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Meta AI death, judge criticises outdated election law & the Sizzler say

Plus: An update to a previously Sizzled Wikipedia mystery

Author

Cam Wilson
August 15, 2025

Edition 2397

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The News

Meta’s AI bot romance leads to man’s death

Meta’s push to get people to use its AI chatbots included the company embracing romantic uses which, in one case, has already led to a man’s death (Reuters). You really have to read this devastating story about a man with diminished mental capabilities from a stroke who had a romantic relationship initiated by a Kendall Jenner-inspired AI chatbot. It encouraged him to travel to New York to meet “her” where he suffered a fall and died. Internal documents from the company show that Meta explicitly allows “romantic and sensual” interactions between bots and teens, or for the bots to offer incorrect medical advice (Reuters).

It should be law that AI chatbots cannot act as if they are real people.

The Sizzle: I read stories like this and can’t come to any conclusion other than that people like Mark Zuckerberg really don’t give a fuck about real people. Reading a sentence like “Current and former employees who have worked on the design and training of Meta’s generative AI products said the policies reviewed by Reuters reflect the company’s emphasis on boosting engagement with its chatbots” and knowing that it means that vulnerable people will die makes me sick to my stomach.

Sorry, no smart analysis here. Just disgust.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Politician’s court win shows how election law needs to change for internet era

Disgraced former MP Andrew Laming has successfully appealed a $40,000 fine for not properly authorising Facebook posts (ABC News). Originally, Laming was fined $20,000 for 3 Facebook posts on a page he ran, but an Australian Electoral Commission appeal led the fine being doubled. Now, the High Court has overturned that on the grounds that, despite being seen by voters 28 times, the number of offences was linked to the number of infringing posts.

The Sizzle: Sizzler Rob flagged in the Sizzle Slack that a dissenting justice on the trial said that this appeal shows Australian electoral law isn’t fit for the digital age. If you hand out an illegal pamphlet, Justice Edelman said, multiple pamphlets = multiple electoral offences. But a post “received by 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 or 1,000,000 unique profiles on Facebook” only counts as a single offence. Essentially, this makes breaking the election law online an “acceptable cost of doing business”, Edelman said.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

What Sizzlers say

  • With the NBN 2000 becoming available in a month, DGH started off a lively thread on Slack about how to get it and what to expect (aka fibremaxxing).

  • There’s been an active forum post about Sizzlers’ favourite self-hosting platforms, with tuey sharing his experience with ZimaOS.

  • In response to the story about how the UK’s age checking might be routing people towards dodgier adult websites, meski compared it to the Prohibition era.

  • Mikey is on the lookout for some good recipe app recommendations.

  • Muddie is leaving mastodon[.]cloud after it has been “overrun by racists” and started off a convo about alternative servers.

  • Cam (me) has to clean up two small errors from earlier in the week:

    • The YouTuber leading the Commodore revival isn’t technically an Australian, but he is British and has voiced a Bluey character so I say he’s an honorary Aussie.

    • When writing about the Epic Games win over Apple and Google, I wrote that the judge found that both companies were anti-competitive for banning side-loading — but, obviously, Android allows that so a ✅ for Google.

(FYI - Sizzle Slack links will only work if you have joined the Slack server here)

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

  • Electronic Frontiers Australia has taken a big swing at Australia's teen social media ban tech trial, with EFA chair John Pane saying there are "serious concerns about the project's methodology". (Bluesky)

  • Meet Matilda, Australia’s answer to ChatGPT (The Australian Financial Review, $)

  • Australia and Vanuatu ink Nakamal Agreement for subsea cables, datacenters (The Register)

  • AI may be ‘turbocharging’ racism and sexism, Australian human rights commissioner says (Guardian Australia)

  • The Big Picture Part One: "I don't know if games are recession-proof" (GamesIndustry.biz)

  • Meta Leaks Part 2 (Internet Archive)

  • Supreme Court sides with Mississippi in social media age-gating case (The Verge)

  • Steam’s censorship issues have broken PayPal support in some regions (Engadget)

  • Google Messages rolling out sensitive content warnings (9to5Google)

  • Trump Administration Is Said to Discuss U.S. Taking Stake in Intel (Bloomberg, $)

  • xAI’s Grok Chatbot Used by US Government Agency Praised Hitler (Wired, $)

  • Apple’s Clever Workaround for the U.S. Ban on Blood Oxygen Sensing in Apple Watches (Daring Fireball)

  • Over $300 million in cybercrime crypto seized in anti-fraud effort (BleepingComputer)

  • Pro-Russian hackers blamed for water dam sabotage in Norway (BleepingComputer)

  • 'Godfather of AI' says chatbots need 'maternal instincts' – but what they really need is to understand humanity (TechRadar)

  • Nothing Phone 3 review: My new favorite Android phone (The Shortcut)

  • “conducting an LIS study tracing the iPod owner to metadata librarian pipeline” (Bluesky)

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

An update to a previously Sizzled Wikipedia mystery

Remember David Woodard, the man who is the subject of the most translated Wikipedia articles? I never got around to snooping more into it. But someone else did. An article in the Wikipedia newspaper, the Signpost looked into Woodard and concluded that the articles “might have been the single largest self-promotion operation in Wikipedia’s history” (Wikipedia). I won’t spoil it but worth a read.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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The Sizzle is created on Gadigal land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.

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