Mentioned in today’s edition: Meta, YouTube, Fujifilm, ChatGPT, Dario Amodei, Reddit, TurboQuant, Evangelion Unit-01 and Elon Musk. Plus, deals on HP Omen gaming monitors, Ugreen power banks and Vodafone prepaid plans.

Meta and YouTube have both suffered significant legal losses that could open the floodgates to further lawsuits. The two companies were found by a California court to have negligently harmed the mental health of a 20 year old woman through the addictive design of their platforms (NYT, gift link). In a New Mexico court, Meta was determined to have enabled the sexual exploitation of young users and misled others about the steps it was taking to protect those users (Politico). Meta is set to appeal both decisions. 

The Sizzle: This is a pretty substantial moment. Yes, the damages in the California trial are small (just a couple of million bucks) and even the US$375m fine in Nevada is a small fraction of Meta's profit. Yet, the California suit was a 'bellwether' case that tested a new legal claim: that it was Meta's platform design, not the speech on the platform, that was harming users. There will be many more cases. All that being said: civil suits are not the way to deal with this. Not everyone can afford to file a lawsuit, or wait the years it takes to fight things in court against teams of the world's best paid lawyers. If we have reason to believe that certain features are hurting people, then those need to be directly regulated. 

This has always been my view. When I've pointed out the potential flaws of the teen social ban, it's always been in the context that restricting 13-16-year-olds doesn't address harmful features for all ages. If we're getting to the point where courts are deciding that companies like Meta are actively being harmful to users by allowing things like infinite scroll or recommendation engines, then it's about time politicians get off their asses and do something about it. 

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Three Queensland government entities have been embarrassed in a cybersecurity audit that found that all three were essentially defenceless (QAO). Sizzler Rohan shared a state Audit Office report detailing how three unnamed government bodies all had "significant failings". This included allowing unauthorised access to their systems, storing credentials in cleartext, and usually not having any requirement for vendors to report cyberattacks. In one case, auditors were able to create a fake third-party account, make it an admin in the systems, and delete audit logs that would have shown their presence. Not good folks!

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A senior Java developer has been criticised in a court for using AI to write his submissions claiming that he had been unfairly dismissed in part for using AI too much at work (Jade). Marcus Wibmer was fired from Fujifilm after an HR process including his claim that being told to put on a shirt at work was sexual harassment and allegedly fabricating an email from a boss. But key among the issues was Wibmer's use of AI to author voluminous complaint emails and openly using ChatGPT in disciplinary meetings to answer questions. Wibmer also used it in court, unsuccessfully, to challenge his termination. 

The Commission's Deputy President ultimately found that it was "not wise" to rely on AI to write "discursive and difficult to follow" submissions that, ultimately, "led to his [legal] demise". I feel a bit bad for the guy because this doesn't seem like normal behaviour, but, yeah, yikes!

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Australia (and NZ):

Rest of World:

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"What possible reason could you have for installing an Evangelion statue in your town," you might ask? Well, obviously, it's sick. Another reason: it makes economic sense (Automation). Or at least it has in the case of the Japanese city of Hamamatsu (population 770,000) that spent about AU$470,000 on installing a 6 metre statue of Evangelion Unit-01 in their city but calculated a $10 million economic impact from all the tourism. That's like 20x returns.

So, the real question is, why hasn't Wagga Wagga or Geraldton installed a giant anime statue?

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