Hundreds of Australians complain of wrongful social media account closures but ombudsman can’t help

More than 1,500 Australians in the past two-and-a-half years have complained to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman about digital platforms, with a third complaining about wrongful account terminations.But the TIO – which is responsible for complaints about mobile phone service, land lines and internet services – has no powers to do anything about it.The TIO’s report, released on Wednesday, comes before Australia’s social media ban, which will see teenagers under 16 banned from about 12 social media platforms from 10 December. The federal government has set out that the platforms must have quick appeals processes in place for people who have been wrongly assessed as being under 16 to regain access to their accounts.In the report, the TIO referred to Karen – not her real name – whose business page on social media was linked to her personal account

Doom, gloom … and Belle Gibson? The top Google searches in Australia in 2025

We may, indeed, be living in the end of times, with natural disasters, death and politics dominating Google searches in Australia in 2025.Cyclone Alfred was the number one overall Google search term by Australians in 2024, according to the annual search results list released by the tech company on Thursday.It was followed by American political activist Charlie Kirk, who also topped Wikipedia’s list of the year’s most-read articles after being fatally shot in September, and in third place was Australian federal election 2025.When we weren’t voting or doomscrolling, we were watching television. Belle Gibson, the Australian wellness scammer and subject of the hit show Apple Cider Vinegar, made it into the overall top 10 list, as did serial killer Ed Gein from the series Monster

Amazon and the tightening grip of capitalism | Letters

Yanis Varoufakis argues that Amazon marks a shift to “technofeudalism”, claiming its ownership of digital infrastructure forces capitalists, governments and users to pay it economic rents (How Amazon turned our capitalist era of free markets into the age of technofeudalism, 27 November). This rests on an idealised view of capitalism. Early capitalism saw similar dynamics: the East India Company, backed by the British state, controlled trade routes, exploited resources and wielded political power, enabling it to charge above-market prices for commodities such as tea and spices.In Capital, Karl Marx noted that English landlords helped establish capitalism by dispossessing peasants and commodifying land. They earned monopoly rents from their exclusive control of this productive resource – a portion of surplus value originally created by exploited labour and first appropriated by industrial capitalists before being transferred to landowners

Anti-immigrant material among AI-generated content getting billions of views on TikTok

Hundreds of accounts on TikTok are garnering billions of views by pumping out AI-generated content, including anti-immigrant and sexualised material, according to a report.Researchers said they had uncovered 354 AI-focused accounts pushing 43,000 posts made with generative AI tools and accumulating 4.5bn views over a month-long period.According to AI Forensics, a Paris-based non-profit, some of these accounts attempt to game TikTok’s algorithm – which decides what content users see – by posting large amounts of content in the hope that it goes viral.One posted up to 70 times a day or at the same time of day, an indication of an automated account, and most of the accounts were launched at the beginning of the year

Tesla privately warned UK that weakening EV rules would hit sales

Tesla privately warned the UK government that weakening electric vehicle rules would hit battery car sales and risk the country missing its carbon dioxide targets, according to newly revealed documents.The US electric carmaker, run by Elon Musk, also called for “support for the used-car market”, according to submissions to a government consultation earlier this year obtained by the Fast Charge, a newsletter covering electric cars.The Labour government in April worried some electric carmakers by weakening rules, known as the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate. The mandate forces increased sales of EVs each year, but new loopholes allowed carmakers to sell more petrol and diesel cars.New taxes on electric cars in last week’s budget could further undermine demand, critics have said

Australia’s eSafety commissioner rejects US Republican’s assertion she is a ‘zealot for global takedowns’

Australia’s online safety regulator has rejected assertions from a key US Republican congressman that she is a “zealot for global takedowns”, as the eSafety commissioner faced questions from the Australian parliament on a Guardian investigation into Roblox.Julie Inman Grant was asked by US Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, Jim Jordan, to speak before the committee last month.The committee produced a report in June arguing the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (Garm), which was shut down in August 2024, had colluded with advertisers and foreign regulators. The committee alleged the group colluded to make demands on then-Twitter about what content it should moderate on its platform.The committee had turned its attention to Inman Grant, after emails from her to the organisation showed the commissioner saying Garm was “helping to hold the platforms to account”

Sam Altman issues ‘code red’ at OpenAI as ChatGPT contends with rivals

Sam Altman has declared a “code red” at OpenAI to improve ChatGPT as the chatbot faces intense competition from rivals.According to a report by tech news site the Information, the chief executive of the San Francisco-based startup told staff in an internal memo: “We are at a critical time for ChatGPT.”OpenAI has been rattled by the success of Google’s latest AI model, Gemini 3, and is devoting more internal resources to improving ChatGPT.Last month, Altman told employees that the launch of Gemini 3, which has outperformed rivals on various benchmarks, could create “temporary economic headwinds” for the company. He added: “I expect the vibes out there to be rough for a bit

The fight to see clearly through big tech’s echo chambers

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery. Today, I’m mulling over whether to upgrade my iPhone 11 Pro. In tech news, there’s a narrative battle afoot in Silicon Valley, tips on avoiding the yearly smartphone upgrade cycle and new devices altogether, and artificial intelligence’s use in government, for better and for worse.The encroachment of technology can feel inevitable

‘The biggest decision yet’: Jared Kaplan on allowing AI to train itself

Humanity will have to decide by 2030 whether to take the “ultimate risk” of letting artificial intelligence systems train themselves to become more powerful, one of the world’s leading AI scientists has said.Jared Kaplan, the chief scientist and co-owner of the $180bn (£135bn) US startup Anthropic, said a choice was looming about how much autonomy the systems should be given to evolve.The move could trigger a beneficial “intelligence explosion” – or be the moment humans end up losing control.In an interview about the intensely competitive race to reach artificial general intelligence (AGI) – sometimes called superintelligence – Kaplan urged international governments and society to engage in what he called “the biggest decision”.Anthropic is part of a pack of frontier AI companies including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, xAI, Meta and Chinese rivals led by DeepSeek, racing for AI dominance