In This Issue


News

NSW Supreme Court upholds decision making Facebook pages liable for defamation in comments

Remember Dylan Voller, the kid who was regularly abused in an NT prison? In 2017 he sued a bunch of Australian media outlets for defamation over the comments people left on those outlet's Facebook posts about articles regarding himself. The NSW Supreme Court found in his favour last year, saying that the media outlets were legally responsible for the comments left on their posts. The media companies appealed and today, the appeal was dismissed. This technically means that Sunrise or the Herald Sun should be moderating comments left by followers on their Facebook pages, because if they leave up something potentially defamatory it leaves the door wide open for someone to sue as there's now legal precedent for it (in NSW at least).

Another one of Trump’s tweets gets moderated, this time for glorifying violence

Twitter took moderating Trump's tweets a step further over the weekend, labeling one of his tweets where he says "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" as violating Twitter's rules for "glorifying violence". After that tweet was slapped down, the White House's Twitter account said the same thing, which Twitter also moderated. The tweets are still there, but you can't see it on their profile pages (just the warning), can't reply to it, it won't appear in follower's timelines and you can't retweet/favourite it. But you can view the tweet it if you click the warning. Twitter argues it doesn't delete these posts because it comes from an important person (i.e: the goddamn President of the USA), which is probably fair enough as if it's just wiped we might forget that the President of the USA at one point said to shoot their own citizens.

The USA once again has the ability to put humans into space thanks to SpaceX

Initially delayed due to weather, NASA and SpaceX successfully put two American humans back into space onboard an American rocket and capsule on Sunday morning. SpaceX built the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft and this was the first time humans were on it. 19 hours later they docked with the International Space Station and NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are now floating around inside it. You can re-watch everything on NASA's YouTube channel (worth subscribing to if you aren't already!). Can I also just say how cool the Crew Dragon spacecraft's controls look? Instead of the usual array of buttons and switches, they have three large touch screens and a handful of buttons. The interior itself looks really minimal too, not what I expected for the inside of a real-life spacecraft.


Not News

Tech is playing a huge role in the USA’s current civil uprising

It's easy to see the mass protests going on in the USA and think it has nothing to do with technology but mate, you are so wrong. For starters, the fact we are seeing so many instances of police brutality is likely not because it's suddenly occurring and police 20 or more years ago were nice guys - it's because everyone is armed with a camera and the means to share those videos (social media) exists. Even the policing side of things is heavily tech stacked, with Minneapolis police using Clearview AI (we know all about these pricks), BriefCam (citywide network of CCTV for public transport) and Amazon's network of Ring devices (doorbells & security cams) to identify protesters. Apparently Customs and Border Protection flew a goddamn Predator drone around Minneapolis on Friday to support police operations. I bet when engineers put cameras in smartphones and built Predator drones, they didn’t think they’d be used like this.


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