The USA's Federal Communications Commission has sent a letter to Apple and Google's CEO asking them to remove TikTok from their app stores. The FCC reckons that due to the crazy level of data TikTok collects on its users (recently exposed in a Buzzfeed News article), that is readily available to the Chinese government because TikTok is a Chinese app, the app violates Apple's and Google's store policies and should be removed. If TikTok isn't removed by the 8th of July, the FCC wants a statement to explain why. You can read the letter for yourself on Twitter. I'd be very surprised if TikTok goes dark in the US, but we are in the post-COVID era where weird things happen on a regular basis.
Sydney is getting its own version of the popular conference South by Southwest in October 2023. It's traditionally held in Austin, Texas, but Destination NSW convinced the Texans (presumably with a pile of money) to put on a variant of their show in Sydney to cater for the Asia Pacific region. The media is going around saying it's the first time SXSW has held a conference outside of Texas, but a quick Wikipedia search says they've held SXSW variants (albeit at a smaller scale) all over the world. SXSW used to be more tech focused back in the day and quite cool, but lately is more pop culture and media stuff and full of wankers. See you there!
Freshly minted Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus is gonna have a crack at the Privacy Act and plans to finally do something with the review of the Privacy Act that kicked off in 2019. He said in an interview with the AFR that "everyone agrees that the Commonwealth Privacy Act is out of date and in need of reform for the digital age" and he isn't wrong - except the Business Council of Australia who are saying that "we are yet to see compelling evidence that there is a need for these". They're anti-everything that doesn't line their own pockets, so not surprising they're against using data as they see fit, consequences be damned. Dreyfus plans to publish a list of proposals and reforms for the Privacy Act "in coming months".
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