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Hello and welcome to Screenshot, your weekly tech update from national technology reporter Ange Lavoipierre, featuring the best, worst and strangest in tech and online news. As always, read to the end for an A+ Subreddit recommendation you didn't know you needed.
Like so many trees falling in abandoned forests, the government's digital ID bill passed the Senate right before the Easter long weekend, and for a while there it wasn't clear whether anyone outside Canberra had noticed.
But different analysis suggests that for some Australians, it's the biggest scandal going.
The reporting by Pyrra Technologies is an important if ugly window into "alternative social media", a land where misinformation is often born, always lives and never dies.
Pyrra tracks global sentiment and activity on an ecosystem of unmoderated or partially moderated social media sites that make X/Twitter seem like a school fete — among them are 4Chan, Gab and Donald Trump's Truth Social.
The company scans "millions of posts on more than 30 alternative social media platforms" each week to detect narratives that are picking up steam, and for Australians on those sites, the digital ID bill is a top concern.
The bill, as the name suggests, would create a (voluntary) government-issued digital ID system, and has been quietly making its way through parliament since November 2023.
In the dying days of the pre-Easter parliamentary sitting weeks, it passed the Senate and is now headed for the House of Representatives, where its passage into law is all but assured.
The bill's stated purpose is to make it harder for internet baddies to steal your identity or otherwise defraud you, which, objectively speaking, does seem like a good thing.
Again — no judgement here — most Australians seem not to care for now. At a guess, it might be because these days many of us are using a digitised driver's licence instead of a physical card anyway, and the whole idea sounds less scary as a result.
But over on alt social media, the bill is about as popular as a Pfizer exec in an N95 mask. It's been described as a poorly concealed Chinese Communist Party-style social credit system, and a plot to advance the goals of a shadowy globalist cabal, among other things.
In case you need to hear it, there's no evidence to support either of those claims.
That's not to say that there's been no legitimate criticism of this bill — among them, that it risks creating a data honeypot of worrying proportions.
The bill was amended dozens of times, and Coalition and right-wing crossbenchers ultimately voted against it anyway, citing everything from privacy concerns to a sluggish rollout for the private sector.
As for the critics Pyrra is monitoring on social media, it's true their numbers are a vanishingly small fraction of the national population.
Still, it's worth keeping an eye on Australia's "other internet", especially as the digital ID gets closer to a rollout.
Misinformation is only subterranean until it's not, and if Facebook for some unknown reason decides to ban news altogether, these are the kinds of narratives we could see thrive in its place.
Speaking of which…
Should social media platforms be forced to carry news?
The federal government is currently trying to decide whether to hit Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, with a giant law-shaped stick, in an attempt to force it to once more pay Australian news publishers tens of millions of dollars.
It's not the only available course of action, as my colleague James Purtill points out.
Assuming, however, the government does opt to use the stick, there's a decent chance Meta will in turn block all Australian news on its platforms.
There are no guarantees of course, but the company has form. You might remember their previous ban, lasting eight days in 2021. In fact Canada is currently six months into its own Meta-flavoured news blackout, creating a vacuum which is reportedly being filled with — surprise — misinformation.
If another news ban plays out here, the next part is harder to predict because asking Meta to pay for news it's no longer using is tricky to say the least.
Enter former ACCC chair Rod Sims, one of the key architects of the aforementioned law-shaped stick, also known as the News Media Bargaining Code.
One idea, as Sims recently told The Australian, is to consider forcing social media platforms to carry news, in the same way radio and TV stations are legally obliged to do so.
Is that even possible in a practical sense? Honestly, I have no clue. The idea has an unhinged air about it, but then again, so did the News Media Bargaining Code to begin with.
No word yet as to whether Meta likes Sims's new ideas better than his old ones.
Theories but no answers about the Very Bad hack that didn't happen
It's hard to communicate exactly how bad the Linux hack would have been if it had succeeded.
In short, a highly sophisticated and years-long plot to install a backdoor in globally significant enterprise-level software was recently discovered, essentially by chance, just before a major rollout.
If you'd rather gouge out your eyes than get stuck into the detail on this one then I'll spare you, except to quote Kevin Roose in the New York Times, who describes the Linux operating system as "probably the most important piece of open-source software in the world", which is used by "banks, hospitals, governments and Fortune 500 companies", among others.
The culprit, a volunteer worker who went by the name Jia Tan, was sophisticated enough in covering their tracks that the attack was likely state-sponsored, according to analysis in Wired.
Makes you wonder about the back doors we might have missed, right?
LoadingIf a complaint about Meta falls in the woods …
Finally, in keeping with today's completely accidental theme of tech news you barely notice, a complaint against Meta alleging that the company misled Australians over its efforts to tackle misinformation is still parked with the regulator.
The regulator (and stay with me here) is DIGI, which happens to be the industry body representing Meta in Australia. It also administers the complaints process via an independent committee.
DIGI told the ABC around 12 days ago it would assess whether the complaint was valid for consideration and provide an answer after the Easter break.
In fairness, they didn't say how long after the Easter break they meant, but I can't wait to find out.
And if it's all too much
Please enjoy our Subreddit of the week: Reverse Animal Rescue, which is exactly what it says on the label.
Imho, the true genius of this very special corner of the internet is that it manages to be both wholesome and supremely dark, simultaneously.
To wit: "Basterd captures a kingfisher and sticks its beak into a fruit".
You're very welcome.