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.
How the alt right used X to exploit the Bondi attacks
It's true that nature abhors a vacuum, but nature's got nothing on X (formerly Twitter) in a crisis.
On Saturday afternoon, in the aftermath of the mass stabbing at Bondi Junction, there was a yawning news void on the topic of the attacker's identity or motive.
In the hours that followed, Australian journalists had little choice but to repeat ad nauseum the few confirmed facts they had, whilst everyone from Anthony Albanese down reminded us that speculation was unhelpful.
Sensing an opportunity, anti-Semitic and white supremacist accounts on X began suggesting with varying degrees of certainty that a Muslim terrorist was to blame, or that the attacker must be Jewish.
Then, roughly four hours in, one of the accounts fed the vacuum a name: Ben Cohen, a 20-year old Jewish man from Sydney's eastern suburbs.
The rumour festered on alt-right Twitter overnight, and journalists, also famous for their allergy to a vacuum, picked it up.
Early the following morning, two 7 News reporters named Ben Cohen as the "confirmed" attacker on TV and online.
Those stories have since been deleted, and 7 News has apologised for what it's described as a "human error".
So how does an ideologically motivated lie travel from alt-right internet backwaters to a national newsroom?
The finer points are so far a mystery and I hear speculation is unhelpful, but we know for sure that it passed through two main gates along the way.
The first was X's content moderation policies, and the second was at least one journalist's bullsh*t detector.
Regarding the first gate, I wouldn't be the first or last person to complain about how X is run.
Since entering its (selective) free speech era under Elon Musk, banned accounts have been reinstated and content moderation has been gutted.
In fact, late last year, the platform was officially kicked out of Australia's voluntary misinformation code for noncompliance, meaning technically, it no longer has to comply at all.
Crucially, no-one anywhere is expecting X to change in the foreseeable future.
Which brings us to the second gate: how journalists treat X.
In general, the media and the world more generally has an unhelpful habit of sorting the social web into two discrete tiers.
Above, we have the street level, consisting of Instagram, Facebook, and on a good day, TikTok — platforms which employ safety teams, engage with regulators, and at least attempt to label or remove misinformation.
Beneath that, there's the lawless, lightless sewer of unmoderated platforms like Gab, 4Chan, and Truth Social.
In the past, Twitter would have blended in more neatly on the street level.
For a decade prior to being absorbed into Musk's empire, it had cemented itself as a legitimate source of information, and a flawed but genuinely useful tool for newsgathering.
But in 2024, as 'X', it has a foot in both worlds, at best.
Part of the problem might be that we're confusing X with Twitter: a platform that no longer exists.
LoadingAustralian regulator dismisses complaint against Meta
Last month, Meta was accused of exaggerating its response to disinformation on Facebook.
A complaint was made to the regulator that Meta's most recent transparency report promised more comprehensive labelling for known falsehoods that it was delivering — a claim the company rejected.
On Monday, the committee dismissed the complaint, saying there was "no convincing evidence".
It's likely the end of the road for the matter.
Australia's code of conduct for misinformation on platforms is voluntary, and was co-designed by companies such as Meta.
Under the code, complaints are considered by an independent subcommittee set up by DIGI, the same industry body that represents tech companies interests in Australia.
The safety research group that made the complaint, Reset Tech, says the decision shows that "platforms can say what they like in their Transparency Reports".
"This is an embarrassment for a country that once led the world on online safety," Reset's executive director Alice Dawkins said.
In an (irony-free) statement explaining why the transparency complaint had been dismissed, the committee expressed its disappointment "that Reset Australia chose to share the substance of its complaint with the media".
No win (yet) for Twiggy Forrest in his war on a Facebook crypto scam
While we're on Meta, mining magnate Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest was going after the company in a WA court over dodgy crypto ads using his name and image to defraud investors, but the matter was dropped late last week.
One woman lost $670,000 as part of the scam, which also made use of fabricated ABC articles.
Watch this space though, because he's also pursuing it in a California court, which is due to give a verdict next month.
And if it's all too much…
(Which it might be, this week, and fair enough) then I hope you find some comfort in this Rorschach test of a subreddit, devoted to mysterious cookie cutters.
Recommendations and tips are always welcome. You can reach me securely on Proton Mail.