Technology

Even if you can somehow get past the absolutely horrendous privacy implications, how the fuck is this even supposed to work? They want to prevent "digital flashing" (eg, dick pics), but how the fuck is any system supposed to be able to tell the difference between consensual and non-consensual content? What if someone wants to see a picture of someone's dick? Even assuming you can create a computer model that can accurately identify a dick pic every single time (you can't), it would also have to be able to infer context to a level that would require effectively human level intelligence and the ability to make judgements across the entirety of a person's communications. This is so far beyond impossible, from a purely technical standpoint, that I cannot begin to imagine how it was ever allowed to become law.

The government’s new Online Safety Act 2023 (Priority Offenses) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, which came into force on January 8, 2026, designates “cyberflashing” and “encouraging or assisting serious self-harm” as priority offenses, categories that trigger the strictest compliance duties under the OSA.

How are they going to prosecute Grok and ChatGPT? Just above in my feed is an article where ChatGPT suggested drug combinations that led a young man to accidentally kill himself with drugs.

That's disgusting.

Why is the government obsessed with scanning people's privates?

I wonder how this will affect projects like Simplex

they should just do preemptive scanning of everything you see at this point.~/s~

I've only seen this reported here, is there an alternative new link