This Week In Cyberspace

10 days to go until lift off and land down in Taiwan for RightsCon Taipei 2025. We are trialling our tech and our FACES! Check the program list out and let us know who you want us to interview: https://www.rightscon.org/program/#list

This Week In Cyberspace we take a look at how the release of China’s new Artificial Intelligence model DeepSeek has knocked the socks off Silicon Valley’s techbros. It’s just as powerful as ChatGPT, made for a tenth of the cost and its release knocked a cool trillion off US tech stocks. How will this new battle for supremacy in the AI space play out?

As Trump cracks down on illegal immigration, reports have emerged that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its Citizen and Immigration Services have dished out $7.8 billion on immigration technologies since 2020. That's a lot of money on what the World Economic Forum reports is not the problem. So what's the deal?

 We kick off This Week In Cyberspace 2025 with a look at the inauguration of Donald Trump and how his American tech bros are falling over themselves to be part of the new world order/disorder. It's a laugh a minute as we get our heads around what just happened with over 100 Executive Orders signed, Trumpian memecoins launched, all against the backdrop of 170 million US Tik Tok users being kick...

2024 was a big year, especially for elections with no less 2 billion people casting their votes. We’ve seen the impact of internet shutdowns in many countries and the influence of social media platforms, especially on the US election. In Russia Putin secured a 5th term and in Syria we saw a shift from digital control to digital freedom. We cast our eyes back on the year that was in cyberspace.

AI is not only harvesting original music to generate it’s own cheap versions but taking away revenue from creatives. For the first time that amount has been calculated at about a quarter of the income of the creator within the next 5 years. The study on the global economic impact of Generative AI in the Music and Audio Visual Industries was released earlier this month in Paris. The study was put o...

Right now in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, delegates are gathered from all over the world for the 20th United Nations’ Internet Governance Forum. The aim of the five day event is to inspire “a global commitment to responsible digital governance and [foster] a future where digital technologies serve the entire global community equitably and sustainably” But with people currently serving up to 45 yea...

On the 76th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights   we explore how human rights intersect with digital rights. Our rights, our Future. Right Now. That's the clarion call around the globe on this day for us all to embrace and trust the full power of human rights as the path to the world we want to live in - a more peaceful, equal and sustainable world.

There are over 100 conflicts happening right now all over planet Earth, wars that most of us would  like to see an end to. But the battlefields of today are a very different to the ones of last century; the white flag coming out of the trenches is no longer enough to stop bullets. Wars are being controlled by satellites and fibre optic cables.  In March this year a supposedly ‘invincible’ US Abram...

We all know that governments like to censor the internet in times of crises, particularly authoritarian governments around election times to control the sort of information that voters have access to. Last Thursday, in a world first, the Australian Government introduced a bill to ban non-voters ( all those under the age of 16) from accessing social media platforms because they’re not considered to...

 The rise of the authoritarian right in the USA was actively facilitated by the algorithms of certain social media platforms. This sinister digital development has sent tremors through the progressive left. But some organisations are fighting back.  The Guardian said it will not post on the social media site  X, saying it's a toxic media platform while the fiercely non-partisan tech focused organi...

One week on from the American election and the progressive world is still reeling. How could a racist sexist autocratic felon have scored the top job? What has happened to the actual culture of the United States to allow Donald Trump to win the popular vote? For the Republicans, who supported an insurrection, and promoted crazy conspiracy theories and spread misinformation and disinformation, for...

It's V-Day - Tuesday Nov 5 - the day America votes. But is the US election really coming down to a stand off between men and women? Trump is telling women that he’ll be their protector, while at the same time saying former congresswoman Liz Cheney should have guns trained at her face for critisising the storming of the Capitol last time. It’s a monumental shit show in the Republican Camp with Harr...

The US election has hit a new low with Donald Trump’s rally in Maddison Square Garden on Sunday Night turning into a real hate fest. Parallels have been made between the event and a Nazi rally in Maddison Square Garden back in 1939. The Republican nominee vowed to “Launch the largest deportation program in American history” and denounced the press “the enemy of the people”. Meanwhile in the swing...

A new study has revealed that Americans are deeply concerned about the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the election. Nearly 40% of those polled reckon AI will be used for evil with only 5% believing it is a force for good.  And then there’s the money issue. Elon Musk has started giving away $1m a day to a voter who signs up to his America Political Action Committee petition, and he says he’s...

With just three weeks to go before the US election, all eyes are on the two major candidates - one, a vibrant 59 year-old woman of the people, and of colour; the other a 78 year- old white male billionaire who has just got a massive leg up from the richest man in the world. Elon Musk is using his powerful social media platform X to trumpet his support of the Republican candidate to his  201 millio...

In this special extended edition of TWICS, co-host Brett Solomon reflects on his 15 years as Executive Director of Access Now. When he started in the job Facebook and Twitter were just emerging as social media platforms. Since then we've seen the rise of both as powerful tech tools and the internet as a force for good, evil and all the grey areas in between. What are the challenges ahead for d...

This Week In Cyberspace, Julian Assange was brought back home to Australian soil in Canberra after a 14 year trial. The following morning, Senator David Shoebridge organised a press conference in Parliament House with Assange's wife Stella Assange, legal team Jennifer Robinson and Barry Pollock, Senators Zoe Daniel, Murray Watt, Peter Wish-Wilson, and former Senator Scott Ludlam. TWICS was on...

We examine the growing battle between tech giants and governments around the world. In the US, Biden has signed off on an ultimatum to Tik Tok to divest or be banned. In Australia, the eSafety Commissioner has issued an ultimatum to X to either take down the video of the stabbing of a bishop in Sydney or pay a daily fine of $785,000 per day. And then there's the European Union where the digita...

The Prime Minister of Australia has called him an “arrogant billionaire” who’s “chosen ego and violence over common sense”. In return, Elon Musk has sarcastically thanked the PM for informing the public that his platform "is the only truthful one”.  The battle lines are clearly drawn with the eSaftey Commissioner issuing a court order for X to remove a video of the stabbing of a bishop in Syd...

Lavender. Sounds pretty vanilla right? But it’s actually the name of the Artificial Intelligence machine allegedly targeting Israel’s bombs at Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives in Gaza. The system has generated  “mass target creation and lethality”, especially in the first six weeks of the conflict. But with a 10% error rating,  the fallout for Gazan civilians has been horrific. On th...

This Week In Cyberspace we take a look at hate speech online in the context of conflict. With the UN calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and the horrific human toll of Palestinian civilian lives still rising, certain words are coming under intense scrutiny. META is reviewing the use of the word 'Zionist' on its platforms, while the Arabic term 'Saheed' - the word for martyr...

It's the biggest year of voting in global history. Seventy countries will decide their governance including citizens of no less than twenty-one African nations. But with many of those already on the Election Watchlist for internet interference, how many will claim to be bastions of democracy? With a humanitarian crisis of apocalyptic proportions underway in the African heartland of Sudan, what...

Putin is locked in for a 5th term, largely through the control of information on the internet, while Elon Musk’s quest for world domination also continues apace with the release of the raw computer code behind his new xAI Chatbot. On top of all that, the Chinese owned company behind TikTok is being forced to sell up in the US, and over in the EU, the AI Act has come into law essentially enabling d...

Did Kate Middleton actually doctor her own family photograph? Or has she actually been abducted by aliens? How fake images can ignite a bonfire of wild conspiracy theories. And turncoat Donald Trump once wanted TikTok banished from the USA. Now that he's banned from Facebook for telling lies and inciting his followers to storm the Capitol, he wants the legislation he introduced to be reversed....