🚓🇦🇺 Australia Just Banned Social Media for Under-16s🚓

Australia is about to pull off something no major democracy has dared to try: a full social-media ban for anyone under 16, starting 10 December. Not time limits. Not parental controls. A ban. And Big Tech has spent the past year lobbying, sulking, or sending… The Wiggles to negotiate on their behalf. 🟦🟪👶🏾😂

This is regulation by fed-up parent energy — and it’s global. Because when you’ve had over a decade to fix safety, address misconduct, and stop algorithmically serving children grooming, self-harm content, and violence, governments eventually stop asking nicely. 🚫📱

But what’s wild is the speed at which the industry jumped from "Trust us, we’ve got safety covered" to "Please don’t copy Australia."

Why? Because if this works — even imperfectly — it becomes a blueprint. And right now, regulators from Norway to Singapore are literally calling Canberra for the playbook. 🌏📞🔥

While CEOs insist they “care deeply about youth safety,” the receipts show something different:

• YouTube is only now rolling out AI age-estimation because governments forced their hand. 🤖

• Instagram Teen protections were found to be two-thirds ineffective, according to whistleblower Arturo Béjar. 📉

• Meta spent a year removing fact-checkers, not harmful content.

• Snapchat says kids are safe — while having hundreds of thousands of under-16 users in Australia alone.

And the lawsuits keep coming: Meta, TikTok, Snap, YouTube all face landmark US cases alleging their products fuel addiction, mental health harms, exploitation — and that they knew.

So Australia’s message is pretty clear:
“You had 15 years to fix this. You didn’t. We’re done.” 🧹⚖️

👀 But Here’s the Problem: Enforcement Will Be Messy Australia’s law is bold, but it’s also… technically shaky. Age verification at scale is messy. Teens will absolutely find workarounds. VPNs will have a renaissance. And the fines (A$49.5m) are pocket change to companies making that in a lazy Tuesday morning. 💸🌥️

And Big Tech knows this. In fact, they benefit if enforcement fails — because then they get to say:
“See? Regulation doesn’t work. Better to let us handle safety.”

It’s a neat trick: comply… but not too well. 😏🪤

Former Facebook Australia head Stephen Scheeler calls this a “seatbelt moment” — the point where society realises tech needs minimum safety standards, not vibes and apologies.

If this sticks, we’ll see:

• Stricter age rules across the EU

• A new wave of parental-rights politics in the US

• Platform design finally forced to shift toward child wellbeing

• Less “Oops, our algorithm did a bad thing again” press tours

And if it fails?
Big Tech gets another decade of “self-regulation” — which has worked about as well as letting toddlers regulate their own screen time. 🧃📺

📉 So what?

Australia’s ban isn’t the perfect policy. But it forces the global conversation Big Tech wanted to avoid:
How much power should private companies have over the mental health of an entire generation?

Self-regulation has clearly failed.
Voluntary commitments haven’t worked.
Safety patches and PR campaigns haven’t solved a decade of harm.

Even if the ban is messy, even if teens get around it, even if enforcement is uneven — one thing is now undeniable:
Governments have stopped believing Silicon Valley will fix itself.

And that shift – culturally, politically, economically – will reshape youth online safety far beyond Australia. 🌍🔒

📚 Read more:
BBC News – Australia’s social media ban for children has left Big Tech scrambling
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce86381p70eo

💸 Marking your own homework 💸

We adore Google. We really do. They backed us early, championed AI for Everyone, and we’ll forever send them virtual plantain emojis for their support. But even with love, there are limits — especially when the Year in Search drops and asks us to suspend disbelief harder than Prince Andrew (Whoops Andrew Mountbatten Widsor) trying to convince the world he can’t sweat. 🧊😅

Google’s annual list used to be a pretty reliable mirror of what the world actually cared about. Elections. Pandemics. Royal chaos. Celebrities behaving terribly. Things that obviously capture the global imagination. But 2025? This year Google looked us dead in the Wi-Fi and said: “The number one global search was… Gemini.” As in: their own AI product. As in: above global conflict, political assassination, culture-defining moments or… literally anything else. Sure, babes. Sure. 🌐🙃

They claim it’s all measured by “peak search interest,” not total volume — convenient, but still not quite covering the sheer audacity. Because somehow, in a year when Prince Andrew lost more titles, Charlie Kirk was assassinated, Iran and Israel went to war, a new American-born Pope was appointed, and Zohran Mamdani became Mayor of NYC, the biggest thing on Earth — allegedly — was… people Googling Gemini. It’s almost as believable as Donald Trump winning the Fifa Peace Prize. Actually no, scratch that — that somehow really happened. ⚽️🕊️🤯

And bless Euronews for publishing the list with a straight face. Because meanwhile, those of us paying even mild attention to the news cycle know that search interest around “Gemini” simply never reached anywhere near the global intensity of the other stories this year. There wasn’t a single UK moment where we thought, “Wow, everyone’s talking about Gemini,” yet Google wants us to believe it outperformed every political scandal, every celebrity meltdown, every geopolitical explosion. Be serious. 🇬🇧😂

Even funnier: ChatGPT didn’t crack the top 10. The tool that literally reshaped work, education, and half of corporate budgets apparently wasn’t being Googled. Not once. Not mass adoption. Not headline dominance. Nope — irrelevant, according to Google’s galaxy-brained metrics. Meanwhile, even Charlie Kirk’s assassination trended for months, and Google’s list still insists its own product stole the show. It’s giving “Spotify Wrapped telling you your top artist is a man you’ve never heard of,” but with more statistical gaslighting. 📈✨

So what?
This isn’t about whether Gemini is good (it is, Its Very good infact). It’s about whether we’re comfortable with the world’s biggest search engine using its cultural scoreboard as a promotional vehicle. The Year in Search has influence — media cite it, brands react to it, and it shapes public memory. If the data starts feeling curated rather than organic, the trust starts leaking. And in the age of AI, where narrative control is power, we cannot afford to sleepwalk through convenient fictions — even when they come wrapped in Google font. 🔍⚡️

📚 Read more:
Euronews – Google’s Year In Search: What were the most googled terms in 2025?
https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/12/05/googles-year-in-search-what-were-the-most-googled-terms-in-2025

The Guardian – Trump awarded inaugural Fifa peace prize
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/dec/05/fifa-peace-prize-trump-world-cup-infantino

Google – Year in Search 2025
https://trends.withgoogle.com/year-in-search/2025/

🎬 Netflix just bought HBO (and half of your childhood) 😵‍💫

Netflix is dropping $72bn to buy Warner Bros’ studio + streaming business – that’s the film and TV studios, HBO, HBO Max, DC, Harry Potter, Friends, the lot – in a cash-and-stock deal valuing the whole thing at about $82.7bn once Warner Bros Discovery splits off its old-school cable networks into a separate “Discovery Global” company.Wikipedia+1 🎢

Paramount and Comcast both tried to outbid them, but Warner’s board chose Netflix – partly because shareholders will keep stock in both the new Warner studio company and the spun-off TV network business, which they say makes Netflix’s lower headline price worth more overall. Regulators (and Trump’s own advisers) are already twitchy about the world’s biggest streamer swallowing one of Hollywood’s oldest studios, so expect a long antitrust soap opera.Wikipedia ⚖️

For viewers, this looks like a win – one subscription to rule them all – but consolidation usually means higher prices, fewer rivals, and even more power concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of US giants. If you’re a Black or underrepresented creator, that can mean your project is competing for oxygen against mega-franchises with billion-dollar marketing behind them, inside an even more risk-averse

📉 So what?

This is the defining media moment of the decade — not because Netflix is bigger, but because Hollywood finally admitted what Silicon Valley already knew: the platform always wins.

By swallowing Warner Bros, Netflix isn’t just buying content; it’s buying cultural infrastructure. HBO, DC, Harry Potter, prestige drama, childhood nostalgia, century-old IP libraries — these were the last moats the streaming wars had left. And overnight, one tech company now owns them all.

For creators — especially Black, Brown, independent or emerging voices — this cuts both ways:

• The gate just got taller. One fewer studio means fewer buyers, fewer greenlights, and bigger incentives to recycle franchise IP over backing new storytellers.

• But the appetite for fresh, global, diverse talent just became Netflix’s biggest competitive advantage. If you can’t out-spend Paramount and can’t out-muscle Disney, you have to out-discover.

• And at a moment when AI is rewriting production workflows, the winners will be the platforms that empower — not replace — creative workers.

We’re heading into a world where tech companies are the new studios and studios are the new suppliers, and the only people who thrive in that world are the ones who organise, negotiate, and build power.

OK as an update, Paramount launched a counteroffer that outbid Netflix. Let's see what happens re competition law and probably Donald Trump's preference

📚 Read more:

Business Insider / MSN — Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. for $72 billion
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/netflix-to-acquire-warner-bros-for-72-billion-in-a-deal-that-could-reshape-hollywood/ar-AA1RMtEQ

Wall Street Journal — Netflix to Buy Warner Bros. for $72 Billion
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/netflix-warner-bros-deal-72-billion-8b5c1c87

📈 UK Gen Z Is Tired of Waiting — So They're Becoming Their Own Bosses

According to new LinkedIn data, business creation in the UK is up 69% in the past year — comfortably outpacing the global average — which means one thing: Brits have collectively decided that if employers won’t give them stable jobs, they’ll just… become the employer. 🇬🇧💼

And leading the charge? Gen Z and millennials. Nearly half say they want to work for themselves soon, compared to just a third of older generations. Turns out when you grow up through austerity, a pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis, and now AI threatening entry-level jobs, “I’ll do it myself” becomes the default career strategy. 🧃⚡️

Part of the rise is structural. AI is cutting into junior roles, making the “traditional” ladder feel like it got pulled up just as this generation reached it. But part of it is cultural: TikTok has basically turned entrepreneurialism into a lifestyle aesthetic. You don’t just start a business — you become the main character of your business journey. 🎥📦

The report also notes a big shift in power dynamics: Gen Z feel the least control over their careers. Only a third say they’re steering the ship — which might explain why entrepreneurship feels like reclaiming the wheel. Meanwhile, baby boomers are out here sitting at 54% career confidence like they didn’t enter the workforce when houses were £2.75 and a handshake got you a job. 🛠️😅

And yes, AI is lowering barriers: naming the company, writing the pitch deck, doing the financial plan, googling “how do taxes work???” — all suddenly doable with a chatbot and some late-night panic. Two-thirds of UK small business owners say AI makes entrepreneurship easier, and globally four in ten professionals say it’s made them more likely to start something of their own. 🤖🚀

But the more interesting story is equity: entrepreneurship isn’t equally accessible. Young Enterprise notes that confidence gaps and resource gaps hold back the very communities that could benefit the most. AI won’t magically fix that — but it can help level some early-stage hurdles if deployed intentionally. Otherwise, we risk creating a startup economy that looks exactly like the old economy, just with more Canva logos. 🧩🔥

📉 So what?

The UK isn’t just seeing a spike in entrepreneurship — it’s seeing a generational jailbreak. When traditional career paths feel unstable and inequitable, people don’t wait for institutions to change; they build alternatives. AI accelerates this shift by lowering friction, but it also raises the question:
Are we empowering new founders, or outsourcing survival to them?

Because the story isn’t “young people are obsessed with startups.”
It’s “young people have stopped believing that the existing system will look after them.”

Entrepreneurship is becoming less of a dream and more of a coping mechanism — and that should challenge how we think about policy, opportunity, and what it actually takes for talent to thrive. 🌱💡

📚 Read more:

LinkedIn – Entrepreneurship on the rise in the UK
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/entrepreneurship-on-the-rise-in-uk-6797908/

🕳️📉 Mark Zuckerberg’s $77bn Metaverse Hangover Has Finally Arrived📉

After five years, $77 billion in losses, and one company-wide rebrand that aged like milk, Mark Zuckerberg has finally admitted what most of us realised halfway through Horizon Worlds: the metaverse was ...[fill in the gap]. 🥽💀

According to Bloomberg, Meta is now planning “deep cuts” to Reality Labs — up to 30% — and shifting its focus (and money) into the thing that did take off: AI. Turns out the future wasn't legless avatars in a digital office—it was the chatbot sitting in your real one. 🤖✨

Investors reacted like parents whose kid finally dropped their year-long dream of becoming a SoundCloud DJ: relieved, supportive, and quietly hoping this time it works out. 📈😅

It's probably a push to say Meta was “evolving its long-term strategy.” It could more simply be explained by "it looked at the receipts". Spending $77bn on a virtual universe only for Apple, OpenAI, and every fast-moving AI startup under the sun to say look at this instead tends to concentrate the mind. 🧾🔥

Hardware costs were ballooning. Adoption was crawling. And somewhere in Hawaii, while vacationing with executives to plan the cuts (because of course), Zuckerberg realised:
AI wearables = future.
VR legless Sims = tax write-off. 🌺🕶️

Zuck once called the metaverse “the future of the company.”
Now it’s “an area of selective investment.”

In tech language, that’s the difference between “We’re building a new world,” and “Please don’t ask about it on the earnings call.” 📞🙃

📉🌍 So What? (A Real One)

This isn’t just a corporate haircut — it’s the final confirmation that:
The metaverse hype cycle is over.

Good news if you were never convinced the future of work was meetings in a floating neon boardroom. But here’s the real impact:

👉 Meta’s weight now shifts fully onto AI, meaning more compute battles, more acquisitions, more policy pressure, and more attempts to embed Meta-owned AI in absolutely everything (including the glasses you forget to charge).

👉 Developers, startups, and regulators will follow the money. If Meta says the metaverse winter is here, the whole ecosystem freezes.

👉 Another $70bn+ detour in tech strategy should terrify policymakers, because it shows just how often global technology direction depends on one CEO’s mood board.

If AI is now the centre of Meta’s universe, we’d better hope Zuck stays committed longer than he stuck with VR legs. 🌌🦵🏾

🔗 Read more

Men’s Journal – After Reportedly Burning Through $77 Billion, Mark Zuckerberg Finally Shifts Meta’s Focus
https://www.mensjournal.com/news/after-reportedly-burning-through-77-billion-mark

📈 The tools behind the tech📉

📦Product📦

• Why I Ignore The Spotlight as a Staff Engineer

📏Design📏 

• The open-source design tool for design and code collaboration
• Worlds first Ai generated font, using nano banana
• Vanilla CSS is all you need

👩🏿‍💻Code👩🏿‍💻

• Failed software projects are strategic failures

🏢The business behind the tech🏢

•  Transparent leadership beats servant leadership
• Chat GPT code red
• The RAM Shortage Comes for Us All 
• Chat GPT user growth has slowed

😃Founding Full Stack engineer😃

Neya is hiring a founding engineer to help build the world’s first AI super-neighbour. We're on a mission to build stronger, more connected local communities, by pioneering the development of AI to increase social connection.

Location: London (ideally 2 days per week in person)

Team: Founding Team

Compensation: £75k–£90k + meaningful equity (0.5–2% depending on experience)

Start date: ASAP

Tech stack: LLMs (LangChain), Node (Express), Next.js (React + TypeScript), Supabase, vector embeddings, Native mobile (currently Capacitor), WhatsApp Cloud API

If you want to apply fill out our short form here, telling the team:

• What is your strongest engineering edge?
• What part of Neya’s stack or problem space would you be most excited (or nervous)?
• Why does Neya appeal to you, and especially at this stage?
• About something you’ve built that best represents your qualities as an engineer.

🙌Resource launch🙌

We are ecstatic to share that our 2025 International Women's Day Resource is now officially published on the Colorintech website. This resource is designed to empower you with practical steps for personal and professional growth , encouraging you to celebrate your wins and embrace the power of your network. Take some time out of your week to check out our IWD resource and start charting your next steps for advancement!

Also, if you missed the IWD Resource Launch webinar or want to re-watch, the full recording of our "Accelerate Action" webinar is now available! You can hear directly from our phenomenal speakers and resource contributors:

• @MelissaBlokland (Founder at ZERANOVA)

• @ElisabethEweka (Founder at ENGRL & Principal Digital Consultant at Hoare Lea)

• @AjoaAkuamoah (Programme Delivery Lead at the Department for Science Innovation and Technology)

• @MoniqueCampbell (Strategic Account Executive at Salsify)

 They discuss the strategies and personal courage required to navigate unique paths to success. Their insights are the perfect complement to the actionable steps and words of wisdom laid out in the IWD Resource.

Click below to access both the Resource and the Webinar Recording:

[ACCESS RESOURCE & WATCH RECORDING]

We’d like to give a huge thank you to our webinar panelists and every individual behind the scenes who poured their expertise and time into making the 2025 International Women's Day Resource and its launch event a massive success.

😃What we are consuming😃

😳How the news spreads across the internet

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