Australian MP and walking brown-note Craig Kelly wants to introduce laws to stop Facebook banning his effort to consistently lie to Australians and troll the planet via its social media platform. Kelly invoked the concept of freedom of speech, which we have no right to in Australia, and claimed banning him permanently from spreading his brand of viral misinformation is some kind of threat to democracy. The MP used Twitter and various major media services to talk at length about how his freedom of speech had been removed. Kelly now plans to push for legislation to do something or other about his ban from his favourite platform. Let's assume it's to enact a bill of rights for Australian citizens and not just to demand his personal right to scream nonsense online.

It's earnings report season for Silicon Valley companies, which is a good time to point out Bits generally avoids the boring business questions of who raised what, who earned what and stats like EBITDA, ARPU, and growth stats galore. We're here to look at the impacts of all things digital on the world around us and the act of working and living every day. We also don't really do rumours, sticking to substantiated products, services and news that is happening right now or in the very, very near future. If you like all that, keep listening, and go get the Byteside newsletter which is turning into a companion daily newsletter starting next week.

OK, one quick nod to the financials... Microsoft is up 44% year over year, Alphabet is up 35% year over year, and AMD is up 93% year over year. Go read the specialists if you want more of that kind of thing today or in the future.

Spotify has announced a paid podcast subscriptions service, launching today for podcast creators in the USA. Spotify is launching the service with no fees until 2023 after which it will take 5% of subscriptions, a much lower cost to creators than Apple's 30% for the first year and 15% after that. Podcasters will need to use Spotify-owned Anchor to upload their podcasts and can tag any show as 'subscriber only', with episodes available via Spotify and other podcast services. Spotify says it aims to roll the service out for creators worldwide in coming months.

In science, Australian researchers have published a study that finds bushfire smoke concentrations could be monitored using mobile phone signals. The team from Monash University found that radio link fluctuations could be observed and help predict smoke concentration levels at ground level and alongside satellite remote sensing it could help to improve early warnings for resident evacuations and wider firefighting efforts.

In weird entertainment decisions, Saturday Night Live has announced Elon Musk will be hosting the show when it returns to screens in May. The noted not-actor actual-shitposter is expected to read awkwardly from cue cards while looking disappointed when the audience doesn't laugh at the jokes he's flubbing throughout the show. Expect Dogecoin to increase in price and volatility around lunchtime on Sunday, Australian time.

In video games, Fortnite has continued its steady takeover of all of pop culture and entertainment with today's launch of a Neymar Jr skin. The famed Brazilian football star can be unlocked through this season's Battle Pass and includes simple and superhero style skins as well as football emotes and other in-game bling. Other recent arrivals in Fortnite include Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn, Lara Croft and Raven from Teen Titans. Keep watching Fortnite if you're wondering how a Metaverse grows via Tim Sweeney's fever dream video game development operation.

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