Platforms of Extremism: Why Australia Must Confront Digital Misogyny as a Security Threat

From Melbourne hospitals to Sydney arrests linked to the Nth Room, Australia is already enmeshed in global infrastructures of digital misogyny. Treating these crimes as isolated risks repeating the failures of other states.

The arrest of junior doctor Ryan Cho in July 2025 for allegedly installing spycams in a Melbourne hospital shocked many Australians. At first glance, it might appear as an aberrant breach of trust: a young professional exploiting his position in a space meant to guarantee care and safety. Yet Cho’s crime is not best understood in isolation. It reflects a broader infrastructure of digital sex crimes that link hidden cameras, encrypted platforms, and online communities across borders. What unfolded in an Australian hospital echoes patterns already exposed elsewhere, most starkly in South Korea’s epidemic of spycam abuse and the Nth Room scandal. Australians often imagine these kinds of digital sex scandals as happening elsewhere – in Seoul, Tokyo, or hidden corners of the internet. Yet Cho’s conviction makes clear that the same infrastructures are present here, and that Australia is already implicated in them.