Your photos, your words and your work: why is Labor making it easier for AI companies to take them for free?

"Leaked documents from a government proposal show that the Albanese government is considering reversing the fundamental rights of Australians under copyright law.

The proposal refers to an “opt-out model”. This would give AI companies permission to train on the open internet here in Australia. Every family photo you ever posted, every small business website, every website would be fair game for AI companies unless you choose to opt out.

Right now, under Australian law, a company has to ask for permission if it wants to use your content. This proposal would mean it doesn’t. It would put the onus on the individual to opt out – through a mechanism that hasn’t yet been proven to work. And it would give AI companies rights to your content until you choose to say no. This flips the legal burden on to the individual. It means that our legal system would serve the interests of AI companies first."

theguardian.com/australia-news…

#LaborFail #LobbyInfluence #ContentTheft #Corruption #Complicity #News #Australia #Activism #Copyright #IntellectualProperty #HumanRights #Authors #Artists #Author #Artist #Photography #Photographer

At the bottom of every supply chain there is a place. An illegal gold pit in Peru's rainforest. A mine where nobody writes down who's holding the shovel.

It widens from there — the pit, then the river that carries off the mercury, then the town that drinks from the river, then the buyer who took the gold, the brand that took the buyer, and the bank that financed every link without once asking a name.

Europe built laws that followed the money down into that mud, past the trader in a clean shirt and the refinery and the smelter, all the way to the pit — and this February, Brussels gutted them. Reporting now binds only firms with 1,000-plus employees and €450 million in turnover. Roughly 80% cut loose. Due diligence shrinks to 5,000-worker, €1.5 billion giants, not until 2029, with the climate-transition-plan duty deleted outright. They crammed a ten-working-day review into 24 hours. Over a weekend. While 360-plus groups begged for suspension.

Brussels calls it simplification. A chainsaw simplifies a forest, too.

"The land keeps receipts even when Brussels shreds them — mercury settles into a Peruvian riverbed whether or not anybody files a report."

But a river doesn't read thresholds.

Downstream.

If you live in the EU, call your MEP. Anywhere else, ask your bank whether it still screens suppliers past the first tier. Two minutes.

Today's Gathering → thistleandmoss.com/p/the-crapt…

#Climate #Environment #Nature #Rivers #Rainforest #Peru #Mining #Gold #SupplyChain #HumanRights #CorporateAccountability #EU #Brussels #Journalism

Book bans, unintended consequences and mainstream media
Reality is often upsetting

Censorship and challenging of library books in Western nations have risen sharply, driven by organized political campaigns targeting LGBTQIA+ themes, race, and geopolitical conflicts.

* "Bondi library removes book How to Sell a Genocide from shelves after complaint."
“..It makes some people upset is unfortunate, but reality is often upsetting. This particular reality is especially upsetting … to the parents of the over 20,000 children killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023. Do Sydney officials plan on removing pro-Israel books from their libraries because it potentially upsets these community members?” >>
theguardian.com/culture/2026/a…

* Book censorship?
That is when the 'the Streisand effect' kicks in: "It is the phenomenon in which an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information results in the unintended consequence of the effort instead increasing public awareness of the information." (wikipedia)

* Here is the banned book:
How to Sell a Genocide
The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, By Adam H. Johnson >>
plutobooks.com/product/how-to-…
#censorship #books #BookBans #BannedBooks #Sydney #UpsettingReality #libraries #PublicLibraries #HumanRights #liberalism #MassViolence #MSM #MainstreamMedia #TheFourthEstate #journalism #PressComplicity #ManufacturedConsent #DemonisingDissent #genocide #RealityDenial

Adults would be harmed by this ban 🧑🧵

In addition to the already stated dangers of increasing the risk of identity theft, fraud, devaluation of official documents, attacks on the most vulnerable, discrimination against marginalized groups, and self-censorship, a ban of social media for children would give a free pass for corporate platforms to perpetuate the harm they also currently cause to adults.

All that is harmful to children on social media is also harmful to adults.

Social media are an integral part of modern communication and it has many benefits, but commercial platforms have been exploiting their users for decades, much beyond what our society should deem reasonable.

It is time for the Canadian government to regulate social media, yes. Not by excluding children and teens from it, but by obligating platforms to be responsible in protecting the safety and sanity of its users. It should be more profitable to run a platform that is open, transparent, and healthy for its users than one that is not.

A ban on addictive algorithms and data reselling, strong privacy protections and user controls, mandated transparency and effective moderation, an obligation to implement proven safety measures, and important consequences for platforms that prioritize profits over users' safety would all be much more effective at protecting everyone on social media, including the children.

(6/9)

#StopIDSurveillance #Privacy #HumanRights #AgeVerification #CanPoli #Canada

Children would be harmed by this ban 🧒🧵

Despite how it might feel at first glance, a ban of social media for children would actually create new harm for children.

First, many children would try to circumvent the ban, this is already happening in countries with such legislation, like Australia.

Second, children who cannot circumvent the ban might be pushed to darker corners of the web to rebuild their social lives, on worse platforms, without any moderation or safety measures. Moreover, being pushed out of the legal frame, these teens and children might feel less inclined to report any abuses experienced to a trustworthy adult, effectively making the situation much worse.

Then, children living with abusive or unsupportive families could lose their support network overnight. It is quite common for 2SLGBTQ+ teens and children living with families that do not support them to find emotional support in a network of peers online. This is often vital to survival. Losing this support suddenly can have devastating permanent consequences.

(5/9)

#StopIDSurveillance #Privacy #HumanRights #AgeVerification #CanPoli #Canada

Lobbyists are influencing policies more than experts and advocates 💰🧵

Unfortunately, there are many groups that are putting pressure on governments all around the world to increase surveillance under the guise of protecting the children. The rapidly growing, for-profit, age assurance industry has all to gain in influencing governments to push for age verification processes and bans of social media for children.

Even Meta has reportedly invested heavily in a network of organisations to discreetly lobby for age verification at the operating system level.

Meanwhile, nonprofit organisations and advocates who genuinely care for the well-being of the public have been warning for years about the dangers of age verification and social media ban legislation, but have much less money and power to influence policies at the government level.

I implore you, as the elected representatives for all Canadians, to consider this threat of corporate influence cautiously in your decisions, to listen to the warnings from advocates and experts in the field, and to prioritize first and foremost the well-being and safety of all Canadians.

(4/9)

#StopIDSurveillance #Privacy #HumanRights #AgeVerification #CanPoli #Canada

A ban does nothing to address the harm caused by social media 🧨🧵

The things that harm children on social media also harm adults. A ban of social media for children sadly does nothing to reduce the harm caused by social media, it only reserves it to adult, and postpones it for children.

The addictive and manipulative black-box algorithms, the privacy-intrusive data collection, the harmful violent content and misinformation, are all hurting adults as well.

Moreover, children who do not go around the ban before the restricted age (other implementations have shown that most children will attempt to circumvent the ban) will find themselves completely ill-equipped to protect themselves from social media harm once they come of age, and will be made even more vulnerable by our own legislation claiming to protect them.

A true solution to this is to regulate corporate platforms to forbid addictive algorithms, targeted advertising, intrusive data collection, third-party data sharing, violent content, weak moderation, manipulative tactics, and other abusive mechanisms used by certain platforms to prioritize profits over the safety and sanity of its users.

This would not only help children, but adults and society as a whole as well.

(3/9)

#StopIDSurveillance #Privacy #HumanRights #AgeVerification #CanPoli #Canada

Age verification processes are dangerous to Canadians ⚠️🧵

Unfortunately, there is no magical solution: A ban of social media for children necessarily means a requirement to identify every adult using social media. This means that intrusive age-verification processes would have to be put in place by social media platforms, therefore collecting an immense quantity of very sensitive information from every Canadian adult using social media.

This is dangerous in many ways.

First, it means many (if not most) platforms will delegate this task to private for-profit third-party vendors with little to no incentive to protect this information properly. We have already seen data breaches of sensitive information in this process. This would increase the risk of Canadians becoming victims of identity theft and fraud, and would diminish the value of Canadian identification documents over time.

Secondly, this can create a permanent record of legal identities tied to social media accounts. This would endanger users who rely on pseudonymity online for safety, such as victims of domestic violence, trans and gender diverse people (for whom the legal identification might not match the name used on social media), performers using stage names online, and other people that are part of marginalized groups regularly targeted online (women, people of colour, 2SLGBTQ+ people, etc.).

All these vulnerable groups would only be one data breach away from incredible harm with the implementation of mandatory identity checks to access social media.

Furthermore, risking to link every social media account to a legal identity can have a silencing effect for activists, journalists, and whistleblowers. This can lead to self-censorship of topics important to discuss publicly in a free democracy.

(2/9)

#StopIDSurveillance #Privacy #HumanRights #AgeVerification #CanPoli #Canada