ABC News: “Facebook admits to scraping every Australian adult user’s public photos and posts to train AI, with no opt-out option”

But that was quickly challenged by Greens senator David Shoebridge.

Shoebridge: The truth of the matter is that unless you have consciously set those posts to private since 2007, Meta has just decided that you will scrape all of the photos and all of the texts from every public post on Instagram or Facebook since 2007, unless there was a conscious decision to set them on private. That’s the reality, isn’t it?

Claybaugh: Correct.

Ms Claybaugh added that accounts of people under 18 were not scraped, but when asked by Senator Sheldon whether public photos of his own children on his account would be scraped, Ms Claybaugh acknowledged they would.

Jake Evans

Hardly surprising coming from Facebook – or any other American tech giant for that matter; the latest example being LinkedIn, which has covertly opted its users in to supply data for AI training without even bothering to update their terms of service.

This is why GDPR is so important in the EU, and why, despite all its critics and lackluster enforcement, the core of the legislation is sound and future proof. In simple terms, companies need to have legitimate reason, or consent, to use consumers’ data for new purposes. Training AI models is clearly a new purpose that doesn’t precisely have a legitimate reason, so companies should in theory ask for distinct consent before using the data.

The Washington Post: “Djokovic is another whiny sports superstar with an exaggerated sense of entitlement”

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Djokovic was looking to game the system at the risk of putting people’s lives in danger. What makes this spectacle even more distasteful is the way that Djokovic’s supporters insist on casting him as the victim. His father, Srdjan Djokovic, claims that his overprivileged, overpaid son, who is staying at a Melbourne hotel used to house refugees and asylum seekers, is the “Spartacus of the new world” — a “symbol” of “poor and oppressed countries and peoples”.

How absurd. If Djokovic is Spartacus, then I’m Rod Laver. In truth, Djokovic is another whiny sports superstar with screwy ideas and an exaggerated sense of entitlement.

I hope that Australia deports him — and that he will not be allowed to enter the United States to play the U.S. Open unless he presents proof of vaccination. Just because sports stars are showered with rewards unknown to ordinary mortals doesn’t mean that they should be allowed to evade the (sensible) covid rules imposed on everyone else.

Max Boot

Speaking of accountability, I too am glad that this peculiar tennis-meets-coronavirus drama concluded with Djoković having his visa revoked and deported out of Australia. Exemptions from general rules for the rich and famous are never justified. In this situation it would be all the more unfair to the people who respected heavy travel restrictions for the past two years, some of them separated from family and friends for extensive periods.

Corporal Frisk: “A RAUKUS in the Pacific”

The American decision, which leads to the exclusion of a European ally and partner like France from a crucial partnership with Australia at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, be it over our values or respect for a multilateralism based on the rule of law, signals a lack of consistency which France can only notice and regret.

As the quote above shows, while there is understandably some anger directed towards Australia for breaking the contract (and doing so a mere two weeks after Both sides committed to deepen defence industry cooperation and enhance their capability edge in the region. Ministers underlined the importance of the Future Submarine program during a joint 2+2 ministerial meeting between French and Australian foreign and defence ministers), the main villain in the French eyes seem to be the US who not only outmanoeuvred the French, but brought along the British and left the French out in the cold. Crucially, there seems to have been little to no warning given to the French, who even if they must have known that the Shortfin Barracuda was in trouble, most likely did not anticipate the US and UK unilaterally deciding to trash the long-held non-proliferation convention to not export reactor technology for use aboard SSNs. Interestingly, it does seem that the initiative – as well as the decision to keep the French in the dark – came from the Australians, making the French framing of this being a US diplomatic backstabbing of the higher order seem somewhat misplaced.

Robin Häggblom

The strategic partnership between US, UK, and Australia, announced last week out of the blue, became the controversy of the week on Twitter – and an opportunity to learn more than I expected to know about nuclear-powered submarines. But unlike most Twitter scandals this has the potential for long-lasting and wide-ranging consequences.

Wired UK: “Facebook’s Australia news ban is the best decision it’s ever made”

But there’s a trickier tangle that taxation alone won’t unpick. For many, Facebook and Google are part of the mythical “open web” – one where hyperlinks can be freely posted on any website. That makes sense on, say, Wikipedia, but it does not make sense on Facebook and Google which, despite their scale and mission statements, are essentially closed advertising ecosystems. Sure, news organisations can choose to post articles and videos on Facebook. And in return, people on Facebook may play those videos and click on those links. Rarely, they might click on an advert on the news organisation’s website or pay to subscribe to that publication. Or, if you’re the Epoch Times, you can game Facebook’s engagement algorithm to transform yourself from a low-budget far-right newspaper founded by an obscure Chinese spiritual movement into one of the most-read publications on the planet. If Facebook prioritised social wellbeing over engagement, this wouldn’t have happened.

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For years it has been clear that the web, which has been shaped in Facebook and Google’s image, is in no way open. Facebook is not a social network. Google is not a search engine. They are an advertising duopoly. In the US, more than half of advertising spend now goes to big digital platforms. In the UK, Amazon, Facebook and Google account for almost 70 per cent of digital advertising spend. If Facebook doesn’t want news on its platform, that’s Facebook’s prerogative. If Google wants to hand giant wads of cash to Rupert Murdoch to secure deeply troubling pay-to-play deals, that’s Google’s prerogative. It’s an irresistible tug-of-war: there would be no Facebook or Google without the terabytes of stuff we shout into the void every hour of every day. And yet, without Facebook and Google, there would be no void to shout into.

James Temperton

Almost six months after issuing the threat, Facebook followed through and blocked links to Australian news sites, not only in the country, but globally. The decision was reversed this week, as the two sides continue to negotiate in the coming months.

The New York Times: “Facebook could block Sharing of News Stories in Australia”

Facebook warned on Monday that it would block users and news organizations in Australia from sharing local and international news stories on its social network and Instagram if the country passed a proposed code of conduct aimed at curbing the power of Facebook and Google.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the country’s top competition authority, is drafting a bill for Parliament that would require both companies to negotiate with media publishers and pay them for content that appears on their sites.

Google also hinted that it might have to cut off its services in Australia in an open letter to users on Aug. 17. Google said the government’s draft legislation would give large media companies “special treatment” so they could make unreasonable demands that would make it difficult to keep Google search and YouTube videos free. Google, which owns YouTube, didn’t indicate how it would respond, but said its free services would be “at risk”.

Daisuke Wakabayashi & Mike Isaac

Facebook in a nutshell:

• we support free speech around the world (except when it conflicts with our business interests)
• we support the news industry (except when it conflicts with our business interests)
• we welcome government regulation (except when it conflicts with our business interests)

The Verge: “I went to Australia to test out Tesla’s vision of the future”

Besides the electric charger, the mansion is also fitted with solar panels and a Tesla Powerwall, a battery for storing the energy they generate. While I live for dumb thrills like driving an expensive car I don’t own on the wrong side of the road, I am, in fact, at the mansion to experience the clean energy lifestyle Tesla is selling.

The Model X and mansion are, in some ways, emblematic of the Tesla lifestyle and approach. The dream of this lifestyle is that you can have everything you already have but without fossil fuels. You can keep on driving a car. You can live in your porn mansion entirely on renewable energy and sell any extra power you harvest to the grid. But best of all, you don’t have to think about any of it.

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It’s true that this is a story about Tesla energy, but it’s also true that we all use energy all the time. The mundane tasks I engage in as I settle into the mansion — the bath, cooking dinner — of course, require energy. I can watch the little jiggles of energy required on the Tesla app. All day long, the mansion has been running on solar energy, and it continues to do so right up until I plug in the Model X to charge. That battery draws so much energy that the house switches to the grid.

Elizabeth Lopatto

A good vision for a future where individual homes are less dependent on grid power – but if your local energy generation can’t charge a Tesla, I would argue the vision has a long way ahead before becoming reality.

The Washington Post: “Australia braces for highest temperatures in recorded history amid blistering heat wave”

Australia may set a record for its hottest day this week, as temperatures soar past 104 degrees (40 Celsius) in most of the nation’s major cities, with inland areas of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia possibly eclipsing 122 degrees (50 Celsius). The heat wave, which is unusually severe for so early in the summer, is affecting the entirety of the continent, gradually progressing eastward from Perth to Adelaide and on toward Melbourne and Sydney by Friday.

The heat is sure to aggravate the already record-shattering bush fires, which have emitted massive amounts of greenhouse gases and choked Sydney residents beneath a blanket of smoke. Health authorities in New South Wales are warning them to stay indoors during the day’s heat.

Andrew Freedman

The nightmare scenario from Greg Egan’s Perihelion Summer happening now, without passing black holes or orbital changes. Meanwhile the Australian leadership is still refusing to take action against global warming, despite huge economic costs caused by the current fires, which will certainly rise in coming years. And, to make matters worse, the lack of initiative from the United States and Australia is encouraging China to ignore limits on its carbon emissions, as the country is planning to build additional coal-fired power plants. Our climate future on Earth seems bleaker by the day…