Google won’t reveal if it is lobbying Trump about YouTube’s inclusion in Australia’s under-16s ban

Google has told parliament that Australia’s under-16s social media ban will be “extremely difficult to enforce”, but won’t say if it is lobbying the Trump administration about YouTube’s inclusion ahead of Anthony Albanese’s US visit.On Monday, Google and Microsoft appeared before a Senate inquiry on a range of age assurance and verification requirements being applied to social media and other aspects of the internet including search.Google’s senior manager of government affairs and public policy in Australia and New Zealand, Rachel Lord, told the inquiry the under-16s ban – which is expected to include YouTube – will have “unintended consequences” and won’t make children safer.Sign up: AU Breaking News email“The legislation will not only be extremely difficult to enforce, it also does not fulfil its promise of making kids safer online,” Lord told the inquiry.“YouTube has invested heavily in designing age-appropriate products and industry leading content controls and tools that allow parents to make choices for their families

‘Death to Spotify’: the DIY movement to get artists and fans to quit the music app

This month, indie musicians in Oakland, California, gathered for a series of talks called Death to Spotify, where attenders explored “what it means to decentralize music discovery, production and listening from capitalist economies”.The events, held at Bathers library, featured speakers from indie station KEXP, labels Cherub Dream Records and Dandy Boy Records, and DJ collectives No Bias and Amor Digital. What began as a small run of talks quickly sold out and drew international interest. People as far away as Barcelona and Bengaluru emailed the organizers asking how to host similar events.The talks come as the global movement against Spotify edges into the mainstream

Meta AI adviser spreads disinformation about shootings, vaccines and trans people

A prominent anti-DEI campaigner appointed by Meta in August as an adviser on AI bias has spent the weeks since his appointment spreading disinformation about shootings, transgender people, vaccines, crime, and protests.Robby Starbuck, 36, of Nashville, was appointed in August as an adviser by Meta – owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other tech platforms – in an August lawsuit settlement.Since his appointment, Starbuck has baselessly claimed that individual shooters in the US were motivated by leftist ideology, described faith-based protest groups as communists, and without evidence tied Democratic lawmakers to murders.Starbuck’s online posts have not changed in tenor since the “anti-DEI agitator” was brought into the Meta fold, and his Trump administration connections raise broader questions about the extent to which corporate America has capitulated to the Maga movement.The Guardian repeatedly contacted Meta for comment on Starbuck’s role, and his rhetoric online, but received no response

Using a swearword in your Google search can stop the AI answer. But should you?

Using a swearword in your Google search can stop that annoying AI overview from popping up. Some apps let you switch off their artificial intelligence.You can choose not to use ChatGPT, to avoid AI-enabled software, to refuse to talk to a chatbot. You can ignore Donald Trump posting deepfakes, and dodge anything with Tilly the AI actor in it.But should you? And can you avoid AI altogether?As the use of AI spreads, so do concerns about its dangers, and resistance to its ubiquitousness

Peter Thiel’s off-the-record antichrist lectures reveal more about him than Armageddon

Peter Thiel famously isn’t into academia. And yet, in four recent off-the-record lectures on the antichrist in San Francisco, the billionaire venture capitalist has made a good case for credentialing.In these meandering talks, Thiel is clearly aiming for the kind of syncretic thinking he so relished in the books and lectures of the philosopher and professor René Girard, whom he knew at Stanford University and whose work he has long admired. Unfortunately, more often than not, Thiel ends up with something that reads like Dan Brown.Thiel has previously workshopped his talks on Armageddon at Oxford and Harvard, at various theology departments, and with a few unfortunate podcasters

‘Little lungs are paying’: 1.6m claimants head to high court as carmakers finally face punishment for Dieselgate

Carmakers accused of cheating air pollution rules have faced little punishment in UK but trial brought by 1.6m motorists is about to begin“Little lungs are still paying for Dieselgate every day,” says Jemima Hartshorn, the founder of the Mums for Lungs campaign group. Her own young daughter has suffered serious breathing problems, which at their worst involved the harrowing experience of having to pin her to the floor to administer an inhaler.It is 10 years since the scandal erupted, exposing cars that pumped out far more toxic fumes on the road than when passing regulatory tests in the lab. But Dieselgate is far from over