We round up only the most interesting happenings; cultural trends, ad wins and fails and media stuff like radio ratings. It’s a collection curated by our most curious minds and shared in one email, so you don’t have to go through your other 20.
Sign Up View the previous issue: 6 Sept 2024On Tuesday, the Prime Minister announced plans to introduce legislation by the end of 2024 aimed at preventing children under a certain age—likely between 14 and 16—from accessing social media platforms. This follows a $6.5 million trial of age verification technology funded in the May budget. Key questions remain about the enforceability of the ban and what methods will be used. The federal government has issued a tender for the trial, but details are limited. Platforms like Instagram already use some age verification, but there’s no industry-wide standard. The eSafety commissioner has suggested a privacy-focused “double-blind tokenised” method, while Meta has proposed verification at the device level, involving tech giants like Google and Apple. So far, no country has fully solved this issue.
Within hours of the presidential debate, Taylor Swift took to social media to announce her support of Kamala Harris. She strongly praised Harris and condemned the recently circulating AI generated deepfakes of herself and her fans advocating for Trump. Swift linked to a nonprofit website imploring people to register to vote. There have been over 300,000 site visits so far. Considering that Trump has attempted to align himself to Swift in the past, the blow of this post can’t be underestimated. The ever-growing impact of celebrities on politics can be seen in the attendance of celebrities at the 2024 Democratic National Convention and even the attendance of Hulk Hogan at the Republican National Convention. There is no doubt celebrity has a strong effect on politics today, but will Swift’s endorsement be enough for Kamala Harris to win?
The interesting bits from across the media landscape in the L7D...
Facebook has admitted to scraping public photos, posts, and data of Australian adult users to train its AI models, without offering an opt-out option. While users in the European Union are given the ability to refuse consent, Australians are not. Meta’s global privacy director faced questions in an inquiry about whether all Australians’ data is being used for AI, but could not confirm if data from users under 18 is also collected. A senator from the Greens said that if Australia had the same laws as Europe. Australians’ data would also have been protected.
The government has introduced the first tranche of amendments to the Privacy Act, a critical move to bring the country’s privacy framework up to date. Greater legal consequences for the malicious release of personal data online, more protection for children online, direct right to action and automated decision making (ADM) have made it into the first round of updates. Those that need ADM – banks, insurers etc will need to articulate what personal information is used for upfront, presenting the most significant possible change to how data is collected and consented for the marketing industry.
A spotlight on advertisers doing interesting creative things...