Organised around three themes – Places and Programs, Collections and Resources and People and Partners – the Public libraries and IKCs (Indigenous Knowledge Centres) Roadmap for Queensland sets out 16 strategies for local action and collective impact. The plan is overlaid with a vision that sees public libraries and IKCs as valued cultural and social hubs contributing to local communities’ lifelong learning and liveability. This vision is complimented by a set of shared values and a recognition that flexible implementation is crucial to ensure the plan is achievable and aligned with the aspirations of libraries, council and communities.

The Oversight Board released a new report looking at the increasing use of AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  → in automated decision-making (ADM) to moderate content on social media platforms. It raises concerns that artificial intelligenceAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  → (AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  →) doing content moderation on social media platforms can be a blunt instrument in cases of over-enforcement – such as where strict application of nudity rules removes breast cancer awareness content because the system cannot understand context – while turning a blind eye to some harmful content. For example, under-enforcement can occur where hate speech is coded to evade detection.

If you are interested in the Oversight Board’s report, you can also read my summary of it.

Open A has published the recommendations of its Safety and Security Committee on safety and security-related processes and safeguards. Some of the key takeaways include:

• making the Committee an independent Board oversight committee,
• expand their risk-based approach to security through internal information segmentation and more staff for around-the-clock security
• doing more industry collaboration on transparency and security, and
• building an adaptable unified safety and security framework for model development and monitoring

Laurie Richardson, Google’s Vice President, Trust & Safety, has written a piece on Google’s commitment to transparency of AI-generated content. They are investing in provenance tools such as SynthID to that end. They also see industry partnerships as crucial to transparency. That’s why they are a member of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) and are integrating C2PA metadata into Search and Ads. While I am cautiously open to these initiatives, I am a little unsure about coalitions that are overly stacked with tech companies.

In a pre-emptive strike against the looming threat of regulation of children and teen’s use of social media in Australia and elsewhere around the world, Meta has announced Teen Accounts for Instagram, “to reassure parents that teens are having safe experiences with built-in protections automatically.” They will have built-in protections for teens for inappropriate content and interactions. Parents will have oversight of the settings for Teen Accounts and can set total daily time limits and block Instagram usage at specified times. Teens will automatically be included regardless of whether they are new and existing users. And Instagram will require more age verification for teens and proactively find teens claiming to be older.

Of course book printing has a carbon footprint. This BBC article looks at some of the ways publishers are reducing it. Emission reductions are coming through less wood fiber, lighter loads and using thinner paper, as well as smaller font sizes and more compact typefaces.

We all know that YouTube is a content behemoth making it difficult for new and small creators to get a look in. To support smaller channels and help users discover new content and creators, the platform has launched a new feature called Hype, with the most hyped vidoes populating a leaderboard. The exact details on how it will work are complicated ⟨  I recommend reading the article on The Verge and YouTube’s blog post for the nitty gritty ⟩ but the initiative will create an alternative mechanism for content discovery outside of the algorithm. It will be interesting to see if Hype can live up to its promise to let users feel more involved in what content gains attention, to incentivise fans to support the creators they are interested in and to promote content on smaller channels.