Earlier this month, Meta updated its commercial terms of use for business accounts to allow it to “use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of” Meta’s products. 

Many artists and small business owners that rely on Instagram and Facebook are livid at Meta granting itself permission to use their content, including from websites simply connected to their Meta accounts, to train AI. But for users in the United Kingdom and European Union, for now, there’s a way to object.

Meta buried this change in its Commercial Terms, and Nieman Lab first reported on the change. The update was originally set to go into effect on October 30, but following backlash, Meta changed the effective date to November 20. Adding to the confusion, Meta then removed the word “train” from a list of allowed use cases, Nieman Lab reported, and limited those uses to “advertising and business products,” where previously it said that data would be used for all Meta products. Those terms still allow Meta plenty of leeway for scraping users’ data to develop its products, however.

EU users’ personal data rights are governed by the General Data Protection Regulation and the AI Act. GDPR, which became enforceable in 2018, requires explicit consent to use personal data. This includes the right to object to one’s data being used. The AI Act, which went into effect in 2024, dictates how AI companies can use personal data, and how people can opt in or out, stating that they can withdraw consent at any time. The UK has its own version of the GDPR. The European Commission states: “The GDPR rules only apply to personal data about individuals; they do not govern data about companies or any other legal entities. However, information in relation to companies may constitute personal data where it allows the identification of a natural person.” 

Several users based in the UK and EU have explained how to object on Instagram. Instagram user bookish.sil posted a walkthrough of how they did it on mobile: by clicking the three lines on their account, going to the privacy center, and clicking “object,” which goes to a form that asks users to write why they are objecting to their data being used. They received an email from Meta saying their objection was approved. Instagram user jenniqueart posted a similar walkthrough with the same results. 

My Meta accounts are based in the US, but using a VPN to locate my IP address in London, I could see options in my Meta privacy settings that would let me object to the use of my information by Meta AI. To get there on desktop with a VPN on, I went to my account privacy center, clicked “Submit a privacy rights request” at the bottom, selected Instagram, clicked “How can I object to the processing of my information?” and got to a page where I could choose to object to the use of my information for Meta AI or third parties, which were two separate options.

When my location is based in the US, these options don't appear.

When I clicked through the option to “object to the use of my information for Meta AI,” however, it returned an error page that said “This form is only available to people in certain regions.” GDPR is meant to apply to wherever someone is located at the time, but since this objection applies to the preferences of one account, it might be based on where the account was created. I tried again located in Belgium and got the same results. I’ve asked Meta to clarify. 

As many have already pointed out in the comments on UK and EU users who’ve posted walkthroughs, these objection steps aren’t available to people outside of those countries, and as Meta continuously changes its platform, these steps might not work for everyone always. Unless something changes before November 20, the rest of us are screwed.

Warnings of escalating clampdown on press freedom come after Cairo court convicts Attalah of managing an unlicensed website

Lina Attalah, a prominent Egyptian journalist and the editor-in-chief of the news outlet Mada Masr, has been released from detention by Egypt’s authorities and had her website ordered to be shut down by a court amid an intensifying crackdown on independent media in the country.

Attalah was taken briefly into custody after a Cairo court convicted her of managing an unlicensed website, prompting fresh international concerns over press freedom in Egypt.

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In order to eliminate global racism, we must dismantle the ideological architecture that allows it to thrive worldwide

Around the world, racism is fueling a new wave of global unrest. In recent weeks, demonstrations in France turned violent amid mounting frustrations over socioeconomic and racial inequities, led by a younger generation that has had enough. Earlier this month, the Green party of England and Wales’s decision to define Zionism as a form of racism sparked controversy and renewed public debate about what racism is and who gets to decide it. In September, electoral gains by Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party raised alarms in a nation with a dangerous history of racist, antisemitic fascism. And for the past year, the Trump administration has pushed ahead white supremacist agendas throughout the United States, highlighted by violent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids targeting people by race, regardless of citizenship status.

To understand each of these examples of racism in isolation would be a mistake. They are connected. Racism is not merely a series of random occurrences affecting certain people in certain places. It is more than institutional discrimination in schools or workplaces or even systemic inequalities in healthcare and policing. Racism is an interconnected, global phenomenon, spreading throughout our human ecosystem and embedded in world order. This global racism, which I name and define in my new book Global Racism: A Challenge for the World, is dangerous – it underpins wars and threatens our very humanity.

Anna Spain Bradley is the author of Global Racism: A Challenge for the World and a professor of law at the UCLA School of Law

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From AI aunties to long diaspora Uber phone calls, here is a selection of our favourite editions to celebrate our second anniversary

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The Long Wave is two! And over the past year, once again, it has surprised us with the breadth of stories and events in the diaspora.

The Long Wave has also evolved into a large community, with many readers getting in touch and sharing their thoughts, tips and sometimes their polite disagreements. We welcome and relish all of it. Here is the team’s selection of our favourite editions.

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Billed as the first end-to-end AI-created series on a major streaming service, this Turkish show looks like the result of the prompt ‘make it cinematic’

Just as the world reels from Elon Musk’s AI-powered The Odyssey remake – though “remake” feels rather generous for a seven-minute splat of synthetic sludge – another bucket of AI gunk is dropped on to our faces. For Prime Video’s AI-generated TV series Castle Walls, produced by Turkish production studio Ay Yapım using a melange of generative video tools, has arrived, billed as the first end-to-end AI-created series to premiere on a major streaming platform.

It’s certainly more epic than Musk’s production, consisting of two 17-minute episodes. Set in the 11th century, the show revolves around the historic Alamut Castle, although it’s entirely absent of any real sense of time or place. I was briefly intrigued by the opening images, with their bold palette of blues and mustard browns and yellows – but as soon as the “people” appeared, looking like Vaseline-smeared Madame Tussauds creations slowly melting in the sun, everything came crashing down.

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Trillium Asset Management wants Microsoft to explain how it will meet its 2030 greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets, and is backing a shareholder proposal to request this information at the firm’s next shareholder meeting. The cloud and software biz set itself lofty environmental goals back in 2020, aiming to be become "carbon-negative" by 2030, and to have removed the equivalent of all the carbon it has ever emitted by 2050. But since the start of the decade, an explosion in AI development and demand for ever more complex models has seen a boom in demand for high-performance compute infrastructure and a construction wave to deliver new datacenters to house it all in. Microsoft is one of the firms to profit from this huge demand, with its cloud division making $214.4 billion in revenue for the fiscal year 2026 ended June 30, a 27 percent year-on-year increase. This has also caused Microsoft’s emissions to head in the wrong direction, with figures from the company’s most recent Environmental Sustainability Report showing that these have increased from 13 million tons of CO2 equivalent in 2020 to 20 million tons in 2025. However, Microsoft estimates that without the carbon reduction initiatives it has already put in place, emissions would now be much higher, somewhere near 34 million tons. The increase is largely accounted for by indirect emissions (Scope 3) from the construction and provisioning of datacenters to meet that demand for cloud services and AI training. But as The Register pointed out, 2025 saw a growing contribution from Scope 2, due to generation of energy the company purchased. This represents 13 percent of total emissions – up from 2 percent in 2024. Now Trillium Asset Management, financial advisors specializing in sustainable and responsible investing, is urging Microsoft shareholders to vote for Proposal 4 during their annual meeting scheduled for December 8. In an SEC filing, the proposal asks Microsoft to disclose additional information illustrating how it will manage climate commitments. This disclosure should go beyond existing disclosures, at reasonable cost, omitting proprietary information, and be made annually. The proposal notes that when Microsoft first announced its carbon negative goal, it said progress required "not just a bold goal but a detailed plan," and that transparency was one of the guiding principles for this climate plan. It states that emissions are now 62 percent above the 2020 baseline, and simply asks Microsoft to apply the principles it articulated in 2020; show the plan, be candid about the math, and explain how it will adapt. In the filing, Trillium warns that falling short of its climate targets may create risk to Microsoft’s credibility, which can influence investor trust. If Microsoft is in danger of failing to meet its 2030 commitments, it could suffer reputational harm, and the filing claims it is already the subject of legal action by investors alleging insufficient disclosure of its AI and cloud spending. On the flip side, it says that disclosure of a climate transition plan will likely prove valuable to large institutional investors who view climate change as a systemic risk to future economic growth. We asked Microsoft for comment, but it already recommended in another SEC filing that shareholders vote against the proposal, arguing it fails to show that Microsoft’s existing disclosures are insufficient for investors to assess its climate-related strategy and performance. Instead, the firm says that the proposal requests a collection of new disclosures that go beyond not just legal and regulatory requirements, but also established voluntary climate-reporting frameworks. The proposal seeks hypothetical scenarios, contingency plans and other forward-looking information that is inherently uncertain and subject to change, Microsoft states, saying it will remain focused on its Sustainability Report and other environmental reporting while meeting any new disclosure mandates that may arise globally. ®

Armed with high-magnification macro lenses, filmmaker Sandro Bocci journeyed through coral reefs to document a striking array of color, texture, and pattern. A project for Bocci’s collective Julia Set Lab, the short film homes in on the intricacies of a life form we can’t see with the naked eye. Subtle shifts in gradients, bold color juxtapositions, and a seemingly endless diversity of recurring motifs explode across the frame, revealing the beauty and complexity of the extraordinary organisms growing below the water’s surface.

Set to music by Maurizio Morganti, “Iteration” is the second collaboration by the pair, who continue to harness the power of technology to create works at the intersection of art and science. Watch the film on Vimeo, along with additional films.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article A Macro Journey Underwater Reveals the Radiant Geometries of Coral appeared first on Colossal.

Russian stores and libraries have had to remove scores of books from their shelves as the government increasingly curtails freedom of speech and the press.

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