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Archive for ‘Politics’

What To Do When You’re Expecting (Climate Change)

September 26, 2019
Climate Change

September 20th saw hundreds of thousands of people in Australia turn out in a massive climate strike, joining millions around the world. Speeches kicked off at 2pm and the march began around 3ish, with schoolkids supported by a variety of adults, including many businesses that signed on to the strike under Not Business As Usual. There was the usual hilarity from the climate deniers in power over in the Liberal Party, including Liberal MP Craig Kelly, who hilariously opined that “The facts are, there is no link between climate change and drought. Polar bears are increasing in number. Today’s generation is safer from extreme weather than at any time in human history.” This is a ridiculous statement in many ways, if only because there’s no logical connection between Kelly’s polar bear index, drought, and climate change. Polar bears are quickly losing their traditional habitat thanks to receding ice from climate change, bringing them into increasing conflict with people. And given that several extreme weather events happened recently — including the Category 5 Hurricane Dorian, among others — and are happening more frequently… actually, why are we even trying to logic people like Kelly? You know he’s wrong. Trust the science.

That being said, the bitter reality of having a government of climate deniers in power has played out over a host of frustrating developments, from the ongoing Adani matter and the fracking nearby to the weird matter of the controversial Great Barrier Reef fund. It’s frustrating to see the two major political parties in this country agree that coal is still necessary:

And even as Swan says Labor must risk an unpopular policy, he defends Senator Penny Wong’s response to pleas from Pacific Island nations: No, she told them, an ALP federal government would not ban new coal mines.

“Coal is not the only issue in town,” Swan told ABC radio on Thursday. While we did need a rapid transition from fossil fuels, he said: “The truth is Australia produces about 4 per cent of the world’s thermal coal. If we’re going to reduce emissions in Australia, 19 per cent of our emissions come out of the transport sector.”

Talking down the impact of Australia’s coal will not put Labor on the right side of history. Australia’s domestic and export fossil fuel emissions now account for 5 per cent of global emissions but current coal, gas and oil developments could increase that to 12 to 17 per cent by 2030, according to study by Climate Analytics.

Frustrations aside, we’ve got to do something about climate change, right?

Beyond Straws and Veganism

Boycotting plastic straws and going vegan will not save the planet. 70% of the world’s greenhouse emissions generated since 1988 have come from just 100 companies:

ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are identified as among the highest emitting investor-owned companies since 1988. If fossil fuels continue to be extracted at the same rate over the next 28 years as they were between 1988 and 2017, says the report, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 4C by the end of the century. This is likely to have catastrophic consequences including substantial species extinction and global food scarcity risks.

While companies have a huge role to play in driving climate change, says Faria, the barrier is the “absolute tension” between short-term profitability and the urgent need to reduce emissions.

There are some things you can do about that. Voting in government representatives who aren’t beholden to fossil fuel interests is a good start. Switching your energy purchase to green power companies, like Powershop’s Green Power packages, can help — and get your friends and family to switch too. Fly less: flying is probably your biggest contributor to your personal carbon footprint. Buy less fast fashion, use more public transport. Buy fewer disposables and fewer plastics. Install solar panels, if you have a roof that you own. And sure, eating less meat probably helps. These gestures are small, though, compared to what companies do and what governments decide. Pressure your governments to commit to a zero-emissions target. If they won’t, organise and protest, vote them out. Support an environmental charity. Even small things help.

There’s probably going to be another climate strike near you soon. Consider attending it.

Climate Change and Advertising

Companies can work on their own to try and help the world into a zero-emissions, low waste target. We have some thoughts here. The ad industry hasn’t been immune to pressures. Via AdNews:

Australia’s advertising industry could take a stand and lead the world, says David Ritter, CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific and the author of The Coal Truth (UWA Publishing, June 2018).

“Fossil fuel use is the number one driver of global warming. Any business that supplies the coal, oil and gas industry with commercial services is implicated in driving the climate emergency,” he says.

“The time has come for the advertising industry to say ‘enough’. Any advertising firm that takes work from the coal, oil or gas sectors is doing PR for the greatest threat to life on earth.

“Instead, the advertising industry in Australia could take a stand and lead the world, using all the skills of public communication to help shift us on a path to wise stewardship of our shared home.”

According to the 2018 Edelman Earned Brand study, 64% of consumers buy on belief. As environmental consciousness grows, brands — and agencies — that commit to a greener, more renewable future will emerge at the head of the pack. It isn’t just about biodegradable packaging or having a carbon offset. It’s not just about having the right kind of messaging. It’s also about committing to green initiatives, be it charities or getting involved at a political level. With many governments in the world either gridlocked at a policy level, beholden to fossil fuel interests, or just plain denying the truth, companies and people getting ahead on their own might be the best way forward. Good luck to us all.

The Fake News Plague

September 21, 2019
fake news

In the lead up to the trash fire that was the 2016 US elections, there was a rash of conspiracy theories about the Democrats and Hillary Clinton that were spread around by conservative media and trolls. Some were somewhat believable–like the one where she was supposedly Very Ill With Some Unnamed Illness, after footage of Hillary, a 70-year-old lady, was shown looking a little frail on film at one point. Some, you’d think, were just so batshit ridiculous that nobody could unironically believe they were real.

Or so I thought.

On October 2016, just before the election, a white supremacist Twitter account claimed that the NYPD had found a Democratic satanic paedophile ring that was being run out of a pizza parlour called Comet Ping Pong. You’d think that a conspiracy like that would be too funny to be taken as anything but a joke, yet further conservative “news” sites soon claimed, among other things, that the NYPD had raided Hillary’s home and that the raid was confirmed by the FBI. Over a million messages used #Pizzagate in 2016. The theory was soon picked up by various far-right activists and even ended up on the pro-Erdoğan government newspapers in Turkey. There were serious consequences for the restaurant: harassment and death threats. Bands tied to the restaurant were abused, as were similar restaurants in the same area, and businesses with similar names. Despite being widely debunked by news organisations, the matter came to a head early December 2016, when a man holding an AR-15 walked into the restaurant and started firing. No one was hurt. When arrested, the shooter said he’d decided to investigate Comet Ping Pong after seeing the matter brought up on Infowars, a far-right conspiracy site whose owner is currently being sued for defamation after driving harassment to the parents of children killed during the Sandy Hook mass shooting (he claimed they were just child actors). Despite people like Jones having to retract their statements and apologise to the owner of Comet Ping Pong since, a small fire was set at the back of Comet Ping Pong this year.

It’s easy to dismiss things like this as stuff that only deranged people will believe, but I’ve seen similar conspiracy theories spread by people closer to home. My college-educated corporate parents, for example, still spread the occasional fake news link over the family chat, which my brother and I have to instantly pounce on to debunk. There are also smaller conspiracies, debunked by science but still considered to be widely true by everyone (e.g. that Yakult makes any sort of real difference to your digestion). With disinformation rapidly poisoning the world and making people distrust everything they read on the news, how can we avoid getting scammed, stay true to the truth, and avoid adding to the mess?

Fake News and Advertising

Mea culpa. Advertising is sadly responsible for spreading a lot of dangerous untruths in the world, lies that ended up broadly corrected often only after lawsuits. Take the whole furor over cigarettes, for example, which ended up in tobacco advertising being banned in some countries, including Australia. The industry still doesn’t publicly accept that smoking causes lung cancer. False and misleading advertising isn’t allowed in Australia – recently, Heinz was fined $2.25 million for misleading advertising by the Federal Court of Australia:

In its initial proceeding against Heinz, the ACCC alleged the company made false and misleading representations, and engaged in conduct liable to mislead the public in relation to the nature, characteristics and suitability of its Little Kids Shredz products. These included statements claiming the product was ‘99 per cent fruit and veg’ and that the food was ‘nutritious’.

At the time, the ACCC pointed out the products contained upwards of 60 per cent sugar, a far greater ratio than an apple, for example, which is about 10 per cent sugar. Its actions followed a complaint made by the Obesity Policy Coalition about food products for toddlers that made such claims when they in fact were predominantly made from fruit juice concentrate and pastes which had much higher sugar content that raw fruit and vegetables.

Being truthful in advertising is more important than ever now, in a world where there’s usually a lot of competition in any market or industry. Brand trust is paramount. If customers stop trusting your brand for any reason — and being lied to is a huge one — they’d move on, and it’d be hard to win them back. A few tips:

  1. Be careful. Research any statement many times before you make it. If there’s even a possibility that it might not be accurate, don’t make it.
  2. Or use careful disclaimers. Have legal check your wording.
  3. If you do get something wrong, own up to it immediately, with a real apology. Not a non-apology.
  4. Commit to being as honest and as transparent with your customers as you can be. They’ll appreciate it.
  5. Add value to their lives. If it’s information – be accurate. For anything else – try to be respectful.

Countering Disinformation

Fake news often spreads through social media. In the Phillippines, where Facebook is free but internet isn’t, this has had consequences: the election of President Duterte:

Two years after the launch of Free Facebook, Rodrigo Duterte mounted a presidential bid, casting himself as the tough-on-crime, anti-elite Everyman ready to bring back jobs and order. Posts about Duterte, full of memes, propaganda, and outright libel (one opponent, now in prison on a dubious drug charge, saw a fake sex tape circulate on Facebook with her in it) did extremely well on Facebook, as nearly any inflammatory content does. When Duterte said he would dump the bodies of executed drug dealers “into Manila Bay, and fatten all the fish there,” the post immediately went “viral, viral, viral,” bragged one of his two social-media directors.

He won handily, and his rule has been brutal. At least 12,000 people have been killed during Duterte’s crackdown on drugs, and hundreds of thousands of Filipinos have been jailed, many of them opponents of Duterte himself. Meanwhile, his social-media team has actively worked to bring in social-media influencers to prop up Duterte’s regime (think Filipino versions of social-media creatures like Mike Cernovich, Laura Loomer, or Jack Posobiec) working closely with the Duterte administration — sometimes directly on the government payroll — to spread fake stories such as a deposed Supreme Court justice was caught attempting to flee the country. Meanwhile, news sources seen as unfriendly to the Duterte campaign have increasingly come under fire, including banning all reporters from an outlet from the presidential palace.

While a system-wide application of fake news like that can only be countered either at an institutional level or a paid organised level, here in Australia, where the internet is uncensored and freely available, it’s possible to safeguard yourself against fake news. A good rule of thumb is, if something feels even slightly unbelievable, Google it before spreading it. Sites like Snopes.com will help you figure things out in a pinch. Sometimes, even if it’s believable, Google it anyway. Before you spread any information, especially news, find a credible site. Read articles linked to statements before retweeting or sharing them – often, snappy 140-280 character Twitter analyses of an article sensationalise it, and key details can be misinterpreted or left out. If you get things wrong, fess up quick. Everyone falls for fake news now and then. Clickbait articles are designed to be highly readable, designed to appeal to and convince you of an idea. In other words, they’re often forms of very good advertising in their own way. Surely by now everyone knows not to completely trust what they see on TV or on social media. You’d just need to apply the same cynicism toward information in general.

We’ve become increasingly time-poor, increasingly addicted to social media, with a tendency to take our news from these platforms. I get why. Facebook’s algorithms are built to show you things that it thinks are in your interest. Information spreads so fast on Twitter that if I hear a rumour of something happening, like a rally in Melbourne CBD, I often check Twitter first because news organisations are unlikely to update anywhere as quickly. Social media can be good for spreading real news, too — I was in a recent talk by Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson, who said that Twitter saved his life. During the Ferguson protests, his platform gave him so much visibility and connections that it was an invaluable part of organising the movement. The Hong Kong protests are highly visible online, and are organised through Telegram.

The platforms are only part of the problem. The trolls will always be there, and as long as their methods keep working, as long as only a tiny percentage of them ever face consequences, they’d keep on churning out fake content for their own purposes. The best we can do is to either approach everything we read online with a healthy grain of salt (a fistful of it, if it’s seen on social media), or to delete everything and live off-grid somewhere in the wilderness. Some days, that’s tempting.

The Disney Monopoly

September 7, 2019

When I first played Kingdom Hearts, I was still in uni. I wasn’t expecting much. It’s a game where you play a kid with huge shoes, big spiky hair, and unrealistic clothing called Sora. Sora wields a “keyblade”, and goes on adventures with Donald Duck and Goofy through different “Disney/Square Enix worlds” such as the world of Hercules etc. Which you fly to on a gummi ship. I know — it sounds ridiculous to me even as I’m typing it. Despite all odds, though, Kingdom Hearts turned out to be an unexpectedly entertaining game. The combat system was fluid and challenging without being annoyingly difficult, the storyline was extremely earnest (read: for kids) but coherent enough to tie the weird storyline together, and most of all — I kid you not — the gummi ship system was incredibly fun. The ship you build is fully customisable, and gummi ship space was fun to navigate.

That was in 2002.

As the game got bigger and more complex, Disney began to add in more and more of the franchises it owned.

In this year’s game, there was Toy Story and Monster’s Inc, on top of the wildly popular franchises of Frozen and Pirates of the Caribbean. I’m surprised they didn’t add worlds like Coco, Finding Nemo, and Moana. Or Star Wars, or Marvel. Playing through Toy Story beside Woody was a strange feeling, in between “I still can’t believe they own Toy Story” to “Why Toy Story 1 and not some newer Pixar property?” By far the biggest Disney flex in popular media so far, however, is probably that one scene in the second Wreck-it Ralph:

disney animation's franchises as per Wreck-it Ralph 2

This was meant to be a funny/triumphant moment in the film, but I mostly just found it scary. How much popular culture does Disney now own? What would this mean for entertainment in general in the future? Needless to say, this wariness isn’t exactly a popularly held opinion. When Disney finally ate 20th Century Fox for $71.3 billion, the news was greeted with joy from fans — despite the mass job losses that ensued and the inherent problems in creating a monopoly this big. X-men was now part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe! Magneto could meet Captain America! Nevermind the implications of Disney now owning the lion (king)’s share of pop culture. Star Wars, Pixar, X-Men, MCU, hell, even the Simpsons. The Mouse just needs to buy DCEU and Harry Potter to consolidate its dominance.

And it will. Maybe someday it will.

I Will Show You The World

This year, the Lion King’s live-action remake became the highest-grossing animation of all time, along with being the ninth highest-grossing film of all time. It was pretty much the same as the original, except with Beyoncé and some slight changes to the cast. Despite the uncanny valley part at the beginning, I actually rather enjoyed it. Just like how I enjoyed the mediocre Avengers: Endgame film, or the very average Aladdin live-action, or the kinda eh Spiderman: Far from Home. That’s the thing about empire. Sooner or later you get used to it. Isn’t it better to have some content than no content?

The problem is in the type of content that gets produced, now that Disney is the Master of the Universe. Via the Guardian:

It’s an almost cartoon-like demonstration of alpha-capitalism: diversity and differentness mushed together into a great big monopolistic blob. With each acquisition, the stakes get higher, as do the profit-opportunities – and, I predict, the numbers of ass-covering executives who will feel less and less inclined to take risky chances on new and different types of film from new and different types of film-maker.

It also has an impact in the way films are now experienced. Via the Atlantic:

The merger essentially confirms that a new age of entertainment has dawned in Hollywood, one where simply releasing blockbusters in theaters isn’t enough to give a company a healthy profit margin. As my colleague Derek Thompson wrote in 2017, Disney’s acquisition of Fox is its first shot in the ongoing streaming wars—a sign that the company is building an arsenal to take on Netflix and any other tech giant that’s muscling into the entertainment business. Disney is getting ready to launch its own subscription streaming service, Disney+, and the Fox assets will pad out that library nicely.

[…]

Disney and Netflix offer the two clearest visions of Hollywood’s future. The former is a media company that’s as old-fashioned as they come, trying to make movies that will pull audiences en masse to the theater. The latter is a tech company that’s largely uninterested in the theater business but has won subscriber loyalty by offering a wealth of viewing options. As the cinema business continues to evolve, perhaps only the biggest films will survive as in-theater experiences, with streaming becoming an equally profitable venue. By adding Fox, Disney has gained ground in that second sphere, but other studios could get left behind in the race.

It’s not so bad yet. At MIFF this year there was a host of diverse, interesting, small-budget films that were screened to mostly booked/packed film theatres. Festivals like Cannes and Tribeca still celebrate creative filmmaking. But it’s often hard for people to see small films unless they’ve caught them at a festival. Not even the number of hipster cinemas in Melbourne screen everything, only the most acclaimed indie films. Films that won the Palme d’Or and such still do get screened at mainstream cinemas, but for everything else, you can either catch the film at MIFF or wait for it to come out on Netflix.

It’s only going to get worse. R-rated films, for example, don’t fit into the Disney brand. And it’s already having trouble spacing out its content, as now it’s just competing with itself:

Disney is already having trouble spacing out their plethora of films and franchises across the calendar in a manner that will give each of them a fair shot at financial success; Dumbo will release in late March despite being completed in time for a late 2018 spot – it was only pushed back to avoid clashing with Nutcracker & The Four Realms and Mary Poppins Returns. And, generally speaking, Disney doesn’t release all that many movies. In 2019, they’ll only have around nine titles in theaters with major releases (not including Fox properties soon to fall under their umbrella). Compare that to Universal Pictures, who will have 15 titles come out this year, while 20th Century Fox has 13 titles scheduled for release in 2019, including the repeatedly-delayed X-Men: Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants. With that studio about to be consumed by Disney, the release schedule as we know it will be completely revamped. And that probably won’t be a good thing.

[…]

If Disney only has to compete with themselves for box office supremacy, then they have far less incentive to produce more or varied content. The Disney model of content is already one with surprising limitations. After all, this is the studio that has built a decades-long sustainable brand without releasing R-rated movies. These historically came under a different studio name like Touchstone, and so it’s unlikely they will entirely kill such Fox films post-merger, but they perhaps won’t be a priority, particularly if they’re bigger budget efforts such as the Alien movies. James Mangold, director of Logan, was one of many to express concern that the merger would limit such storytelling opportunities since they don’t fit with Disney’s brand.

With a huge share of the market, Disney can now enforce its already unprecedented demands on cinemas:

One way the schedule will be completely changed is in how it will affect movie theaters. Unlike most studios, Disney demands a far larger cut of ticket sales for their films and are also the strictest in terms of the conditions they impose on theaters, both independent and multiplex. For example, Disney demanded a massive 65% cut of domestic ticket sales from Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Typically, studios ask for between 50 – 60%.

Other than new films, Disney has also started block Fox’s backlog of films from second run theatres:

Looks like the future’s in streaming, a handful of indies, or blockbuster fare — watched in huge cinema chains. Fun.

The Empire Strikes Back

When the Copyright Act was enacted in the USA in 1790, copyright duration was only 14 years, renewable for another term of 14 years if the author was still alive at the end of the first term. The law changed gradually over time, allowing for longer and longer terms, but it was only when copyright on the Mickey Mouse character was set to expire in 1984 that Disney started seriously lobbying in the 70s to have the Copyright Act changed. As such, when I was studying copyright law, we used to not-so-jokingly call it the Mickey Mouse Law — because it worked. According to the Art Law Journal:

In 1976, Congress authorized a major overhaul of the copyright system assuring Disney extended protection. Instead of the maximum of 56 years with extensions, individual authors were granted protection for their life plus an additional 50 years, (which was the norm in Europe). For works authored by corporations, the 1976 legislation also granted a retroactive extension for works published before the new system took effect. The maximum term for already-published works was lengthened from 56 years to 75 years pushing Mickey protection out to 2003. Anything published in 1922 or before was in the public domain. Anything after that may still be under copyright.

With only 5 years left on Mickey Mouse’s copyright term, Congress again changed the duration with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This legislation lengthens copyrights for works created on or after January 1, 1978, to “life of the author plus 70 years,” and extends copyrights for corporate works to 95 years from the year of first publication, or 120 years from the year of creation, whichever expires first. That pushed Mickey’s copyright protection out to 2023.

[…]

Not everybody has been happy about these changes due to our inability to use old work to create new artistic works. One author noted that we are “the first generation to deny our own culture to ourselves” since “no work created during your lifetime will, without conscious action by its creator, become available for you to build upon.”

The Empire has until 2023 to figure out how to change the law again — but even if it doesn’t, the copyright that expires is on the original black and white, gloveless iteration of Mickey Mouse as seen in Steamboat Willie. The modern version with the gloves and the red pants expires in 2025 — and Disney will probably still contest the matter with litigation. Disney’s aggressive use of litigation to protect its copyright and its repeated tendency to change American copyright law to suit its own purposes has a damning effect on popular culture and creativity. As the biggest juggernaut remaining in entertainment, its clout has only gotten bigger.

I still look forward to Disney/Pixar/LucasArts/MCU films. I watch many of them on premiere days. I buy the merch, play the games. Yet the more ascendant the company gets, the more depressing the outlook for film and popular culture in general. Massive monopolies like this will only get bigger, more hungry, play safer: we can only hope that something will change. All hail the Mouse.

The Rise of Evil Photoshop

July 30, 2019

Photoshop isn’t always bad, I tell myself as I open CNN and notice that the latest news involve Trump appearing in front of a doctored Presidential seal featuring a Russian-styled two-headed eagle holding some golf clubs. Given it was for a conservative student summit, apparently it was all a mistake thanks to time crunch, but heads rolled and I laughed. Photoshop is a fun program. For many young designers, it’s usually their first introduction to Adobe Creative Suite — in design school, everyone knew how to use it. There are always funny Photoshopping events that run on Kotaku and other sites. That being said, it’s often used for evil or outright illegal purposes.

If you’ve been following the news, you might have seen that certain people thought it would be funny to make an app which auto-undresses women. Just women, mind you. If a guy’s picture was put into the app, it just added boobs to it. Naturally, the app promptly went viral, because there are a lot of evil bastards in the world. Via Vice:

“We created this project for users’ entertainment months ago,” he wrote in a statement attached to a tweet. “We thought we were selling a few sales every month in a controlled manner… We never thought it would become viral and we would not be able to control traffic.”

When I spoke to Alberto in an email Wednesday, he said that he had grappled with questions of morality and ethical use of this app. “Is this right? Can it hurt someone?” he said he asked himself. “I think that what you can do with DeepNude, you can do it very well with Photoshop (after a few hours of tutorial),” he said. If the technology is out there, he reasoned, someone would eventually create this.

Since then, according to the statement, he’s decided that he didn’t want to be the one responsible for this technology.

“We don’t want to make money this way,” the statement said. “Surely some copies of DeepNude will be shared on the web, but we don’t want to be the ones to sell it.” He claimed that he’s just a “technology enthusiast,” motivated by curiosity and a desire to learn. This is the same refrain the maker of deepfakes gave Motherboard in December 2017: that he was just a programmer with an interest in machine learning. But as the subsequent rise of fake revenge porn created using deepfakes illustrated, tinkering using women’s bodies is a damaging, sometimes life-destroying venture for the victims of “enthusiasts.”

“The world is not yet ready for DeepNude,” the statement concluded. But as these victimizing algorithms and apps show, there is no simple solution for technology like DeepNudes, and the societal attitudes that erase women’s bodily autonomy and consent.

There are a few takeaways from this. Firstly, I think it’s hilarious that Alberto thought he was creating an app “motivated by curiosity and a desire to learn” when it could destroy the lives of women with fake revenge porn. It’s either disingenuous — an “Uh oh, I now realize I could be sued for this!” or extremely ignorant, a “I’m so privileged I didn’t realize this might be a problem” thing. Secondly, it’s true that anyone with Photoshop could do what DeepNude does. If you pirate or buy Photoshop and if you invest time learning how to use the app (It WILL take more than a few hours), you can indeed create fake nude images that you could spread around to get someone fired / hurt them enough to drive them to depression or suicide / worse. Not to mention that anything that gets on the internet will likely stay on the internet.

What Can Victims of Evil Photoshop Do?

Depending on what the problem is, there might be a legal recourse. Many countries have a revenge porn law on the books. In Australia, there’s both a civil and criminal recourse:

“When we’ve spoken with people who’ve been individual victims of this type of behaviour — which is terrible behaviour, obviously — what they say is what they really want is some ability to really quickly compel that person to stop doing it and to compel people who’ve received it to take it down if it’s posted on Facebook or to remove it if it’s been texted or emailed to someone,” Porter told 6PR on Thursday afternoon.

“And so we’ve set up this civil penalty regime, which basically allows for this really quick take-down, if you like, of that type of posting. In addition to which, we’ve looked at the existing offences and we’ve toughened them up, so that it will now be the case that if you send an image which we have defined as a private sexual image of someone and you do that in a way that’s unreasonable — including, obviously, consideration as to whether or not the person consented — then you can face a penalty of five years.

“If you do that and you’ve been the subject of three or more of these civil penalty orders — which is the regime that sits underneath it — then you can be guilty of an offence with a penalty up to seven years.”

For everything else, things are more complicated. Deep fakes, or computer-generated replicas of a person saying or doing things they hadn’t said, already exist. In May 2018, a Belgian political party, Socialistische Partij Anders, or sp.a, created a deep fake video of Trump purportedly offering climate change advice to the people of Belgium. They’d assumed that the poor quality of the fake would alert people to the fact that it was a parody video. Naturally, it didn’t. The video went viral and sp.a went into damage control. If even a small-scale deep fake could damage our already fragile news systems, it could do worse. Via the Guardian:

Citron and Chesney are not alone in these fears. In April, the film director Jordan Peele and BuzzFeed released a deep fake of Barack Obama calling Trump a “total and complete dipshit” to raise awareness about how AI-generated synthetic media might be used to distort and manipulate reality. In September, three members of Congress sent a letter to the director of national intelligence, raising the alarm about how deep fakes could be harnessed by “disinformation campaigns in our elections”.

The specter of politically motivated deep fakes disrupting elections is at the top of Citron’s concerns. “What keeps me awake at night is a hypothetical scenario where, before the vote in Texas, someone releases a deep fake of Beto O’Rourke having sex with a prostitute, or something,” Citron told me. “Now, I know that this would be easily refutable, but if this drops the night before, you can’t debunk it before serious damage has spread.”

The problem, the article noted, wasn’t even whether people could or could not easily ID whether a video was fake, or if there was tech that could tell if it was fake:

Indeed, as the fake video of Trump that spread through social networks in Belgium earlier this year demonstrated, deep fakes don’t need to be undetectable or even convincing to be believed and do damage. It is possible that the greatest threat posed by deep fakes lies not in the fake content itself, but in the mere possibility of their existence.

This is a phenomenon that scholar Aviv Ovadya has called “reality apathy”, whereby constant contact with misinformation compels people to stop trusting what they see and hear. In other words, the greatest threat isn’t that people will be deceived, but that they will come to regard everything as deception.

Recent polls indicate that trust in major institutions and the media is dropping. The proliferation of deep fakes, Ovadya says, is likely to exacerbate this trend.

In other words, no, there’s nothing much we can do to prevent the increasing sophistication of evil Photoshop and its kin. It’s all very well to ask people to apply an extra-healthy dose of cynicism and scepticism to anything that appears too good to be true, but in today’s time-sensitive world, that’s a hard ask.

A Retouching Law

Altering images to remove small flaws is nothing new. We do it ourself — retouching images to make them more beautiful. I’ve worked before in a studio with mostly fashion clients where they’d regularly lengthen the legs, lengthen the neck, change the hair, the nails — all in post-production. The “It can all be fixed in post” attitude is filtered in from design school. A classmate once told me in third year that while in first year he would have reshot an image with an error in the set, in third year it was already just easier to erase it in post rather than fiddle with cameras and lighting.

When retouching is taken to extremes, however, that’s what I’d call Strangely Socially Acceptable Evil Photoshop. Look at the image above. It’s of the same model: Filippa Hamilton. See the problem? The image on the left drew criticism over its alteration to impossible body standards.

The Rise of Evil Photoshop

Such standards cause lasting damage or worse on people. In 2007, Hila Elmaliach, a well-known model, died of complications from anorexia at age 34. She was 5’8, and weighed less than 22kg at her death. She’d developed eating disorders when she’d become a model at 13 years old. The American Medical Association also released a statement in 2011 about image alteration:

“The appearance of advertisements with extremely altered models can create unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image. In one image, a model’s waist was slimmed so severely, her head appeared to be wider than her waist. We must stop exposing impressionable children and teenagers to advertisements portraying models with body types only attainable with the help of photo editing software.”

Israel has now passed legislation requiring models to have a BMI of at least 18.5, and there’s legislation in the books about retouching in some countries. Via Pixelz:

In France, a law that went into effect in October of 2017 requires a “photographie retouchée” label on photos that have been digitally altered to make a model’s silhouette narrower or wider; it also requires an every other year health exam for models, to medically certify they are healthy enough to work.

Getty images has now banned “any creative content depicting models whose body shapes have been retouched to make them look thinner or larger,” and there’s also been celebrity backlash on the issue:

The Things We Do

People have less and less of an appetite for extremely retouched stuff. American Eagle’s lingerie line, Aerie, had a campaign celebrating women of all body types:

It resulted in a 20% increase in sales in 2015. And of course, there’s Dove’s heavy push towards body positivity, in award-winning ads that have raised the profile of its products. So how much retouching (if any) is OK, and how much is not? In our opinion, retouching minor things like dirt, temporary blemishes, lighting and such is fine. These edits don’t fundamentally change what the image is, they just change the basic presentation. Respect the model and respect your audience, and as with every ad/marketing content out there, create it while trying to do no evil. That’s the best advice we can put forward in this day and age. Want to know more? Get in touch.

Image by Alex Wong / Getty Images / as seen on CNN

The Restaurant Pay Reckoning

July 24, 2019
george calombaris restaurant pay

“I wish I could steal $7 million dollars and only get fined $200,000,” said a friend of mine when the scandal broke. If you’ve been on the news or Aussie Twitter recently, you might have seen that George Calombaris, one of the judges on the popular reality TV cooking competition Masterchef Australia and restauranteur of Press Club, Gazi, Hellenic Republic and others — has been fined a relative pittance for wage theft. Ironically, on the day of the finale, as activists were trying to get the #MasterTheft hashtag trending, news broke that all three judges wouldn’t be returning for 2020. Their pay negotiations had fallen through, apparently. Despite currently being on million-dollar salaries, they’d asked for a pay raise of 40%. Twitter was briefly overstimulated:

I confess I’ve tried every one of George’s restaurants, even the Press Club, which is probably the most pretentious restaurant I’ve ever been to. If you know me, you’d know that’s a real achievement. Yes, it was more pretentious even than Attica, which when I visited during the first year of its opening, had a little print-out essay of Ben Shewry’s “food philosophy” that you had to read before looking at the menu, where near the end you’re chivvied out into the freezing night and made to walk around the tiny backyard garden poking at herbs. More pretentious than Michelin restaurants in Europe, or even Quintessence in Tokyo, whose menu is literally a blank slate that’s passed to you at the start of the meal. In the Press Club, my guest and I were shown a basket of potatoes still in their jackets. “Cool,” we said, puzzled. “Now the kitchen will transform the potatoes,” announced the serving staff. “Ok,” we said. At the Press Club, your seats are against windows that look down into the kitchen. We watched the serving staff take the potatoes to the kitchen, where sauce was slathered on top. It was served as it was.

We laughed then, but now that I’m aware of the wage theft, I kinda understand.

Free Labour and a Fine Dining Restaurant

It’s now Rockpool Group’s turn to be hit by the wage scandal, before which it was Vue de Monde. To be honest, we’d be completely unsurprised if every high-end restaurant in Australia is underpaying its staff. After all, underpaying — or not even paying — staff has been a staple of fine dining restaurants for a long time. The latter is called ‘staging’, a sort-of free labour internship that is the backbone of fine dining across the world. Via Eater:

What is unfair, underneath the veneer of awards, and the steady flow of international reservation requests they come with, is an ugly economic reality. Because many of these temples of culinary artistry cannot function without the work of stagiaires, their unpaid labor force.

A stage (pronounced: stajh, taken from the French word for “trainee”) is like a cooking internship, and the practice is much more common in elite, destination restaurants than local faves. Some cooks do this for a few days, but often the unpaid work lasts for weeks or months; depending on the kitchen, a stage might see themselves chopping up produce for mise en place or running entire stations during a night’s dinner service. Ostensibly, a cook who has already been in the field a few years, is staging to learn, to absorb new skills and knowledge from the kitchen’s full-time staff — because to be the best, you’ve got to learn from the best. I know a chef who staged at the French Laundry in California, and he doesn’t regret the unpaid, 14-hour days for a minute. It made him who he is. And for those who are able to do this, the experience is figuratively priceless. But in a literal sense, it does have a cost.

“Pursuing your dream and doing whatever it takes to work for the best restaurant, you put up any sacrifice,” says Abigail Ainsworth, a Toronto filmmaker currently shooting a documentary, tentatively titled Stage, about staging in the world’s best restaurants. “We’ve met people who sell their cars, break up with loved ones, really do whatever it takes to live their dream and work for these chefs.”

[…]

In 2015, when Noma was ranked at number three, the Guardian reported that the Copenhagen restaurant employed about 25 paid cooks, with another 30 unpaid stagiaires. A memoir from a former stagiaire, published in Los Angeles Magazine, described 17-hour days. When El Bulli was in the number one spot, I interviewed Ferran Adrià, who told me that he had 25 stagiaires, a workforce that outnumbered his paid staff.

It’s all very well to claim that staging is going to cooking school for free, but unpaid labour is illegal across many countries for a good reason. Besides, people who can afford to stage would themselves be a privileged few — people who don’t have medical debts to pay off, for example, or families to support. That’ll contribute to a lessening of diversity across the industry, which you can see in the spread of the Best 50 Restaurants list this year too. It lauded itself for being “female-forward“, when there were only 5 women-led restaurants in the top 50, and there’s still, hilariously, a “Best Female Chef” award, as though women can’t compete at the same level for Best Chef.

Free staging isn’t legal in Australia — but underpaying staff in general while overworking them is still the go. When Ben Shewry of Attica implemented the 48-hour working week for his staff, it was lauded:

“48-hour work weeks at a top 50 restaurant is amazing – this should be the Australian standard.”

However, not everyone is receptive to a shorter work week – chefs included. Dan Puskas of Sydney restaurant Sixpenny tried to implement a four-day system six months ago, but failed.

“I pitched it to our staff and none of them wanted to do it,” he says. “We’re lucky here because we don’t do Sunday dinner and we close Mondays and Tuesdays so our chefs get Sunday nights off and then two week days.”

“There’s this old idea that if you want to survive in this industry, you have to work these crazy hours. Maybe it’s exaggerated but on the other hand, we couldn’t afford to be open if we worked eight hours a day. We’d need to double the chefs, our prices would go up and we’d have no customers,” says Puskas.

It’s a hard life. We can only hope the Attica staff are also being paid what they’re worth. The last time I was in the restaurant, the chef’s essay was gone, but the garden walk remained.

Masterchef 2020

To be honest, I don’t particularly care that three middle-aged guys have lost a job that they held with intermittent success for 11 years. I used to love watching Masterchef. I learned how to quarter a chicken watching the show, among other things. I’ve gone to restaurants or tried bakeries because they featured on the show. I wish it the best. Unlike a lot of reality TV out there, much of Masterchef is feel-good TV where you can actually learn something. Yet every year, having to watch George struggle to eat spicy food got less and less funny. And each time the judges (other than Matt Preston the food critic) was faced with something beyond the norm, I usually held my breath to see if they were going to handle it badly.

Notwithstanding the top 10 for this year, the show has become more diverse over the years — last year’s winner was Singapore-born Sashi Cheliah. It was an absolute trip to turn on free-to-air Australian TV five days a week and listen to the accent from the country of my birth boom out over everyone else (Sashi used to be a police officer and it shows). TV is changing. This year, one of the most-watched shows on Netflix was Ava Duvernay’s incredible When They See Us, about the Central Park Five. Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians have made silly money at the box office. The new 007 is Lashana Lynch.

Here’s hoping that Masterchef Australia and Channel 10 will see the way the wind is blowing, and bring in judges that reflect the huge variety of food that Australia is now home to. It’s a new world now, hungry for new things. To Matt and Gary, thanks for the entertainment, even though it’s been 11 years and I’m still not entirely sure why Gary was even there (does he even have a restaurant?). As to George… pay your staff more, man. And the potatoes were weird.

Image from 7news.

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