Balance Brief: 3rd December 2025 to 16th December 2025
This week, we look at how data centres place pressure on energy and water resources, how AI development relies on poorly recognised forms of labour, and how gaps in safety and governance remain even as capabilities advance.
Women, minorities, journalists, and human rights defenders experience disproportionate harm through online violence, surveillance, and intimidation, while research highlights growing risks to jobs and democratic participation. Ultimately, there’s a growing mismatch between the speed of technological deployment and the capacity of existing institutions to manage its effects.
Covering 3rd December to 16th December
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Infrastructures of power
Elon Musk’s X was fined $140 million by EU tech regulators for breaching online content rules, the first sanction under landmark legislation that drew criticism from the US government. X gets $140 million EU fine for breaching content rules but TikTok settles | Reuters (Reuters, 6th Dec)
As Keir Starmer rose to power in the UK, the political machine responsible for his rise ran a behind-the-scenes campaign to demonetise the US news outlet Breitbart. Keir Starmer Machine Ran a Secret Campaign to Demonetize Breitbart News and Other Opposition Outlets (Dropsitenews, 3rd Dec)
Rather than being lured by propaganda or groomed by the already converted, individuals might self-radicalise through the simple act of chatting to a bot. You Talkin’ to Me? Algorithmic Mirrors and Chatbot Radicalisation – GNET (GNET, 8th Dec)
According to #KeepItOn coalition data, armed conflict was the leading trigger globally for internet shutdowns in 2023 and 2024. Internet shutdowns in armed conflict: a typology of harms - Access Now (Access Now, 11th Dec)
Despite the territorial defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2019, IS’s online caliphate continues to expand in tandem with the ever-evolving digital communications landscape. The Weaponisation of Femininity: Gendered Realities in ISIS’s Digital Caliphate – GNET (GNET, 11th Dec)
Pakistan’s new electronic crimes act means that tweets and even simple reposts can now attract charges of glorification, cyberterrorism, hate speech and ‘false information’. Understanding PECA: What Pakistan’s Cybercrime Law Means for Your Social Media | Dawn News English (DawnNews English, 10th Dec)
AI, labour and displacement
As the number of data centers increases in Mumbai, they are likely to strain the city’s scarce and precious resources, especially power and a hygienic water supply. Mumbai’s Data Center Dreams Run on Coal and Inequality | TechPolicy.Press (TechPolicy Press, 2nd Dec)
A personal account of a data worker, documenting the fragmented, undervalued, and emotional labour behind chat moderators and data annotation workers. The Emotional Labor Behind AI Intimacy (Data Workers’ Inquiry)
Governance and geopolitics
At the centre of Australia’s social media ban is a $100,000 whirlwind trip to the UN to sell the campaign. ‘Everyone got paid’: How Wippa’s pro-teen social media ban group cashed in on its success (Crikey, 9th Dec)
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday intended to limit state regulation of artificial intelligence. Trump Signs Executive Order To Combat State AI Regulation | TechPolicy.Press (TechPolicy Press, 12th Dec)
Cultural frontiers
AI writing is marked by a whole complex of frankly bizarre rhetorical features that make it immediately distinctive to anyone who has ever encountered it. Why Does A.I. Write Like … That? - The New York Times (The NYT Magazine, 3rd Dec)
Digital power reimagined
Generative AI is a seductive distraction from the type of AI that is most likely to make your life better, or even save it: predictive AI. Generative AI hype distracts us from AI’s more important breakthroughs | MIT Technology Review (MIT Technology Review, 15th Dec)
Research and reports
With the expansion of communication technologies, war propaganda has evolved in both its methods and reach, increasingly instrumentalising social media platforms to shape public opinion at both national and international levels, often through targeted digital content such as online ads. WAR PROFITEERS: ONLINE ADS AND THE MACHINERY OF PROPAGANDA FOR WAR | Access Now
Women and young adults face the biggest threat from AI in the workplace, with wider improvements in health, education and income potentially falling by the wayside. Millions of jobs at risk in Asia-Pacific as AI adoption surges in wealthy nations | UN News
Scraping must undergo a serious reckoning with privacy law as it violates nearly all of the key principles of privacy laws, including fairness, individual rights and control, transparency, consent, purpose specification and secondary use restrictions, data minimisation, onward transfer, and data security. The Great Scrape: The Clash Between Scraping and Privacy
Throughout the New York City mayoral general election, Zohran Mamdani has received widespread national and international attention as both the first Muslim and Democratic Socialist candidate. A significant part of this discourse has circulated on the social media platform X. Islamophobia and the New York City Mayoral Election
In digital space, attacks are used strategically to intimidate, control, and silence critical human rights defenders. Connecting Current Tech report.
Online violence is an escalating threat to women’s participation in public life and democratic deliberation in the AI Age, especially in the context of rising authoritarianism, increased repression of women’s rights organisations, and networked misogyny. TIPPING POINT: THE CHILLING ESCALATION OF ONLINE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE
The AI industry is struggling to keep pace with its own rapid capability advances — with critical gaps in risk management and safety planning that threaten our ability to control increasingly powerful AI systems. AI Safety Index
