Stay informed on your terms.

You can read and share stories without an account. Device-local saves and your privacy choice use browser storage. Signing in stores the session needed to keep your account available.

News notifications

Browser alerts are optional and separate from analytics. When you enable them, we store a browser delivery address, encryption keys and a private token used to manage your choice. Your browser provider handles delivery. We do not need your name or email. The token stays on your device; the server stores only its hash. You can turn alerts off on the news updates page or in browser settings. Expired subscriptions are removed. Unused subscriptions expire after 180 days, and delivery records are retained for 30 days.

Analytics

Analytics is enabled by default and can record story IDs, reading time, page use, sharing-button choices and outbound-link clicks. You can turn it off in Privacy choices. We do not send your email or comment text to Google Analytics. A share-button click tells us you opened a sharing option, not that you published a post.

Private UX history

With your permission, we retain coded page visits, the items and counters displayed, their positions and content versions, reading duration, scroll progress and interaction events. A randomly generated browser identifier replaces your email. This is pseudonymous data, not a claim of anonymity. Search words, comment bodies, raw IP addresses and raw user-agent strings are not included.

Research on how people navigate and engage with AI information requires a separate optional choice and a declaration that you are 18 or older. Account creation, notifications and an analytics choice do not provide research consent. Withdrawing research permission excludes earlier linked events from the research dataset. Enabling it does not retrospectively include earlier activity. Declining all measurement removes linked private UX history. Public aggregate counts, account actions and consent evidence are separate. Privacy choices includes a button to delete activity associated with this browser. Clearing browser storage can remove the identifier needed to locate it. Contact us about other data requests.

Your account and comments

Your account email is private. Your chosen display name and approved comments are public. You can delete your comments, remove likes and saves, or delete your Brief community profile from the account page. Sign-in authentication records may also be used by other services sharing this account; contact the project about removing them.

Retention

The short-lived records for public readership counters are separate from private UX history. Consented product-measurement history is retained for up to 13 months. Separately opted-in adult research activity is retained for up to 24 months. Scheduled maintenance removes expired history. Consent records can remain for up to 30 months to document the choices made. Aggregate readership can remain. Comments, likes and account saves remain until you remove them or the service removes them. Public comments can be copied by other readers, even after deletion here.

Advertising

When advertising is active, Google and its partners may use cookies or device information to deliver and measure ads. Google's consent message controls those advertising choices separately from reading analytics. You can revisit them through Privacy choices. How Google uses data on partner sites. Optional reader-support payments take place on the payment provider's website, under its terms; the Brief does not collect payment-card details.

Music and external sources

Music is loaded from its original host only after you press play. That host receives the network request needed to deliver audio. Opening a source link takes you to the source’s own website and privacy terms.

Contact

For a privacy question or data request about The Brief, email research@hamelberg-ai.com.

Public readership and engagement

Views and share actions count consenting browser sessions, not unique people. A session can add at most one view and one share action per item per UTC day. Views require five seconds with the page visible. Share actions mean a copied link, a sharing-app link selected, or a completed native share request; they do not prove a social-media post. Views and share-action totals start when this feature is connected. We do not invent earlier activity.

Likes and account saves count current signed-in choices. Device-only saves stay private and are not included. Comments count approved contributions. Engaged reads cover the last seven days and require the existing reading-time and progress thresholds. All these aggregate counts are readable without an account. Dashes mean the counters could not be loaded. These are best-effort first-party measurements, not audited audience or advertising figures.

Optional measurement receipts expire after eight days; aggregate view and share counts remain. Notification endpoints, delivery keys, sign-in emails and preference-management tokens are private. Browser notifications are an independent choice of AI newspaper, culture and AI research, with up to two deliveries daily around 08:30 and 18:30 Amsterdam time. Browser and scheduling delays can change arrival times. Old weekly preferences are not silently converted to twice-daily consent.