In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: How Russian disinformation is reaching the U.S. ahead of the 2024 election (NBC News) The Rise of the Compliant Speech Platform (Lawfare) ExTwitter Makes It Official: Blocks Are No Longer Blocks (Techdirt) People are flocking to Bluesky as X makes more unwanted changes (The Verge) Instagram blames some moderation issues on human reviewers, not AI (TechCrunch) This episode ...
Oct 18, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 33
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: States sue TikTok over app’s effects on kids’ mental health (CNBC) Risks vs. Harms: Youth & Social Media (Substack) Instagram and Threads moderation is out of control (The Verge) TikTok lays off hundreds in Malaysia in move toward AI moderation (Asia Nikkei) Meta ‘Supreme Court’ expands with European center to handle TikTok, YouTube cases (Washingon Post) The DSA art...
Oct 11, 2024•52 min•Season 1Ep. 32
In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Professor Kate Klonick, who has studied and written about trust & safety for many years and is currently studying the DSA & DMA in the EU as a Fulbright Scholar. They cover: EU Commission’s Digital Fairness Fitness Check (European Commission) Differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions (Nature) Inside Two Years of Turm...
Oct 04, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 31
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Ben is joined by guest host Cathryn Weems, who has held T&S roles at Yahoo, Google, Dropbox, Twitter and Epic Games. They cover: Google outlines plans to help you sort real images from fake (The Verge) Fake AI “podcasters” are reviewing my book and it’s freaking me out (Ars Technica) We Don't Need Google to Help "Reimagine" Election Misinformation (Tech Policy Press) Social media owners t...
Sep 27, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 30
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: Breton’s resignation could mark a new chapter for EU digital policy (Euractiv) Finnish horse enthusiast is an EU tech front-runner (Politico) Instagram, Facing Pressure Over Child Safety Online, Unveils Sweeping Changes (New York Times) Instagram to make teenagers’ profiles private by default (Financial Times) AI chatbots might be better at swaying conspiracy theorists tha...
Sep 20, 2024•52 min•Season 1Ep. 29
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Riana Pfefferkorn , a Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human Centered AI. They cover: Australia threatens fines for social media giants enabling misinformation (Reuters) Social media ban for children to be introduced this year, but age limit undetermined (ABC) ASIO director-general Mike Burgess issues warning to big tech companies they may soon be force...
Sep 13, 2024•55 min•Season 1Ep. 28
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: Social networks can’t be forced to filter content for kids, says judge (The Verge) Judge Rejects Yet Another Attempt By Texas To Police Online Speech (Techdirt) Telegram apologizes for handling of deepfake porn content in S. Korea (Yonhap) Brazilian Supreme Court panel upholds X ban (Axios) Elon Musk’s Starlink backtracks to comply with Brazil’s ban on X (The Guardian) Wit...
Sep 06, 2024•55 min•Season 1Ep. 27
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: TikTok must face a lawsuit for recommending the viral ‘blackout challenge’ (The Verge) Third Circuit’s Section 230 TikTok Ruling Deliberately Ignores Precedent, Defies Logic (Techdirt) France charges Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, releases him on €5M bail (Politico) Elon Musk’s X could face ban in Brazil after failure to appoint legal representative (The Guardian) Zuckerberg sa...
Aug 30, 2024•53 min•Season 1Ep. 26
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Daphne Keller, the Director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center. They cover: Ninth Circuit Rules in Favor of NetChoice Over California’s Age Appropriate Design Code (Ninth Circuit) Governor Newsom and Attorney General Bonta on appellate court decision regarding California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (State of California) R...
Aug 23, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 25
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: EU takes shot at Musk over Trump interview — and misses (Politico) Online Safety Act not fit for purpose after far-right riots, says Sadiq Khan (The Guardian) See why AI detection tools can fail to catch election deepfakes (The Washington Post) Harris campaign's Google ads rewrite news headlines (Axios) Children to be taught how to spot extremist content and fake news onli...
Aug 16, 2024•53 min•Season 1Ep. 24
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: Bluesky adds Techdirt founder Mike Masnick to its board (TechCrunch) X, Owned by Elon Musk, Brings Antitrust Suit Accusing Advertisers of a Boycott (New York Times) WFA Shutters GARM, X Antitrust Suit Cited (MediaPost) UK faces resistance from X over taking down disinformation during riots (Financial Times) Open letter to UK online service providers (Ofcom) Google and Meta...
Aug 09, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 23
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: Jim Jordan Demands Advertisers Explain Why They Don’t Advertise On MAGA Media Sites (Techdirt) TikTok Has a Nazi Problem (Wired) NazTok: An organized neo-Nazi TikTok network is getting millions of views (Institute for Strategic Dialogue) How TikTok bots and AI have powered a resurgence in UK far-right violence (The Guardian) Senate Passes Child Online Safety Bill, Sending ...
Aug 02, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 22
In the first ever live recording of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike and Ben are joined at TrustCon 2024 by Dona Bellow, Platform Safety Policy at Reddit, and Alice Hunsberger, PartnerHero’s VP of Trust & Safety and Content Moderation, to round up the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, including: Meta content moderation vendors hit by global cyber outage (Reuters) Could social media support healthy online conversations? New_ Public is working on it (Nieman Lab) Pa...
Jul 26, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 21
In this sponsored Spotlight episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, host Ben Whitelaw talks to Mike Pappas, the founder & CEO of our launch sponsor Modulate , which builds prosocial voice technology that combats online toxicity and elevates the health and safety of online communities. Their conversation takes an in-depth look at how voice is becoming an increasingly important medium for online speech while technology is making more advanced voice moderation possible, and what that means for trust and sa...
Jul 23, 2024•36 min•Season 1Ep. 20
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: Russia and China pounce on Trump rally shooting to undermine U.S. (Washington Post) The Gunshots Rang Out. Then the Conspiracy Theories Erupted Online (New York Times) Chaos on social media platforms after Trump shooting is a mess of their own making (CNN) Elon Musk Wants His AI Bot to Deliver the News. It Is Struggling With the Job (WSJ) Spotify's new comment feature trie...
Jul 19, 2024•53 min•Season 1Ep. 19
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Domonique Rai-Varming, Senior Director, Trust & Safety at Trustpilot. Together they cover: Amazon, Expedia and Trustpilot unite to fight fake reviews (BBC) EU charges Elon Musk’s X for letting disinfo run wild (Politico) British female politicians targeted by fake pornography (The Guardian) The hidden workers behind AI tell their stories (Netzpolitik) How Mach...
Jul 12, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Although our hosts are both on vacation this week, we didn’t want to leave our listeners waiting too long for an update on today’s big news about online speech: the Supreme Court’s ruling in the NetChoice cases, which sends the Texas and Florida laws that would limit the ability of online platforms to moderate political speech back to the lower courts. So Mike Masnick has stepped briefly back to the microphone to join our producer, Leigh Beadon, for a quick mini episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, which...
Jul 01, 2024•19 min•Season 1Ep. 17
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: Supreme Court Sees Through The Nonsense, Rejects Lower Courts’ Rulings Regarding Social Media Moderation (Techdirt) How Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Failed Children on Safety, States Say (New York Times) New Features to Help Protect Our Community (Snap) Trends in Financial Sextortion (Thorn/NCMEC) Teens lean on AI for mental health support (Mercury News) I Paid $365.63 to Replac...
Jun 28, 2024•56 min•Season 1Ep. 16
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: Surgeon General: Why I’m Calling for a Warning Label on Social Media Platforms (New York Times) The Surgeon General Is Wrong. Social Media Doesn’t Need Warning Labels (The Daily Beast) Anthropic calls for AI red teaming to be standardized (Fortune) How small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline (Engadget) Pornhub to block five more states over age verificati...
Jun 21, 2024•53 min•Season 1Ep. 15
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: Meta says it won’t support suit against major child safety law (Washington Post) Obstacles to Autonomy: Post-Roe Removal of Abortion Information Online (Amnesty International) Abortion Groups Say Tech Companies Suppress Posts and Accounts (NY Times) The Stanford Internet Observatory is being dismantled (Platformer) How Politics Broke Content Moderation (Columbia Journalism...
Jun 14, 2024•49 min•Season 1Ep. 14
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Yoel Roth, former head of trust & safety at Twitter and now head of trust & safety at Match Group. Together they cover: X tweaks rules to formally allow adult content (TechCrunch) Temu joins Shein in facing stricter regulation in the EU (The Verge) Facebook’s Taylor Swift Fan Pages Taken Over by Animal Abuse, Porn, and Scams (404 Media) Post-January 6th de...
Jun 07, 2024•53 min•Season 1Ep. 13
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: EU Explores Whether Telegram Falls Under Strict New Content Law (Bloomberg) Too Small to Police, Too Big to Ignore: Telegram Is the App Dividing Europe (Bloomberg) NIST Reports First Results From Age Estimation Software Evaluation (NIST) Supersharers of fake news on Twitter (Science) Digital town square? Nextdoor's offline contexts and online discourse (JQD:DM) The first s...
May 31, 2024•53 min•Season 1Ep. 12
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: Meta and Coinbase link up with Match to fight pig-butchering, romance scams (Fortune) Indian Voters Are Being Bombarded With Millions of Deepfakes. Political Candidates Approve (Wired) Meta says AI-generated election content is not happening at a “systemic level” (MIT Technology Review) How Bluesky is thinking about spam (Bluesky) French TikTok block in overseas territory ...
May 24, 2024•58 min•Season 1Ep. 11
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: Commission opens formal proceedings against Meta under the Digital Services Act related to the protection of minors on Facebook and Instagram (European Commission) Meta, TikTok, other platforms told to expect EU guidelines soon on child protection, age verification (MLex) Got a text that you think is a scam? S’pore’s new centre to fight online harms can help verify it (Str...
May 17, 2024•48 min•Season 1Ep. 10
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership (Tom's Hardware) Tech firms must tame toxic algorithms to protect children online (Ofcom) Reddit Lays Out Content Policy While Seeking More Licensing Deals (Bloomberg) Extremist Militias Are Coordinating in More Than 100 Facebook Groups (Wired) Politicians Scapegoat Social Media While Ignoring Real...
May 10, 2024•51 min•Season 1Ep. 9
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Alex Feerst, former General Counsel and head of trust & safety at Medium, and co-founder of the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership. Together they cover: Was There A Trojan Horse Hidden In Section 230 All Along That Could Enable Adversarial Interoperability? (Techdirt) EU Commission opens formal proceedings against Facebook and Instagram under the Digital S...
May 03, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 8
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: How to Fix the Online Child Exploitation Reporting System (Stanford Internet Observatory) TikTok faces EU Commission’s second probe, potential suspension of reward program (Euronews) Meta Expands Its Mixed Reality Beyond the Quest Headsets (CNet) The biggest AI companies agree to crack down on child abuse images (Thorn) Wattpad has a community problem, so it’s killing DMs ...
Apr 26, 2024•55 min•Season 1Ep. 7
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: Schools Were Just Supposed To Block Porn. Instead They Sabotaged Homework and Censored Suicide Prevention Sites (The Markup) New Tools to Help Protect Against Sextortion and Intimate Image Abuse (Meta) Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media—and driving some to suicide (Bloomberg) The AI That Could Heal a Divided Internet (TIME) Mexican election agency and news...
Apr 19, 2024•53 min•Season 1Ep. 6
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Ben is joined by guest host Alice Hunsberger, VP of Trust and Safety and Content Moderation at Partnerhero and former Global Head of Customer Experience at Grindr. Together they cover: Measuring the Persuasiveness of Language Models (Anthropic) Our Approach to Labeling AI-Generated Content and Manipulated Media (Meta) Survey: New Laws Mandate Access To Social Media Data, But Obstacles Remain ...
Apr 12, 2024•41 min•Season 1Ep. 5
In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation, and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: Elon Musk's X appoints new safety chiefs as it seeks to rebuild ads business ( Fortune ) X’s ‘complimentary’ Premium push gives people blue checks they didn’t ask for ( The Verge ) Mozilla Research: Platforms’ Election Interventions in the Global Majority Are Ineffective ( Mozilla ) Implementing the Online Safety Act: Additional duties for ‘categorised’ online services ( ...
Apr 05, 2024•58 min•Season 1Ep. 4
