The hosts of Ctrl-Alt-Speech are both on vacation this week, but 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...
Jul 01, 2024•19 min
We weren't planning to do a series, but after our last two episodes with Alice Marwick and then Candice Odgers, things have lined up nicely for a trifecta of episodes about the current moral panic around kids and social media. This week, we're joined by Dr. Devorah Heitner, an expert on kids and technology and author of the recent book Growing Up In Public, as well as a Substack about mentoring kids in a connected world, to discuss what parents really need to know about kids, social media, and t...
Jun 25, 2024•49 min
In the conversation about keeping kids safe online, the actual experts with the most to offer are all too often treated as outsiders and interlopers. One such expert is Candice Odgers, Professor of Psychological Science and Informatics at the University of California Irvine, who has recently been involved in a lot of debates against people who are very confident despite having far less information and expertise. This week, she joins us for something of a follow-up to our previous episode, to hav...
Jun 18, 2024•44 min
There's a broad legislative push for rules that would (supposedly) protect kids online. But as we've written about at length, while the concern for teen mental health might be genuine, the legislative response is highly problematic and based on a misdiagnosis of the underlying problems. This week, we're joined by UNC's Alice Marwick, one of a group of academics who recently released a primer on child safety legislation, to discuss the many different issues at play and the problems with various r...
Jun 11, 2024•49 min
At the latest committee hearing about its repeal bill, Congress finally deigned to bring in one witness who spoke in defense of Section 230. Engine Executive Director Kate Tummarello got a little bit of time to explain how Section 230 isn't about protecting big tech, it's about protecting the hosts and users of all kinds of extremely important and valuable online communities. But that little bit of time was far from enough, so this week Kate joins us on the podcast to say some more things that C...
Jun 04, 2024•48 min
Check out Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike Masnick's brand new podcast with Ben Whitelaw, creator of the Everything in Moderation newsletter. In this teaser excerpt from last week's episode, Mike and Ben discuss a fascinating story about how political deepfakes are being used in the Indian election - but not in the way you might expect. Listen to the whole episode covering all the week's biggest news in online speech - and get ready for this week's episode, releasing tomorrow - by visiting ctrlaltspeech.co...
May 30, 2024•14 min
As decentralized social media experiments continue, we're getting more and more opportunities to really understand the impact of decentralized systems and how they are received by users. Amy Zhang, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Washington, has been studying and thinking about these issues a lot, and this week she joins us on the podcast to discuss a recent paper and, in general, how users are faring in the world of decentralized social media and content moderation....
May 21, 2024•46 min
There's no shortage of prognostication about the future of generative AI, including plenty of predictions that it won't actually be around forever for various reasons. A lot of these takes are a little too speculative or just not very interesting, but one that stands out comes from law professor and returning podcast guest Eric Goldman, who joins us this week to discuss his recent lecture and subsequent paper arguing that the regulatory environment won't allow generative AI to survive. 2024 Nies...
May 14, 2024•49 min
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's CyberTipline is a central component of the fight against child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online, but there have been a lot of questions about how well it truly works. A recent report from the Stanford Internet Observatory, which we've published two recent posts about, provides an extremely useful window into the system. This week, we're joined by two of the report's authors, Shelby Grossman and Riana Pfefferkorn, to dig into the conte...
May 07, 2024•50 min
We've got one more cross-post episode for you today, then next week we're back with a brand new discussion. Recently, Mike joined the Daily Beast's The New Abnormal podcast with host Andy Levy for a conversation about the big news from last week: Biden signing a bill that will ban TikTok in the US if owner ByteDance doesn't divest from it. The full episode of The New Abnormal covers other topics as well, or you can listen to Mike's segment isolated here on this week's episode. The New Abnormal e...
Apr 30, 2024•19 min
Check out Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike Masnick's brand new podcast with Ben Whitelaw, creator of the Everything in Moderation newsletter. In this teaser excerpt from last week's episode, Mike and Ben discuss the startling epidemic of "sextortion" scammers targeting teens online. Listen to the whole episode covering all the week's biggest news in online speech - and get ready for this week's episode, releasing Friday - by visiting ctrlaltspeech.com or subscribing to Ctrl-Alt-Speech on your podcast platf...
Apr 24, 2024•14 min
This week, we've got another cross-post episode for you. Mike recently appeared on the Sidebar podcast from Courthouse News as part of an episode taking an in-depth look at why copyright is actually the biggest free speech restriction in the US and the various questions, implications, and problems that arise from this. You can listen to the whole thing here on this week's episode.
Apr 24, 2024•34 min
Check out Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike Masnick's brand new podcast with Ben Whitelaw, creator of the Everything in Moderation newsletter. In this teaser excerpt from last week's episode, Ben and guest host Alice Hunsberger discuss Meta/Facebook's new policy for labeling AI-generated content. Listen to the whole episode covering all the week's biggest news in online speech - and get ready for this week's episode, releasing tomorrow - by visiting ctrlaltspeech.com or subscribing to Ctrl-Alt-Speech on you...
Apr 18, 2024•10 min
Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee had a hearing all about Section 230, in which they didn't even attempt to find a witness pointing out its benefits. Among the many organizations that could have provided that vital perspective is the Wikimedia Foundation (as seen in three excellent posts on Medium), and this week we're joined by Rebecca MacKinnon, Wikimedia's VP of Global Advocacy and long-time open internet defender, to talk about why the hearing was bad and Section 230 is very...
Apr 16, 2024•44 min
One very important thing to understand in the conversation about online speech is that there are many different kinds of online communities, big and small, and they all have their own needs when it comes to rules and governance. This fact is a key element of a new book, Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life by media studies professor Nathan Schneider, and this week Nathan joins the podcast to talk about how democracy does (and doesn't) manifest in online communities.
Apr 09, 2024•49 min
Check out Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike Masnick's brand new podcast with Ben Whitelaw, creator of the Everything in Moderation newsletter. In this teaser excerpt from last week's episode, Mike and Ben discuss the recent decision from the Oversight Board that reveals the single most moderated word on Meta's social media sites. Listen to the whole episode covering all the week's biggest news in online speech - and get ready for this week's episode, releasing tomorrow - by visiting ctrlaltspeech.com or sub...
Apr 04, 2024•11 min
We've written a lot about the Murthy case at the Supreme Court, and especially how poor of a job the states did in making their argument. Now, as we await the ruling, there are a lot of questions about what it will look like and how consequential it will be. This week, we're joined by law professor Kate Klonick to discuss what happened, what's likely to come next, and what kind of impact it will have.
Apr 03, 2024•50 min
Check out Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike Masnick's brand new podcast with Ben Whitelaw, creator of the Everything in Moderation newsletter. In this teaser excerpt from last week's episode, Mike and Ben discuss the latest curious and contradictory content moderation decisions by Elon Musk, and a recent article about the risks and challenges associated with how different countries approach internet regulation. Listen to the whole episode covering all the week's biggest news in online speech - and get ready...
Mar 28, 2024•10 min
Last year in September, we released a cross-post episode of Mike's appearance on the DWeb Decoded podcast with Danny O'Brien. If you listened to that episode, you know that Mike and Danny go way back, and Danny played an important role in the founding of Techdirt. This week, we've got the inverse counterpart to that episode, with Danny joining Mike here on the Techdirt podcast for a discussion about decentralization and "cognitive liberty" (and a bunch of other topics).
Mar 26, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Check out Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike Masnick's brand new podcast with Ben Whitelaw, creator of the Everything in Moderation newsletter. In this teaser excerpt from the debut episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike and Ben discuss the US bill that aims to ban TikTok, or at least force ByteDance to divest from it. Listen to the whole episode, covering all the week's biggest news in online speech, by visiting ctrlaltspeech.com or subscribing to Ctrl-Alt-Speech on your podcast platform of choice! Apple Podcasts...
Mar 18, 2024•14 min
As is tradition, now that we've announced the winners of our latest public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1928, it's time for a special episode of the podcast taking a closer look at them. Just like in past years, Mike is joined by myself and our game design partner Randy Lubin to discuss our thoughts on the winners in all six categories, and a bunch of other great games that didn't quite make the cut.
Mar 13, 2024•44 min
Anyone who follows Techdirt knows we're very interested in the progress of Bluesky, the decentralized social network that embraces our concept of protocols over platforms. Bluesky recently ended its invite-only beta and opened its doors to the public, so it seems like a great time for a check-in, and who better to check in with than Bluesky CEO Jay Graber? Jay joins us on this week's episode for a discussion about Bluesky's progress and what the future holds.
Mar 05, 2024•58 min
In our coverage of the problems with KOSA and other legislative pushes to "protect the children" online, we usually (for obvious reasons) come at the subject from the technology side, and look at all the ways these laws misunderstand the internet. But that's not their only flaw: these proposals also tend to lack any real understanding of child safety. Maureen Flatley is someone who has been vocal from the other side, having covered child safety issues for about as long as we've covered tech, and...
Feb 21, 2024•49 min
As we've written about repeatedly, efforts to protect kids online and improve their mental health at the moment all seem to be focused on taking social media away from them, even though all the evidence suggests this would be harmful, not helpful. Today, we're joined by Rob Morris, who aims to take a different approach with his online mental health service Koko, for a discussion about how the real way to help kids is to meet them where they're at.
Feb 13, 2024•38 min
A couple weeks ago, we released the 2024 edition of our Sky Is Rising report about the state of the entertainment industries. Last week, Mike and I joined Corbin Barthold on Techfreedom's Tech Policy Podcast for a discussion about the report and, more broadly, the state of culture in the internet era and the conversations that surround it. You can listen to the whole conversation here on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast.
Feb 06, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Back in April, we were joined on the podcast by Chris Riley, the Executive Director of the new nonprofit Data Transfer Initiative that aimed to promote data portability and empower users to transfer their data from one service to another. Today, the Initiative has released its first annual report, and Chris is back on the podcast for a discussion all about how things are going, and what's on deck for 2024. Data Transfer Initiative Annual Report 2023 (PDF): https://dtinit.org/assets/DTI-Annual-Re...
Feb 01, 2024•39 min
We've got a nice fresh live recording for you today! Just yesterday, Mike was at the Knight Foundation's INFORMED Conference to participate in a panel discussion with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, moderated by former Twitter Trust & Safety head Yoel Roth. The subject was decentralized and federated social media, especially its implications for content moderation, and you can listen to the whole panel here on this week's episode.
Jan 25, 2024•1 hr 3 min
Last month, we wrote about Apple's nonsensical attack on Beeper, a universal messaging app that exemplifies many of the things we talk about here on Techdirt, like adversarial interoperability and the value of embracing open protocols over walled platforms. This week, Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky joins us on the podcast to talk about the app, the fight with Apple, and the power of protocols.
Jan 17, 2024•47 min
We're back from the holidays, and it's time for a new episode of the Techdirt Podcast! This week, we're joined by Ravi Iyer, Research Director for the USC Marshall School's Neely Center and Managing Director of the Psychology of Technology Institute, to discuss a proposed "design code" that aims to make social media better serve society. Mike isn't entirely convinced by the approach, leading to a long discussion about all its ins and outs.
Jan 09, 2024•58 min
Many of you might know Andrew "K'Tetch" Norton as a Techdirt commenter, or from his work at TorrentFreak or for the Pirate Party, and some of you might know that he also runs his own podcast, Tetch Talk. Recently, Andrew asked Mike and I to join him on the podcast for a discussion about our content moderation games Moderator Mayhem and Trust & Safety Tycoon, and today we're posting a mirror of the full discussion for our last podcast of the year. See you in 2024!
Dec 19, 2023•1 hr 14 min
