Ctrl-Alt-Speech

Latest Episodes:

Should Speech Cost a GARM and a Leg? Aug 09, 2024

Show notes

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 struck secret ads deal to target teenagers (Financial Times)
Turkey blocks access to Instagram for failure to comply with laws (Reuters)
Harry and Meghan discuss 'protecting' their children (BBC)
The Many Reasons Why NCMEC’s Board Is Failing Its Mission, From A NCMEC Insider (Techdirt)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is the podcast where we make sense of the major debates shaping online speech, platform power, content moderation and the future of the internet. It’s co-hosted by Mike Masnick (Techdirt) and Ben Whitelaw (Everything in Moderation).

I Bet You Think This Block is About You Aug 02, 2024

Show notes

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 It to an Uncertain House Fate (New York Tmes)
The teens lobbying against the Kids Online Safety Act (The Verge)
Social Media Mishaps Aren’t Always Billionaire Election Stealing Plots (Techdirt)
X suspends ‘White Dudes for Harris’ account after massive fundraiser (Washington Post)
Why Won’t Google Auto-complete ‘Trump Assassination Attempt’? (Intelligencer)
‘Technical glitch’ is no longer an excuse (Everything in Moderation from 2020)
A message to our Black community (TikTok from 2020)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund, and by our sponsor Discord. In our Bonus Chat at the end of the episode, Mike speaks to Juliet Shen and Camille Francois about the Trust & Safety Tooling Consortium at Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, and the importance of open source tools for trust and safety.

Live at TrustCon 2024 Jul 26, 2024

Show notes

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:

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund, and by our sponsor TaskUs, a leading company in the T&S field which provides a range of platform integrity and digital safety solutions. In our Bonus Chat at the end of the episode, also recorded live at TrustCon, Mike sits down with Rachel Guevara, TaskUs Division Vice President of Trust and Safety, to talk about her impressions of this year’s conference and her thoughts on the future of trust and safety.
You can also watch the video of the recording on our YouTube channel.

Spotlight: Modulate CEO Mike Pappas on Voice Moderation Jul 23, 2024

Show notes

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 safety.
This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund, and our sponsor Modulate.

Conspiracies Abhor a Vacuum Jul 19, 2024

Show notes

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 tries to solve a longtime problem (Fast Company)
Comments on Podcasts Gives Creators and Listeners More Ways To Engage (Spotify)
A grieving mom’s TikTok videos spark online speech battle (Washington Post)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund, and by our sponsor Concentrix, the technology and services leader driving trust, safety, and content moderation globally. In our Bonus Chat at the end of the episode, Paul Danter, Global Head of Trust and Safety at Concentrix, talks about what he's excited for at next week’s TrustCon event and the huge potential for industry collaboration.

Over to EU, Elon Jul 12, 2024

Show notes

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 Machine Learning Can Undermine Human Rights: YouTube’s Struggle to Moderate the Syrian Crisis (Trust and Safety Foundation)
Strengthening Our Approach to Mature Content on Etsy (Etsy)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.

Minisode: The Supreme Court's NetChoice Ruling Jul 01, 2024

Show notes

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 we’re also posting to the Techdirt podcast feed. In this short discussion, Mike explains the immediate implications of the ruling, the way it separates procedural questions from its broader guidance on the First Amendment, and what it signals about how the court will evaluate issues like this in the future.

Read more about the NetChoice ruling in our coverage on Techdirt:

This episode is produced with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.

A Lack of (Under)Standing Jun 28, 2024

Show notes

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 Replace 404 Media With AI (404 Media)
Companies see backlog in DSA transparency database (Euronews)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.

This Podcast May be Hazardous to Moral Panics Jun 21, 2024

Show notes

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 verification laws (The Verge)
New York Outlaws 'Addictive' Social Media Feeds For Teen Users (PC Mag)
Meta Oversight Board’s Helle Thorning-Schmidt: ‘Not all AI-generated content is harmful’ (Financial Times)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.

Moderating Politics & Politicizing Moderation Jun 14, 2024

Show notes

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 Review)
Propagandists are using AI too—and companies need to be open about it (MIT Tech Review)
The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative (Rest of World)
An Anonymous-Messaging App Upended This High School (WSJ)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.

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