Ctrl-Alt-Speech

Latest Episodes:

The Human Element in the Room May 07, 2026

Show notes

In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by First Amendment lawyer Ari Cohn. Together they discuss:

Pennsylvania sues AI chatbot as state lawmakers wrestle with stricter regulations (Pennsylvania Capital-Star)
Children are drawing moustaches on their faces to fool online age checks - and it's working (Euronews)
The Online Safety Act: Are children safer online? (Internet Matters)
Utah first state to hold websites liable for users who mask their location with VPNs — law goes into effect, designed to prevent bypassing age checks (Tom’s Hardware)
Three Justifications—and the AI Accelerant—of India’s Digital Censorship Infrastructure (Tech Policy Press)
Did School Cellphone Bans Work? New Study Finds Mixed Results.(NY Times)

Support the podcast by joining our Patreon, with special founder membership available until May 28th.

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).

Age Against the Machine Apr 30, 2026

Show notes

In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by Jess Miers, law professor at University of Akron School of Law. Together, they discuss:

Support the podcast by joining our Patreon, with special founder membership available until May 28th.

Celebrating 100 Episodes & Launching Our Patreon Apr 23, 2026

Show notes

In this special episode, Mike and Ben reflect on 100 episodes of the podcast, followed by an important announcement: we’re launching a Patreon and making some changes to Ctrl-Alt-Speech!

Starting on May 28th, Patreon members will get early access to extended weekly episodes with in-depth coverage of an extra major story. The free episodes will continue here on this feed, just slightly shorter and released one day later.

You can become a member now at one of two levels: Supporters get early access to the extended episodes, and for a limited time Founders get that plus the opportunity to send us news stories that you think we should cover each week. After the new episodes begin at the end of May, the Founder tier will become the Insider tier with all the same benefits at a slightly higher price, so act now if you don’t want to miss out (you’ll also get bragging rights as a founding member!)

We’re immensely grateful to the incredible audience we’ve found over these past 100 episodes, and this is our way of helping make the podcast sustainable for the next 100!

The Silence of the LLMs Apr 16, 2026

Show notes

In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:

The Darkest Web (BBC)
Federal agencies skirt Trump’s Anthropic ban to test its advanced AI model (Politico)
Anthropic Opposes the Extreme AI Liability Bill That OpenAI Backed (Wired)
Europe should regulate Big Tech instead of banning kids from social media, Estonia says (Politico EU)
Statement by President von der Leyen with Executive Vice-President Virkkunen on the digital age verification app (European Commission)
Apple threatened to remove Grok from the App Store over sexualized deepfakes, letter says (NBC News)
A fake Ledger app on the Apple App Store drained $9.5 million in crypto (Coindesk)
India’s Decentralized System of Internet Censorship (Tech Policy Press)
As Social Media Tears Society Apart, a New Crop of Scary Movies Focuses on the Horror of Content Moderation (Variety)

We’re still yet to find a Ctrl-Alt-Speech 2026 Bingo Card winner — could this week be your lucky day? Play along!

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’ Internet Apr 09, 2026

Show notes

In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Ben is joined by Fadzai Madzingira, a digital policy expert with a decade of experience at Meta, Salesforce, Ofcom and currently Twitch, where she leads the policy, outreach and education teams. Together, they discuss:

Exclusive: Meta has discussed ending funding to the Oversight Board (Platformer)
Spotlight: Five Years of the Oversight Board, from Experiment to Essential Institution (Ctrl-Alt-Speech)
What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots (The New York Times)
Early Lessons from Australia's Teen Social Media Ban for the Rest of the World (Tech Policy Press)
Stuck in the Middleware with Youth with Vaishnavi J (Ctrl-Alt-Speech)
Greece to ban social media for under-15s from 2027, calls on EU action (Reuters)
The Family Tech Cycle: Navigating Screens, Devices, and Social Media (Joan Ganz Cooney Center)

We’re still yet to find a Ctrl-Alt-Speech 2026 Bingo Card winner — could this week be your lucky day? Play along.

Age Old Questions Apr 02, 2026

Show notes

In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:

It's official: Australia's teen social media ban isn't working, yet (Crikey)
Social Media Minimum Age - Compliance update (eSafety Commision)
Blunder from Down Under (Ctrl-Alt-Speech)
April 3 could create a dangerous gap in child safety across Europe (Thorn)
Commissioners pile pressure on Parliament to pass child sexual abuse bill (POLITICO)
Weeks After Denouncing Government Censorship On Rogan, Zuckerberg Texted Elon Musk Offering To Take Down Content For DOGE (Techdirt)
What Is YouTube’s Dominance Doing to Us? We Asked Its C.E.O. (The New York Times)
This Episode is Broadly Safe To Listen To (Ctrl-Alt-Speech)
Meta will "substantially reduce" describing Instagram teen accounts as PG-13 (Engadget)
Rated R for Ridiculous (Ctrl-Alt-Speech)

If you’ve got Elon Musk in your Ctrl-Alt-Speech 2026 Bingo Card this week, you’re in luck.

For Meta or Worse Mar 26, 2026

Show notes

In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:

How London become a T&S hub (Everything in Moderation)
Everyone Cheering The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Against Meta Should Understand What They’re Actually Cheering For (Techdirt)
Supreme Court Sides With Internet Provider in Copyright Fight Over Pirated Music (New York Times)
US settles social media censorship case, bars agencies from threatening penalties (Reuters)
Meta’s latest AI improves its terrible content moderation (The Register)
Transparency Report 2025 (User Rights)
An automated moderation error left Tumblr users panicked (The Verge)

Don’t forget to listen along with Ctrl-Alt-Speech’s 2026 Bingo Card and drop us a line if you win or have ideas for new squares.

Money for Nothing and Clicks for a Fee Mar 19, 2026

Show notes

In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:

Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story (Times of Israel)
Maybe Turning War Into a Casino Was a Bad Idea? (The Atlantic)
French music streamer Deezer battles deluge of AI fraud (Financial Times)
I hacked ChatGPT and Google's AI - and it only took 20 minutes (BBC)
US to Receive $10 Billion Fee for TikTok Deal, WSJ Reports (Bloomberg)
'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back (404 Media)
‘Another internet is possible’: Norway rails against ‘enshittification’ (The Guardian)

Play along with Ctrl-Alt-Speech’s 2026 Bingo Card and get in touch if you win!

Writing Some Wrongs Mar 12, 2026

Show notes

In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:

Play along with Ctrl-Alt-Speech’s 2026 Bingo Card and get in touch if you win!

The (Content Moderation) Eras Tour Mar 05, 2026

Show notes

In a special episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Ben and Mike discuss (with apologies to Tay-Tay) the three eras of content moderation in the media and what comes next.

Their conversation builds on Ben’s essay in the soon-to-be-published Trust, Safety, and the Internet We Share Multistakeholder Insights,a new book looking at the evolution of the Trust & Safety industry and how platform policies decisions are made. The pre-print is available online.

Together, they unpack three distinct phases: The Strange Fascination Era (2003–2015), when newsrooms powered platform growth and treated social media as an exciting new frontier; The “We’re Watching You” Era (2016–2020), when investigative reporting exposed online harms and pushed platforms to formalise Trust & Safety; and The Mask Off Era (2021–present), as platforms retreat from working with the media and the commitment to moderation waned.

We’ll be back next week with our regular episode.