Ctrl-Alt-Speech

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)
• Pathways - Expert advice, resources and opportunities for the tech industry to further build capacity to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse (Tech Coalition)

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.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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:

• In Content Moderation Cases, Supreme Court Says ‘Try Again’ – But Makes It Clear Moderation Deserves First Amendment Protections (Mike Masnick)
• In The NetChoice Cases, Alito And His Buddies Are Wrong, But Even If They Were Right It May Not Matter, And That’s Largely Good News (Cathy Gellis)

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

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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. 

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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 deplatforming reduced the reach of misinformation on Twitter (Nature)
• Misunderstanding the harms of online misinformation (Nature)
• Israel Secretly Targets U.S. Lawmakers With Influence Campaign on Gaza War (NY Times)
• Twitch terminates all members of its Safety Advisory Council (CNBC)

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

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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 social media babies are adults now. Some are pushing for laws to protect kids from their parents’ oversharing (CNN) 
• TikTok offered an extraordinary deal. The U.S. government took a pass. (Washington Post) 
• Q&A: Ireland’s Digital Services Coordinator On 100 Days of the DSA (Tech Policy Press)

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

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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 sets ‘dangerous precedent,’ critics warn (Politico)
• How a Chinese Influence Operation Is Targeting Pro-Trump Communities Online (Lawfare)
• X CEO Linda Yaccarino accuses Australia of ‘overreach’ after judge lifts ban on stabbing video (CNBC)

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 trust and safety field providing a range of platform integrity and digital safety solutions. In our Bonus Chat at the end of the episode, TaskUs SVP of Global Offerings Phil Tomlinson tells us about his time at the Trust and Safety Professional Association summit in Dublin, his key takeaways from the event, and the trust and safety lessons learned from well-designed conference lanyards.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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 (Straits Times)
• Bipartisan Bill To Repeal Section 230 Defended In Facts-Optional Op-Ed (Techdirt)
• Indian journalists turned to YouTube to dodge Modi’s censorship. Some of their channels are now being blocked (Reuters Institute for Journalism)
• She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all (The Guardian)
• Commission services sign administrative arrangement with Ofcom to support the enforcement of social media regulations (Pub Affairs Bruxelles)
• Singapore’s proposed online safety laws look like more censorship in disguise (Rest of World)

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

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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 Solutions (Techdirt)
• ‘Facebook Tries to Combat Russian Disinformation in Ukraine’ – FB Public Policy Manager (Kyiv Post)
• TikTok Sues U.S. Government Over Law Forcing Sale or Ban (New York Times)
• Swiss public broadcasters withdraw from X/Twitter (Swissinfo)
• Congressional Committee Threatens To Investigate Any Company Helping TikTok Defend Its Rights (Techdirt)

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

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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 Services Act (European Commission)
• OnlyFans Investigated over its duties to protect under-18s from restricted materials (Ofcom)
• Canadian banks need to do more to stop abusive e-transfers, survivors say (CBC)
• TikTok And Meta Aren’t Labeling State Propaganda About The War In Gaza (Forbes)
• How we fought bad apps and bad actors in 2023 (Google security blog)
• Meta’s oversight body prepares to lay off workers (Washington Post)

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

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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 (The Verge)
• Discord CEO Jason Citron makes the case for a smaller, more private internet (The Verge)
• Stanford Internet Observatory’s CyberTipline Report (Stanford Law School) 

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

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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 organizations leverage Check (Meedan)
• Benjamin Cohen was falsely accused of the Bondi Junction stabbings. Here's how the lie spread around the world (ABC News)

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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 (Tech Policy Press) 
• Brazil Might Regulate All Social Media After Clash With Elon Musk (Guardian) 
• X automatically changed 'Twitter' to 'X' in users' posts, breaking legit URLs (Mashable)
• LinkedIn starts verifying recruiters to stop scams (Axios) 
• Content policy is basically astrology? (T&S Insider from Everything in Moderation) 

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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 (Ofcom)
• Social networks could quit Britain under online safety laws, Reddit claims (The Telegraph)
• Patreon is taking Reddit’s approach to content moderation (The Verge)
• Facebook has blocked Kansas Reflector (Kansas Reflector) 

The episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund, and by our launch sponsor Modulate, the prosocial voice technology company making online spaces safer and more inclusive. In our Bonus Chat at the end of the episode, Modulate's Director of Marketing Mark Nolan chats with Mike about the the recent launch of the Gaming Safety Coalition, why its important for Modulate to work with other companies to create stronger gaming environments and the importance of a hybrid approach to T&S.      

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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

• Users shocked to find Instagram limits political content by default (ArsTechnica)
• Oversight Board Publishes Policy Advisory Opinion on Referring to Designated Dangerous Individuals as “Shaheed” (Oversight Board)
• It’s not a glitch: how Meta systematically censors Palestinian voices (Access Now)
• High Court orders temporary suspension of Telegram's services in Spain (Reuters)
• Imagining a Roadmap to User-Led Governance of Meta (Tech Policy Press)
• Why Bluesky Remains The Most Interesting Experiment In Social Media, By Far (Techdirt)
• Meta’s most banned word, ad targeting vs moderation and new civility research (Everything in Moderation)

The episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund. We weren't able to schedule our usual Bonus Chat at the end of the episode so Mike and Ben talk about their thinking on podcast sponsorship, why advertising content doesn't have to be all bad and how you get in touch if you're a company or organization looking to reach Ctrl-Alt-Speech's growing and global audience.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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

• Supreme Court Seems Skeptical Of The Claims That The Federal Government Coerced Social Media To Moderate (Techdirt) 
• Reddit’s I.P.O. Is a Content Moderation Success Story (New York Times) 
• Elon Musk's X Is Suspending Accounts That Reveal a Neo-Nazi Cartoonist's Alleged Identity (Wired) 
• The Risks of Internet Regulation (Foreign Affairs) 
• EU to impose election safeguards on Big Tech (Financial Times) 
• Canada’s Online Harms Act is revealing itself to be staggeringly reckless (Globe and Mail)

The episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund, and by our sponsor Block Party, which builds privacy and anti-harassment tools to increase user control, protection, and safety. In our Bonus Chat at the end of the episode, Block Party founder and CEO Tracy Chou discusses the impact of harassment on self-censorship and explains how she is making navigating privacy and safety settings on major platforms easier for users through her tool, Privacy Party. 

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

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

• The US TikTok ban and what it could mean for the future of the internet (Techdirt) 
• The EU prepares to regulate Chinese marketplaces (Reuters) 
• Telegram's CEO gives a rare interview - and what that says about online speech (Financial Times) 
• Generative AI is already messing with elections (Al Jazeera) 
• Bluesky open sources its moderation tooling software (Bluesky) 
• Trust & Safety software market is set to double by 2028, according to a new report (Duco) 

The episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund, and by our launch sponsor Modulate, the prosocial voice technology company making online spaces safer and more inclusive. In our Bonus Chat at the end of the episode, Modulate CEO Mike Pappas joins us to talk about how safety lessons from the gaming world can be applied to the broader T&S industry and how advances in AI are helping make voice moderation more accurate. 

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

Welcome to Ctrl-Alt-Speech, a brand new a weekly news podcast co-created by Techdirt’s Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation’s Ben Whitelaw. Each episode will be looking at the latest news in online speech, covering issues regarding trust & safety, content moderation, regulation, court rulings, new services & technology, and more.

Subscribe now and stay tuned for our debut episode coming next Friday!

If your company or organization is interested in supporting Ctrl-Alt-Speech and joining us for a sponsored interview, visit ctrlaltspeech.com for more information.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.