Shows
Ctrl-Alt-SpeechHave Yourself a Very Meta ChristmasIn the last Ctrl-Alt-Speech of the year, Mike and Ben round up the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation with the following stories:Meta shuts down global accounts linked to abortion advice and queer content | Global development (The Guardian)Facebook is testing a link-posting limit for professional accounts and pages (Techcrunch)Meta adopts new age-check system to meet global child safety laws (FT)Russian ban on Roblox gaming platform sparks rare protest (Reuters)OpenAI hires George Osborne to spearhead global ‘Stargate’ expansion (FT)Oscars Bolts From ABC to YouTube Starting in 2029 (Hollywood Reporter) Ctrl...
2025-12-1953 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechCensors & SensibilityIn this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:Resonant Computing Manifesto Support Techdirt’s Uncompromising Coverage, Get Our First Commemorative Coin (Techdirt)US Ambassador Slams EU Tech Rules as Musk’s X Hit With Fine (Bloomberg)Why the X fine is causing so much transatlantic drama (Politico)Tech workers face new H1-B scrutiny as Trump targets ‘censorship’ (Washington Post)H1-B visa advice (LinkedIn - Alice Hunsberger)Australian leader defends social media ban as teens flaunt workarounds (Reuters)Age restrictions alone won't keep children safe online (U...
2025-12-121h 03Ctrl-Alt-SpeechYou Can't Antitrust Anyone These DaysIn this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:Meta wins FTC antitrust trial over Instagram, WhatsApp deals (CNBC)Commission eyes further simplification of tech rules after DSA review (Euractiv)Inside Europe's 'Jekyll and Hyde' tech strategy (Digital Policy)NetChoice sues Virginia to block its one-hour social media limit for kids (The Verge)Tech Giants Sue California Over Social Media Access Law (2) (Bloomberg Law)TikTok to give users power to reduce amount of AI content on their feeds (The Guardian) The Most Frustrating Word for Trust & Safety P...
2025-11-2153 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechNew Blocks On The KidsIn this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:It’s Cool to Have No Followers Now (New Yorker)Introducing Safe for Work? — all about T&S jobs (Everything in Moderation*)Kids Turn Podcast Comments Into Secret Chat Rooms, Because Of Course They Do (Techdirt)Reddit and Kick added to child social media ban (ABC News)X boss explains why ‘horrific’ video viewed by Axel Rudakubana wasn’t removed (The Independent)Southport Inquiry (YouTube)How Elon Musk is Boosting The British Right (Sky News)arXiv Changes Rules After Gett...
2025-11-0759 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechChat Bot Your Tongue?In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:Character.AI is banning minors from AI character chats (Financial Times)Strengthening ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive conversations (OpenAI)Senators propose banning teens from using AI chatbots (The Verge)EU accuses Meta, TikTok of breaching digital rules (Politico) Meta and TikTok are obstructing researchers’ access to data, European Commission rules (Science.org)Hey Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run The Content Moderation Learning Curve (Techdirt)China’s new law: only degree-holding influencers can discuss professional topics – netizens divided o...
2025-10-3153 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechA Tale of Two InternetsIn this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:Wikipedia Volunteers Avert Tragedy by Taking Down Gunman at Conference (New York Times)AI-Generated Content a Triple Threat for Reddit Moderators (Cornell Tech)Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors (404 Media)As social media age restrictions spread, is the internet entering its Victorian era? (The Conversation)Winning with misinformation: New research identifies link between endorsing easily disproven claims and prioritizing symbolic strength (The Conversation)Tinder Launches Mandatory Facial Verification to Weed Out Bots and...
2025-10-241h 02Ctrl-Alt-SpeechRated R for RidiculousIn this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:Sam Altman says OpenAI isn’t ‘moral police of the world’ after erotica ChatGPT post blows up (CNBC)Where are all the women on Sora 2? This could be a nightmare for OpenAI. (Business Insider)Musk’s AI Is Being Used to Make Hardcore Porn: ‘Grok Is Learning Genitalia Really Fast!’ (Rolling Stone)Instagram Will Limit Content for Teenagers Based on PG-13 Ratings (NY Times)UK MPs urged to investigate TikTok’s plans to cut 439 content moderator jobs (The Guardian)TikTo...
2025-10-1753 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechModerating is Such Sweet SorrowIn this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by Dave Willner, founder of Zentropi, and long-time trust & safety expert who worked at Facebook, AirBnB, and OpenAI in Trust & Safety roles. Together they discuss:Masnick's Impossibility Theorem: Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible To Do Well (Techdirt)UK makes new attempt to access Apple cloud data (Financial Times)Imgur pulls out of UK after data regulator warns of fines (TechCrunch)Leaked Meta guidelines show how it trains AI chatbots to respond to child sexual exploitation prompts (Business In...
2025-10-0254 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechFrom 'Free Speech' To 'Flag This'In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:How platforms are responding to the Charlie Kirk shooting (The Verge)Bluesky Issues Warning to Any Users Celebrating Charlie Kirk Assassination (Newsweek)Right-Wing Activists Are Targeting People for Allegedly Celebrating Charlie Kirk’s Death (Wired)Charlie Kirk Was Shot and Killed in a Post-Content-Moderation World (Wired)Has Britain Gone Too Far With Its Digital Controls? (New York Times)The Censorship Alarm Is Ringing in the Wrong Direction (Public Knowledge)We now know who the new owners of TikTok wi...
2025-09-1952 min
Revolution.SocialTechdirt’s Mike Masnick on Growing Bluesky, Clueless Regulators & the Case for OptimismTechdirt founder & editor Mike Masnick has long argued that the internet’s power should lie with its users. In his landmark 2019 essay, Protocols, Not Platforms, he laid out a vision for how decentralized systems could preserve free speech while avoiding the pitfalls of centralized control. That vision has since helped inspire Bluesky, where Mike now serves on the board.
“Your right to free speech does not include the right to put a billboard on my front lawn or to come into my living room and yell whatever it is that you want to yell,” he explains. “The question is, how do y...
2025-09-181h 14Ctrl-Alt-SpeechIt's a Banned, Banned, Banned, Banned WorldIn this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:Nepal to block some social media including Facebook (Reuters)Why Nepal Banned 26 Social Media Platforms And What It Means (Medianama)A parliament in flames, a leader toppled. Nepal’s Gen-Z protesters ask: What comes next? (CNN)When Trolls Take On Tyrants: 4chan and Kiwi Farms Sue the UK Over Extraterritorial Censorship (Techdirt)Wikipedia is resilient because it's boring (The Verge)Former Meta employees say they saw child abuse in VR before company blocked research (NBC News)Mark Zuckerberg su...
2025-09-1253 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechThe Haidt of HypocrisyIn this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:Jordan escalates global tech argument, with Farage's help (Politico) Farage’s rules for free speech: talk about anything but your lunch (The Times)Is Jonathan Haidt right about smartphones? (TES)My mom and Dr. DeepSeek (Rest of World)AI 'deadbots' are persuasive — and researchers say they're primed for monetization (NPR)OpenAI co-founder calls for AI labs to safety-test rival models (TechCrunch)Privacy-Preserving Age Verification—and Its Limitations (Steven M. Bellovin) Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Eve...
2025-09-0552 min
Computer Says MaybeNodestar: The Eternal September w/ Mike MasnickHow did the internet become three companies in a trenchcoat? It wasn’t always that way! It used to be fun, and weird, and full of opportunity. To set the scene for the series, we spoke to a stalwart advocate of decentratilsation, Mike Masnick.More like this: Big Tech’s Bogus Vision for the Future w/ Paris MarxThis is part one of Nodestar, a three-part series on decentralisation: how the internet started as a wild west of decentralised exploration, got centralised into the hands of a small number of companies, and how the...
2025-08-2952 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechYou Asked, We AnsweredThis is the second of our special episodes for the month of August. Last time, we talked a bit about the past and future of Ctrl-Alt-Speech; this time, Mike and Ben answer some questions from our listeners, and also share a few of the latest reviews. We're taking one more week off after this, then we'll be back in the first week of September with a return to our regular weekly news roundups! Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at podcast@ctrlaltspeech.com and sponsorship enquiries to sponsorship@c...
2025-08-2150 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechWhat's Next for Ctrl-Alt-SpeechWe're taking a little break from our regular weekly news roundups this month, but we've got a couple special episodes lined up in the mean time, starting with a conversation all about the past and future of Ctrl-Alt-Speech. This week, Mike and Ben talk about how the podcast got started, how we create the episodes, our philosophy about sponsorship, and what we need to make Ctrl-Alt-Speech sustainable in the long run. We hope you enjoy it! Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at podcast@ctrlaltspeech.com and sponsorship e...
2025-08-0737 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechLive at TrustCon 2025Our second annual live at TrustCon recording of Ctrl-Alt-Speech! Ben was unable to make the trip halfway around the world, but Mike was joined by trust & safety influencer Alice Hunsberger from Musubi and Ashken Kazaryan, a Senior Legal Fellow at the Future of Free Speech at Vanderbilt University. They cover:As millions adopt Grok to fact-check, misinformation abounds (Al Jazeera)Analysis Of Grok’s Epstein Comments Show How This AI Chatbot Is Learning (Forbes)People With Body Dysmorphia Are Spiraling Out After Asking AI to Rate Their Looks (Rolling Stone)Can A Chatbot Be Your Therapist? Casper’s Neil...
2025-07-241h 09Ctrl-Alt-SpeechThe UK Wants Us To Ask Your Age Before You ListenIn this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:a16z-Backed AI Site Civitai Is Mostly Porn, Despite Claiming Otherwise (404 Media)Hugging Face Is Hosting 5,000 Nonconsensual AI Models of Real People (404 Media)Ofcom head says age checks are ‘really big moment’ for children’s online safety (The Guardian)New online safety rules not 'the end of the conversation', says minister (BBC)Commission’s guidelines for online child safety target platforms of all sizes (Euractiv)I met the sextortion scammers destroying young lives for £1 a day (The Times)“Why me?” On...
2025-07-181h 02Ctrl-Alt-SpeechMove Fast and Mistake ThingsIn this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:Jack Cable calls out Cluely over bogus DMCA (X)The cofounder of the viral AI 'cheating' startup Cluely says he only hires people for 2 jobs (Business Insider)Missouri AG: Any AI That Doesn’t Praise Donald Trump Might Be “Consumer Fraud” (No, Really) (Techdirt)Instagram wrongly accuses some users of breaching child sex abuse rules (BBC)Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot praises Adolf Hitler on X (FT)Grok Becomes ‘MechaHitler,’ Twitter Becomes X: How Centralized Tech Is Prone To Fas...
2025-07-1147 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechDon't Believe What This Podcast Says About MisinformationIn this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:The Misleading Panic over Misinformation (Cato Institute) Claims that Online Misinformation Fears Are Overblown ‘Radically Understates’ the Scale of the Threat (Byline Times)EU Disinformation Code Takes Effect Amid Censorship Claims and Trade Tensions (Tech Policy Press)Content Moderation Is Not Censorship (Law & Liberty)Asked to think like a paedophile or act suicidal: Workers training Meta's AI in Ireland speak out (The Journal)The Hidden Human Cost of AI Moderation (Jacobin)Brazil rules that social media platforms are respo...
2025-07-0453 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechTeen But Not HeardIn this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Ben is joined by guest host Bridget Todd, a technology and culture writer, speaker and trainer and host of two great podcasts, There are No Girls on the Internet and IRL: Online Life is Real Life. Together, they cover:AI Models And Parents Don’t Understand ‘Let Him Cook’ (404 Media)Trial reveals flaws in tech intended to enforce Australian social media ban for under-16s (The Guardian)Inside /r/SGExams: Meet the young volunteers behind 1 of S’pore’s largest online forums for s...
2025-06-2746 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechOutsourced But Not Out Of MindIn this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Ben is joined by guest host Mercy Mutemi, lawyer and managing partner of Nzili & Sumbi Advocates. Together, they cover:Meta can be sued in Kenya for human trafficking and for algorithmic amplification of harm (Open Democracy)Billy Perrigo on investigating Facebook's 'ethical' outsourced content moderation in Kenya (Everything in Moderation)A first look at Meta’s Community Notes (Indicator Media)Get Noted (Columbia Journalism Review)The Meaning of Being an African YouTuber: Big Audiences, No Big Money + Is TikTok Excluding Africans From...
2025-06-201h 09
Heartland Newsfeed Podcast Network086: Reclaiming the Internet (w/ Mike Masnick)What's happened to Twitter, or now X, is the clearest example of why it's actually not great that so much of our digital communication is controlled by just a few firms and, through them, the whims of guys like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. These single points of control not only mean a product we love today can be unlovable, or just gone, tomorrow, but also give more dangerous actors, like governments, avenues to use that centralization against us.The alternative is to revive what the internet once was: a decentralized and much more open place. I think this...
2025-06-1952 min
ReImagining Liberty082: Reclaiming the Internet (w/ Mike Masnick)What's happened to Twitter, or now X, is the clearest example of why it's actually not great that so much of our digital communication is controlled by just a few firms and, through them, the whims of guys like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. These single points of control not only mean a product we love today can be unlovable, or just gone, tomorrow, but also give more dangerous actors, like governments, avenues to use that centralization against us.The alternative is to revive what the internet once was: a decentralized and much more open place. I...
2025-06-1956 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechOutrage For The MachineIn this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:He’s a Master of Outrage on X. The Pay Isn’t Great. (NY Times)The vulnerable teen drawn into far-right extremism online (Financial Times)X, Bluesky and Reddit in France’s crosshairs amid porn clampdown (Politico)EU sidesteps Macron’s ultimatum to ban social media for kids under 15 (Euractiv)Commission seeks feedback on the guidelines on protection of minors online under the Digital Services Act (European Commission)OnlyFans releases stern statement as it DEACTIVATES Bonnie Blue’s account fo...
2025-06-1350 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechAlgorithm ShruggedIn this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Zeve Sanderson, the founding Executive Director of the NYU Center for Social Media & Politics. Together, they cover:If algorithms radicalize a mass shooter, are companies to blame? (The Verge)Large Language Models Are More Persuasive Than Incentivized Human Persuaders (Arxiv)A dangerous plan to ‘win’ the AI race is circulating (Washington Post)Texas governor signs law to enforce age verification on Apple, Google app stores (Reuters)AB 853: California AI Transparency Act.(CalMatters)Regulators Are Investigating Whethe...
2025-05-301h 01
How The World WorksMike MasnickKevin D. Williamson is joined by Mike Masnick, founder and editor of Techdirt. They discuss the evolving challenges of content moderation, the day-to-day realities of running an independent tech publication, and how the internet has changed over time from its early decentralized roots to a more complex and structured environment.
2025-05-281h 06Ctrl-Alt-SpeechModeration Without RepresentationIn this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Hank Green, popular YouTube creator and educator. After spending some time talking about being a creator at the whims of platforms, they cover:Crash Course Coin (Complexly)Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College (NY Mag)The Professors Are Using ChatGPT, and Some Students Aren’t Happy About It (NY Times)How Miami Schools Are Leading 100,000 Students Into the A.I. Future (NY Times)We Shouldn’t Have To Explain To The FTC Why Content Modera...
2025-05-2353 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechHypocritical InfrastructureIn this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Cathy Gellis, an internet and First Amendment lawyer. Together, they cover:The Copyright Office Issues A Largely Disappointing Report On AI Training, And Once Again A Major Fair Use Analysis Inexplicably Ignores The First Amendment (Techdirt)Trump fires Copyright Office director after report raises questions about AI training (TechCrunch)Elon Musk’s X caves to ‘censorship’ demand from India as tensions build with Pakistan (AFP)In the government’s war on ‘disinformation’, facts are collateral damage (The Hi...
2025-05-1653 minCtrl-Alt-SpeechLook What The Chat Dragged InIn this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:The group chats that changed America (Semafor)Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening (New York Times) Meta faces Ghana lawsuits over impact of extreme content on moderators (The Guardian) Social media moderators’ lives are getting worse. Big Tech needs to take responsibility (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism)Meta’s ‘Digital Companions’ Will Talk Sex With Users—Even Children (Wall Street Journal)Kids should avoid AI companion bots—under force of law, assessment says (CalMatters)I'm a mom who...
2025-05-0253 min