We'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 [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

Our 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 Parikh Launches A New $93 Million-Backed Startup To Try (Forbes)
• A Realist Perspective on Trust & Safety (Tech Policy Press)

This week’s sponsor is Modulate. In our bonus chat Mike Masnick talks with Modulate founder and CEO Mike Pappas, live at TrustCon, about the kinds of voice scams they’re seeing, with a focus on scams using social engineering techniques to pressure people to do things they probably shouldn’t do.

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:

• 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 shame, self-blame, and feeling so. damn. Stupid. (Blockparty)
• If It Breaks Wikipedia, It’s Probably Bad Policy (InternetExchange)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund and by our sponsor, the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership. In our bonus chat Mike talks with DTSP Executive Director David Sullivan to talk about their new Safe Framework Specification, which is an official ISO standard (available for free download) which will help everyone better understand best practices and concepts around online trust & safety work.

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:

• 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 Fascist Manipulation (Techdirt)
• See the leaked teen social media ban tech trial report that has experts worried (Crikey)
• New anti-fraud system is labelling hospital texts and other legitimate messages as ‘likely scam’ (Irish Independent)
• Why Ireland’s New “Scam Likely” Labels Might Actually Make SMS Fraud Worse for Banks and the Public (Medium)

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:

• 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 responsible for users’ posts (Rest of World)
• X opens up to Community Notes written by AI bots (The Verge)

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 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 students (Straits Times)
• The people who clean up your TikTok feed are starting to fight back (Rest of World)
• Man with real-life girlfriend and child proposes to AI chatbot after programming it to flirt: ‘I think this is actual love (New York 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 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 its Creator Economy? (Fast Company)
• Is TikTok Excluding Africans From its Creator Economy? (OkayAfrica)
• I was tricked, tortured, finally freed: inside a Burmese scam farm (The Times)
• Tanzania announces shutdown of X because of pornography (BBC)

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:

• 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 for defiant reason (The Tab)

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 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 Whether Media Matters Colluded With Advertisers (NY Times)
• Anthropic’s new AI model turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline (TechCrunch)
• Why Anthropic’s New AI Model Sometimes Tries to ‘Snitch’ (Wired)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund, and by our sponsor Modulate. In our Bonus Chat, we speak with Modulate CTO Carter Huffman about how their voice technology can actually detect fraud.

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 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 Moderation Is So Crucial To Free Speech, But We Did (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.