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

• Social media platforms have work to do to comply with Online Safety Act, says Ofcom (The Guardian)
• LFGSS and Microcosm shutting down 16th March 2025 (the day before the Online Safety Act is enforced) (LFGSS)
• The GamingOnLinux Forum is shutting (GamingOnLinux)
• Australia leads the world in setting new standards for online child safety (eSafety Commission)
• How will Australia's under-16 social media ban work? We asked the law's enforcer (NPR)
• Fentanyl Almost Killed Michael Brewer. Now He Wants Snap to Pay (Bloomberg)
• Telegram Moderation Overview (Telegram)
• U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear challenge to TikTok ban (CNBC)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund. While Online Regulators may have stolen Christmas, Ctrl-Alt-Speech is going to try to take a short holiday break and will return in early January.

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 was suicidal and needed help. A 15-year-old girl pushed him to kill himself on a live stream (Washington Post)
• Romania’s top court annuls presidential election result (CNN)
• Continuing to protect the integrity of TikTok during Romanian elections (TikTok)
• Covert Facebook Network Found Targeting Romanian Voters (Bloomberg)
• TikTok pushes far right candidate content in Romanian election, Global Witness investigation shows (Global Witness)
• Romania annulled its presidential election results amid alleged Russian interference. What happens next? (Atlantic Council)
• X’s Yaccarino Praises Child Safety Bill and Urges House Backing (Bloomberg)
• Elon Musk’s X comes out in favor of pro-censorship law (Mashable - January 2024)
• Kenya’s President Wades Into Meta Lawsuits (TIME)
• Attacker Has Techdirt Reclassified As Phishing Site, Proving Masnick’s Impossibility Law Once Again (Techdirt)

No actual moles were harmed in the making of this episode, which 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:

• TikTok Ban Upheld (DC Circuit)
• TikTok’s Romanian reckoning (Politico)
• Romania asks EU to investigate TikTok’s election handling after ultranationalist’s stunning win (Politico)
• TikTok Removes Covert Network Linked to Romanian Candidate (Bloomberg)
• GOP FTC Commissioners Abuse “Free Speech” Rhetoric To Push For Government Control Over Online Speech (Techdirt)
• Race to replace FTC chair Lina Khan pits antitrust hawks against candidate softer on Big Tech: sources (NY Post)
• Meta says it’s mistakenly moderating too much (The Verge)
• The Curious Case Of ChatGPT’s Banned Names: Hard-Coding Blocks To Avoid Nuisance Threats (Techdirt)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund, and by our sponsor Internet Society, a global nonprofit that advocates for an open, globally connected, secure and trustworthy Internet for everyone. In our Bonus Chat, Natalie Campbell and John Perrino from Internet Society join us to talk about the social media age restriction law in Australia, a proposed age verification bill in Canada, and the trend of age gating and age verification globally, and what it means for the open internet.

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 David Sullivan, the Executive Director of the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership. They cover:

• Trump's FCC Pick Wants to Be the Speech Police. That's Not His Job (Wired)
• Sauce for the Goose: The FCC Lacks Authority to Interpret Section 230 Post-Loper Bright (The Federalist Society)
• Roblox gives parents more power to protect the safety of young gamers (NBC)
• Meta should allow third party imagery of terrorist attacks, with a warning (Oversight Board)
• As Bluesky soars, Threads rolls out custom feeds globally (TechCrunch)
• Threads’ algorithm will focus more on the people you follow (The Verge)
• The communications minister cited a study in support of a teen social media ban. Its co-author disagrees (Crikey)
• Meta says it has removed 2 million accounts linked to pig butchering scams (The Record)
• You Too Can Hire an ‘Etsy Witch’ to Curse Elon Musk (Wired)

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:

• Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia follows The Guardian in quitting Elon Musk’s X due to disinformation and ‘disturbing content’ (Fortune)
• Bluesky attracts millions as users leave Musk's X after Trump win (Reuters)
• Advertisers set to return to X as they seek favour with Elon Musk and Donald Trump (Financial Times) 
• The plan to ban children under 16 from social media (The Times) 
• Should smartphones be banned in schools? (Financial Times) 
• Facebook and Instagram to Offer Subscription for No Ads in Europe (Facebook) 
• An update on political advertising in the European Union (Google)
• Facebook’s Algorithms Think a Small English Community Is Up to No Good (Gizmodo)
• Phony X accounts are meddling in Ghana’s election (Rest of World)
• Sockpuppet network impersonating Americans and Canadians amplifies pro-Israel narratives on X (DFR Lab)

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:

• Pennsylvania Becomes Hot Spot for Election Disinformation (NY Times)
• After Trump Took the Lead, Election Deniers Went Suddenly Silent (NY Times)
• X Is a White-Supremacist Site (The Atlantic)
• Papers, Please? The Republican Plan to Wall Off the Internet (Tech Policy Press)
• What Trump's Victory Means for Internet Policy (CNET)
• The government plans to ban under-16s from social media platforms. Here's what we know so far (ABC Australia)
• Canada orders shutdown of TikTok's Canadian business, app access to continue (Reuters)

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:

• These look like Harris ads. Trump backers bought them (Washington Post)
• Facebook Took More Than $1 Million For Ads Sowing Election Lies (Forbes)
• Election officials are outmatched by Elon Musk’s misinformation machine (CNN)
• Election Falsehoods Take Off on YouTube as It Looks the Other Way (New York Times)
• Exploiting Meta’s Weaknesses, Deceptive Political Ads Thrived on Facebook and Instagram in Run-Up to Election (ProPublica)
• The U.S. Spies Who Sound the Alarm About Election Interference (New Yorker)
• This Is What $44 Billion Buys You (The Atlantic) 
• How Russia, China and Iran Are Interfering in the Presidential Election (New York Times) 
• Can A.I. Be Blamed for a Teen’s Suicide? (New York Times) 
• 'Sickening' Molly Russell chatbots found on Character.ai (BBC) 

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, Dom Sparkes, Trust and Safety Director for EMEA, and David Elliot, Head of Technology, try to lighten the mood by discussing how to make a compelling business case for online safety and the importance of measuring ROI.

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.

Ben and Mike are technically off this week, but we decided to run an experiment. After discussing Google’s NotebookLM and its ability to create AI-generated podcasts about any content, Mike experimented with how it would handle one of the stories Mike & Ben discussed last week: Daphne Keller’s The Rise of the Compliant Speech Platform on Lawfare. Mike explains why we’re running this, some of the work that went into it, as well as his thoughts on the experiment, followed by the AI-generated version.

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 Russian disinformation is reaching the U.S. ahead of the 2024 election (NBC News)
• The Rise of the Compliant Speech Platform (Lawfare)
• ExTwitter Makes It Official: Blocks Are No Longer Blocks (Techdirt)
• People are flocking to Bluesky as X makes more unwanted changes (The Verge)
• Instagram blames some moderation issues on human reviewers, not AI (TechCrunch)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund, and by our launch sponsor Modulate, which builds prosocial voice technology that combats online toxicity and elevates the health and safety of online communities. Mike Pappas joins us for our bonus chat, talking to Mike about the ever important decision between building your own trust & safety tools versus buying them from vendors.

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:

• States sue TikTok over app’s effects on kids’ mental health (CNBC)
• Risks vs. Harms: Youth & Social Media (Substack)
• Instagram and Threads moderation is out of control (The Verge)
• TikTok lays off hundreds in Malaysia in move toward AI moderation (Asia Nikkei)
• ​​Meta ‘Supreme Court’ expands with European center to handle TikTok, YouTube cases (Washingon Post)
• The DSA article you didn't know about, but should (T&S Insider)
• Streaming platform Kick bans Jack Doherty after he crashed his car on a livestream (Polygon) 
• Truth Social Users Are Losing Ridiculous Sums of Money to Scams (Gizmodo)
• Hacked ‘AI Girlfriend’ Data Shows Prompts Describing Child Sexual Abuse (404 Media)

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.