Host Corbin Barthold offers some end-of-year reflections on the moral panic over kids’ use of social media and AI. Then we revisit Episode 405 (“No, Internet Age Verification Has Not Been ‘Solved’,” Apr. 30, 2025), in which Prof. Eric Goldman discusses his paper “The ‘Segregate-and-Suppress’ Approach to Regulating Child Safety Online.”

Links:

This Country Banned Social Media for Young Teens. Here’s how They’re Defying It.

Australia’s Social Media Ban Goes Into Effect as Pretty Much Everyone Realizes It’s a Total Mess

The “Segregate-and-Suppress” Approach to Regulating Child Safety Online

Tech Policy Podcast 417: Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton Is Wreaking Havoc

Pamela Samuelson (UC Berkeley) discusses the Supreme Court oral argument in Cox v. Sony, a copyright case that could have major ramifications for the internet.

Links:

Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment

Corbin heads over to the Techdirt Podcast, hosted by the one and only Mike Masnick, for a wide-ranging discussion about the state of social media.

Geoff Manne (ICLE) returns! He and Corbin break down a judge’s ruling (politely) laughing the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit against Meta out of court.

Topics include:

• The bizarro world of antitrust trash tweeting
• “‘Antitrust’ means what I want it to mean!”
• Back in reality: a straightforward ruling
• Maybe Zuck just . . . knows what he’s doing?
• Users want what they want ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• Does your market definition pass the laugh test?

Links:

Tech Policy Podcast 384: The Facebook Antitrust Case 

Tech Policy Podcast 393: Herbert Hovenkamp on the State of Antitrust Law

Ari Cohn (FIRE) and host Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) survey the Trump administration’s many attacks on the First Amendment.

Topics include:

• Law firms you should no longer hire
• Political opponents = terror groups?!
• Brendan Carr is a lap dog
• Jawboning rebrand: it’s “outreach”!
• Terrorizing foreign students is bad

Links:

What if the Big Law Firms Hadn’t Caved to Trump?

The Global Free Speech Recession

Tech Policy Podcast 394: Tech and Trump 2.0

She’s back! Former host Ash Kazaryan (Future of Free Speech) returns for a wide-ranging discussion about powerful algorithms, attacks on Section 230, and much, much more.

Topics include:

• Ash: this is your life!
• In defense of tHe aLGoRitHm
• In defense of Section 230
• Once more: Anderson v. TikTok is so bad
• Has information gotten too cheap?
• Why Evangelicals should love AI
• Why every platform has a metamorphosis
• Let’s get cancelled

Links:

I Built This Algo Brick by Brick

The Bedrock Principle

Neural Viz

Tech Policy Podcast 417: Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton Is Wreaking Havoc

TPP From the Vault: Revising Section 230 Will Silence Marginalized Voices

TPP From the Vault: Why Section 230 Matters

Sri Muppidi (The Information) discusses OpenAI’s effort to overhaul its corporate structure—and the resulting power struggle over the company’s future.

Links:

OpenAI Says Its Business Will Burn $115 Billion Through 2029 

OpenAI Executives Rattled by Campaigns to Derail For-Profit Restructuring 

OpenAI Says Nonprofit Parent Will Own Equity Stake in Company of Over $100 Billion

Jeremy Neufeld (Institute for Progress) discusses how our immigration system works, why high-skilled immigrants are so important to the tech sector, what’s wrong with the Trump administration’s H-1B reforms, why America is so complacent about competing for global talent, and more.

Links: 

Trump’s H-1B Changes Won’t Work

Talent Recruitment Roulette: Replacing the H-1B Lottery | IFP

The Talent Scout State | IFP

Tech Policy Podcast 317: Making Progress

Adam Kovacevich (Chamber of Progress) discusses the populist / anti-tech turn in politics, and what can be done about it.

Topics include:

• How did we get here?
• Tech optimists: There are dozens of us!
• Beware ThE gROupS
• If there’s a crisis, maybe act like it?
• Duct tape and bubble gum
• The great relearning
• We’re so doomed
• We’re so not doomed

Links:

Tech Policy Podcast 403: The Constitutional Crisis

Tech Policy Podcast 388: The Abundance Agenda

Tech Policy Podcast 355: Conservative Futurism

Tech Policy Podcast 301: The Realignment

Ari Cohn (FIRE) and Tom Kurland (Patterson Belknap) discuss the spate of product-liability lawsuits against social-media and AI companies.

Topics include:

• A tort law primer
• The ballad of Helen Palsgraf
• Causation, shmausation
• Speech =/= product
• Ideas are powerful. (That’s the point!)
• “Addiction.” You keep using that word …
• ♪ Junk science ♪
• AI, suicide, and you

Links:

Tech Policy Podcast 414: Beware the Butlerian Jihad

Tech Policy Podcast 347: When Schools Scapegoat Social Media

Tech Policy Podcast 310: Algorithmic Amplification