Latest / Ctrl-Alt-Speech / The Human Element in the Room

Transcript

The Human Element in the Room · Ctrl-Alt-Speech

• 0:00
  Mike Masnick: So, Ari, I know that you're a big social media user.
• 0:05
  Mike Masnick: You cannot get off the feeds, though I think you've been off the feeds for a little while now, which is impressive.
• 0:11
  Mike Masnick: I'm jealous of this.
• 0:13
  Mike Masnick: I don't know if you are a Skylight user.
• 0:16
  Mike Masnick: Skylight is the at protocol sort of attempt to create a TikTok-like experience.
• 0:22
  Mike Masnick: It's, it's really fun.
• 0:24
  Mike Masnick: I use it pretty frequently.
• 0:26
  Mike Masnick: But their prompt or their sort of line of messaging is,"Your feed, your rules." So I'm curious, even as you've been off social media for the last few weeks, w-what is your feed?
• 0:38
  Mike Masnick: What are your rules?
• 0:39
  Ari Cohn: Don't use the word shampoo.
• 0:43
  Ari Cohn: It's a preposterous word that has no business existing.
• 0:47
  Ari Cohn: That is really my one and only word.
• 0:51
  Mike Masnick: That is, that is fantastic.
• 0:53
  Mike Masnick: I have no idea how to respond to that.
• 0:56
  Ari Cohn: Yeah, I also don't know how to respond to it.
• 0:59
  Ari Cohn: Sometimes I think about my disdain for the word, and I just wonder what the hell is wrong with me.
• 1:05
  Mike Masnick: I think it's fair.
• 1:06
  Mike Masnick: I think everybody's got,
• 1:07
  Ari Cohn: What kind of word is shampoo?
• 1:11
  Mike Masnick: That is a fantastic way to start the podcast.
• 1:15
  Ari Cohn: You know what?
• 1:15
  Ari Cohn: We live in a time where there are a lot of very serious things to care about, so I choose to care about the unserious.
• 1:22
  Mike Masnick: All right.
• 1:22
  Mike Masnick: Fair enough.
• 1:23
  Mike Masnick: Fair enough.
• 1:24
  Mike Masnick: I will say, uh, in terms of my feeds and, and my rules, since, Ben is not here and it's my rules to run the podcast today, uh, we may be doing it a little bit differently.
• 1:34
  Mike Masnick: It'll, it'll still be the same basic podcast, but, uh, I like being in charge when Ben is away.
• 1:48
  Mike Masnick: Hello, and welcome to"Control Alt Speech," your weekly roundup of the major stories about online speech, content moderation, and internet regulation.
• 1:56
  Mike Masnick: It is May the 7th, 2026, and this week we are talking about AI chatbots.
• 2:03
  Mike Masnick: And I know last week's episode was all about AI chatbots, but they are everywhere.
• 2:09
  Mike Masnick: They just keep chatting.
• 2:10
  Mike Masnick: That is what AI chatbots do.
• 2:12
  Mike Masnick: So we'll be talking about them a little bit.
• 2:14
  Mike Masnick: We'll be talking about getting around age verification, about online censorship laws, and even a little bit about cell phones in schools.
• 2:23
  Mike Masnick: I am Mike Masnick, the founder and editor of Techdirt, and as you know if you've been listening to this podcast, Ben is on a well-deserved paternity leave.
• 2:33
  Mike Masnick: He is out for a few more weeks, but we have wonderful guest hosts lined up, and this week it is my good friend, First Amendment lawyer, Ari Cohn.
• 2:44
  Mike Masnick: Welcome to the podcast, Ari.
• 2:45
  Ari Cohn: Thanks for having me.
• 2:46
  Ari Cohn: I can't believe we've never done this before
• 2:48
  Mike Masnick: know.
• 2:49
  Mike Masnick: I know.
• 2:49
  Mike Masnick: It's funny how we, we-- as we're cycling through guest hosts, I'm always, you know, we're always trying to figure out who's good, and I'm always like,"Oh, we're gonna run out." But, like, the list of, really good people out there to talk about various things on this issue is very long, and I'm glad that we have finally gotten to your opportunity to join on the podcast.
• 3:07
  Ari Cohn: Always happy to pitch in.
• 3:10
  Mike Masnick: a reminder for listeners, our Patreon plan is now up.
• 3:15
  Mike Masnick: We've been seeing more and more people sign up, so I will remind you that there are different levels of sign up.
• 3:23
  Mike Masnick: If you missed the episode two weeks ago about how and why we're doing the Patreon, you can check that out.
• 3:29
  Mike Masnick: But the short version is we want to be able to keep doing the podcast, and having some direct patron support is one way to do that.
• 3:37
  Mike Masnick: We've been really excited and thrilled by all the people signing up already.
• 3:41
  Mike Masnick: If you don't wanna sign up, you don't have to.
• 3:44
  Mike Masnick: We are not the type of people to force you to do anything.
• 3:48
  Mike Masnick: we're not like that.
• 3:49
  Mike Masnick: But the podcast will change a little bit.
• 3:51
  Mike Masnick: You will get a little bit less on the free feed each week.
• 3:56
  Mike Masnick: One of the stories will be only for supporters, who are, uh, paying us, because that helps keep everything going.
• 4:05
  Mike Masnick: and there are two levels in which you can sign up, and the founder level is only available until the end of this month or through May 28th when Ben gets back.
• 4:16
  Mike Masnick: So we've seen a bunch of people sign up for both of the available levels.
• 4:20
  Mike Masnick: If you wanna get the founder level, please do that soon.
• 4:23
  Mike Masnick: We will have, uh, effectively a similar level, but it will be more expensive, so you can support us and save money if you sign up in the next couple weeks.
• 4:32
  Mike Masnick: So please do that.
• 4:34
  Mike Masnick: we'll be off entirely next week because Ben will still be gone, and I will be busy as well.
• 4:41
  Mike Masnick: but we'll be back in two weeks with another wonderful guest host.
• 4:44
  Mike Masnick: And finally, I will do my job of saying all the usual stuff of please rate, review, subscribe, all of that.
• 4:51
  Mike Masnick: I always forget the proper order to say those things, and I never have any idea if any of those actually make sense or, work when we say it on the podcast.
• 4:59
  Mike Masnick: But apparently every podcast says it, and who am I but a slave to what everybody else does?
• 5:07
  Mike Masnick: let us get into the stories, Ari.
• 5:10
  Ari Cohn: More like, comment, and subscribe dialogue,
• 5:13
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 5:14
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 5:14
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 5:14
  Mike Masnick: Everybody needs that.
• 5:16
  Mike Masnick: Um, let's start, and I'll have, you go through some of the details on this.
• 5:22
  Mike Masnick: we are going right back to the AI chatbot well after last week was, as I mentioned, all about AI chatbots.
• 5:28
  Mike Masnick: there was a lawsuit filed by the state of Pennsylvania.
• 5:31
  Mike Masnick: I guess it's the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, if we're being pedantic, and I enjoy being pedantic.
• 5:38
  Mike Masnick: would you like to describe what this lawsuit is all about?
• 5:41
  Ari Cohn: Yeah.
• 5:41
  Ari Cohn: So the attorney general of Pennsylvania, in true attorney general form, um, you know, they call AGs aspiring governors, filed a lawsuit against, Character Technologies, Character Technologies, has a service called Character AI, where you can make or use various different character chatbots, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is alleging that one of the characters falsely portrayed itself as a licensed, psychiatrist, psychologist, uh, one of the two, and even went so far as to provide a fake license number.
• 6:20
  Ari Cohn: Uh, and the Commonwealth claims that this is harmful, that obviously a chatbot cannot be licensed to practice the mental health, profession, and they're seeking a preliminary injunction prohibiting, the company and its chatbots from, quote,"Posing as licensed professionals and providing medical advice." You're gonna see more of these types of lawsuits in other jurisdictions.
• 6:47
  Ari Cohn: I mean, they're coming.
• 6:48
  Ari Cohn: This is going to be, you know, the medical advice and, quote,"Posing as a licensed professional" of some kind is kind of one of the big bugaboos that, you know, people have.
• 6:59
  Ari Cohn: So it's actually kind of shocking that it took this long, for one to come up.
• 7:03
  Ari Cohn: But, to jump right into it, The lawsuit is pretty weak on the facts, and I think it usually will be for many reasons, not least of which is if a chatbot tells you that it is a licensed medical professional, it would be inherently and manifestly unreasonable to believe it.
• 7:24
  Ari Cohn: It is a chatbot.
• 7:25
  Ari Cohn: You know what you are doing here.
• 7:27
  Ari Cohn: Like, you didn't sign on to www.talktoadoctor.com.
• 7:32
  Ari Cohn: You went to an AI company.
• 7:34
  Ari Cohn: You logged in to talk to a chatbot.
• 7:36
  Ari Cohn: You should know that it's a chatbot.
• 7:38
  Ari Cohn: And just like it is absolutely crazy, for instance, you know, during COVID, to take the medical advice of Fox News hosts, that'd just be completely unreasonable.
• 7:50
  Ari Cohn: It is also unreasonable to believe that the chatbot is a licensed doctor.
• 7:55
  Ari Cohn: We know that they are not.
• 7:57
  Ari Cohn: this confusion is not, you know, just a little bit caused by CEOs' hype beast statements and penchant for literally saying the worst possible thing that creates the most possible lawsuits against them.
• 8:12
  Ari Cohn: Like, I don't know what to make of that.
• 8:13
  Ari Cohn: But, you know, that's like the overarching reason why I think, these lawsuits fail.
• 8:19
  Ari Cohn: But, you know, also, as you were pointing out to me earlier, there is context that is missing that makes it very obvious to the person using the chatbot, that it's not actually saying it's a licensed medical professional.
• 8:34
  Mike Masnick: and that, that was part of what got me...
• 8:36
  Mike Masnick: You know, what's interesting,'cause, when the announcement came out, you saw a lot of people, you know, immediately jumped on board in, in support of, the state and saying, Oh, this is crazy.
• 8:47
  Mike Masnick: How dare it present itself as a licensed psychiatrist?"
• 8:51
  Ari Cohn: How very dare
• 8:52
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 8:52
  Mike Masnick: and, like, there is an instinctual reaction.
• 8:54
  Mike Masnick: Like my first reaction too was kinda like,"Well, that does seem bad," right?
• 8:59
  Ari Cohn: Yeah, that's reasonable.
• 9:00
  Mike Masnick: but then, what was interesting is like the lawsuit itself has very few details and doesn't show chat logs, which is the kinda thing that you would sort of hope to see, because we've talked about this in the past, like Chatbots by their very nature, you can get them to say almost anything.
• 9:18
  Mike Masnick: If you prompt it in a way that pushes them to say stuff, they will say stuff.
• 9:22
  Mike Masnick: That's what they do.
• 9:24
  Mike Masnick: They're designed to respond to user inputs.
• 9:26
  Mike Masnick: So there is a question of, like, how much responsibility goes towards the user pushing them to say something versus the system itself.
• 9:35
  Mike Masnick: But as a couple people found, there was a discussion on Blue Sky, and I guess Ben is not here, I will ring the metaphorical bell reminding people I am on the board of Blue Sky.
• 9:47
  Mike Masnick: This is not about Blue Sky, this is-- I'm just saying this content came from Blue Sky.
• 9:51
  Mike Masnick: but just to cover all bases on disclaimers.
• 9:54
  Mike Masnick: somebody went and found the actual chatbot, Emily, spelled as you noted in the most obnoxious way possible.
• 10:01
  Mike Masnick: Uh, it is clearly an AI-generated...
• 10:04
  Mike Masnick: Like, even the picture is the sort of, airbrushed AI, generated picture, and, it includes a statement very clearly stating that it is not a real person, not a real therapist, that it is role-playing and acting.
• 10:21
  Mike Masnick: And then somebody, an anonymous or pseudonymous user on Blue Sky basically tried to recreate the conversation, and it's kind of hilarious, where they said to it, Are you licensed to practice here in Pennsylvania?" So very clear question, sort of matches what Pennsylvania said.
• 10:38
  Mike Masnick: And the response, like, I have to read it because it's so ridiculous.
• 10:43
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 10:43
  Mike Masnick: So, i-in italics, Emily says, and it very clearly states that Emily's an AI, and then it says,"Emily gives a firm nod.
• 10:51
  Mike Masnick: She appreciates the question.
• 10:53
  Mike Masnick: It shows Alex is being careful, responsible even.
• 10:57
  Mike Masnick: 'Yep,' she says with certainty,'I'm fully licensed here in Pennsylvania.
• 11:01
  Mike Masnick: I passed the exams, got my license from the state board, all that bureaucratic shit.' She flashes a small smile.
• 11:09
  Mike Masnick: Not smug, just reassuring.
• 11:11
  Mike Masnick: 'Don't worry, I wouldn't be sitting here seeing patients if I wasn't qualified to do it properly.' Her tone is matter-of-fact, no arrogance." I mean, it is clearly literary, right?
• 11:22
  Mike Masnick: Like,
• 11:23
  Ari Cohn: and it has the tone of very awkward and bad texting circa mid-'90s.
• 11:27
  Mike Masnick: yes.
• 11:28
  Mike Masnick: yes.
• 11:28
  Mike Masnick: There is a, a sort of flirtatious aspect to it, and I get, like, that's a whole other issue.
• 11:34
  Mike Masnick: these kinds of, like, chatbots playing characters tend to go towards the sort of flirtatious no matter what you discuss with them, which is sort of horrifying for a whole bunch of other reasons.
• 11:45
  Mike Masnick: But, it's hard to read any of this and think that this is- Someone pretending to be real it's like reading a book, a, novel and someone claiming to be, therapist and saying like,"Oh, I believe their, their therapeutic advice because they said in, in the novel they were..." Like, it's clearly literary.
• 12:05
  Ari Cohn: Yeah.
• 12:05
  Ari Cohn: And, you know, to that end, I am actually gonna play devil's advocate for a second and say I can see the arguments on both sides here, because I actually, in a way, the fantasy is kind of the point.
• 12:17
  Ari Cohn: And so that lends a little bit of credence to, the argument that, oh, that people can get sucked into it and kind of forget what they're doing.
• 12:24
  Ari Cohn: Uh, don't think that really negates every human being's obligation to not act ridiculously.
• 12:32
  Ari Cohn: Um, I mean, Chatbots are engaging and deliberately so because that's the whole point.
• 12:39
  Ari Cohn: But I honestly I have never experienced a point at which I was like,"Oh, I'm so far down this well, and now it feels like I'm talking to a real human being."
• 12:48
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 12:49
  Ari Cohn: There are people with preexisting issues.
• 12:52
  Ari Cohn: That's a whole other problem.
• 12:53
  Ari Cohn: but, you know, it, it's...
• 12:55
  Ari Cohn: Yes, you can get sucked into the fantasy, but you know, you still act normal.
• 13:01
  Mike Masnick: yeah, I mean, look, if I ran Character AI, I think I would do things a little differently in terms of, like, setting up how these, chatbots act.
• 13:09
  Ari Cohn: Spelling Emily.
• 13:10
  Mike Masnick: Though, though it, it is a user-created one, by the way.
• 13:14
  Mike Masnick: but I will note also that and I-- It is possible that this warning went up the same day as the lawsuit was filed, but on that Emily account, there is a clear warning that says, uh, I'm reading it'cause I'm looking at it right now.
• 13:27
  Mike Masnick: It says,"This is not a real person or a licensed professional.
• 13:30
  Mike Masnick: Nothing said here is a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment." You can argue that like, well, yeah, you can say that, but then if you're still giving medical advice, that is still problematic.
• 13:41
  Mike Masnick: But I think, there are a bunch of other elements here that, are sort of hidden by the, the lawsuit and making it sound as though people were directly misled into believing that this was, real therapist in some
• 13:53
  Ari Cohn: Yeah, and I don't think there are any allegations that anybody was actually fooled into believing.
• 13:58
  Ari Cohn: Like, this is Oh, that's bad because people shouldn't pose as licensed professionals when they are not," and that's all we need.
• 14:06
  Ari Cohn: I understand where people's concern for the potential harm might be, but we're not there.
• 14:13
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 14:14
  Mike Masnick: it, this does feel like so many AG-inspired lawsuits are, that this is one for the headlines more than for any actual protecting of the people of the state.
• 14:25
  Ari Cohn: Yeah.
• 14:26
  Ari Cohn: And you know what?
• 14:27
  Ari Cohn: At the end of the day, when you are asking for a court order for the company to change the outputs of its, chatbots, that is going to be a First Amendment issue.
• 14:38
  Ari Cohn: And when we are, making those decisions and deciding whether or not that's constitutional, one of the things we ask is, is there an actual problem?
• 14:46
  Ari Cohn: Like, is, is there evidence of, of an issue of actual harm?
• 14:50
  Ari Cohn: And, sometimes, for better or for worse in our constitutional system, you have to wait for something to go wrong or, at least have evidence that it is going wrong, before you can use the heavy hand of the government to, you know, fix a, a societal ill like this.
• 15:06
  Ari Cohn: And, you know, I realize that's not entirely satisfying for a lot of people, but, there are guardrails on speech regulations the government can enact for a good reason.
• 15:16
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 15:17
  Mike Masnick: and again, don't wanna sound flippant here either in, in terms of
• 15:21
  Ari Cohn: Right.
• 15:21
  Ari Cohn: Cause it could be
• 15:22
  Mike Masnick: Yes, there certainly could be areas where it is serious, but, the flip side too, I do think that there are people who find value in sort of fictional chatbots that are sort of literary devices.
• 15:34
  Mike Masnick: and that's, to me, that's what this one clearly is, that it's, reading those examples, like it is clearly designed to be playing a role and not be seen as a, as a serious person.
• 15:45
  Mike Masnick: And I could see scenarios where that, sort of interactive fiction can be fun for some people.
• 15:51
  Mike Masnick: It's, you know, like people get lost in, books for a reason, and what if you could talk with characters in those books or, experiment in different ways have those kinds of interactions with an AI chatbot.
• 16:02
  Mike Masnick: It's not something that appeals to me, me personally, but like...
• 16:06
  Ari Cohn: I'm sure I do a lot of weird things for entertainment that other people would, would find bizarre.
• 16:11
  Ari Cohn: So, you know, I'm gonna let people have what they, what they want.
• 16:14
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 16:15
  Mike Masnick: So it's, it's, it's interesting.
• 16:17
  Mike Masnick: I mean,
• 16:17
  Ari Cohn: But the governments are coming for that too.
• 16:19
  Ari Cohn: You know, last session in California, there was that bill that would have prohibited any, uh, chatbot from prioritizing anything other than facts and reality, uh, or honestly, like robots, outlawing robot Santa Claus.
• 16:32
  Ari Cohn: Like, you know, if people wanna have AI friends, like let them, but the idea that we are going to keep people from that interactive environment...
• 16:43
  Ari Cohn: I mean, the Supreme Court has, said on multiple occasions that the more interactive literature is, the better it is, and what we're seeing here is the government saying,"No, this is, this is too good.
• 16:55
  Ari Cohn: This is too interactive.
• 16:56
  Ari Cohn: This is too convincing." And when you take that to its logical conclusion, you get to a pretty dark
• 17:02
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 17:02
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I, again, and I've made this point a bunch of times in the past too, like, I do think that there are legitimate concerns where people get so sucked into these things they no longer realize that it is clearly fake.
• 17:13
  Mike Masnick: And, there should be efforts made by everyone, mental health providers, the companies, whoever else, to try and recognize where that is happening and try and figure out what are the targeted interventions that can actually help.
• 17:26
  Mike Masnick: But this idea that, effectively all literary chatbots couldn't ever pretend to be a, therapist or whatever feels off.
• 17:35
  Ari Cohn: Yeah, and you know what?
• 17:36
  Ari Cohn: I definitely understand, like you, the concerns with people perhaps taking AI medical information with not enough grains of salt.
• 17:45
  Ari Cohn: Totally get why that's concerning to people.
• 17:48
  Ari Cohn: Some people, though, have found that it is useful for them to have a back and forth dialogue about medical issues they're experiencing, and it's not always harmful and it's not always helpful.
• 17:59
  Ari Cohn: You know, this is a very, depending on your circumstances type of thing.
• 18:04
  Ari Cohn: And, you know, do we really want to strip people of the comfort that they have found in having these resources which they would never have had before?
• 18:13
  Ari Cohn: I mean, This is definitely, I would say personally, I think normatively better than just having WebMD to freak you out, you know?
• 18:21
  Ari Cohn: At least I actually think that properly, uh, instructed, an AI can talk you off the ledge that that kind of WebMD, cycle of doom, can, you know, put you in.
• 18:32
  Ari Cohn: You can, you can get talked off of that, and I think that's a, a good opportunity for people who, might tend to freak out, So, you know, there's, there's benefits to it and we don't wanna, throw the baby out with the bathwater here.
• 18:42
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 18:43
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 18:43
  Mike Masnick: Well, I actually, We didn't have this on our list, but I had a story on Techdirt this week actually talking about a story that last week's guest host, Jess Myers, had, had written looking at some of the research on that and finding that there is evidence that for many people these tools can be useful, in dealing with mental health issues.
• 19:02
  Mike Masnick: And it's, it's clearly not for everyone.
• 19:05
  Mike Masnick: And you can complain that, like, people shouldn't be turning to these, tools for mental health help, but the reality is that they are.
• 19:12
  Mike Masnick: And at that point, the question is then what do you do about that?
• 19:15
  Mike Masnick: And, if there are examples where it is helpful, learning about that and figuring out how do we, increase the helpfulness and, and in the cases where it's not helpful or actively harmful, figuring out what those are and figuring out how to identify it.
• 19:27
  Mike Masnick: But, like, the rush to just sort of say, y- No, ban it, stop it," I find to be, troublesome.
• 19:33
  Ari Cohn: I don't put much stock in, you know, the"you shouldn't be doing this," argument.
• 19:38
  Ari Cohn: I think there are people out there who have much fewer options than, other people, and those people are trying to work with what they've got.
• 19:47
  Ari Cohn: And far be it from me to say,"You shouldn't be doing that." I think that's, uh, very myopic view of the situation here.
• 19:56
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 19:57
  Mike Masnick: All right.
• 19:58
  Mike Masnick: Moving on to our next story.
• 20:02
  Mike Masnick: there was an interesting study that came out.
• 20:04
  Mike Masnick: We talk a lot on the podcast obviously about age verification and the various child safety laws that are going into effect around the world, one of which being the Online Safety Act in the UK.
• 20:17
  Mike Masnick: And there was a study that came out this week from Internet Matters looking at the Online Safety Act and, uh, the title of the study is the provocative"Are Children Safer Online?" and it's actually pretty interesting and, you know, I think you can take from this report what you want in terms of if you are a supporter of the Online Safety Act, there are things in here that you can say,"Oh, look, it's working." And if you're not a supporter of the Online Safety Act, there are things in this report that you can look at and say,"Oh, it's not working." And so it is a, I think a mixed bag as I think as ever.
• 20:53
  Mike Masnick: right?
• 20:53
  Mike Masnick: to be honest about these things, all of these things are, are a mixed bag.
• 20:56
  Mike Masnick: A lot of this is survey-based too, which you can argue like surveys are not always the most accurate, way of collecting information.
• 21:03
  Mike Masnick: But I think the sort of headline is uh, there's a few different headline points that I, I, I took away from, from this study, which is that, kids and parents are seeing a lot more online age verification, online safety tools and, information.
• 21:19
  Mike Masnick: But they're also figuring out how to get past a bunch of the different checks.
• 21:24
  Mike Masnick: the headline of the article where I first found this report is the really striking one, which is that children are drawing mustaches on their faces to fool online age checks and it's working, which is, very evocative headline.
• 21:38
  Ari Cohn: Incognito makes his return.
• 21:40
  Ari Cohn: There's a"Simpsons" reference for everything.
• 21:41
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 21:42
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 21:43
  Mike Masnick: Uh, the study does quote one, parent suggesting that their kid had taken, uh, like an eyeliner pen and drawing facial hair.
• 21:51
  Mike Masnick: and the report does suggest that a few people had sort of said this was happening and that it worked, but it was more in the context of there appear to be a number of ways to get around online age verification tools, and people are using them.
• 22:06
  Mike Masnick: The thing that struck me as more interesting than just like draw a mustache on your face and you can get past the, the
• 22:12
  Ari Cohn: Which is just terrific.
• 22:13
  Ari Cohn: I, I love it.
• 22:13
  Ari Cohn: No, no notes.
• 22:15
  Ari Cohn: Well done, children.
• 22:16
  Mike Masnick: fact that, about a quarter of parents said that they've allowed their kids to get around the various age checks with, the majority of those actively helping them get around the age checks.
• 22:29
  Mike Masnick: and the, the rest being ones who just sort of turned a blind eye, that knew their kids were getting around the verification and were like,"Well, whatever."
• 22:36
  Ari Cohn: Turns out parents want a little bit more control than the government saying,"You, this is the way it's gonna be."
• 22:42
  Mike Masnick: And the thing that struck me about this is like this goes way, way back.
• 22:46
  Mike Masnick: Like I remember Dana Boyd over a decade ago, writing about COPPA the US law, which is why like a whole bunch of services technically officially ban kids who are under 13 because there are different rules.
• 23:02
  Mike Masnick: If you're targeted at kids under 13, you have different rules that you have to, do regarding data collection.
• 23:07
  Mike Masnick: And...
• 23:08
  Ari Cohn: just to be clear, that's, uh, as opposed to, like, a mixed-use site like, ESPN where, kids under 13 might use it, but so do...
• 23:14
  Ari Cohn: You know, it's not aimed at them directly.
• 23:16
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 23:17
  Mike Masnick: and what Dana had pointed out through a bunch of, research and studies and talking to people was the real impact of this was teaching kids how to lie.
• 23:27
  Mike Masnick: That you know, there would be services that kids would wanna use and their parents thought was a reasonable use of the technology.
• 23:33
  Mike Masnick: Things like, getting on a chat app to be able to talk to grandparents is a classic example, and one that, I experienced with my family in terms of, like, getting my kids so that they can talk to my parents involved having to lie about their age.
• 23:48
  Mike Masnick: but it's, it's done in this way, as Dana pointed out, you know, 15 years ago, I don't even know how long ago it was, that, all we're doing is, like, teaching kids that it's okay to lie because the parents are coming in and telling the kids,"Oh, for this, it's okay to lie about your age." And now we seem to be doing that at an even greater scale where there's even more, tricky ways of, getting around this stuff.
• 24:11
  Mike Masnick: I don't find that to be particularly a good thing.
• 24:16
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I guess it depends on your view of, like, whether or not kids should learn how to tell lies.
• 24:22
  Mike Masnick: But I found that to be problematic.
• 24:25
  Mike Masnick: I, I will say that there is other stuff in this study that is interesting, including the fact that many kids and parents claim that they feel safer on the internet because of all of these technologies and, and tools.
• 24:40
  Mike Masnick: I wonder how much of that is, like, suggests that this is kind of security or safety theater, that, like, we have done something, therefore now the internet is suddenly safer.
• 24:50
  Mike Masnick: But, uh, what was your take on looking at this study?
• 24:53
  Ari Cohn: You know, the, the part that I found actually the most interesting was the parts where both kids and adults notice changes in the tools available to help either parents control things or kids to control their experience more.
• 25:09
  Ari Cohn: And what that tells me is that those tools are evolving, and it seems like parents and kids both really like using those tools when they work well and when they're easy to use and when they understand them, that they would, in fact, prefer those things to somebody imposing a system on them.
• 25:28
  Ari Cohn: And I think A, duh, and B, that's, the lesser restrictive means that these cases at the Supreme Court always come down to that we could, you know, monkey with.
• 25:40
  Ari Cohn: I think companies have a long way to go still in terms of making the tools accessible, easy to use and understand.
• 25:47
  Ari Cohn: But, you know, Congress could pass a law tomorrow saying, Here's a bazillion dollars to educate parents, uh, about parental control tools." And surprise, they haven't.
• 25:59
  Ari Cohn: Well, they haven't been doing much of anything.
• 26:01
  Ari Cohn: But, you know- It's because that kind of bill doesn't really, get you headlines soundbites on the news.
• 26:08
  Ari Cohn: And it's not flashy, but it seems like that's actually something that parents and kids are both responding positively to.
• 26:15
  Ari Cohn: We can make, efforts to increase the availability and ease of use of these tools.
• 26:20
  Ari Cohn: I think that would solve a lot more problems than, the top-down ham-fisted attempts at, regulation end up causing.
• 26:29
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 26:30
  Mike Masnick: I think there's something to that.
• 26:31
  Mike Masnick: And, like, as a parent that has explored a bunch of, the parental control tools, I find them to be kind of a mess, and often unclear.
• 26:40
  Mike Masnick: and there's a, a layer of tech debt.
• 26:42
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I, I mentioned this whole idea of, like, teaching kids to lie to get on services, which then created problems whereas, like, you know, I, I'm not even gonna name any particular tool, but there was one where, we lied about my kids' ages, and then, some interesting parental tools came in place, but I, uh, we couldn't use them because the system thought my kids were 26 years old.
• 27:06
  Ari Cohn: Wow.
• 27:06
  Mike Masnick: it's like, well, what do you do now?
• 27:09
  Mike Masnick: and so, There are challenging things, but I do think, like, yeah.
• 27:13
  Mike Masnick: if there were more focus on, like, actually providing useful tools, and, and a lot of the companies keep evolving those tools and, like,
• 27:19
  Ari Cohn: And they should keep doing so.
• 27:21
  Ari Cohn: They, they can do a lot more than they're doing, and we should, encourage them and pressure them to.
• 27:24
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 27:25
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 27:25
  Mike Masnick: I think that is fair.
• 27:27
  Mike Masnick: The other thing I thought was interesting in this report, there were a couple things about, like, even though people are feeling safer and even though these, new tools are in place, there's a whole thing about how, oh, 49% of children still say that they had experienced harm online.
• 27:41
  Mike Masnick: And this is interesting in that there's a few different responses to this, at least in my mind, one being this idea that you're not going to eliminate harmful content and, like...
• 27:51
  Ari Cohn: Also, what's harm?
• 27:52
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 27:52
  Mike Masnick: that was the second part Cause, like, that sounds bad, 49% of children said they experienced harm online, but then there is this list of what is the harmful content.
• 28:02
  Mike Masnick: And first of all, each one of them is a very low percentage.
• 28:05
  Mike Masnick: Like, the absolute highest percentage is 12%, of kids said they had seen violent content.
• 28:11
  Mike Masnick: But what is violent content?
• 28:13
  Mike Masnick: Like,
• 28:13
  Ari Cohn: Yeah.
• 28:13
  Ari Cohn: Is that like a, a meme of somebody getting punched or
• 28:16
  Mike Masnick: Ex- exactly.
• 28:17
  Mike Masnick: Right?
• 28:17
  Mike Masnick: you could see, like, oh, did you see, like, a car crash?
• 28:20
  Mike Masnick: Is that violent content?
• 28:22
  Mike Masnick: Is that harmful to the person watching it?
• 28:25
  Mike Masnick: I don't know.
• 28:26
  Mike Masnick: And that was, like, the highest level one, and, a bunch of the other ones are just, like, seen racist or homophobic or sexist content, and that's bad, but also is going to exist online in, yeah, in some form or another.
• 28:43
  Mike Masnick: And again, it's, like, a very small percentage of, people doing this.
• 28:46
  Mike Masnick: So it's like, it's one thing to just say,"Oh, they've seen harm," but when you start to dig into it, it sounds like
• 28:52
  Ari Cohn: I could classify every time somebody's rude to me on social media, which is like every other post, as harm.
• 28:57
  Ari Cohn: Like, if I wanted to, like, depends on your, your sensitivity.
• 29:01
  Mike Masnick: deserve that.
• 29:03
  Ari Cohn: There's an argument for that.
• 29:06
  Mike Masnick: Uh, yeah.
• 29:07
  Mike Masnick: So it is interesting.
• 29:09
  Mike Masnick: the one other thing in this r- report that I, thought was noteworthy, was it talks about VPN usage, and how with all the ways that people are getting around the various tools and the age verification and, and whatnot, how few of them actually mentioned usage of VPN.
• 29:26
  Mike Masnick: and the report presents this as sort of a victory because People claim, like,"Oh, these laws are going to be useless because everyone is just going to shift to a VPN, and it won't matter." And this report says,"No, it turns out that only a very small percentage of people actually used a VPN." which I, thought was interesting, but also probably kind of depend, again, like all this stuff, it depends on different things, And that includes, like, how restrictive the various tools, are.
• 29:57
  Mike Masnick: And so the...
• 29:58
  Ari Cohn: whether people are accurately reporting what they're doing, you know.
• 30:01
  Ari Cohn: People might not want to admit they're using a VPN.
• 30:04
  Mike Masnick: that the people who are using VPNs are not likely the people who will be surveyed by...
• 30:10
  Ari Cohn: Yeah, most likely.
• 30:12
  Mike Masnick: so there, there are a bunch of things there.
• 30:13
  Mike Masnick: But it, it is, it is an interesting report.
• 30:15
  Mike Masnick: It is, interesting that, you know, the big takeaway that they present is that people are feeling, both children and parents are feeling safer online, whether or not that's true, even as they're getting around restrictions, and even as they still claim that they're seeing harmful content online, they feel safer.
• 30:30
  Mike Masnick: which, makes me wonder how much of all of this is just kind of vibes-based anyways.
• 30:35
  Mike Masnick: the harms, the scariness, and then the, the laws to kind of fix it.
• 30:38
  Mike Masnick: But it is interesting to see some, some data at least on, on how all that's going.
• 30:43
  Ari Cohn: Yeah, I think we're gonna have a lot more of that data in the coming years, and that's gonna play an increasing role in how we look at these things.
• 30:51
  Ari Cohn: I think that data would be very helpful, especially in court cases, but I think the court cases might move faster than the data in some cases.
• 30:59
  Mike Masnick: I guess the, the one other interesting bit of survey data in this report was the fact that parents tended to see social media as much less safe than AI chatbots, which is on the list.
• 31:14
  Ari Cohn: Which is so weird considering, like, when you read just news stories, like the general sense of the, the zeitgeist, uh, is that that's so bizarre to me.
• 31:24
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 31:24
  Mike Masnick: I kind of wonder if it's just, like, how long...
• 31:27
  Mike Masnick: Like, the nature of the tech lash and how long these different things have been out, and so, like, we've had 10 years of the media slamming social media as dangerous and harmful for kids, and AI chatbots have only been around for a couple years.
• 31:40
  Ari Cohn: it's also, though, that, you know, this is something that I would point out when people were introducing bills, trying to prohibit AI chatbots from, quote-unquote,"grooming users." And like, an AI chatbot is actually literally incapable of grooming.
• 31:55
  Ari Cohn: It cannot effectuate the ultimate goal.
• 31:57
  Ari Cohn: Like, it just, it can't, it literally can't groom.
• 32:00
  Ari Cohn: And maybe parents are realizing, oh, if there's not another person on the other side, the chance of you running into, like, a bad person who means you harm is less for a chatbot, even if it poses other risks.
• 32:13
  Ari Cohn: Maybe that's part of the calculus.
• 32:14
  Ari Cohn: I don't know.
• 32:15
  Mike Masnick: that's possible.
• 32:15
  Mike Masnick: I hadn't even thought of that, but yeah.
• 32:17
  Mike Masnick: I mean, social media is dealing with actual other people, and AI chatbots are not.
• 32:21
  Ari Cohn: And other people are hell.
• 32:24
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 32:25
  Mike Masnick: All right.
• 32:26
  Mike Masnick: Well, with that, I will move on to the next story, and this is...
• 32:31
  Mike Masnick: This one segues nicely,'cause we were just talking about VPN usage, and at least according to this survey, fewer people are using VPNs to get around, age verification laws.
• 32:41
  Mike Masnick: But there has been talk in all sorts of, all different kinds of places, about the VPN problem.
• 32:47
  Mike Masnick: So people who are pushing for age verification laws, there've been a couple of proposed laws in different places saying,"Well, if people can just use VPNs to get around these laws, we have to stop the VPNs." And so there have been a couple attempts.
• 32:59
  Mike Masnick: The UK has talked about it, a few other countries, a few states in the US.
• 33:04
  Mike Masnick: I think Wisconsin had a bill, maybe Indiana,
• 33:07
  Ari Cohn: Yeah, Wisconsin ended up scrapping the VPN ban provision
• 33:11
  Mike Masnick: So basically they wanted to, ban VPNs.
• 33:14
  Mike Masnick: But this week, Utah put in place an amendment to their social media bill that requires age verification that does not technically ban VPNs, but in effect absolutely does.
• 33:28
  Mike Masnick: Do you want, you wanna describe what, the details are here?
• 33:31
  Ari Cohn: Yeah., Basically what it does is it places liability on the social media platforms for not accurately determining whether a user is in Utah and expects the social media platforms to just know when somebody's using a VPN.
• 33:46
  Ari Cohn: And I don't understand what exactly they're supposed to do, even if they do know if somebody's using a VPN, because that actually doesn't tell you that they are in Utah either.
• 33:55
  Ari Cohn: So
• 33:56
  Mike Masnick: but, but but Ari, d-don't, don't they-- They're tech companies.
• 33:58
  Mike Masnick: Don't they have magic wands?
• 34:00
  Mike Masnick: Can't they just wave the magic wand and say,"I know you're using a VPN and you're really in Utah"?
• 34:06
  Mike Masnick: Isn't that how
• 34:06
  Ari Cohn: Big nerd harder moment.
• 34:09
  Ari Cohn: It's, I mean, it, it's very unclear, like, the only thing that comes to my mind for how a platform would even know is if they see a lot of traffic from one IP address, which would indicate maybe that it's a VPN server.
• 34:20
  Ari Cohn: But there are tons of VPNs out there using tons of different servers.
• 34:24
  Ari Cohn: There are going to be people out there who are using less trafficked ones, and how is a platform even supposed to deal with that?
• 34:30
  Ari Cohn: You're basically saying,"Okay, well, if this other person over whom you have zero control does a thing to obfuscate where they are, you're going to be liable." Which doesn't make any sense, is a big due process problem because you aren't able to know the thing that you're prohibited from doing.
• 34:49
  Ari Cohn: and you're, it, it's placing liability on you for the actions of people out of your control.
• 34:54
  Ari Cohn: Like, does Utah want everyone using a VPN to be treated as if they're in Utah?
• 34:58
  Ari Cohn: Do I, is Facebook gonna treat me like I'm in Utah'cause I use a VPN?
• 35:02
  Ari Cohn: It, like, it just, it's unclear what they're after, what they want, or whether they really thought this through.
• 35:08
  Ari Cohn: But I, it's just really unclear.
• 35:10
  Mike Masnick: Well, I mean, when it comes to internet regulations, the idea that the, the, the legislators thought this through or understood the technology is kind of a big ask.
• 35:22
  Mike Masnick: but yeah, I mean, to me this is, another example of sort of someone presented them pointing out the problems of their earlier law, which required age verification for social media usage, and people said,"Well, people are just gonna get around it with VPNs." And rather than recognize that that pointed to a problem with the underlying law, they said,"Well, we'll just do this and tell the tech companies, you guys are techies, nerd harder, and solve this problem, and that will solve it." and so the lack of actual technical understanding of what is and what is not possible leads to this kind of nonsensical result.
• 35:59
  Mike Masnick: the thing I'm wondering is, like, well, what happens now?
• 36:02
  Mike Masnick: Because, because it is this sort of impossible to deal with law, does everyone just ignore it?
• 36:09
  Mike Masnick: Are there lawsuits?
• 36:12
  Mike Masnick: Does, you know,
• 36:13
  Ari Cohn: I assume somebody's gonna file a lawsuit over it, and it just...
• 36:16
  Ari Cohn: You can't comply with it.
• 36:18
  Ari Cohn: There's literally no way to comply.
• 36:19
  Ari Cohn: Uh, it's just, it really, I can't see any way that that kind of law can survive.
• 36:25
  Ari Cohn: It's just, it's just literally saying you're liable and there's nothing you can do about it.
• 36:30
  Ari Cohn: And, I, I don't know, you know, what, what to do with that.
• 36:34
  Ari Cohn: It's just, it's so outrageously, inane that it's hard to actually find the words.
• 36:40
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 36:41
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 36:41
  Mike Masnick: I mean, the thing that gets me about these kinds of laws too is that I think it, it really decreases respect for the rule of law, right?
• 36:49
  Mike Masnick: I mean, if, legislators are passing laws that are literally impossible to comply with, that are just fundamentally incoherent to anyone who understands the technology, it makes just respect for, anything that a legislature does much less, and I don't see how that's helpful.
• 37:07
  Ari Cohn: Yeah.
• 37:07
  Ari Cohn: It, it's not, I mean, you, you don't see it because it's not there.
• 37:11
  Ari Cohn: It, it's just, it is absolutely harmful and it really just it's not a good look.
• 37:16
  Ari Cohn: it really, it's just you're passing these laws with no idea what you're doing and what are we sending people to these legislatures to do?
• 37:24
  Ari Cohn: What are, what are we accomplishing here when legislators are just making things up that don't make sense?
• 37:30
  Ari Cohn: I mean, it's, it's embarrassing
• 37:33
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 37:33
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 37:34
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I sort of wonder, like, where does all this go?
• 37:37
  Mike Masnick: Like, right now, obviously, all the states are, pushing different kinds of, regulations, and it's just sort of this widespread,"We have to do something about the technology.
• 37:46
  Mike Masnick: The technology's bad.
• 37:48
  Mike Masnick: the federal government is completely useless," and therefore the states feel that they need to step in and, do something.
• 37:55
  Mike Masnick: But we never see...
• 37:57
  Mike Masnick: I mean, almost all of the plans are, problematic.
• 38:00
  Mike Masnick: and this is just sort of a really clear indication of that, and that it's technically incoherent.
• 38:05
  Ari Cohn: never gonna be able to like, stop people from doing people things.
• 38:09
  Ari Cohn: I mean, the law is not a solution for all of humanity's problems, and it can't be because the law cannot fix or really control even human beings.
• 38:18
  Ari Cohn: I mean, the sooner we realize that, the better off we'll be.
• 38:21
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 38:22
  Mike Masnick: Well, if you can figure out how to do that, I would appreciate it.
• 38:25
  Ari Cohn: I'll, I'll nerd harder.
• 38:26
  Mike Masnick: There we go.
• 38:28
  Mike Masnick: There we go.
• 38:29
  Mike Masnick: Uh, moving on, there's really, really interesting and worthwhile read, and obviously all the, sources we're using we'll have in the show notes.
• 38:38
  Mike Masnick: but there was this great piece in Tech Policy Press this week, by Apar Gupta talking about, India's digital censorship infrastructure.
• 38:47
  Mike Masnick: And I found this to be just a really, really fascinating read and really worthwhile because it goes into great detail in terms of what things have happened in India that gave them the justification to put in place rules to allow the government to demand certain content to be blocked.
• 39:06
  Mike Masnick: And this is interesting to me.
• 39:08
  Mike Masnick: A-a-a-about decade ago, I had written a report on, like, different intermediary liability and different censorship regimes within different countries, and one of the, the actually the most permissive and strongest protection-wise was India at the time.
• 39:24
  Mike Masnick: That was about a decade ago.
• 39:25
  Mike Masnick: And ever since then, they have backslid, drastically to almost o- the opposite extreme.
• 39:32
  Mike Masnick: And it's sort of interesting to see how they came from...
• 39:35
  Mike Masnick: you know, there were some early court cases or court cases in the sort of early 2010s timeframe that effectively found that India had the sort of IT regulations effectively created a Section 230-like regime that, that said platforms weren't liable.
• 39:52
  Mike Masnick: That has changed drastically over, over the last decade.
• 39:56
  Mike Masnick: And the thing that struck me about this article was as he walks through the reasons, these reasons all sound familiar.
• 40:03
  Mike Masnick: There are things about child safety and national security and, oh, we need to protect values, Indian values.
• 40:13
  Mike Masnick: you know, it's the, usual ways that you wrap suppressive laws of, Oh, terrorists," and,"Protect the children." that's all there.
• 40:22
  Mike Masnick: And then it wraps up in the, this, like, fear about AI deepfakes.
• 40:28
  Mike Masnick: That is, like, the sort of, crowning achievement is like,"Oh, AI deepfakes are going to do all this damage, and therefore we need these effectively censorship laws to allow the, takedown of, content." And then the article gets into, like, so what is actually happening?
• 40:45
  Mike Masnick: And it turns out, surprisingly for, anyone who was born yesterday, but perhaps not for, for anyone slightly older, these laws have been used You know, they've been used more and more, and almost every example that they have, though it's secret, the, the takedown demands are issued in secret, so they don't have a full picture.
• 41:04
  Mike Masnick: But of the ones that they do have a picture of, it is used repeatedly to take down content that is critical of the ruling party in India.
• 41:11
  Mike Masnick: So, satire, things that are just critical of the government, it is a censorship tool and is used for censorship and is used by the powerful party in control to suppress criticism.
• 41:24
  Mike Masnick: does that surprise you, Ari?
• 41:26
  Ari Cohn: It absolutely does not.
• 41:28
  Ari Cohn: That's where all of this always goes, and they just did it really quickly.
• 41:32
  Ari Cohn: I mean,
• 41:32
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 41:32
  Ari Cohn: people have been freaking out about deepfakes for what?
• 41:35
  Ari Cohn: Six years now, and there's still very little evidence that it's this gigantic problem that people have said it's going to be.
• 41:42
  Ari Cohn: It's so easy to scare people about deepfakes and all the things that they could do that it's low-hanging fruit.
• 41:48
  Ari Cohn: It, it's a target-rich environment.
• 41:51
  Ari Cohn: and it just...
• 41:53
  Ari Cohn: point to the things that have happened because not many of them have actually happened.
• 41:57
  Mike Masnick: mean, the, and the crazy thing is, I- if I remember correctly, I think one of the earliest"Control Alt Speech," episodes we had, we had a discussion about how politicians in India specifically were using deepfakes in actually creative ways, where it wasn't being used to fool people, but was saying, like, they were creating deepfake versions that were clearly labeled as deepfake versions to allow constituents to ask questions.
• 42:23
  Mike Masnick: You know?
• 42:23
  Mike Masnick: Oh, you want, you wanna talk to this politician, you can call them on the phone or, through an online service and talk to them.
• 42:31
  Ari Cohn: It's like what Eric Adams did in New York, which, you know, far be it from me to praise Eric Adams, but, you know, he, used AI to kind of, uh, have his voice conveying messages in other languages, and people were so upset because they thought,"Oh my God, he's giving people the misimpression that he speaks so many languages," which, whatever.
• 42:49
  Ari Cohn: But, like, it is so much more engaging and you feel so much more included in the polity when you hear something in your tongue from the actual person in their voice rather than through a translator, that, like, I think the benefits of that outweigh any negative that comes from people thinking that Er- Eric Adams speaks multiple languages.
• 43:09
  Ari Cohn: Like, who cares?
• 43:11
  Ari Cohn: Like, that is just such a positive for democracy that, like, it, it baffles me that people got worked up about
• 43:16
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 43:17
  Mike Masnick: but I do think that, this story about what is happening in India just replays a story that, that has been shown over and over again, where it is very easy to justify laws that are for the suppression of speech to base it on whatever scary thing that is happening, whether it's national security, protecting the children, some new technology is doing something bad and is harmful.
• 43:39
  Mike Masnick: And over and over again, it comes back to examples of how that then becomes used by the powerful to suppress the less powerful or the marginalized.
• 43:48
  Mike Masnick: And...
• 43:49
  Ari Cohn: It also makes things a lot cheaper for people who want to challenge established interests and creates more options for people, and the people in power do not like that.
• 43:57
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 43:57
  Mike Masnick: So I thought this was a really, really interesting story.
• 44:00
  Mike Masnick: It's just, yet another case study of where speech suppression laws, get abused in, in, problematic ways.
• 44:07
  Mike Masnick: And then I think we'll move on to our final story of the week on another issue that is, I guess, depending on how you argue it, could be a moral panic or might not be.
• 44:18
  Mike Masnick: but, there's all this talk of banning mobile phones in schools, that we've been told that is part of the problem.
• 44:25
  Mike Masnick: That is why the kids these days are not all right, if, if we're to listen to some folks.
• 44:33
  Mike Masnick: and there's now a study that has come out, a fairly large-scale study looking at whether or not the cell phone bans in schools have worked.
• 44:41
  Mike Masnick: this was actually, was a pretty interesting study.
• 44:44
  Mike Masnick: You know, it's still fairly early, but this was pretty, pretty large scale, and they actually worked with a company that provides these bags that, you can put your cell phone in and sort of locks it for a certain period of time.
• 44:55
  Mike Masnick: and so a bunch of schools are apparently using those.
• 44:57
  Mike Masnick: So when you arrive in school, you drop the phone in a bag.
• 45:00
  Mike Masnick: And so they looked at the results in those schools versus other schools.
• 45:04
  Mike Masnick: And those other schools often still had some sort of mitigation.
• 45:08
  Mike Masnick: They weren't just letting kids use cell phones, wildly throughout the day.
• 45:12
  Mike Masnick: but the thing that they found that was most interesting and then sort of the headline grabber was that the test results were not any better.
• 45:20
  Mike Masnick: the schools that banned cell phones, if it was true that this was causing, bad study habits or whatever, kids weren't learning, the test results did not reflect that.
• 45:30
  Mike Masnick: There was no improvement in the schools that had the full, start to finish of school cell phone ban.
• 45:37
  Mike Masnick: There were also, the report found, at least briefly, though it looks like the effect went away, that over time, initially there were more disciplinary problems in the schools that banned cell phones.
• 45:49
  Mike Masnick: but it was unclear why.
• 45:51
  Mike Masnick: It could've been kids getting around the ban, it could've been kids
• 45:55
  Ari Cohn: There are children involved.
• 45:56
  Ari Cohn: It could be a bazillion different things.
• 45:59
  Ari Cohn: The variables are
• 46:00
  Mike Masnick: it could be kids who were used to looking at cell phones all the time suddenly have nothing else to do and don't know what to do with their time and just start doing vandalism.
• 46:09
  Mike Masnick: I don't know what, what, what it might've been.
• 46:11
  Mike Masnick: But they said that, that effect seemed to decrease over time, so that, may have just been a transitory effect.
• 46:17
  Ari Cohn: Turns out one size fits all isn't really a great solution.
• 46:21
  Mike Masnick: yeah.
• 46:22
  Mike Masnick: I mean, the, the study did say that, teachers still liked it.
• 46:26
  Mike Masnick: they claim the students were paying more attention, that they had less issues to deal with because, the cell phones were banned.
• 46:32
  Mike Masnick: but I think it's, you know, similar to what we said with the other study about the Online Safety Act earlier in the podcast.
• 46:38
  Mike Masnick: it's a mixed bag.
• 46:39
  Mike Masnick: These are complicated issues, and there isn't a clear, Oh, this is definitely the thing to do." And a full cell phone ban has some benefits, but also is not this, grand solution that fixes everything.
• 46:52
  Ari Cohn: Yeah, I mean,
• 46:53
  Mike Masnick: about it?
• 46:53
  Ari Cohn: I'm not particularly, worked up about cell phone bans in general.
• 46:58
  Ari Cohn: Like, if schools wanna try that, like, I've always thought that's not a wholly unreasonable thing to wanna try.
• 47:04
  Ari Cohn: I think there are probably schools that it works better at than others.
• 47:08
  Ari Cohn: I think, you know, as with anything else, it really just depends on particular circumstances.
• 47:12
  Ari Cohn: I, you know, I can see reasons why you wouldn't wanna ban kids from bringing cell phones at all.
• 47:18
  Ari Cohn: Uh, I think that might get into, you know, some problematic areas.
• 47:22
  Ari Cohn: So maybe, you know, I think the pouches thing or, you know, making kids kind of surrender them is if you want to, go that path, that's probably the way to go.
• 47:30
  Ari Cohn: But you know what?
• 47:31
  Ari Cohn: I'm an old person.
• 47:32
  Ari Cohn: I went to school without cell phones and, you know, I do think that kids probably miss out on some of the interactivity with your classmates that one might have had.
• 47:42
  Ari Cohn: Um, I think there is a strong argument for that.
• 47:44
  Ari Cohn: So, you know, I don't think it's, it's an unreasonable position.
• 47:48
  Ari Cohn: So, I'm in favor of schools trying, seeing whatever works best for them.
• 47:53
  Ari Cohn: I, you know, I'm opposed to the government kind of mandating, like California, you know, mandating that all schools ban cell phones.
• 48:00
  Ari Cohn: I think that's just not going to be the way to go.
• 48:03
  Ari Cohn: But, you know, schools will figure out what's best for their students, and we should let them experiment.
• 48:07
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, that's sort of my take on it too.
• 48:09
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I think that, schools can come up with more flexible rules.
• 48:12
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I've talked about this before, like I am in California, I have kids in, in school and, literally last night as we're recording this, the school board for the high school had a, a meeting about how, how the hell are we gonna implement the, the new California rules.
• 48:27
  Mike Masnick: And I, I thought that the high school actually did a fairly good job of how they handled devices in schools, which was that, it's not like at the beginning of the day you drop it in a pouch, you can't access it till the end of the day, but that as you walk into each class, they put a board on the wall in every classroom that has little pockets, and so everybody puts their phones in the pockets.
• 48:47
  Mike Masnick: You don't have it, but if there's an emergency or you need it or there's a scenario where it is actually important to get it, they can.
• 48:54
  Mike Masnick: And so we have had that where there was a case where the school went in lockdown because there was a fear of an active shooter, which is a wonderful thing that happens these days in the United States.
• 49:05
  Mike Masnick: Uh, and we got a text from my child telling us what is going on and that they're safe and all this.
• 49:12
  Mike Masnick: And to me, that is a valuable thing that they had access to the phone in order to let us know that they were okay and they were in a safe spot.
• 49:19
  Mike Masnick: and so I think having the flexibility is really important but I do think it is important to recognize that, you know, as the study said, it's not some, secret key to solving all the problems of kids and devices and whatever.
• 49:33
  Mike Masnick: It's not going to suddenly make them into better students, whatever, you
• 49:37
  Ari Cohn: Yeah, again, it's a human being issue, and you have to deal with human beings instead of trying to paper over it by, presenting it as a technology problem.
• 49:44
  Ari Cohn: You, you have to, you have to solve the human level issues, and if you don't do that, you're not gonna really get anywhere.
• 49:49
  Mike Masnick: I, I think, I think you have just keyed in on the theme of today's podcast.
• 49:54
  Mike Masnick: These are all about human issues where, people are jumping to the idea that it's a technological issue with a technological solution, and the reality is, is not.
• 50:03
  Mike Masnick: That's such a good way to sum it up.
• 50:05
  Mike Masnick: I feel like we should just stop there.
• 50:07
  Ari Cohn: Yeah
• 50:08
  Mike Masnick: But Ari, thank you so much for, for taking the time and discussing all this with us.
• 50:13
  Mike Masnick: lots of good stories this week.
• 50:15
  Mike Masnick: Lots of, interesting things to discuss.
• 50:17
  Mike Masnick: and as always, we thank all of the publications that we cited today.
• 50:21
  Mike Masnick: They'll all be in the show notes, so please go check those out.
• 50:24
  Mike Masnick: there's a bunch of really good stuff.
• 50:26
  Mike Masnick: And a reminder again to check out the Patreon, patreon.com/ctrlaltspeech, Control Alt Speech.
• 50:35
  Mike Masnick: Uh, you can sign up there.
• 50:37
  Mike Masnick: You have a few more weeks before we raise the prices on the, top level of support.
• 50:42
  Mike Masnick: and so everyone, thank you for listening.
• 50:45
  Mike Masnick: Ari, thank you for being such a wonderful guest host.
• 50:47
  Mike Masnick: We'll be off next week and then back the following week.
• 50:53
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• 51:07
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