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Transcript

School of Hard Blocks · Ctrl-Alt-Speech

• 0:00
  Mike Masnick: So Chris, we have a lot to talk about this week regarding kids and technology, some of which I am warning listeners may get a little bit dark.
• 0:09
  Mike Masnick: so before we start, let us remind each other about how the internet can be fun.
• 0:15
  Mike Masnick: Uh, what, what kind of fun thing did you find on the internet this week?
• 0:20
  Chris Messina: You know, I, it's always an interesting week when Jack Dorsey drops another product, uh, especially, you know, kind of in the Blockhead lineage.
• 0:27
  Chris Messina: And so he's been doing a bunch of interesting things in the agent world.
• 0:30
  Chris Messina: First, he launched something called Buzz, to reuse Google's old, uh, product name, uh, which I worked on.
• 0:36
  Chris Messina: but this week he launched something called Bird, B-E-R-D.xyz, and I found this to be so cursed and so bizarre and yet very worth looking at because, you know, I think a lot about AI and creativity and expression, and literally it's like going into the, Willy Wonka-like factory and seeing a bunch of, like, Willy Wonka-ian agents running around that do things for you.
• 1:03
  Chris Messina: And the characters are quite literally, like, out of a Willy Wonka-type, 1930s-style movie.
• 1:09
  Chris Messina: Um, and so imagine ChatGPT but in a Willy Wonka factory, and that's kind of what, Bird looks like.
• 1:16
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I did see that, and it, it is...
• 1:19
  Mike Masnick: I keep hearing people, building similar things themselves, like personally.
• 1:24
  Mike Masnick: like I have a friend who, who's set up, you know, has a whole bunch of different AI agents running, but he has built like a little anthropomorphic system so that like when an agent isn't working, it shows it's sleeping, and he can click on it, and
• 1:38
  Chris Messina: There are these pets that you can enable inside of ChatGPT it's a whole trend, and I think we're gonna see more of them.
• 1:44
  Chris Messina: And it's finally because, you know, once you have all these agents, they need some sort of identity, some kind of expression, or else you lose track of them.
• 1:50
  Chris Messina: they are like pets.
• 1:51
  Chris Messina: And so I think that's what this is, showing us, and it sort of leads into a story that we'll talk about later around, uh, AI companions
• 1:57
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 1:57
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 1:57
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 1:58
  Mike Masnick: Well, I will say the fun thing that I found this week was I went down this rabbit hole.
• 2:02
  Mike Masnick: I did not know about this.
• 2:04
  Mike Masnick: you might'cause you know about everything that is happening on the internet.
• 2:08
  Mike Masnick: Uh, but, this concept, which I guess first became very popular in South Korea and is now spreading around the world, which is, vaguely referred to as dopamine shopping.
• 2:19
  Mike Masnick: Have you come across this?
• 2:20
  Chris Messina: Oh, I I can sort of instantly get an im- an image for what this might be, but, but please go on.
• 2:24
  Chris Messina: Tell me more
• 2:25
  Mike Masnick: so it is basically based on the idea that a lot of people...
• 2:29
  Mike Masnick: You know, e-commerce is very easy.
• 2:30
  Mike Masnick: We, all use it in some form or another, and there are times where it feels like maybe some of us buy stuff just because it's fun to shop
• 2:39
  Chris Messina: It feels good.
• 2:39
  Chris Messina: Of course.
• 2:40
  Chris Messina: Yeah, it's shop- shopping therapy, you know, used to be something we do in the real world.
• 2:43
  Mike Masnick: Exactly.
• 2:44
  Mike Masnick: but this trend and there are a bunch of different sites for it, and I have gone down the rabbit hole of looking at, a whole bunch of them, is allowing you to shop without the actual shopping.
• 2:54
  Chris Messina: Oh, man.
• 2:55
  Chris Messina: Oh, so it's like you have infinity dollars and you can buy everything and you can LARP as an internet shopper.
• 3:01
  Mike Masnick: Exactly.
• 3:01
  Mike Masnick: It is exactly
• 3:02
  Chris Messina: I kind
• 3:03
  Mike Masnick: You can put it in...
• 3:04
  Mike Masnick: You can put in your address, and it will track where the non-existent package is, showing it traveling to you even though no money is you, you know, you put it in your shopping cart, you put in, you can put in fake credit card details on some of them or whatever, and they don't charge you, but you can track your package.
• 3:23
  Mike Masnick: You can see it shipping to you.
• 3:24
  Mike Masnick: You can buy all sorts of expensive stuff, clothing, electronics.
• 3:28
  Mike Masnick: So the main one I found was called dopamineshop.co, but there's also, Food Never Comes, so you can order food that literally never comes, or Fake Eats, which is like a DoorDash kind of thing, so you can, if you're, too obsessed with that.
• 3:43
  Mike Masnick: there's a whole bunch of these sites, and I was overjoyed at finding
• 3:48
  Chris Messina: This is like, it's so Matrixian.
• 3:49
  Chris Messina: It's just like, you know, if, if you were wondering if we're living in a simulation, now you can literally simu-shop.
• 3:54
  Chris Messina: honestly, I would imagine people would pay a subscription for this that would actually c- lower the cost of their monthly spend, and they'd have, like, less crap that they have to deal with.
• 4:02
  Chris Messina: I, I don't know what that would do for, you know, the actual retailers, but, um, I kind of
• 4:08
  Mike Masnick: it is, it is fun.
• 4:10
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 4:19
  Mike Masnick: Hello, and welcome to Ctrl Alt Speech, the podcast where we make sense of the major debates shaping online speech, platform power, content moderation, I guess fake shopping, and the future of the internet as well.
• 4:32
  Mike Masnick: It is August 20th, 2026, and this week we're discussing how schools are dealing with technology, how courts are looking at technology, why Discord made some changes in Brazil, and for our Patreon subscribers, the rise of AI companions around the globe and the laws that seek to regulate them.
• 4:51
  Mike Masnick: Ctrl Alt Speech is my weekly venting session hosted by me, Mike Masnick, the founder and editor of Techdirt.
• 4:58
  Mike Masnick: And this week, my regular co-host Ben is on vacation, so we have a special guest host.
• 5:05
  Mike Masnick: this is Chris Messina, who has been involved in Silicon Valley and open source software and social media for a couple decades now.
• 5:13
  Mike Masnick: but it has to be said every time your name is mentioned, your biggest claim to fame, and I know this hangs over you like an albatross, is that you are the inventor of the hashtag.
• 5:25
  Mike Masnick: So whether you like hashtags or hate hashtags, Chris is to blame.
• 5:31
  Chris Messina: Yes, I am.
• 5:31
  Chris Messina: And we just actually celebrated or, ridiculed the, the 19th birthday of the hashtag.
• 5:36
  Chris Messina: So the hashtag predates almost all of these topics that we're talking about today
• 5:40
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 5:41
  Chris Messina: So if I have a, if I have a, jaded or dated lens, uh, it is because of that
• 5:46
  Mike Masnick: excellent.
• 5:47
  Mike Masnick: I will note that, Chris is a Patreon supporter, as are many other listeners.
• 5:53
  Mike Masnick: And so you too can support us via Patreon, and you will get early access to episodes, longer episodes with a more in-depth story as well, and also at certain levels, a chance to submit suggestions for other stories to cover.
• 6:08
  Mike Masnick: You can find us at patreon.com/ctrlaltspeech.
• 6:13
  Mike Masnick: That's C-T-R-L-A-L-T speech, which you know how to spell.
• 6:20
  Mike Masnick: Also, if you sign up during the month of August, which somehow is rapidly c- coming
• 6:25
  Chris Messina: know.
• 6:26
  Mike Masnick: I-- this is in- incredible.
• 6:29
  Mike Masnick: if you use the discount code TRUSTCON, all capital letters, T-R-U-S-T C-O-N, you get 90% off your first month, which means you have nothing to lose, or rather maybe a
• 6:42
  Chris Messina: 10%?
• 6:43
  Mike Masnick: a dollar, or so to lose.
• 6:45
  Mike Masnick: All right.
• 6:46
  Chris Messina: Take all the money you save from dopamine shopping and
• 6:48
  Mike Masnick: There you go.
• 6:49
  Mike Masnick: Exactly.
• 6:50
  Mike Masnick: thank you.
• 6:51
  Mike Masnick: that is the sales pitch.
• 6:53
  Mike Masnick: let us get into this week's stories.
• 6:55
  Mike Masnick: Chris, both you and I have kids in high school, and I think we have both been thinking a lot about back to school stuff, because that is the time of year It
• 7:05
  Chris Messina: in California.
• 7:06
  Chris Messina: Yeah.
• 7:06
  Mike Masnick: it's, it, it has already happened.
• 7:09
  Mike Masnick: I have, one kid in high school and one in middle school, and somehow in where we live, the high school and the middle school are in different districts, which means they have different schedules.
• 7:20
  Mike Masnick: and so they started at different times and different weeks, which has been bizarre.
• 7:25
  Mike Masnick: But my kids are back to school, as are yours, and so we've been thinking about the, back to school and technology side of things.
• 7:32
  Mike Masnick: So, you found a story that you thought, was interesting and worth talking about.
• 7:35
  Chris Messina: Yeah.
• 7:36
  Chris Messina: Yeah.
• 7:36
  Chris Messina: So, my 16-year-old, you know, went back to, high school in Oakland, and, came home with a new set of restrictions on their devices, you know.
• 7:44
  Chris Messina: And there had been some restrictions last year, but this year, you know, there was a new California law that effectively, makes it so that kids cannot use their devices all day long.
• 7:54
  Chris Messina: and in fact, from the start of school, they have to put them in these little pouches, That's one of the things that, um, my teen is most annoyed by.
• 8:00
  Chris Messina: It's like, why are they spending all this money on these stupid pouches when kids are just finding ways to get around them?
• 8:05
  Chris Messina: but it sort of-- brings to light, I think, the real-world implications of a lot of the topics that you guys discuss here in terms of when these bans go into effect, how they affect kids, whether or not these things are actually effective.
• 8:16
  Chris Messina: as you and Ben have discussed how kids find a way around these types of prohibitions.
• 8:21
  Chris Messina: I've heard that even some teachers, in the schools are actually giving their, their kids who go to these schools, burner phones to put into the pouches because there's no verification.
• 8:31
  Chris Messina: and that e-effectively, these little pouches, I guess, are magnetized.
• 8:34
  Chris Messina: And so essentially, you know, you put the device in the pouch, it's like magnetically sealed, and then later in the day, you sort of go through a, process of demagnetizing it.
• 8:42
  Chris Messina: And the magnets themselves, I guess, are not guarded, so kids will just go and sort of like open the pouches.
• 8:48
  Chris Messina: so it's, it's just this like, cat and mouse kind of arms race circumstance, presumably, with the intention, I guess, of, preserving kids' attention and helping and supporting them in focusing on, their schooling.
• 9:00
  Chris Messina: But it also feels a little bit like, I guess there's, there's a question of like when and how should kids learn effective use of technology, and whose responsibility in society is it?
• 9:11
  Chris Messina: And is prohibition the best way to arrive at an outcome where kids are savvy about how to use these technologies in effective and pro-social ways?
• 9:18
  Chris Messina: And I don't know that we have like a, a permanent answer to it, and I don't know that there is just one answer.
• 9:22
  Chris Messina: But seeing these bans go into effect, sort of feels like both, I don't wanna say it's like the easiest and simplest thing to do, but from an adult's older generation who's like looking at the kids, barely looking at themselves and saying,"Oh my God, we must do something," putting the devices in a hermetically sealed envelope for the course of the, the school day, feels like, you know, job done, I can like, wipe my hands and, and move on.
• 9:46
  Chris Messina: And yet it doesn't actually, I think, address the underlying, issues around how society and culture needs to adapt and change to one where these, technologies are, are part of our everyday experience.
• 9:54
  Chris Messina: You know, one of the, things that was crazy about this was just that on one of the syllabuses, it sort of outlined the expectations for the kids for the year, and one of them was, of course, no devices in class.
• 10:03
  Chris Messina: And then the very next line was,"And we will be distributing the assignments on Google Docs in Google Classrooms." And like you're like left to like wonder like, okay, so you've taken away the, the devices, and yet that is exactly how the kids are supposed to perform their, their studies.
• 10:15
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 10:16
  Mike Masnick: I, I mean, one of the things that I saw with my high schooler too was, not just that, like, they do take away the devices, but then often they have to do homework where it's on paper and they have to
• 10:26
  Chris Messina: Yes,
• 10:27
  Mike Masnick: math, they have to...
• 10:28
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, either writing or, or math where they'll have to, do the equations on paper, but then to submit them, they have to take a photo of the homework with their phone and then upload it.
• 10:38
  Mike Masnick: And I was just like,"Oh my God, this just doesn't seem like the right way to be doing this." and none of that actually does teach kids, like, the appropriate use of the technology, and there's also this sort of weird assumption that as soon as you either get out of high school or graduate from high school that you're, now suddenly you're okay with using the phone when, when you've had this sort of prohibition.
• 11:01
  Mike Masnick: I mean, there are obvious parallels and, you know, not all of them are entirely fair with, like, underage drinking and stuff like that, where you have the, the prohibition and you say you can't drink until 21, and you, of course, one, kids get around it and they figure out ways to, drink underage.
• 11:18
  Mike Masnick: And then two, like, you don't have the kind of thing where you sort of teach kids how to drink responsibly or, you know, be, you you
• 11:26
  Chris Messina: in Europe,
• 11:27
  Mike Masnick: You're right.
• 11:27
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 11:28
  Mike Masnick: Where they, they tend to do better.
• 11:30
  Mike Masnick: Obviously, there are exceptions and extremes in, in all cases.
• 11:34
  Mike Masnick: and so, I fear that we're sort of heading down a similar path.
• 11:38
  Mike Masnick: it's funny.
• 11:39
  Mike Masnick: So the high school here, they're not doing the hermetically sealed pouches.
• 11:43
  Mike Masnick: I know a lot of schools are.
• 11:45
  Mike Masnick: That has become very popular.
• 11:46
  Mike Masnick: I'm in the middle of Silicon Valley, and so I think there's a big push and pull among parents around here.
• 11:53
  Mike Masnick: And, like, the school last year when this law went into effect, they sent out these emails and they had, like, board meetings or whatever where they, they wanted parents to weigh in, and you had very, very extremely different positions where there are lots of people who are just like,"Ban the technology entirely." There are lots of people who are saying like,"No, I would like my kid to learn how to use these things appropriately," and there are, you know, some benefits to using them well.
• 12:18
  Mike Masnick: and so the sort of compromise that the school has is that...
• 12:22
  Mike Masnick: And we had this before, and I have actually spoken about this on the podcast, where every room, every classroom has a board with pockets, not hermetically sealed pockets, just pockets, and they're, they're numbered
• 12:34
  Chris Messina: I think that's what OUSD had last
• 12:36
  Mike Masnick: Okay.
• 12:37
  Mike Masnick: so the high schools here have had that for I think going back three years now, and they're continuing to use that, though this year because of the California law, they're also banning smartwatches, which they, they didn't before.
• 12:51
  Mike Masnick: And so
• 12:52
  Chris Messina: Because kids would be like chatting, you know, like, like using like the, the watch, right?
• 12:56
  Mike Masnick: will find a way.
• 12:57
  Chris Messina: They will, yes.
• 12:59
  Chris Messina: Yeah
• 12:59
  Mike Masnick: we've spoken before about the, the fact that like, if it's not this, they'll, build their own social media in, like, Google Docs comments or famous one that we discussed, last year at some point was, Spotify comments.
• 13:12
  Mike Masnick: Like, kids would pick an old, podcast that nobody was paying attention to.
• 13:17
  Chris Messina: like an internet alleyway, and they'll go hang out
• 13:19
  Mike Masnick: And just find a spot where they can communicate.
• 13:22
  Mike Masnick: you know, I imagine that that still happens, but, I think, y- there are different things here where talking to teachers about it, every teacher I've spoken to loves the idea of having a school ban.
• 13:32
  Mike Masnick: That's one where I haven't heard Like, so many teachers seem to say that it does make a difference and that kids are paying more attention in class.
• 13:40
  Chris Messina: it's a collective act- action problem, right?
• 13:42
  Chris Messina: So you kind of have to who- do the whole school so that there's not kids that are kind of like skirting around it and, you know.
• 13:48
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 13:49
  Chris Messina: that makes sense.
• 13:50
  Mike Masnick: there were studies where there had been about, 10 years ago, there had been another, you know, there had been attempts to ban phones in, in certain schools, and almost all of them went back and switched after a few years.
• 14:01
  Mike Masnick: And there was a famous one, New York City had done it, and what they found in New York City, though New York City has now since re-banned phones in schools, but they had done it about 10 years ago.
• 14:10
  Mike Masnick: and what they found was that the enforcement then was very uneven.
• 14:14
  Mike Masnick: And in fact, lower resourced minority students tended to get in trouble much more, that it just became this tool
• 14:21
  Chris Messina: Of like repression.
• 14:22
  Mike Masnick: Exactly.
• 14:23
  Mike Masnick: you know, so I worry about that, though it feels like the approach this time around with schools and, phone bans is a little bit more thoughtful.
• 14:32
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 14:32
  Mike Masnick: But I mean, as you said, like people are bringing in burner phones and, so the extreme case that every- that lots of parents say is like,"Well, there are school shootings.
• 14:40
  Mike Masnick: If there's a school shooting, I wanna be able to communicate with my kid, and I hate this idea that you're not letting me do that." and then there are other cases where it's like there are stories of phones being used to capture a teacher being abusive.
• 14:54
  Mike Masnick: and if kids don't have access to their phones, they don't do that.
• 14:56
  Mike Masnick: There are stories of, school newspapers and student reporters who need their phones to document things that are happening in the school.
• 15:03
  Mike Masnick: you know, there are some cases I've seen where like student reporters get, an from the rule because they have a legitimate use
• 15:10
  Chris Messina: if they, they actually would allow them to go back to, like, film cameras or something.
• 15:14
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 15:15
  Mike Masnick: I, I I don't know.
• 15:16
  Mike Masnick: There's, there's all sorts of ways of, dealing with this, but I...
• 15:19
  Mike Masnick: You know, it does seem weird.
• 15:20
  Mike Masnick: I mentioned to you, like, right before we, we sat down to discuss stories today, I'd been out for my morning walk, and, uh, I was listening to a podcast in which there was a, Gen Z, a young woman who is, uh, you know, angry about how unsafe she believes technology is for her generation, and she, you know, has argued that she had eating disorder problems which she felt were brought on by scrolling too much Instagram.
• 15:50
  Mike Masnick: and she was interviewing Jonathan Haidt, who is, you know, sort of, The bogeyman of, of the...
• 15:56
  Chris Messina: of, of some of these bands?
• 15:58
  Chris Messina: Yeah.
• 15:58
  Mike Masnick: And it was interesting because she was certainly a, huge critic of technology.
• 16:03
  Mike Masnick: and he went into the interview sort of thinking like this was his audience and his crowd, and, he talks about all the problems that he sees with technology.
• 16:12
  Mike Masnick: And about halfway through the interview, she didn't quite turn on him exactly, but she kinda pointed out, like, Your entire approach is this prohibition and banning, and that doesn't really help because it makes the technology more appealing to young people, and it never teaches us how to use it, and it does absolutely nothing to make it safer for everybody else." And he didn't quite know how to deal with that, which I thought was really interesting as well, that he just kind of, like, stumbled over it a bit.
• 16:42
  Mike Masnick: And, there was audience questions, and, and a couple other people brought up this idea of, our community, we meet people and have friends and all this stuff through our phones.
• 16:52
  Mike Masnick: They're mediated through our phones, but we've...
• 16:54
  Mike Masnick: in many cases, it's been really helpful.
• 16:56
  Mike Masnick: And he basically denied their lived experience and was just like,"Well, you know, if you didn't have social media and the phone, you would have better relationships with people around you." And I...
• 17:07
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, exactly.
• 17:08
  Mike Masnick: It's like, I don't, I don't know that that's true.
• 17:10
  Mike Masnick: There was this, this assumption that, like, phone-mediated interactions are not real.
• 17:15
  Mike Masnick: and I think we need to get past that because that's not true.
• 17:20
  Chris Messina: I mean, a- as we've taken away, like, third spaces, you know, that are safe for kids to go in, or, you know, we vilified walking down the street, you know, as a solo teenager or teenager with friends, or there's just, like, fear about, other people.
• 17:33
  Chris Messina: It's made it, I think, very hard for people to, like, le- and I know, like, at least, uh, again, speaking from my experience in, with my kids, like, they are happy to put the phone down and hang out with friends.
• 17:42
  Chris Messina: They also will use their phone to find new friends.
• 17:45
  Chris Messina: Instagram is a great place to find and discover people that share an interest in music, you know, going to concerts, things like that.
• 17:52
  Chris Messina: And so especially if you're in some kind of school environment where there's not a lot of people who, are interested in the same things or share your values, I mean, like, these types of social platforms cut across all those divisions and allow y- like, expand the pool of people who you might discover that are actually quite compatible and quite interesting to you.
• 18:10
  Chris Messina: And so, it just sort of feels like there's this conservatism in Haidt's approach, where it's like,"Oh, back in my day when we didn't have these devices, well, we were all so social, and we all loved each other, and we were all eg- egalitarians, and there was no racism, and there was no sexism, and everything was equal, and we just loved each other, and kumbaya, man." And you're like,"That never happened, bro." Like, that wasn't the way things were, and it's not that way now, you know?
• 18:32
  Chris Messina: And so, like, you're kinda coming at this from this, fantastical perspective that I think isn't...
• 18:38
  Chris Messina: I don't know.
• 18:38
  Chris Messina: I mean, I, like, I read his book and I've listened to a lot of podcasts, and there's, like, some useful things in there.
• 18:43
  Chris Messina: But my feeling all along, I mean, has been there's a need to figure out how we equip humans and humanity and society to meet this moment, and that we will be using these technologies for a long time to come, and that it requires people to, like, elevate themselves and to meet the moment and all the challenges that these technologies present to us, as opposed to saying,"Well, if we just, you know, minimize their use or, you know, sequester them," that somehow putting them away and only allowing a certain segment of the population to have access to them, that's the way that it's going to go well.
• 19:16
  Chris Messina: I mean, these are, these are information tools.
• 19:18
  Chris Messina: These are social tools, and if people and humans cannot learn to interact together with these tools, we're gonna, I think, stay pretty stuck in this, like, adolescent, juvenile, kind of moment.
• 19:29
  Chris Messina: and I don't think it's gonna be that way forever.
• 19:31
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 19:31
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I, I do think, you know, some of this, and this is not to put it all on the parents, but, there has to be some role for the parents as well in terms of helping kids learn to use the technology well if the schools are not going to do it.
• 19:44
  Chris Messina: I think this is a very important and, dicey topic.
• 19:47
  Chris Messina: You know, as parents, right, there's a question for us, right?
• 19:50
  Chris Messina: Like, what are we doing or what have we done?
• 19:53
  Chris Messina: What tools do we make available, you know, to, to help our ki- Like, I'll give you sort of an example.
• 19:58
  Chris Messina: as, as a relatively tech-savvy person, I'm trying to set up my 16-year-old with an Apple Cash account so they can go out and buy things.
• 20:05
  Chris Messina: Because it turns out, like cash isn't king anymore.
• 20:06
  Chris Messina: Uh, Apple Cash is.
• 20:09
  Chris Messina: and so when they wanna go to like, you know, the store or whatever and get something, They'll have their phone, and they'll, they'll use it for that purpose.
• 20:15
  Chris Messina: And there's, a process or a flow now that Apple requires a teen to have an ID in order to get, an account.
• 20:22
  Chris Messina: And obviously, this defends against, fraud and other things like that.
• 20:25
  Chris Messina: But the gates that we put in the way of using some of these technologies are, I think, baffling to a teen user.
• 20:31
  Chris Messina: They don't understand the threats.
• 20:33
  Chris Messina: They don't understand the risks.
• 20:35
  Chris Messina: it's one thing to sort of say,"Hey, you know, you drink a lot of alcohol, you're probably gonna throw, throw up and, you know, make bad decisions." You know, you can point to like movies and things like that to show people what that looks like.
• 20:43
  Chris Messina: On the other hand, when it comes to, technology, I think it's, it's harder to provide, uh, like a cause and effect narrative or, or to show technology and be like,"We're gonna put these parental controls on your device or on your use of, uh, you know, Instagram and things like that because we're anticipating that, you may do things that are negative or that you may be bullied or things like that." Now, I would be very interested to know, and I haven't seen any stats on this, like in terms of what the adoption of these parental controls are.
• 21:11
  Chris Messina: Because I think the point that you're pointing to is, well, parents have some duty of care and responsibility, and I agree with that.
• 21:17
  Chris Messina: At the same time, for every single app that exists, there's a different set of parental controls.
• 21:22
  Chris Messina: And in fact, ChatGPT just came out with their version of ChatGPT for teens in addition to the parental controls that they launched last year.
• 21:29
  Chris Messina: And so, you know, we're, we're a Claude household.
• 21:32
  Chris Messina: You know, we're not really a, a ChatGPT household.
• 21:34
  Chris Messina: So does that mean that I have to go into each one of my kids' apps and, turn on parental controls and then learn each of those systems?
• 21:41
  Chris Messina: And again, as technically savvy people, we might be able to do that and make that work.
• 21:47
  Chris Messina: On the other hand, for the vast majority of parents who are already stressed out and worried about it, I, I suppose maybe this is why the, the, prohibition and the ban happens because getting the time and the attention to fine-tune the controls to meet a, a, parent's values just takes too goddamn long, And like they may not even have visibility, right?
• 22:05
  Chris Messina: 'Cause like then you talk about like Discord or other platforms that kids are spending time on, and the parents may not have a lot of visibility into what actually goes on in those places.
• 22:12
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 22:12
  Mike Masnick: Though, though, yeah, I mean, it's ha- has parental controls.
• 22:15
  Mike Masnick: All these have parental controls, but, I mean, the argument I was making was even, different than that even because, like, I agree all those things are effectively impossible to keep up with.
• 22:24
  Mike Masnick: You might have, like, on one or two apps, but you can't do parental controls on, all the apps.
• 22:30
  Mike Masnick: to me, the thing that becomes important is, being able to communicate with the kids about, like, generally understanding potential risks and also, having an open path for communication where it's just like if you come across something online that, you don't understand or is problematic, do you have someone that you feel comfortable talking to?
• 22:50
  Mike Masnick: Whether it is us, your parents, or if there's a trusted teacher at school or something along those lines, where it's not so much we're going to lock down and limit what you can do.
• 23:01
  Mike Masnick: It is like, please understand that there are potential dangers.
• 23:05
  Mike Masnick: We can't predict them all.
• 23:06
  Mike Masnick: We can't stop you from coming across all of them, but please understand that there's someone that you can talk to if you do come across these things.
• 23:13
  Mike Masnick: And to just, begin to teach them how to recognize the potential dangers.
• 23:17
  Chris Messina: I mean, it's a really good point, and I don't think I've talked to another, enough parents, like, about this specific matter.
• 23:22
  Chris Messina: It's like, if your kids bring you something, you know, that's like salacious or they clearly shouldn't see or shouldn't have access to, but maybe one of their friends sent it to them or it was just making the rounds, how do you greet that with, you know, curiosity and without shaming them or without blaming them?
• 23:37
  Chris Messina: Without saying,"How could you look at this?" Like, you know, those types of responses because I think that the amount of content that, kids can be exposed to is enormous and it really is more about guiding them, I think, with, you know, support and structure and kind of like welcoming that in which requires, you know, at least when I think about my parents, like my parents were like, I think pretty aggressive about blaming me and blaming the messenger.
• 23:59
  Chris Messina: Like if I came with a question like,"Well, what do you think about this?" And they'd be like,"Oh, how dare you," you know,"talk about drugs," you know, or something.
• 24:05
  Chris Messina: So it requires I think parents to really have that kind of open-endedness, um, when they encounter these types of, you know, materials and I, don't know where the discourse is on that.
• 24:14
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 24:15
  Mike Masnick: No, I think it's important.
• 24:16
  Mike Masnick: I mean, one of the things that I've tried to get across, and haven't had to use this, but, like, I've expressed to my kids that, like, if they ever feel that they've come across something where they're in trouble online, to come to me and start out by saying, like,"I need help." Or like, I, I gave them a specific phrase which is, like, supposed to signal to me, too, like,"Don't be mad at me.
• 24:37
  Mike Masnick: right now I need help
• 24:38
  Chris Messina: Yeah
• 24:39
  Mike Masnick: I need you to scold me for this," because...
• 24:40
  Chris Messina: In case of fire, break
• 24:42
  Mike Masnick: Exactly.
• 24:43
  Mike Masnick: and so I find that something like that, where it's just like,"Look, Don't think that I'm going to be upset with you.
• 24:49
  Mike Masnick: come to me and be able to talk to me about it.
• 24:51
  Mike Masnick: And if you use this, it's like a signal to me, now is not the time to worry about why you got into this situation.
• 24:57
  Mike Masnick: Let's deal with the situation first." But that is, it's tricky and, like, having both parents and kids accepting that you know, feeling comfortable with that is, very difficult.
• 25:06
  Mike Masnick: I wanna move on.
• 25:07
  Mike Masnick: though this is, the next story is sort of similar kind of thing, which is that in France, they, put in place a similar social media ban, for under 15s, is sort of copying the Australia ban and, and elsewhere that is trying a ban, except that this constitutional court said,"No, you can't do that." And this was, a thing that, Emmanuel Macron rushed in.
• 25:30
  Mike Masnick: He, uh, wanted it to be his legacy, and he wanted it in place before the school year started.
• 25:35
  Mike Masnick: Um, he got it done, and then it got undone by the French Constitutional Court, which was very interesting, where they, you know, very short, very easily readable decision where they just said,"This is way too broad.
• 25:49
  Mike Masnick: and even if there is a legitimate interest," and they said, you know,"The government has a legitimate interest in protecting children, this is not the way to do it.
• 25:56
  Mike Masnick: kids have some amount of rights as well that we have to respect.
• 26:00
  Mike Masnick: And also, the only way to implement this is through universal age verification, and that creates massive privacy problems." and I think was, like, you know, it was really good to see the court come out and say that, and I think, some of the, the reasoning behind it also applies elsewhere in Europe as other countries in Europe start rushing to, try and apply this as well.
• 26:21
  Mike Masnick: What, what did you think of that, ruling
• 26:23
  Chris Messina: Yeah.
• 26:23
  Chris Messina: You know, I mean, there's been so many of these now, that I guess I wonder, you know, if this is a, almost like Project 2025 kind of initiative where there's model legislation that has been written and then just gets copied and pasted in all these different jurisdictions
• 26:35
  Mike Masnick: It's, I was gonna say, it goes back to Jonathan Haidt.
• 26:37
  Mike Masnick: I mean
• 26:38
  Chris Messina: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:39
  Chris Messina: I guess I, I, I felt like There was like this like there was a tipping point after which there was like the narrative, and I do think like, you know, the anxious generation
• 26:47
  Mike Masnick: Yeah
• 26:47
  Chris Messina: cauterized, or not cauterized, like sort of like mobilized a lot of people to be like,"Oh, we must take action.
• 26:52
  Chris Messina: We must do something." And then the, the question is,"Well, what do we do?" And then it's like ban hammer, and that became like the solution.
• 26:58
  Chris Messina: And as a result of seeing that play out, I think a lot of the nuance and trade-offs, you know, that many of us in this space have been talking about for years now suddenly come to the fore because you're like,"Oh, well, you ban that, but now you have to implement universal age verification." And then we go to the question of, well, where, at what level of the stack does that exist?
• 27:18
  Chris Messina: And that means now your computer is adversarial to the user because it requires you to reveal information about yourself in order for you to gain access to it.
• 27:27
  Chris Messina: And so that is a very different sort of proposition where it's almost like a citizenship verification now.
• 27:32
  Chris Messina: It's like age verification in order for you to use the thing that unlocks communication, unlocks commerce, unlocks all manner of different things.
• 27:40
  Chris Messina: And yeah, I mean, just again, going back to my Apple Cash experience, you know, where it's like there had to be like an identity, card that was like taken a photograph in order to get the age verification in order to open up this Apple Cash account.
• 27:51
  Chris Messina: Now you're talking about doing that just to allow anyone to use any kind of device, and the ways in which that can go wrong, the problems with that are, rife.
• 27:59
  Chris Messina: And so unless you have the apparatus set up to provide support to that, you know, and in the era of like reducing government and DOGE and like things like that, you know that there's gonna be this like massive set of people that are disenfranchised because they can't get through the system because they look too old, or they type like an adult, or they don't, or they type like a child and they're 35, you know.
• 28:18
  Chris Messina: And there's just like these false positives, and you're left in this kind of like, you know, limbo state, this, um, uh...
• 28:23
  Chris Messina: Who was the, uh, the author that talked about being in like this purgatory?
• 28:26
  Chris Messina: Anyways, classic story.
• 28:27
  Chris Messina: Uh, Kafka, like a Kafkaesque sort of situation, right?
• 28:31
  Chris Messina: Where like you just, you can't use computers because it thinks that you're like 12 when, when you're not.
• 28:36
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 28:36
  Mike Masnick: Yeah
• 28:37
  Chris Messina: So, anyways, I think it's, it's good though that the, courts are pushing back to some degree, especially in these overly broad circumstances.
• 28:43
  Chris Messina: 'Cause as we mentioned before, it's the implementation and the enforcement that ultimately imperils people who are less well-resourced.
• 28:51
  Chris Messina: And so it's fine if you have like an absolutely like, uh, homogeneous, society or culture and it's like relatively small and, everyone agrees and has the same values, but that's just not the real world,
• 29:01
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 29:01
  Mike Masnick: No, it, it is, it is tough.
• 29:03
  Mike Masnick: It'll be interesting to see what happens with these other laws.
• 29:05
  Mike Masnick: But, was sort of pleasantly surprised that the French court was, you know, was willing to, to do this
• 29:10
  Chris Messina: we'll, I guess we'll, we'll see,'cause like the thing that seems to be happening in that case is that they're going to be maybe attempting again, but
• 29:16
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 29:17
  Chris Messina: set of rules, right?
• 29:19
  Mike Masnick: And so Macron has sort of instructed the, I guess the French assembly to, figure out a way to get this through, and he wants it before he leaves office.
• 29:29
  Mike Masnick: So this is very much like tied to his legacy as opposed to necessarily like what actually works.
• 29:34
  Mike Masnick: What does, what, what actually makes sense?
• 29:36
  Chris Messina: Is, is the guy who was like so pro tech, he's, he's sort of fallen far from that tree, I guess
• 29:40
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 29:40
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 29:41
  Mike Masnick: Now speaking of kids and safety and e-everything, and also Oakland, where you were talking about the changes in the Oakland School District, this week there's a trial going on in Oakland, about kid safety.
• 29:53
  Mike Masnick: And so, uh, there there was some reporting on that.
• 29:56
  Mike Masnick: Do, do you wanna talk a little bit about the reporting that you saw?
• 29:58
  Chris Messina: Yeah, I mean, this is another one of these, big Meta trials.
• 30:01
  Chris Messina: It's just like, just like we have like, the Jonathan Haidt heard around the world, you know, legislation.
• 30:05
  Chris Messina: I feel like on the other hand, there is a, let's get a pound of flesh, from these big tech companies for their years of, potential neglect, or I don't know, not caring, uh, I guess, uh, about the uses of, of their products.
• 30:18
  Chris Messina: And I guess like I wanna be mindful that I probably sound or at least come across as more of an apologist these platforms and that's not, that's not true.
• 30:25
  Chris Messina: I think that it's, it's, subtle and it's nuanced.
• 30:27
  Chris Messina: And again, I guess my trauma, you know, comes from obviously the relationship with the hashtag and people being upset about like abuses of the
• 30:34
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 30:35
  Chris Messina: "Well, I never intended it for it to be used that way." And so, you know, should I be like,"Well, I should have taken it back and then, not giving people the chance to use it?" But then it turns out that people have found communities and friendships and all sorts of things.
• 30:46
  Chris Messina: So like any technology, it is, a blade that cuts both ways and I certainly imagine that there were choices that Meta made that were completely, commercially oriented and as a public company that exists in capitalism, they were doing the thing that was necessary to stay, as a publicly traded, company and business.
• 31:02
  Chris Messina: I think the question is, given that and given the societal harms, you know, that arose from that previous context, who then bears the responsibility and w- what do they need to do about it?
• 31:13
  Chris Messina: And so in this case, you know, you have a researcher, like a social science researcher, you know, and when I, when I was at Google, we had a lot of these folks who were also looking into how people use social media and technology.
• 31:23
  Chris Messina: You know, I worked on Google Plus and you find such interesting broad, like broad spectrum uses.
• 31:29
  Chris Messina: There's so many uses that are so boring and so uninteresting and so basic and like sharing recipes, you know?
• 31:36
  Chris Messina: That stuff is not gonna end up in someone r- someone's report, and yet it might actually be like the 70 percentile like use case.
• 31:42
  Chris Messina: And then you have someone like this who is finding, abuse and negative things, things that humans have done to each other for a long time, perhaps both amplified and now you're able to detect it because it's happening in, in a digital substrate.
• 31:54
  Chris Messina: And, you know, he's trying to say,"Look, you know, Meta knew about these things, should have done more about it, and therefore they're responsible." and so that's kind of I think what this trial is about, as many of the trials have been about.
• 32:03
  Chris Messina: it raises just this, continuing question about, if you know about these things but it's a minority of cases and you also implement, child protections or parental controls, but then the parents don't use those controls or the children are not, guided by the parental figures, is it ultimately the corporation's responsibility to raise those children or to figure out how those, kids can, can or should not be able to access that technology?
• 32:26
  Chris Messina: and I don't...
• 32:26
  Chris Messina: Again, as a society, you know, as a free society, you know, one where civil liberties are important, I don't think we've found, the silver bullet answer yet.
• 32:33
  Chris Messina: so that, that's, that's my read on this.
• 32:35
  Chris Messina: But you, you tell me what am I missing?
• 32:36
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 32:36
  Mike Masnick: No.
• 32:37
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I'm, I'm sort of in, in agreement on that, and it's like I don't like Meta.
• 32:42
  Mike Masnick: I don't trust Mark Zuckerberg.
• 32:43
  Mike Masnick: I, I have all sorts of problems with, Meta's platforms, and I don't generally use them.
• 32:50
  Mike Masnick: and I have no doubt that he has made many poor choices.
• 32:54
  Mike Masnick: But, a lot of the headlines this week were about, Arturo Bejar, I think that's how you pronounce his name, um, who was sort of this whistleblower, who complained...
• 33:03
  Mike Masnick: Who said, you know, like, I did this research and I found that, people were using it in unsafe ways, and I sent all these emails to Mark Zuckerberg, and I didn't get any response." and it makes for really great headlines and really great stories, but I always-- I don't like those stories because I don't think that they're telling an, a fully accurate picture of what is going on.
• 33:24
  Mike Masnick: Because at any company, you can find, and I'm sure you've experienced this, and I've spoken to lots of people, you can find people who say,"Well, I had the solution.
• 33:34
  Mike Masnick: in my mind it was we should have done this, and the bosses didn't, and therefore that proves that they didn't care." And the reality is often somewhat different, which is that they have a bunch of different competing interests, and they have a bunch of different people saying,"Here are the best ways to deal with the safety aspects of it or to deal with these other things or these other competing interests," and they make decisions based on that.
• 33:57
  Mike Masnick: And we don't know all of the different competing things, and we can say that we personally disagree with the decisions that Mark Zuckerberg made, and I think there are lots of cases where I did.
• 34:08
  Mike Masnick: But, like, to say because this one person suggested one path, we don't know how viable that path was or what the trade-offs were or what the things were or, or, even would that approach have actually helped.
• 34:21
  Mike Masnick: So it's very easy to write these headlines, and I'm sure they work well in court, you
• 34:27
  Chris Messina: Угу
• 34:28
  Mike Masnick: But I find them problematic in terms of, like, using that to define the narrative, which is the same thing with, like, the Frances Haugen documents that came out originally.
• 34:37
  Chris Messina: you know, I...
• 34:37
  Chris Messina: The thing that I find so challenging about, these stories is, like, if Meta weren't as successful and as, like, broadly used as it is, would anybody care?
• 34:46
  Chris Messina: And the reason why I ask that is because, you know, you look at a platform like Mastodon or Blue Sky, you know, which we've both been involved with, and maybe they didn't make, you know, similar choices that Meta made, and yet fewer people use it.
• 34:57
  Chris Messina: And so there's this question, if you do the right thing, in quotes, and you don't do the things that optimize for growth, and you don't grow, and you don't survive, then have you succeeded in addressing the harms that, is being brought up in this trial?
• 35:12
  Chris Messina: And so there's a question about, like, whether, you know, this research, had it been im- implemented and adopted, would've actually led to addressing those harms or whether it would've actually caused the business not to, to continue to grow, in which case, then it wouldn't have mattered anyways.
• 35:28
  Chris Messina: Some other nefarious entity that chose to do the, other thing would've continued to grow.
• 35:32
  Mike Masnick: all the people, right?
• 35:33
  Mike Masnick: And you can argue that it's, like more people went to TikTok because Facebook was focused on all of these, like, safety
• 35:40
  Chris Messina: That's right.
• 35:40
  Mike Masnick: you can say TikTok was less safe,
• 35:42
  Chris Messina: I mean, look at like, not that I'm, I'm like...
• 35:44
  Chris Messina: I guess I'm just using my own experience'cause it's grounded in reality, but like with Google Plus, we gave people a lot of tools based on the things that they were saying that Facebook was doing that they didn't like.
• 35:55
  Chris Messina: You know?
• 35:55
  Chris Messina: So you could have what we called circles, and you could put all of your contacts into circles, and you could share specifically with just the people that you wanted to share with.
• 36:02
  Chris Messina: And you know what?
• 36:03
  Chris Messina: it was too hard.
• 36:04
  Chris Messina: People didn't get it.
• 36:05
  Chris Messina: And it turned out that they didn't wanna actually take advantage of the control.
• 36:08
  Chris Messina: So maybe I'm, I'm somewhat cynical because the products that I've worked on where we gave people what they claimed to want in terms of control over their social and digital experiences ended up being too hard, too much work, and ultimately those things didn't survive the test of time because they didn't get adopted.
• 36:27
  Chris Messina: And so when people complain about Meta, it's like you're complaining about humans and their choices, and yet you want the company to be responsible for just giving people what they want.
• 36:36
  Chris Messina: And so I find that, that balance, in a capitalist context to be very challenging to sort of make sense of.
• 36:41
  Chris Messina: You know, maybe that's why the, the, the Democratic socialists are, you know, on the rise'cause they, they wanna try a completely different structure and okay, like
• 36:49
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 36:50
  Chris Messina: like that would be the way to
• 36:51
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 36:52
  Mike Masnick: I mean, it is funny how, how few of these conversations take into account, like, how Wall Street would have reacted.
• 36:57
  Mike Masnick: Like, you can read the stories of, like, the downfall of Twitter, before Elon took over, where it was like...
• 37:03
  Mike Masnick: Wall Street came in and effectively threatened Jack Dorsey if he didn't implement a bunch of things that were focused on growth as opposed to actually making the platform healthier.
• 37:12
  Mike Masnick: there are all sorts of things where, like, we should have part of that be part of this discussion, not just like, oh...
• 37:17
  Chris Messina: Yeah,'cause I mean, their, their whole thing was healthy conversations,
• 37:20
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 37:21
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 37:22
  Chris Messina: And now, now look at the platform.
• 37:23
  Chris Messina: Now l- like, you know, it's like be careful what you wish for, right?
• 37:27
  Chris Messina: It's like it was bought out by the guy who's the richest man in the world to turn it into something that is more like what, you know,
• 37:32
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 37:33
  Chris Messina: built because that's what people want
• 37:34
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 37:35
  Mike Masnick: last of our eye catching stories before we go on to the Patreon section, we'll make this one quick.
• 37:40
  Mike Masnick: this is down in Brazil where Discord has had to ban live streams, down in Brazil.
• 37:47
  Mike Masnick: This is based off of a very tragic story, and as often happens in these things, there are tragic stories behind, uh, the stories where a young child, I believe 13 years old,
• 37:58
  Chris Messina: Mm-hmm
• 37:59
  Mike Masnick: a live stream and effectively bullied into taking their own life.
• 38:02
  Mike Masnick: And that is horrific in all sorts of ways.
• 38:06
  Mike Masnick: There's no possible way to describe that in, in a scenario that is not horrific.
• 38:11
  Mike Masnick: the people involved in the bullying to lead to that result have been arrested and, there are cases like this where I see this and you say,"This is a law enforcement issue that law enforcement should be taking care of." However, the wife of the president of Brazil took it upon herself to blame Discord specifically and said that they were not doing enough to keep people safe, and there's been an effort to say that Discord is not...
• 38:35
  Mike Masnick: there's a new law in Brazil that requires age verification and safety and all this kind of stuff, and they're arguing that they did not, do enough to protect against this kind of unique case, and therefore Discord's position is to ban all live streams in Brazil.
• 38:50
  Mike Masnick: And I understand why they would do that.
• 38:52
  Mike Masnick: I don't think that helps.
• 38:54
  Mike Masnick: I mean, it's the same conversation that we're having over and over again today in this, in this hour of, it's easy to say that and it's easy to blame the technology for it, but should be
• 39:04
  Chris Messina: people are just going to go to a different platform.
• 39:06
  Chris Messina: And so maybe because Discord was visible, and obviously this is like a tragedy.
• 39:10
  Chris Messina: Like
• 39:10
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 39:10
  Chris Messina: even imagine what it's like to be a parent of a 13-year-old that, decides, to do this or is bullied into doing this.
• 39:16
  Chris Messina: I mean, to me it's a despicable, thing for humans to cause other humans to do, period.
• 39:21
  Chris Messina: You know, whether it's in the real world or whether it's the digital world.
• 39:24
  Chris Messina: The question about whether the platform is liable for this or what they could have done to prevent it, I think is, is exactly like what we've been talking about.
• 39:31
  Chris Messina: and whether or not age verification would have actually prevented this type of situation from occurring, or if it would have happened again elsewhere or maybe in a, you know, darker alley on the internet as opposed to Discord.
• 39:41
  Chris Messina: And so I don't know.
• 39:43
  Chris Messina: You know, my, my heart goes out to like the, the parents involved and, and even, you know, to the perpetrators.
• 39:47
  Chris Messina: Like how horrible must your life and self-esteem be to like treat other people this way through a digital platform?
• 39:53
  Chris Messina: But, to your point, from...
• 39:54
  Chris Messina: What my read of the situation is like Discord was going back and forth between, you know, I think the, the law came down and then Discord was like,"Well, we can't do age verification because of these nuances and subtleties." Then they eventually got there, and even still, you know, it didn't work out.
• 40:07
  Mike Masnick: Yeah
• 40:08
  Chris Messina: I think kids are gonna find a way, to use, you know, live stream.
• 40:11
  Chris Messina: I mean, this happened on Facebook, uh, you know, when, when they started doing live streams.
• 40:16
  Chris Messina: You know, and now they've like, you know, implemented a five-second delay or whatever, and they have AI that's trying to catch these things.
• 40:21
  Chris Messina: But regardless, I mean, who do you call?
• 40:23
  Chris Messina: Like, what's the 911 on the internet when something goes wrong?
• 40:26
  Chris Messina: and that leads to all kinds of, um, what's it called when, um...
• 40:29
  Chris Messina: Oh, swatting, right?
• 40:30
  Chris Messina: So You know, like it can be abused in both directions.
• 40:34
  Chris Messina: I mean, ultimately, why don't we just ban humans from using the internet and then we'll solve the problem?
• 40:37
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 40:38
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 40:38
  Chris Messina: joking.
• 40:39
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 40:39
  Mike Masnick: There, there are solutions to all these things.
• 40:41
  Mike Masnick: You could turn off the internet, but there there might be, there
• 40:43
  Chris Messina: Exactly.
• 40:44
  Mike Masnick: costs.
• 40:46
  Mike Masnick: Yes, exactly.
• 40:47
  Mike Masnick: God.
• 40:48
  Mike Masnick: Well, on that note, uh,
• 40:50
  Chris Messina: sorry.
• 40:50
  Chris Messina: We, we, we warned you guys this was gonna be
• 40:52
  Mike Masnick: this
• 40:52
  Chris Messina: I don't know why I feel so dark
• 40:53
  Mike Masnick: was g- g- gonna, gonna, be a little bit dark.
• 40:55
  Mike Masnick: Um, we are gonna move on to the Patreon-only part of the, the podcast.
• 41:00
  Mike Masnick: if you are not a Patreon subscriber, this is where we say goodbye.
• 41:04
  Mike Masnick: But, now is a good time to subscribe to the Patreon.
• 41:08
  Mike Masnick: Uh, you can use the discount code TRUSTCON, all capital letters, and you can hear the next part of the discussion we're-- in which we're going to be talking about, more potentially dark subjects, about AI companions, and mental health, and some of the attempts to regulate AI companions..
• 41:26
  Mike Masnick: But, uh, if you're, not a Patreon subscriber, thanks for listening, and, go subscribe to the Patreon.
• 41:32
  Chris Messina: I did it
• 41:34
  Announcer: That's the end of this week's free edition of Ctrl Alt Speech.
• 41:38
  Announcer: To hear the extended episode with additional coverage, become a Patreon supporter at patreon.com/ctrlaltspeech.
• 41:45
  Announcer: That's C-T-R-L Alt Speech.
• 41:48
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• 41:55
  Announcer: Thanks for listening