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Transcript

Chat Bot Your Tongue? · Ctrl-Alt-Speech

• 0:00
  Ben Whitelaw: So, Mike, last week, you surprised us all when you demonstrated a real aptitude for the youth lingo.
• 0:06
  Mike Masnick: Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm an expert on this.
• 0:09
  Ben Whitelaw: You, you're really down with the kids.
• 0:10
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, so last week I asked you to spill the tea.
• 0:13
  Ben Whitelaw: You understood what that meant.
• 0:14
  Ben Whitelaw: and so this week I'm using you as a gauge for another youth targeted app called Wiz.
• 0:21
  Ben Whitelaw: Okay?
• 0:22
  Ben Whitelaw: it's in the headlines this week for reasons that we'll touch on briefly in introduction.
• 0:26
  Ben Whitelaw: But the Wiz app, gets users on board by saying you can pop into online profiles and chat wiz new people.
• 0:34
  Mike Masnick: Very clever.
• 0:36
  Ben Whitelaw: that's not a typo.
• 0:38
  Ben Whitelaw: chat with new people.
• 0:39
  Ben Whitelaw: So, so let's start this week's episode by asking what would you pop into your online profile and who would you chat Wiz?
• 0:48
  Mike Masnick: Well, I'll say I, I attended a very nice event yesterday in San Francisco, where I was on a panel talking about AI and safety related things, which I think will be a big part of today's discussion.
• 0:59
  Mike Masnick: But I got to chat with a bunch of very interesting people at the event.
• 1:02
  Mike Masnick: and it was a, really, really nice time talking about AI safety related issues.
• 1:08
  Mike Masnick: So that was my chat with new people.
• 1:10
  Mike Masnick: how about you?
• 1:11
  Mike Masnick: what, uh, what profile would you pop into, or who would you chat Wiz.
• 1:15
  Ben Whitelaw: I would chat with some researchers in Europe who have gone to great lengths to solicit information from platforms under the DSA and have been squashed and kiboshed at every level it seems.
• 1:28
  Ben Whitelaw: we're gonna hear a bit about that today, but yeah, sparing a thought for those, European researchers trying to get valuable data out, out of platforms to do important research.
• 1:37
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm here for you.
• 1:48
  Ben Whitelaw: Hello and welcome to Control Alt Speech, your weekly roundup of the major stories about online speech, content moderation, and internet regulation.
• 1:55
  Ben Whitelaw: It's October the 30th, 2025, and this week's episode is brought to you by Web Purify, an InTouch company.
• 2:02
  Ben Whitelaw: InTouch CX is a global leader in digital customer experience management, back office processing, trust and safety and AI services.
• 2:10
  Ben Whitelaw: And in fact, web Purify have just launched their very first podcast Trust issues, the brilliantly named trust issues, which brings you insights from the people who keep the internet safe.
• 2:19
  Ben Whitelaw: And here at Control Speech, we are fans.
• 2:22
  Ben Whitelaw: It focuses on digital trust and safety, content moderation, ai, customer experience, lots of the stuff that we talk about here on the podcast each week.
• 2:30
  Mike Masnick: And it's a podcast,
• 2:32
  Ben Whitelaw: and it's a podcast who doesn't love podcasts, right?
• 2:35
  Ben Whitelaw: but the difference with, with.
• 2:36
  Ben Whitelaw: This podcast with trust issues is that it delivers that interesting information in candid round table style discussions with industry innovators and leaders.
• 2:46
  Ben Whitelaw: hosted by a brilliant host, Adish Daley, who previously worked in trust and safety at TikTok, and a little known fact about her practice as a barrister at law.
• 2:55
  Ben Whitelaw: So she's, she's qualified in a number of different ways, and, uh, there are three episodes of trust issues out already.
• 3:01
  Ben Whitelaw: My favorite is with, Dr.
• 3:03
  Ben Whitelaw: Tracy Elizabeth, who's the former head of Family Safety and Developmental Health at TikTok.
• 3:08
  Ben Whitelaw: She's also worked at Netflix, previously before that as well.
• 3:11
  Ben Whitelaw: And she, in the latest episode talks really interestingly about a story that we talked about last week, Mike.
• 3:17
  Ben Whitelaw: Instagram's move to a PG 13 content classification and the importance, which we didn't really talk about, of well-trained human moderators in making sure that that content is classified consistently, over time, which I, was a completely new angle for me.
• 3:32
  Ben Whitelaw: did you have a favorite episode
• 3:34
  Mike Masnick: Yeah,
• 3:34
  Ben Whitelaw: the ones that have been published yet?
• 3:36
  Mike Masnick: yeah.
• 3:36
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I, I listened to all three, and I, think they're really good.
• 3:38
  Mike Masnick: The one that stood out to me, and I think will be somewhat, for obvious reasons, was the second episode.
• 3:43
  Mike Masnick: Which was with Abba Roy from Google, and it's because he helped create a game called B scam Ready.
• 3:52
  Mike Masnick: And this is a trust and safety style game, which is something that I am deeply familiar with, having created a few of my own.
• 3:59
  Mike Masnick: so I, I hadn't heard of it before, but it's sort of teaching people how to recognize potential scams and whether or not they might be, you know, targeted, by a scam.
• 4:09
  Mike Masnick: And it, it's a really interesting tool because, you know, as.
• 4:12
  Mike Masnick: Google has found and lots of other people have found, is that the more you educate people to look out for this stuff on their own, to be kind of media literate, the more likely they are to recognize the scam early and, perhaps stop it.
• 4:23
  Mike Masnick: And so, uh, we talk about, the thinking behind it and the game and how it works.
• 4:27
  Mike Masnick: And, I thought it was absolutely fascinating for both the game designer element and the trusted safety element and the combined trusted safety games.
• 4:36
  Mike Masnick: That is a very small community of people.
• 4:38
  Mike Masnick: So.
• 4:41
  Ben Whitelaw: High praise.
• 4:41
  Ben Whitelaw: High praise indeed.
• 4:42
  Ben Whitelaw: the other episode that is out already is with a name.
• 4:45
  Ben Whitelaw: Many people would know, Cecily Fi Hoy, I hope I pronounce that right.
• 4:49
  Ben Whitelaw: Who is, the kind of main character in the Netflix series?
• 4:52
  Ben Whitelaw: Tinder Swindler.
• 4:53
  Ben Whitelaw: There are some great guests coming up from Rob Locks and from Blue Sky.
• 4:56
  Ben Whitelaw: so really, as our partner for today's episode, you know, If you're a trust and safety specialist, if you're a community experience leader, somebody thinking about AI or just broadly interested in tech, go and have a listen to trust issues.
• 5:09
  Ben Whitelaw: The new podcast from Web Purify and InTouch CX company available on Spotify and YouTube.
• 5:15
  Ben Whitelaw: great to have them Part of today's show, this week we're talking about the pushback to AI chatbots the EU going after two big platforms under the DSA and whether Mike's undergraduate degree would get him enough credit to be in Chinese influencer.
• 5:31
  Mike Masnick: What a lead in.
• 5:33
  Ben Whitelaw: more on that soon.
• 5:34
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, I think we, we've got a lot to get through.
• 5:37
  Ben Whitelaw: Mark.
• 5:37
  Ben Whitelaw: This has been a, it's been a real grind to get through all of the stories since we can figure out what we're gonna talk about.
• 5:43
  Ben Whitelaw: I think we had maybe 25 stories to sift through today.
• 5:45
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, it was a, it was a big one.
• 5:47
  Ben Whitelaw: Most and a long while.
• 5:48
  Ben Whitelaw: so I think we'll, dive straight in.
• 5:50
  Ben Whitelaw: there's no time like the present.
• 5:51
  Ben Whitelaw: we're gonna start by talking about a series of stories about, the pushback I'd say, or the course correction to what has been a longstanding narrative that we talked about controlled speech, which is the concerns about, user safety on generative AI tools like chatt, pt, and other such tools.
• 6:10
  Ben Whitelaw: We know that there is, a particular stream of concern around mental health and particular kind of the mental health of, of young people.
• 6:18
  Ben Whitelaw: And we've talked on the podcast about the legal cases that have been brought against OpenAI, Google and character AI as some of the big companies for deaths related to the usage of, these tools by particularly young people, people in their teens.
• 6:33
  Ben Whitelaw: And so.
• 6:34
  Ben Whitelaw: There's a series of story this week that I think kind of bring together the, I would say the demand for the tools, particularly the, you know, as companions as AI companions in a world we just increasingly complex and, difficult to navigate.
• 6:46
  Ben Whitelaw: And the kind of the supply really of that and the challenges that we're seeing from a supply issue, and how companies and platforms and politicians are thinking about regulating that supply, into what I guess is a increasingly large and lucrative market for these services.
• 7:01
  Ben Whitelaw: Where did you want to, to kinda start?
• 7:02
  Ben Whitelaw: What's, the beginning of, of this thread that we're going to pull in today's episode?
• 7:07
  Mike Masnick: I think there's a lot of things, but I think, I think maybe we start with, uh, character ai, and, their decision, you know, they were sort of one of the first ones that people called out as, you know, concerns about it.
• 7:18
  Mike Masnick: And there was the lawsuit that was early on.
• 7:20
  Mike Masnick: They got a lot of attention and concerns about the nature of, companion chatbots and their potential impact on mental health.
• 7:28
  Mike Masnick: And the big announcement this week from character AI being that they were.
• 7:31
  Mike Masnick: Banning, those under 18 from having longer conversations with their, chatbots.
• 7:39
  Mike Masnick: And I, and I thought it was kind of interesting even in the, the way that they're implementing this, which is they're effectively weaning, teenagers off, where it is basically, I think it's starting with a limit of two hours a day that you can chat with someone and it'll get less and less.
• 7:53
  Mike Masnick: And then sometime, in about a month, they will block those chats entirely.
• 7:58
  Mike Masnick: I am not a user of character ai, so I don't fully understand some of the details here.
• 8:04
  Mike Masnick: They are saying that, teenagers will still be able to use the app for like, some element of generative AI generating videos or, or something of that nature, but not having sort of ongoing chats with characters anymore.
• 8:18
  Mike Masnick: And there is this element of, you know, I've seen some people sort of completely celebrating this.
• 8:24
  Mike Masnick: And, obviously with that, when you're banning teenagers, there's some element of age verification that's going on because you have to determine who is a teenager, and who is not, obviously the other half of that.
• 8:36
  Mike Masnick: and it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
• 8:40
  Mike Masnick: I feel that, that company was probably effectively forced into making that decision because of just the constant legal threats against it and the ongoing lawsuit and all of this discussion you know, how do, how do you respond to that?
• 8:55
  Mike Masnick: And it probably got to the point where it was easiest for them to say, okay, we're just gonna Cut off kids.
• 9:00
  Mike Masnick: Whether or not that makes a difference is, is a whole other question.
• 9:04
  Mike Masnick: And, I still have this general problem with the idea that the answer to any of these issues is, is an outright ban.
• 9:13
  Mike Masnick: do we think that if we ban people who are 16 and 17 from using a companion chatbot in any sort of form, that suddenly, you know, when they turn 18, suddenly they have the skills and the ability to use it appropriately.
• 9:26
  Mike Masnick: I find that hard to believe.
• 9:28
  Mike Masnick: and so I understand why character AI sort of feels pressured into this, but I, I find it, less compelling as a solution.
• 9:36
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 9:36
  Ben Whitelaw: This is, is surprising, I think because of The immediacy of this change.
• 9:41
  Ben Whitelaw: Right?
• 9:41
  Ben Whitelaw: Very, very often you have a platform say, okay, we've taken onboard, research, and the kind of media reaction to this, and we're gonna do something in a month or two months down the line.
• 9:51
  Ben Whitelaw: The change that you've explained there, the, the decrease to two hours is immediate.
• 9:55
  Ben Whitelaw: then the weaning takes place over the course of a pretty short period of time, of like a month or something.
• 10:00
  Ben Whitelaw: So there's something has happened here where you're right, there's been some sort of advice, legal perhaps, or, a change in kind of, you know, strategy, something internal has happened where they've thought this is the least worst option, for us as a company.
• 10:13
  Ben Whitelaw: and that's, I think what many people have been kind of calling for in some regards.
• 10:17
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, there's in the Verge story that we'll include in the today's show notes.
• 10:20
  Ben Whitelaw: There's lots of, you know, nonprofits, people who've been asked for their, comment on this story, and they're saying, this is what we've been asking for for a while.
• 10:27
  Ben Whitelaw: it backs up research that.
• 10:29
  Ben Whitelaw: was done earlier this year by Common Sense Media, which tested a lot of the AI models and found that, there was issues with the types of responses that under 18 users were getting.
• 10:40
  Ben Whitelaw: And so that research has been out there a while.
• 10:43
  Ben Whitelaw: It's taken something else, another force, another factor to, cause the reason why, they're changing that now.
• 10:48
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, and I'm sure, I'm sure legal liability is a big part of it.
• 10:51
  Mike Masnick: And, and also sort of the, the constant media bashing of this.
• 10:56
  Mike Masnick: And it's, you know, there's, there's a different story every week and it's not always about this one particular company, but I think at some point, lots of companies come to the point where they're just like, screw this.
• 11:05
  Mike Masnick: You know, like, we're just getting totally beat up on this.
• 11:07
  Mike Masnick: And I'm sure they have some sort of internal models in terms of how many of our users do we think are, of that age, and if we're cutting them off from the service, how much of an impact is that on our bottom line, as opposed to, getting past this media story and focusing on the larger audience of people over eight, over the age of 18.
• 11:23
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, because there clearly, there clearly is an opportunity, which will come on shortly be before we do, just to talk a bit about, that percentage of users that they believe is under, under 18, the CEO of character ai.
• 11:35
  Ben Whitelaw: Karen Deep Anand spoke to the Virgin, said he thinks it's around 10% of the user base, which obviously is, I was surprised about how kind of little that was, frankly, that we're under 18.
• 11:45
  Ben Whitelaw: So, but without kind of age assurance or age verification, as you say, it's impossible to know.
• 11:51
  Ben Whitelaw: We like to always kind of analyze the responses of platform CEOs when they're talking about safety.
• 11:56
  Ben Whitelaw: And I thought he, in that piece gave a couple of, kind of quite, kind of smart on the money comments about how the risk can never be zero.
• 12:03
  Ben Whitelaw: and also, you know, the fact that.
• 12:05
  Ben Whitelaw: These are big numbers that they're talking about, and there's always gonna be an element of people who are suffering from some sort of, you know, mental health crisis when they come onto the platform, which is something that often comes up in these discussions about, to what extent is this the responsibility of platforms to, manage that usage, on the number of users, is 10% kind of around the number you, you thought, where did, where did you think, a service like character ai, which where you can build your own, uh, character, a lot of people are using it to, kind of conjure up characters from books and films and tv?
• 12:36
  Ben Whitelaw: I would've expected to be higher.
• 12:38
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 12:38
  Mike Masnick: I mean, if, if you would, again, like I don't have any direct insight into it, so I don't know, but if you had just asked off the top of my head, I would've guessed it would've been higher, but not, not ridiculously higher, I would've probably guessed more around 20%.
• 12:52
  Mike Masnick: range.
• 12:53
  Mike Masnick: You know, I do think that there are plenty of adults who are using these tools also, and I think there is this sort of, The way it's talked about in the media is, is almost as if it's only kids who are using these kinds of tools.
• 13:05
  Mike Masnick: And I think that's clearly wrong.
• 13:07
  Mike Masnick: I think there's plenty of evidence that lots of adults find these tools useful as well.
• 13:12
  Mike Masnick: Which then gets me back to the point, and we'll talk about this in some other context as well, but like I.
• 13:16
  Mike Masnick: If we're in this world where so many people do find these tools useful in some form or another, in some cases, and this is the part that gets people scared, it's like, are you using it for therapeutic reasons, which I think a lot of people are, and that is beyond just the idea of like using it as a therapist, but being able to converse with someone, or in this case, I guess something is therapeutic for many people.
• 13:42
  Mike Masnick: Like if you don't have someone to talk to about issues, just being able to talk can be very helpful.
• 13:47
  Mike Masnick: and, you know, varying degrees and, and obviously depends on lots of context.
• 13:52
  Mike Masnick: and so to me there is this element of if that is going to be a part of many people's lives, wouldn't we be better set up?
• 14:01
  Mike Masnick: If we then were teaching people how to use it wisely and use it safely and use it appropriately, and this rush to jump in and just say, well, you know, the only way to deal with this is to ban it entirely.
• 14:15
  Mike Masnick: Just again, like, you know, and we've talked about this in other context, but it's, it's just like the prohibition, the just say no approach to things.
• 14:22
  Mike Masnick: And that never actually seems to work.
• 14:25
  Mike Masnick: You know, prohibition with alcohol didn't work saying, just say no to drugs.
• 14:29
  Mike Masnick: abstinence education, none of those things actually seem to work.
• 14:32
  Mike Masnick: They make adults feel better because they're not taking on the real issues with children.
• 14:38
  Mike Masnick: it allows adults to be like, well, you know, I've, I've protected the kids.
• 14:43
  Mike Masnick: And I don't think it's, it does a really good job of actually, getting kids to understand what is appropriate when, how, how to do things safely.
• 14:51
  Mike Masnick: and so you know, I, I, it, it has all the hallmarks of a typical moral panic, and I totally understand why character AI did this, and I don't fault them for making the decision that they did.
• 15:02
  Mike Masnick: But I think it's important to call out, like, we've seen this play out in other contexts before and it seems a little silly to me to think that, banning it is the only and best option,
• 15:14
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah.
• 15:14
  Ben Whitelaw: I, I was talking about this with a friend and we were saying that what's needed in a way is, an equivalent of having a glass of wine at home with your parents.
• 15:24
  Mike Masnick: right?
• 15:26
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, there's this idea that, you know, before you turn 18 in the UK at least, I'm not sure if, if this kind of happens, if there's a social norm for this in the us but certainly there's this idea in the UK and probably in Europe as well, more broadly, that if you have a, a glass of wine or a beer with dinner with your parents, you normalize alcohol in a certain setting so that when you turn 18, you don't go out and drink, three liters of that vodka and fall under the table.
• 15:51
  Ben Whitelaw: And so there's almost like a, kind of what we're lacking is that for the internet, the means by which kind of parents control the usage of the internet kind of via a control panel that only they have access to.
• 16:02
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and there isn't a kind of, it's not a socially, I guess like mediated interaction.
• 16:08
  Ben Whitelaw: it's kind of slightly, they have control and, they have to be very aware of.
• 16:13
  Ben Whitelaw: of the kind of harms of the internet to be able to talk to a young person about it in a way that is much like going for dinner and, saying, here's what a glass of wine looks like and here's how you drink it with dinner.
• 16:23
  Ben Whitelaw: So do you think there's scope for that in other ways?
• 16:25
  Ben Whitelaw: And how, how do you think we get there?
• 16:27
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 16:28
  Mike Masnick: and I think, you know, and we have talked about this in other contexts and I've certainly written about this and talked about it in the past, in other contexts as well, but you know, with the internet, I think it is important for parents to have a role in terms of teaching kids appropriate use, which is more than just banning it and talking about like, which apps are you using and why, and, and how to think about it.
• 16:50
  Mike Masnick: And also importantly, to make sure that kids have someone they can talk to.
• 16:57
  Mike Masnick: About these things that they feel comfortable talking to.
• 16:59
  Mike Masnick: And you in some cases, in many cases, it's like making sure that kids are comfortable going to their parents and saying, I made a mistake, or something bad has happened.
• 17:08
  Mike Masnick: And if it's not a parent, then having someone else who is a trusted adult in their life that they feel comfortable with.
• 17:14
  Mike Masnick: And we've talked about this, generally in the, with some of the, uh, you know, extortion scams, the sextortion scams where, what they're really relying on are kids who don't have anyone to go to who feel trapped and have no escape.
• 17:29
  Mike Masnick: And that's where the worst happens.
• 17:31
  Mike Masnick: And so I think there are ways to, you know, uh, Candace Rogers, who's a researcher, who we've mentioned before and I've interviewed before, who's talked a lot about, how.
• 17:42
  Mike Masnick: her kids are on Instagram and they spend time just like going through Instagram together and saying like, this is the kind of content that's here.
• 17:51
  Mike Masnick: Here's what you should think about different, you know, here's how to think about this stuff.
• 17:54
  Mike Masnick: And not saying like, you're always going to do it together, but, to sort of walk through this is the way this app works.
• 18:00
  Mike Masnick: And even saying like, here are things that it might try to do to manipulate you or pull you or, or try and get you to purchase stuff or whatever it might be.
• 18:07
  Mike Masnick: Just have that discussion and then, allow kids to go off and spend time on their own.
• 18:13
  Mike Masnick: You don't want to be, you know, the helicopter parent, uh, just hovering over everything that they do.
• 18:17
  Mike Masnick: You know, especially as, kids get older, you know, all of this is, there are different levels at different ages, but understanding how to do that and teaching them like, you know, there are risks here, but we're, giving you the tools on how to use it appropriately.
• 18:30
  Mike Masnick: And we expect that sometimes you will make mistakes because everybody makes mistakes.
• 18:35
  Mike Masnick: And I think that is the sort of like.
• 18:37
  Mike Masnick: Have a glass of wine with dinner with your parents kind of situation where you can, give people, examples, you can give people also examples of good behavior yourself.
• 18:47
  Mike Masnick: You know, when you are using these apps, don't use these apps all the time, right?
• 18:50
  Mike Masnick: Like if you're a parent and you're at dinner and you're just scrolling through TikTok yourself, probably not a great example, you know, but, sort of understanding how to have that conversation in a way that is sort of, introducing them not just to the apps and how to use them, but also the risks involved with the explanation that like, everyone makes mistakes.
• 19:10
  Mike Masnick: You may make mistakes, but trying to recognize it, trying to figure out how do you come back from those things is really important.
• 19:16
  Mike Masnick: And I think that you can do that with, the, chat app or chat bot kind of structures as well.
• 19:23
  Mike Masnick: but you know, it's something that we'll have to, to learn how to do appropriately.
• 19:27
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, certainly.
• 19:28
  Ben Whitelaw: So this is an interesting story, I think in a broader suite of stories, around course correcting this narrative, of, chatbots being dangerous, mental health.
• 19:38
  Ben Whitelaw: And so character, ai, ai have taken the approach, as you say.
• 19:41
  Ben Whitelaw: of changing their policies for underage users.
• 19:45
  Ben Whitelaw: OpenAI have done something slightly different.
• 19:48
  Mike Masnick: Just slightly.
• 19:49
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 19:49
  Ben Whitelaw: Just you know, rather than restrict the usage for a particular group of, you know, potentially vulnerable users, they've actually gone to explain the work that they've done with a whole suite of mental health and, and wellbeing experts.
• 20:04
  Ben Whitelaw: And they've produced a very detailed, very kind of transparent piece about how they have improved their default model, in a number of different ways to cater for these harms that we're talking about.
• 20:16
  Ben Whitelaw: And this is like a new approach, I would say, for open air.
• 20:19
  Ben Whitelaw: In terms of kind of defining the narrative about how harmful these tools are, would you say.
• 20:25
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 20:25
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I mean, I thought it, it was interesting.
• 20:28
  Mike Masnick: I thought, obviously, when a big AI company's coming out with something like this, it's been gone over with very, very carefully by lawyers and marketers and everything.
• 20:39
  Mike Masnick: But this struck me as like, there are a lot of indications in here of a company that is just taking this seriously, and that is thinking through, like we know that.
• 20:49
  Mike Masnick: There are concerns about mental health and chatbots, and we want to explore those you know, how can we be a good partner in this space?
• 20:59
  Mike Masnick: And that's not saying necessarily that OpenAI is a good partner, but they, they are taking steps that suggest that they are actually thinking through, like, how do we minimize the harm?
• 21:11
  Mike Masnick: And there is, there is an admission here and, and I think, that is important.
• 21:15
  Mike Masnick: That, and, and you'd mentioned this a little bit before with the character AI stuff as well, which is like when you have a tool that is used by this many people, there are some people who are going to be using it, who are having mental health issues that they're facing.
• 21:29
  Mike Masnick: and then there's a question of, well, one, how much is the tool.
• 21:34
  Mike Masnick: Exacerbating that or is it helping it or is it doing nothing?
• 21:39
  Mike Masnick: Did it cause it, is it making things go to another level?
• 21:43
  Mike Masnick: Like there are all of these different questions involved and the answers to them are going to be context specific and are going to be different per individual, per particular conversation.
• 21:54
  Mike Masnick: And, and sort of coming out with a blatant, you know, this is where we get back to like the full ban on under eighteens is such a blunt instrument for a situation that has so much nuance between the specific use case and the specific users in question.
• 22:09
  Mike Masnick: And it appears that, how well all this actually works, I think remains an open question.
• 22:16
  Mike Masnick: but you're always going to find some cases, and these are the cases that become huge New York Times stories of.
• 22:24
  Mike Masnick: this person had a mental health episode, they were using chat GPT, and it said something bad to them.
• 22:31
  Mike Masnick: those stories are going to exist.
• 22:33
  Mike Masnick: There's no way to make that go away.
• 22:35
  Mike Masnick: There's always going to be a case of that, and there's always going to be some situations where that sort of thing might occur.
• 22:42
  Mike Masnick: But I think given all that and the fact that OpenAI has decided that they do still want chat GPT to be able to have these kinds of conversations, they've taken a bunch of steps here to say, how can we maximize the better results and minimize the really problematic results?
• 23:00
  Mike Masnick: And so this struck me as a really, really interesting and very transparent and open idea, you know, open approach to how do we deal with these things?
• 23:08
  Mike Masnick: And they mentioned here, you know, like the cases of, Suicidal ideation or things of that nature are very, very rare.
• 23:16
  Mike Masnick: which is good in that, you know, you don't want to see like a lot of that and you don't wanna see it going up.
• 23:22
  Mike Masnick: But that also means that they don't have as much data and history in terms of identifying it.
• 23:28
  Mike Masnick: lot of these things, training these models.
• 23:30
  Mike Masnick: It depends on how much data you have and if they don't have as many examples of it, and examples of the different ways in which it shows up, that makes it harder and harder to actually do the detection as well.
• 23:41
  Mike Masnick: But it, sounds like they're really working on it.
• 23:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I think, I think you're right.
• 23:44
  Ben Whitelaw: And again, this probably most likely has been caused by the lawsuits that they have, they have faced.
• 23:51
  Ben Whitelaw: but the, the kind of bringing together of they say 170 experts in mental health and, and wellbeing, and using them to kind of figure out what are the most, most common issues when it comes to psychosis, mania, self-harm, suicide.
• 24:07
  Ben Whitelaw: And then addressing those spec, particularly within this model, they say has caused improvements in what they call compliance with desired behavior.
• 24:15
  Ben Whitelaw: So having the model react in the way that it is best thought to in kind of 65%.
• 24:22
  Ben Whitelaw: to 80% of cases.
• 24:23
  Ben Whitelaw: So big jumps in the way that, you know, the model was reacting, to the kinds of questions that, like you say, end up in the death of people.
• 24:32
  Ben Whitelaw: And the reporting of that by a major paper, which obviously no one wants in any case, that's when the thing that has gone too far.
• 24:40
  Ben Whitelaw: the thing that stands out for me is, is the depth and the detail of this piece it's clearly a designed to show the workings out of the work that they've been doing to say, we are working on this.
• 24:51
  Ben Whitelaw: Here is the numbers.
• 24:52
  Ben Whitelaw: we can't be accused or you, you have to go some way to accuse us of not caring about this or putting, uh, resources into this.
• 24:59
  Ben Whitelaw: Like you say, you know, gotta take that with a p of salt, but.
• 25:03
  Ben Whitelaw: It's detailed and it's data driven and it's, it leaves you with a thought that this is a company that is thinking carefully about this.
• 25:11
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 25:11
  Mike Masnick: The thing I'll add to it, is I am in my head at least somewhat comparing this to the situation that meta faced a few years ago when Francis Hogan L leaked these documents from internal discussions within.
• 25:26
  Mike Masnick: Meta about, you know, specifically the one that keeps making the headlines is the discovery that in some cases Instagram was making, young girls feel worse about themselves in relation to body image.
• 25:40
  Mike Masnick: and.
• 25:42
  Mike Masnick: There were all of these headlines for months, and you still hear it, and you still hear it in, discussions among policymakers.
• 25:48
  Mike Masnick: Oh, Facebook or Instagram knew that they were making girls feel worse about themselves and they did nothing about it.
• 25:55
  Mike Masnick: And it's, that latter part of that sentence, that was the concern because this was internal research and the, response to it is not public.
• 26:06
  Mike Masnick: And if you actually look at the research, which one was, first, leaked mainly by, Francis Hogan.
• 26:13
  Mike Masnick: But then meta itself revealed more of the details of that research.
• 26:17
  Mike Masnick: What you saw was like.
• 26:18
  Mike Masnick: It was actually an example of the company taking those issues seriously, doing the research to sort of try and find out, how are people reacting to Instagram and different situations.
• 26:27
  Mike Masnick: And they looked at a number of different categories and saw that, you know, some of them, most of them, was not doing harm.
• 26:34
  Mike Masnick: But in this one case it was, and they called it out in an internal presentation.
• 26:38
  Mike Masnick: They call it out because they're trying to respond to it.
• 26:40
  Mike Masnick: But because the narrative got set by the media rather than themselves, the story that is still the belief today is like, oh, Facebook didn't care about this.
• 26:49
  Mike Masnick: Instagram didn't care about this.
• 26:50
  Mike Masnick: So I look at this as sort of like, whoever put this together has thought through that.
• 26:55
  Mike Masnick: I still think that this will be used against open ai.
• 26:58
  Mike Masnick: I still think that no good deed goes unpunished in this kind of thing.
• 27:02
  Mike Masnick: People are gonna look at it and say, oh, you know, like from this research, you know that there are mental health problems that people are having.
• 27:08
  Ben Whitelaw: Well, and I've seen reporting of, of this kind of blog post framed as, there are millions of people who are using chat TPT to ask about their suicide.
• 27:19
  Ben Whitelaw: And, that's because obviously there's a very low prevalence as you, as you mentioned, in nor point, nor nor one something.
• 27:26
  Ben Whitelaw: But because of the large user base, it's the same old thing that social media platforms face it because you have a large user base that equates to a large number of people.
• 27:35
  Ben Whitelaw: So the, criticism potentially valid is that there are millions of people who are coming to JT PT for this issue.
• 27:41
  Ben Whitelaw: How can we ensure that those people are getting the right responses and the right information and the right interventions.
• 27:48
  Ben Whitelaw: And I think there has been some improvements with the way that people have been directed to suicide prevention, hotlines and other services that are available in, in their countries.
• 27:58
  Ben Whitelaw: That's as a result of, I guess, research and pressure and, and media coverage.
• 28:02
  Ben Whitelaw: And I think this is also a similar, thing where the media coverage will be not always spot on is kind of forcing open AI to be more open and transparent without there being any regulation that forces them to do so.
• 28:15
  Ben Whitelaw: Uh, that's at least how I see it.
• 28:17
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 28:17
  Mike Masnick: I, I, I, I think that's, that's valid, right?
• 28:19
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I think the underlying point that you're making, that the scale here matters and the scale is the thing that is very, very difficult for people to wrap their heads around.
• 28:28
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 28:29
  Mike Masnick: one case out of, a billion users is still bad, but it's still, you know, that's an, an exaggeration, right?
• 28:37
  Mike Masnick: It's, it's, you know, more than that, but like the scale actually matters.
• 28:41
  Mike Masnick: And scale is something that you know, at the, at the kind of.
• 28:44
  Mike Masnick: Scale that we're talking about is impossible for, humans to wrap our heads around.
• 28:47
  Mike Masnick: Like, you know, most people can't even comprehend the difference between a million and a billion, and it's a really big difference, right?
• 28:55
  Mike Masnick: and so all of that matters, and yes, like, even if the media is getting these stories wrong, and even if politicians are getting these stories wrong within a certain limitation because politicians can actually, cause regulatory changes that could have real impact, I think all of that is pushing companies to think through these things.
• 29:14
  Mike Masnick: I, I think, you know, you probably wouldn't see this kind of explanation and detail and reaction from open AI without that kind of pressure.
• 29:22
  Mike Masnick: So I'm not against that though, you know, I still worry when it, when it presents a, an inaccurate picture and creates problems and like, to bring up the, Instagram.
• 29:32
  Mike Masnick: Research Francis Hogan stuff.
• 29:33
  Mike Masnick: Again, like I certainly heard from companies after that came out that other companies in the space were scaling back their internal research programs, not because they didn't want to do that kind of work and determine, what is healthy and what is not.
• 29:51
  Mike Masnick: But because they were afraid that it would be represented, out of context.
• 29:56
  Mike Masnick: And if we do the research, then it can be presented as, oh, you knew that your app was a problem.
• 30:03
  Mike Masnick: Whereas if you don't do the research, then you have the plausible deniability and you can say, well, all we didn't know.
• 30:10
  Mike Masnick: And that's not great either.
• 30:12
  Mike Masnick: and so it's interesting to me to see open AI sort of.
• 30:15
  Mike Masnick: Buck that a little bit and say like, yeah, we are doing the research and yes, like maybe it's because of the lawsuits, maybe because we're getting pressure on all sides about this stuff, but we're trying to actually do something and here are the results of, what we've done and sort of trying to, in some ways, get ahead of that story where they can.
• 30:30
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, yeah, it's true.
• 30:31
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and you know, we, there is no age authentication or age assurance on, chatt PT yet, I believe.
• 30:38
  Ben Whitelaw: I think there are, there is a safe version.
• 30:40
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm not entirely sure how you get served that, but, know, you mentioned lawmakers seeking to kind of weigh in on the discussion around chatbots.
• 30:49
  Ben Whitelaw: And this kind of brings us to the, the third potential course correction.
• 30:53
  Ben Whitelaw: We have character ai, limiting the service to, to under eighteens.
• 30:56
  Ben Whitelaw: We have open AI being more transparent about how, what they're doing and how they're trying to address the issue.
• 31:02
  Ben Whitelaw: And then you have senators who are seeking to bring their, you know, political power to bear, let's say.
• 31:11
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:12
  Mike Masnick: You know, I mean there, there are so many different bills and so many different regulations being proposed, but this week we saw that Senators Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal have introduced something called the Guard Act, which is an attempt to, ban everyone under 18 from using any kind of chat bot.
• 31:29
  Mike Masnick: it has some other features too.
• 31:31
  Mike Masnick: my general rule of thumb is that you shouldn't trust any, internet related bill from Josh Hawley or from Richard Blumenthal.
• 31:39
  Mike Masnick: And if the two of them together are on it, you should probably burn it with fire.
• 31:43
  Mike Masnick: Um.
• 31:45
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, you know, you know, when I think of, Hawley and BLI guitar, I think of Pinky in the Brain.
• 31:50
  Ben Whitelaw: I, that's what
• 31:52
  Mike Masnick: Well, which one's?
• 31:53
  Mike Masnick: The brain here,
• 31:55
  Ben Whitelaw: It's true, it's true.
• 31:56
  Ben Whitelaw: I, I think it's mainly just the forehead of Richard Blumenthal that I think about, whether it has a brain or not.
• 32:01
  Ben Whitelaw: Um,
• 32:02
  Mike Masnick: trying to take over the world.
• 32:03
  Mike Masnick: Huh?
• 32:04
  Ben Whitelaw: kind of, yeah, kind of,
• 32:06
  Mike Masnick: Um, you know, this, this bill's bad.
• 32:09
  Mike Masnick: I mean, look, you can read it however you want, but like it, it potentially bans search engines for people under 18 if read as broadly as it could be read.
• 32:17
  Mike Masnick: And that seems like just bad drafting.
• 32:20
  Mike Masnick: and when you're creating a law around important internet related things.
• 32:24
  Mike Masnick: It could be drafted in a way that would ban search engines, that's probably bad.
• 32:29
  Mike Masnick: you know, these two are not very careful about their, bill drafting in lots of ways.
• 32:33
  Mike Masnick: and they're both just, you know, they would be happy to sort of ban the internet, I think.
• 32:38
  Mike Masnick: and so they don't really care about the, collateral damage that they are doing in this process.
• 32:44
  Mike Masnick: But I, I do think it is, it is another reaction to the general reporting that, oh, these things are bad and that kids are, definitely being harmed by these tools.
• 32:55
  Mike Masnick: and I don't think it takes into account any of the nuance that we've been trying to discuss in that, you know, I think actually for some kids, these tools can be really helpful.
• 33:05
  Mike Masnick: and the, the idea that they're just inherently bad, I think, leads to problematic outcomes like a bill, like this one.
• 33:13
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 33:14
  Ben Whitelaw: it's striking and I guess that there is, in so many of these cases, very little input from children about how the services can be useful or what they want from these services.
• 33:24
  Ben Whitelaw: And we saw probably too late, but social media companies create youth councils and advisory bodies where, you know, under eighteens and teens would come on board to, I guess, provide their opinion about how they were using.
• 33:38
  Ben Whitelaw: Facebook groups or TikTok or Snapchat and that input across the business, probably has some sort of benefits.
• 33:45
  Ben Whitelaw: We we're not entirely clear how they work, but to have them heard I think is, is a right thing.
• 33:50
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and I wonder if that's something that you know, open AI and other companies will start to do more of
• 33:55
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, and we, we've definitely seen that in the social media space.
• 33:57
  Mike Masnick: And also now more recently, parent councils too.
• 34:00
  Mike Masnick: Uh, which I think are a really great idea too, for understanding the challenges that parents have regarding how their kids are using these apps, because I think that is like a really interesting and underexplored area as well.
• 34:12
  Mike Masnick: And again, like when you put together these kinds of councils, they're not necessarily going to be, perfect and they're not going to be experts, but they can begin to express their own concerns and that gives a picture for the company to think about.
• 34:25
  Mike Masnick: you know, have we considered, how this will impact the kids that we speak to or the parents that we speak to, to get a sense of it?
• 34:33
  Mike Masnick: I don't think, uh, you know, I, I've, I've seen some panels, discussions like, uh, you know, there was a conference, uh, Around kid safety on the internet last year that I attended that led off with two panels of like middle school and high school aged kids talking about their experiences, which was absolutely fascinating.
• 34:52
  Mike Masnick: Part of the recognition was it was really useful to learn that the struggles that they had where they found tools useful, their policy recommendations struck me as fairly naive.
• 35:04
  Mike Masnick: But that's, you know, they're not policy experts, but understanding their lived experience with these tools I think was actually really valuable to then think through the actual policy implications of, you know, how do you deal with this?
• 35:18
  Mike Masnick: And so, yes, I think it would be good to see more of that kind of thing around, in the AI space as well.
• 35:24
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 35:25
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and all of these stories together, Mike made me think a little bit about your content moderation learning curve that you wrote about, um, in regards to Elon when he took over x slash Twitter.
• 35:37
  Ben Whitelaw: It feels like there's a kind of another learning curve that's being speed run here, where Sam Altman and these AI companies are having to really get to grips very quickly with the different kind of incentives and forces that, come with creating policies and, adhering to regulations.
• 35:54
  Ben Whitelaw: Are you seeing kinda similar characteristics between the one for social media that we've, we've seen over the last 20 years and this one.
• 36:00
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:01
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I think it's, it's a direct parallel as your colleague Alice Hunsberger has written about as well, so we'll give you, give you the plug there.
• 36:10
  Mike Masnick: Um, yeah, I mean, I think there's definite parallels, right?
• 36:13
  Mike Masnick: And obviously, a lot of the safety people at the AI companies, a lot of them came from the social media world and they lived that learning curve.
• 36:22
  Mike Masnick: and so it's not a surprise to see them doing the same thing in the AI space.
• 36:27
  Mike Masnick: Now, there is one thing that I think is different there are a few things that are different, but there's one that I think is important that relates to the story that we were just talking about with, the Holly Blumenthal bill, which is the policymaker's involvement in all of this, which is that in the social media space, while you had.
• 36:43
  Mike Masnick: You know, as people went through the learning curve, while there was some discussion of policy stuff, it wasn't as prevalent and it wasn't as focused.
• 36:51
  Mike Masnick: so there is this element now with AI and AI safety where I think a lot of the policymakers and regulators feel that they, made mistakes and that they missed out on the social media situation and that they messed that up.
• 37:07
  Mike Masnick: And so here they're overcorrecting and they have decided that we're not going to make the same mistake again.
• 37:13
  Ben Whitelaw: Hmm.
• 37:14
  Mike Masnick: we screwed up, we didn't regulate social media properly, and therefore we have to be much more aggressive with AI tools and chatbots to make sure that no harm happens, as opposed to social media, which we now think was like hugely harmful, which is very much disputed, obviously.
• 37:32
  Mike Masnick: and so I think that element changes The learning curve a little bit because, the thing that, was important to me when I wrote about that original learning curve piece, the Elon Musk one, was how much of it.
• 37:47
  Mike Masnick: Was driven, not by regulations, not by legal threats.
• 37:52
  Mike Masnick: So some of it is, but most of it is really driven by the market itself and the users and the partners and the advertisers and the fact that like people don't like it when your platform fills up with abuse and harassment and spam and all this kind of stuff.
• 38:07
  Mike Masnick: There are these natural factors pushing you in this direction.
• 38:11
  Mike Masnick: And there is, this comes up in all different contexts, but there is this belief out there among some, which is frustrating to me, that the only incentives are the legal incentives.
• 38:22
  Mike Masnick: And that if there is no law in place, no company will make their platform safer.
• 38:26
  Mike Masnick: And that's just not true.
• 38:27
  Mike Masnick: And part of the learning curve is the fact that like, trust and safety did not come about because.
• 38:33
  Mike Masnick: Of legal mandates, right?
• 38:35
  Mike Masnick: Trust and safety came about because people at platforms were like, oh man, that's bad.
• 38:40
  Mike Masnick: we should be better.
• 38:41
  Mike Masnick: We shouldn't allow that kind of bad thing to happen on our platform.
• 38:44
  Mike Masnick: It's driving users away.
• 38:45
  Mike Masnick: It's driving advertisers away, it's driving partners away, all this kind of stuff.
• 38:49
  Mike Masnick: That's where much of the learning curve comes from.
• 38:51
  Mike Masnick: But in this context, in the AI context, the regulatory situation is much more pronounced, I think, than than last time around.
• 38:59
  Ben Whitelaw: Much stronger.
• 39:00
  Ben Whitelaw: Interesting.
• 39:01
  Ben Whitelaw: Okay.
• 39:02
  Ben Whitelaw: So we have platforms who are self-regulating.
• 39:05
  Ben Whitelaw: in the form of character ai, we have platforms such as OpenAI who are focusing on radical transparency as a way of mitigating this idea that they don't care about users.
• 39:14
  Ben Whitelaw: And then we'll probably have some platforms, Mike, who are going to lobby against or for a better version of the legislation that Haw and Blumenthal and others around the world I'm sure will be cooking up as we speak.
• 39:26
  Ben Whitelaw: So, yeah, lots of different ways of, course correcting against this ai, harm narrative that we are seeing week in, week out.
• 39:33
  Ben Whitelaw: the topic of regulation is a good one to segue us into our next story.
• 39:37
  Ben Whitelaw: we saw last week, just after we stopped recording an announcement from the, European Commission about, uh, an investigation they've been running against TikTok and Meta.
• 39:48
  Ben Whitelaw: I dunno about you, Mike, but I think that the EU commission have been awaiting until we've recorded, until they announce their big investigations.
• 39:57
  Mike Masnick: sure they're big listeners and they're just like, they're probably spying on us knowing exactly when we finish, drop the announcement as we're talking about what we're gonna title the podcast this week and it's too late for us to go back.
• 40:09
  Mike Masnick: So, yeah.
• 40:10
  Ben Whitelaw: hoping we don't cover it next week.
• 40:12
  Ben Whitelaw: Well, you know, this is an important, story in a couple of different senses.
• 40:15
  Ben Whitelaw: The long and short of it is that, these two investigations against Meta and TikTok, which have been happening a a long time, finally come to fruition.
• 40:23
  Ben Whitelaw: they focus on primarily access, researcher access to data, which is a part of the DSA that often gets kind of overlooked.
• 40:31
  Ben Whitelaw: doesn't really get a lot of attention, but is a kind of big part of the DSA and, and what it's about.
• 40:36
  Ben Whitelaw: There are other parts of, this announcement as well related to content moderation, appeals and notice and action mechanisms.
• 40:44
  Ben Whitelaw: So the way that users are able to report content, and how that is, you know, kind of spun out into data that then gets reported to regulators at the other end.
• 40:54
  Ben Whitelaw: So there are two kind of aspects of this.
• 40:56
  Ben Whitelaw: fair to say that the researcher element is not a big surprise.
• 41:00
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, researchers if, if, if you, you know, know of any, who have been focusing on, technology or big tech, they found it very difficult to get any data about platforms.
• 41:10
  Ben Whitelaw: And there's a really good piece that we will also share in the show notes.
• 41:15
  Ben Whitelaw: By science.com, I think it is, that talks about, brings to life the difficulties that researchers have in requesting data from platforms, the delays that they have when, when asking for data.
• 41:25
  Ben Whitelaw: the kind of poor formatting of data makes it very difficult to do any kind of meaningful research.
• 41:29
  Ben Whitelaw: so that's not a surprise in terms of this investigation.
• 41:33
  Ben Whitelaw: it is more of a surprise.
• 41:34
  Ben Whitelaw: I think that the content moderation, appeals and notice and action mechanisms are in there.
• 41:38
  Ben Whitelaw: we see a lot of people obviously report content.
• 41:41
  Ben Whitelaw: so to say that the reporting mechanism is somehow, hard for users to access or, difficult to kind of manage or, or find is a surprise to me.
• 41:51
  Ben Whitelaw: but in, you know, wherever you sit on the decision, this is only the fourth and fifth platform to be kind of hauled across the coals by the DSA.
• 41:59
  Ben Whitelaw: Previous ones being x slash Twitter, Ali Express and tmu, I believe.
• 42:05
  Ben Whitelaw: So.
• 42:05
  Ben Whitelaw: We don't see a lot of these investigation kind of, announcements.
• 42:09
  Ben Whitelaw: This one is, notable and I think, you know, the platforms have some time to, to react to the investigation.
• 42:15
  Ben Whitelaw: an appeal.
• 42:16
  Ben Whitelaw: there could be big fines, but it's unlikely.
• 42:19
  Ben Whitelaw: it's unlikely we'll probably see some changes to how the research access is implemented to keep the EU happy.
• 42:26
  Ben Whitelaw: What did you think, Mike?
• 42:27
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 42:28
  Mike Masnick: and just a quick realtime correction, it's science.org is where it is, but you can check in the show notes to get the actual stories.
• 42:36
  Mike Masnick: You know, I'm going to play my usual role on this podcast of saying, there, there are a lot of nuances here to consider.
• 42:42
  Mike Masnick: Right?
• 42:42
  Mike Masnick: and I think that, researcher access is one that, you know, when you hear about it, you're like, yeah, that sounds good.
• 42:48
  Mike Masnick: Like, obviously researchers should have access to data and we should want people to be able to research these things.
• 42:53
  Mike Masnick: But it has proven to be a lot more complicated than, people make it out to be.
• 42:58
  Mike Masnick: For example, the somewhat famous Cambridge Analytica scandal started as a researcher access to data story.
• 43:07
  Mike Masnick: And people forget this, but everyone's like, oh, Cambridge Analytica was obviously evil.
• 43:11
  Mike Masnick: But it started as somebody who was presenting themselves as an academic researcher, trying to get data on, different connections between people, which then was used.
• 43:21
  Mike Masnick: nefariously later by political campaigns, whether or not that was effective as a whole other story.
• 43:26
  Mike Masnick: And so I bring that up to point out that like, again, the situation where the companies, the lesson from Cambridge Analytica is be really, really careful about which data you're sharing with which researchers.
• 43:38
  Mike Masnick: And then there are, elements in the DSA to try and account for that somewhat, but like I also understand where the platforms are hesitant to just be like willy-nilly handing out data in an easy to use format because they have these concerns.
• 43:54
  Mike Masnick: And so, I think it's, it's interesting, it's interesting to follow and it becomes this kind of dance between the regulators and the platforms about how do we actually comply in a way that doesn't lead to other problems down the road.
• 44:06
  Mike Masnick: And sort of understanding those, those differences becomes really, really important.
• 44:11
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 44:12
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, I, I, agree with that.
• 44:14
  Ben Whitelaw: I would say if I was a platform that was doing as much as, for example, open AI is, in terms of mental health and, teen safety, I feel like I would want that data to be as available as possible and, and for people to kind of tell the story that obviously I'm trying to kind of tell, and I think there's this element of, Obviously there can't be, unfettered access to data and there should be credentials in place and people, it should be a kind of governed process.
• 44:40
  Ben Whitelaw: and maybe there's more the DSA can do to kind of explain what kinds of access to data is, is available to what kinds of researchers.
• 44:48
  Ben Whitelaw: But there's, it seems like this is a kind of area of the DSA where there's upsides for everyone, more so than maybe other parts of the DSA.
• 44:54
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 44:55
  Mike Masnick: In theory it's just again, I mean, you have different elements here too, which is that.
• 44:59
  Mike Masnick: you know, like Meta has tried to be more open in the past, right?
• 45:02
  Mike Masnick: And they set up like these different programs to try and allow researcher access to data but you run into all sorts of problems and, the different articles, the science article, the political article that we have about this, both of them also mentioned at the same time the political complication, which is the, shit show that is the United States government right now, where you have those in power in Congress and in the administration claiming that the EU and the DSA is a censorship machine.
• 45:31
  Mike Masnick: Which, you know, I've certainly raised my concerns about how it leads to potential suppression of speech, but like they're totally misrepresenting the nature of that.
• 45:40
  Mike Masnick: And to them, the things around researcher access to data is.
• 45:46
  Mike Masnick: For the purpose of censorship is the way that they read it, right?
• 45:49
  Mike Masnick: And so they're freaking out about it.
• 45:50
  Mike Masnick: And so you have these companies that are sucking up to the current administration and they don't want to be seen to be feeding the, censorship complex or whatever, like, you know, it's all nonsense, but they're all of these different competing factors.
• 46:04
  Mike Masnick: And you're right that in theory it should be a win-win.
• 46:07
  Mike Masnick: But there are a whole bunch of narratives going around that are important, that need to be understood.
• 46:12
  Mike Masnick: And there are a number of different competing incentives often in direct conflict with each other that the platforms are having to negotiate internally as well.
• 46:20
  Mike Masnick: And so I don't think it's quite as simple.
• 46:22
  Mike Masnick: In theory, yes, it should be a win-win win, but the reality is unfortunately, a lot more complex.
• 46:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 46:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I think that's fair.
• 46:29
  Ben Whitelaw: And I think more than anything else, you know, this is a, a sign of just how difficult it is to bring these cases to bear.
• 46:36
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, these are, you know, these investigations been running since April and May, 2024.
• 46:41
  Ben Whitelaw: So these are taking a long time to build up the kind of complex political environment behind it, as you say, is probably causing that.
• 46:48
  Ben Whitelaw: It doesn't help that, you know, TikTok is about to be taken over by, uh, the US government and have a, have a Trump on the board.
• 46:55
  Ben Whitelaw: Sorry to raise your blood pressure, but Yeah, so there's, there's.
• 46:58
  Mike Masnick: That is not confirmed yet.
• 46:59
  Mike Masnick: Even though, even though as we're recording, I believe, Trump just concluded a, a meeting in China.
• 47:06
  Mike Masnick: Uh, but, uh, the last I saw before we started recording, maybe it's changed, but before we started, is that there was no final deal on TikTok yet, even though I, we were told that it might be announced today, but
• 47:16
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, we'll see.
• 47:17
  Ben Whitelaw: let's finish off then Mike, with, talking of kind of Chinese social media, a really interesting story that you've seen, kind of do the rounds in a couple of outlets.
• 47:27
  Ben Whitelaw: None of them, particularly large or reputable.
• 47:29
  Ben Whitelaw: We, we should say that upfront.
• 47:31
  Mike Masnick: We have some concerns about the details here.
• 47:34
  Ben Whitelaw: little bit.
• 47:34
  Ben Whitelaw: A little bit.
• 47:35
  Ben Whitelaw: But it's, a good enough story that many people have picked it up, and, and run with it.
• 47:38
  Ben Whitelaw: And this is kind of China's new law on ensuring that influencers have the sufficient professional credentials, let's say, to talk about certain topics online.
• 47:49
  Ben Whitelaw: Is, is, is, is labor relations one of them?
• 47:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Are you,
• 47:53
  Mike Masnick: I, I don't think so,
• 47:55
  Ben Whitelaw: do we need to take down the podcast from a few weeks back?
• 47:59
  Mike Masnick: That, for, for non-regular listeners or those who might not remember the podcast from a few weeks ago, that is a reference to my credentials and my degree in industrial labor relations, which, uh, contrary to, our discussion from a few weeks ago does not really make me an expert in, in labor relations.
• 48:17
  Mike Masnick: You know, I, I certainly know some stuff and maybe a little bit more than your average bear, but, I, I don't think that the credentials themselves don't necessarily make an expert and,
• 48:27
  Ben Whitelaw: but you would qualify in this,
• 48:29
  Mike Masnick: and under this scenario.
• 48:31
  Mike Masnick: If, if it was one of the categories that they were regulating, and again, like we don't have full access to the law and the reporting on it is a little bit all over the map.
• 48:42
  Mike Masnick: We're not entirely clear how this law actually works, but the way it is being widely interpreted is that uncertain topics.
• 48:48
  Mike Masnick: And you can guess it's the more controversial topics.
• 48:51
  Mike Masnick: Basically, China is now requiring you to have some sort of credential, a degree or something to prove that you are an expert to discuss them.
• 48:59
  Mike Masnick: Now, this is just blatantly a censorship law, right?
• 49:02
  Mike Masnick: Like there's no two ways around it.
• 49:04
  Mike Masnick: You can't have it any other way.
• 49:06
  Mike Masnick: And, the vagueness and the way it's being reported on to me is almost a feature, not a bug of the law, which is that the important thing for most censorship laws, including this one, is that the impression is more important than the actual enforcement of the law.
• 49:23
  Mike Masnick: And if everybody believes that you can't talk about something unless you have a credential.
• 49:27
  Mike Masnick: they're not gonna talk about it, right?
• 49:28
  Mike Masnick: It's going to scare people away into self-censorship, which is the most effective way that, most censorship laws work.
• 49:35
  Mike Masnick: And so the discussions that are going on across the internet are basically like, oh, well, if you're in China, there are certain topics you can't talk about unless you have a degree.
• 49:44
  Mike Masnick: And that means people are just going to avoid talking about them altogether.
• 49:48
  Mike Masnick: and you know, China has lots of experience with this kind of thing.
• 49:52
  Mike Masnick: The original, great firewall laws in China never, we're very clear in terms of like, this content is banned, this content is not allowed.
• 50:00
  Mike Masnick: But rather it just told the intermediaries the different service providers that if we determine that you have allowed bad content through, we will punish you.
• 50:10
  Mike Masnick: And what that leads to is over censorship.
• 50:13
  Mike Masnick: The intermediaries say, well, we can't allow anything bad.
• 50:16
  Mike Masnick: The fact that it's not defined well, that means we just ban and block a lot more of it just to be safe.
• 50:22
  Mike Masnick: And that's, that's how these kinds of laws work in practice is, is the name of that sort of thing.
• 50:27
  Mike Masnick: So I think this is that same sort of thing.
• 50:29
  Mike Masnick: There are topics that the Chinese government doesn't want people talking about online.
• 50:32
  Mike Masnick: And so they say the only people who can do that are those who are properly credentialed and therefore a whole bunch of people.
• 50:37
  Mike Masnick: And obviously intermediaries that allow speech will say, well, sorry, we can't allow this kind of talk because you're not credentialed.
• 50:44
  Mike Masnick: And it gives them another excuse and it gives people themselves an excuse to self-censor and not talk about these things.
• 50:51
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I think that it's a really, you know, with the rise in creator led content, people going to creators for their news, for their information, people feeling that these individuals are more authoritative in some cases, definitely more authentic.
• 51:05
  Ben Whitelaw: I think it's a really interesting development.
• 51:07
  Ben Whitelaw: We, we do see elements of kind of Chinese laws proliferate to other parts of the world in strange ways.
• 51:14
  Ben Whitelaw: and there's, the conversation that's we had around.
• 51:16
  Ben Whitelaw: the way that certain ranking a algorithms kind of prioritize authenticity and, expertise and experience in ways that, are not government mandated, not based upon your degree certification or any kind of formal qualifications, but they, they are judging somewhat, your experience and, and expertise in some form.
• 51:35
  Ben Whitelaw: So it's an interesting conversation that maybe we'll pick up another time.
• 51:38
  Ben Whitelaw: I think we could probably spend another whole hour talking about that, Mike.
• 51:42
  Ben Whitelaw: But, for today I think we'll probably round up with the news that yes, you would qualify to talk about, know, labor re relations on, I dunno, WeChat or Ian, uh, in, in the near future.
• 51:53
  Ben Whitelaw: That's listeners if you, if you want to get Mike's take on those issues, you know where to go.
• 51:58
  Mike Masnick: Oh, I was gonna say, the other thing is that we should, we should start a credentialing service where we'll, we'll give people credentials on their expertise on certain topics, and there's a big business opportunity there.
• 52:08
  Ben Whitelaw: We can crack China.
• 52:09
  Ben Whitelaw: Finally,
• 52:09
  Mike Masnick: There you go.
• 52:11
  Ben Whitelaw: um, thanks everyone for listening.
• 52:12
  Ben Whitelaw: we've, uh, had a really good run through of some great stories, from the Ft, from the Verge, from the New York Post, from Politico.
• 52:18
  Ben Whitelaw: go and read and subscribe to those outlets wherever you get them.
• 52:21
  Ben Whitelaw: come back and listen to us, uh, every week.
• 52:23
  Ben Whitelaw: we're here next, next week, and if you've got time ready to review us, wherever you get your podcast really helps us get discovered and, find more listeners like you.
• 52:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Thanks everyone.
• 52:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Take care.
• 52:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Have a good week.
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