Latest / Ctrl-Alt-Speech / Chief Equivocation Officer

Transcript

Chief Equivocation Officer · Ctrl-Alt-Speech

• 0:01
  Ben Whitelaw: As regular control alt speech, listeners will know Mike.
• 0:04
  Ben Whitelaw: We start every week of the podcast with a phrase or prompt that you might see if you open an app or a kind of web service.
• 0:11
  Ben Whitelaw: And we've been doing this because we think these little bits of text and taglines prompt us and make us interact and engage.
• 0:18
  Ben Whitelaw: This week we could not do signal, right?
• 0:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Everyone has been talking about signal.
• 0:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Even if we've done it before, I can't remember.
• 0:24
  Ben Whitelaw: But Signal doesn't have a prompt or, tagline in the same way.
• 0:27
  Ben Whitelaw: So we're, we're stealing a bit of marketing material from one of their online pages.
• 0:32
  Ben Whitelaw: And so this week I'm prompting you to speak freely.
• 0:37
  Mike Masnick: Well, I would just like to say that if any random CEOs of tech companies want to accidentally add me to their group chats and, uh, tell me what they're thinking about content moderation these days, I, I, I would not be opposed to that.
• 0:54
  Ben Whitelaw: We're gonna talk about a few of their CEOs today
• 0:56
  Mike Masnick: I, I think so.
• 0:57
  Mike Masnick: I think so.
• 0:58
  Mike Masnick: And what and what about you, Ben?
• 0:59
  Mike Masnick: Uh, can you, uh, speak freely for me please?
• 1:02
  Ben Whitelaw: Well, I was speaking freely at the marked as urgent event that we had in London last night.
• 1:07
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm a little bit worse aware this morning as a result.
• 1:09
  Ben Whitelaw: Uh, it was a super fun evening, but, I managed to incorporate, you'll be unsurprised Mike, my renovation into my presentation about content moderation.
• 1:18
  Ben Whitelaw: So I spoke freely both about moderation and renovation and yeah, I got a few, comments and a few jokes about it, but it was fun.
• 1:25
  Mike Masnick: And you didn't, you didn't end up winning the, Twitter sign from last week's, uh, discussion for, for as part of your home renovation.
• 1:31
  Ben Whitelaw: Not this time.
• 1:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Not this time, unfortunately.
• 1:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Hello and welcome to Control Alt Speech, your weekly roundup of the major stories about online speech, content moderation, and internet regulation.
• 1:50
  Ben Whitelaw: It's March the 28th, 2025, and this week's episode is brought to you with financial support from the future of online trust and safety fund.
• 1:58
  Ben Whitelaw: This week we're talking about Elon Musk, courting of tough men, porn appearing on platforms you might not expect and rage baiting.
• 2:06
  Ben Whitelaw: My name's Ben Whitelaw.
• 2:06
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm the founder and editor of Everything Moderation, and I'm with a man who's in a lot of signal chats and maybe lurking in one that you are into.
• 2:15
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike Masnick.
• 2:17
  Mike Masnick: Please, please accidentally add me to your signal chats.
• 2:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I'm presuming you've never had this done to you before.
• 2:23
  Ben Whitelaw: I was gonna ask you.
• 2:25
  Mike Masnick: I have never had anything.
• 2:26
  Mike Masnick: I am in, as you note, I'm in quite a lot of signal chats.
• 2:29
  Mike Masnick: That is the, it appears to be the group chat, app of choice for lots of people.
• 2:34
  Mike Masnick: But I have never been accidentally added to a group chat,
• 2:38
  Ben Whitelaw: What a wild story.
• 2:39
  Mike Masnick: of the nature of Yes.
• 2:41
  Mike Masnick: The US government right now.
• 2:42
  Ben Whitelaw: What such a shame.
• 2:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Such a shame.
• 2:44
  Ben Whitelaw: So yeah, if anyone's listening and wants to add Mike, feel free to do so.
• 2:48
  Ben Whitelaw: I've got some congratulations to give to you.
• 2:50
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike.
• 2:50
  Ben Whitelaw: I saw on the internet that you have been awarded a special award this week.
• 2:57
  Ben Whitelaw: The, uh.
• 2:58
  Mike Masnick: I think, I think technically I don't get the award until October.
• 3:01
  Ben Whitelaw: Okay.
• 3:02
  Ben Whitelaw: Okay.
• 3:02
  Ben Whitelaw: But you, but it's been announced.
• 3:03
  Ben Whitelaw: You don't, you don't
• 3:04
  Mike Masnick: been announced.
• 3:05
  Ben Whitelaw: Talk us through it.
• 3:06
  Ben Whitelaw: The, the protector of the internet award.
• 3:08
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, yeah, I've, I've won the protector of the internet award.
• 3:12
  Mike Masnick: I've asked them to give me a shield to go with, with the award.
• 3:16
  Mike Masnick: Uh, it's, from the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, which is a really good group.
• 3:20
  Mike Masnick: I've, done various projects with them in the past.
• 3:23
  Mike Masnick: I've spoken at their conferences in the past, and they.
• 3:27
  Mike Masnick: I think only recently I've started doing this.
• 3:29
  Mike Masnick: this is not the first year that they've done the protector of the internet award, but they've been doing it for a little while.
• 3:33
  Mike Masnick: they have a big thing where they, fly a bunch of their members into DC and they meet with Hill staff and stuff, and then they have an award ceremony where they give out awards to a few people.
• 3:42
  Mike Masnick: And this year, very nicely, uh, they have given me the protector of the internet award.
• 3:47
  Mike Masnick: I forget who won it last year.
• 3:48
  Mike Masnick: They had told me, but I'm, I'm sort of forgetting now.
• 3:50
  Mike Masnick: But it's a very, it's a nice, nice, you know, little, uh, thing.
• 3:55
  Mike Masnick: Uh, and yeah.
• 3:55
  Mike Masnick: So that'll be in October?
• 3:57
  Ben Whitelaw: So you'll get to dress up and receive your shield.
• 4:00
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 4:01
  Mike Masnick: Yes,
• 4:02
  Ben Whitelaw: Excellent.
• 4:03
  Ben Whitelaw: well you might remember last week that we had a call out for some podcast reviews and I'm, I'm glad to say Mike, we've got some very funny listeners'cause the bar for submitting a review was not hating the podcast
• 4:18
  Mike Masnick: That, that this is, let's be clear here.
• 4:19
  Mike Masnick: This is what you told them.
• 4:22
  Mike Masnick: You told people, if you don't hate the podcast, please review it.
• 4:26
  Mike Masnick: And our listeners took us up on that with that specific prompt.
• 4:31
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah.
• 4:32
  Ben Whitelaw: With glee.
• 4:33
  Ben Whitelaw: With actual glee.
• 4:34
  Ben Whitelaw: We had three reviews, which is three more than we've had in the last six months.
• 4:38
  Ben Whitelaw: So thank you to those three listeners and all of them said in their review in some form, I don't take this podcast.
• 4:47
  Mike Masnick: Which is
• 4:48
  Ben Whitelaw: Which is great, which is, and I'm very glad to hear that.
• 4:50
  Ben Whitelaw: So, thank you to those people who've left the review.
• 4:53
  Ben Whitelaw: For those of you who haven't left a review or who left a review a long time ago and want to update how you feel about the podcast, please go and leave a few words and a star rating on your podcast platform of choice when you can.
• 5:05
  Ben Whitelaw: It really helps us really reach our tentacles out into the wider world.
• 5:09
  Ben Whitelaw: And, uh, if you want to leave any other kind of coded messages within your reviews.
• 5:14
  Ben Whitelaw: Please do, and we'll, we'll try and discern them and, and, filter out what it is that the, the secret language is.
• 5:21
  Ben Whitelaw: really, really, really appreciate it.
• 5:23
  Ben Whitelaw: And, uh, with that note, we'll crack on with today's stories.
• 5:26
  Ben Whitelaw: We're gonna start with a familiar figure, Mike, but in a, in a, in a context that is slightly to him and to us.
• 5:34
  Ben Whitelaw: you found a few stories about Elon Musk and his, courting of a couple of strong men.
• 5:39
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, this, this has been interesting.
• 5:41
  Mike Masnick: I think, you know, last week we tried to avoid talking about Elon, but you can only avoid talking about Elon for so long before he must enter the conversation.
• 5:48
  Mike Masnick: I think it's part of the, you know, contract he has with the world at this point.
• 5:52
  Mike Masnick: he must be the main character.
• 5:54
  Mike Masnick: and so yeah, there were a couple of interesting stories and it sort of.
• 5:57
  Mike Masnick: Started with the fact that X decided to file a lawsuit in India.
• 6:01
  Mike Masnick: basically complaining about the nature of, the, content moderation demands from the government.
• 6:08
  Mike Masnick: This struck me as interesting on a, on a few levels.
• 6:11
  Mike Masnick: first being that we had spoken about the fact that old Twitter had also sued the Indian government over its demands.
• 6:19
  Mike Masnick: And in fact, that had been sort of an ongoing fight.
• 6:21
  Mike Masnick: And at one point the Indian government had raided Twitter's offices in India.
• 6:25
  Mike Masnick: Nobody was there'cause I think it was in the middle of Covid.
• 6:28
  Mike Masnick: and there was all this sort of back and forth and pressure, and when Elon Musk had taken over Twitter.
• 6:35
  Mike Masnick: And declared that the old regime was all into censorship and stuff.
• 6:39
  Mike Masnick: And then almost immediately he started obeying a bunch of the, orders coming from the Modi government to take down speech of critics of that government.
• 6:48
  Mike Masnick: And we called out the fact that, hey, this looks bad if you're going around saying that you are.
• 6:54
  Mike Masnick: against censorship.
• 6:55
  Mike Masnick: And then you're, obeying the censorship commands from the, from the government.
• 7:00
  Mike Masnick: it raises questions about how committed you are to that, especially when the, the former administration that you claimed was anti speech was willing to fight them in court.
• 7:08
  Mike Masnick: And then there were a bunch of stories for the, the next two years basically of x being willing to take down critics of Modi over and over again.
• 7:16
  Mike Masnick: There was a documentary, there was a, a few other things along the ways.
• 7:20
  Mike Masnick: So just the fact that he is now stepping up and decided to sue is interesting and different because that's a big shift and, and as we've seen over the last few years, the thing that became clear was that mostly I.
• 7:33
  Mike Masnick: Elon was willing to fight when he disagreed publicly with the government.
• 7:39
  Mike Masnick: So if it was a more left-leaning government, then he would go on Twitter or X and declare himself to be a free speech mortar and talk about how, oh, you know, the awful Brazilian government is trying to get me to take down stuff.
• 7:51
  Mike Masnick: The Australian government is trying to get me to take down stuff.
• 7:53
  Mike Masnick: But when it was a more right-leaning authoritarian government.
• 7:57
  Mike Masnick: Turkey and India being the sort of classic examples, he seemed to be willing to go along with it.
• 8:03
  Mike Masnick: So it was really interesting to see him shift in India, at this moment too, because this was also a moment where his other companies are like in India.
• 8:15
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 8:16
  Ben Whitelaw: So before we get into that, just talk us through the kind of actual, case that he's bringing against the Indian government and, what it leads into.
• 8:23
  Mike Masnick: So this is actually really kind of interesting, so.
• 8:27
  Mike Masnick: Indian internet law has been kind of back and forth over the last like decade or so, and there had been lawsuits on this, and I'd written about this years ago, where they have these different, it acts, that sort of lay out the intermediary liability questions around content moderation.
• 8:46
  Mike Masnick: And for a while it actually looked like the Indian law was, actually going to kind of match section two 30.
• 8:52
  Mike Masnick: but then.
• 8:53
  Mike Masnick: That upset some people in the government who wanted content to be more easy to take down.
• 8:58
  Mike Masnick: And so it shifted in a pretty drastic way and made it so that the government had a lot more power to sort of order content to be taken down.
• 9:05
  Mike Masnick: And so what.
• 9:06
  Mike Masnick: X is now doing is challenging the sort of latest version of the law.
• 9:11
  Mike Masnick: It's section 69 A of the IT Act.
• 9:15
  Mike Masnick: and they're saying that that violates free speech rights because it basically creates a way for the government to.
• 9:21
  Mike Masnick: Send information to the platforms that they say have to be taken down.
• 9:25
  Mike Masnick: and the way the law is currently being interpreted, and again, this is after a few different court cases and a few different challenges and changes, the way it is being interpreted is that if the government sends you a.
• 9:35
  Mike Masnick: Content that they believe should be taken down that you really will get in trouble if you don't.
• 9:40
  Mike Masnick: And we saw that again with the, previous regime and Twitter who did try to fight this in court and eventually ended up losing.
• 9:48
  Mike Masnick: Now the government has responded to this and I thought this was really interesting.
• 9:52
  Mike Masnick: And this response came out Just before we started recording, to be honest.
• 9:56
  Mike Masnick: and they're presenting it as a very different thing.
• 9:58
  Mike Masnick: So in the lawsuit Elon is referring to, or not Elon, but X and their lawyers are.
• 10:04
  Ben Whitelaw: love it.
• 10:04
  Ben Whitelaw: I'd love it if he wrote his own lawsuits.
• 10:06
  Mike Masnick: that would be, that would be quite something.
• 10:08
  Mike Masnick: But, um, they're referring to it as a censorship portal.
• 10:12
  Mike Masnick: basically saying the system that is set up to have the government send requests is a censorship portal, which it probably is actually a fairly accurate description of it.
• 10:21
  Mike Masnick: The government is pushing back and saying, no, no, this is not a censorship portal.
• 10:26
  Mike Masnick: This is just a website that allows us to notify you of harmful content.
• 10:30
  Mike Masnick: This struck me as really interesting because this has been the debate that we've had in other countries and in particular in the US and the whole thing with the Twitter files a few years ago when Musk took over, which is that Twitter has set up various portals to allow governments or government officials to alert them to content that they believe might be violating the terms of service.
• 10:52
  Mike Masnick: And this is, there's like a very specific distinction in here that is important, which is that the US system.
• 10:58
  Mike Masnick: And, you know, the way it works is that certain actors have the ability, they have access to a, portal where they can submit stuff, but it still is up to Twitter.
• 11:06
  Mike Masnick: Or the company, you know, to decide does this actually violate our rules?
• 11:10
  Mike Masnick: The point is, it's like flagging content and it is a, a more trusted flagger because it's coming from the government, it'll be reviewed in order and determined whether or not it actually violates.
• 11:19
  Mike Masnick: And as we saw with the actual details that came out later of the Twitter situation, Twitter often would, reject those and say, this doesn't actually violate our terms of service.
• 11:28
  Mike Masnick: and we will reject them.
• 11:29
  Mike Masnick: And so the Indian government is sort of presenting this as the same thing.
• 11:32
  Mike Masnick: Like, this is just a way for us to alert you.
• 11:34
  Mike Masnick: And I think they're deliberately sort of mimicking the language that was used in the US to present it as not as threatening or problematic.
• 11:42
  Mike Masnick: Whereas what X is claiming and what I actually think is probably more accurate is that under Indian law.
• 11:47
  Mike Masnick: Unlike in the US when you get a request from the government through this particular portal, under this particular law, you feel very strongly compelled to remove that
• 11:56
  Ben Whitelaw: Hmm.
• 11:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Okay.
• 11:57
  Mike Masnick: And so, I find it interesting that India is sort of now using the language that was used to describe the American situation where it wasn't censorship, even though some people claimed it was censorship, including Elon Musk to now reflect.
• 12:13
  Mike Masnick: The situation in India where there is much more clear government coercion as part of this process, and now we'll see how it, fights out in the courts.
• 12:23
  Mike Masnick: Though it is very strange that at a time when Elon is, seen as fairly close with Modi and has been doing deals for his other businesses, including both Tesla and starlink, for him to suddenly decide that this is a fight worth fighting
• 12:37
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, that's what's really interesting is that Elon Musk and Modi met in Washington in February, and I remember the photos, there's a bunch of photos, that were published of him with Modi and some of his kids as well.
• 12:49
  Ben Whitelaw: It was a very kind of odd photo op Dunno what they were trying to achieve, but, clearly a kind of photo moment.
• 12:55
  Ben Whitelaw: and then as you say, he's trying to kind of expand his business interest there.
• 12:59
  Ben Whitelaw: Do you think that this court case is being used as leverage in the push to expand into India with Tesla and, increase the market share of, of starlink?
• 13:09
  Mike Masnick: I have no idea.
• 13:10
  Mike Masnick: I mean, it, it, it sounded like he was getting those deals anyway, so I'm not, I'm not entirely sure that this is beneficial, so I'm, I'm honestly a little confused by it.
• 13:18
  Mike Masnick: You know, I'm wondering if more information will come out at some point that something else came up within this process.
• 13:24
  Mike Masnick: It strikes me as a weird way to have leverage because.
• 13:27
  Mike Masnick: I'm sure Modi is the stronger player in, in this situation.
• 13:30
  Mike Masnick: you know, Musk needs access to those markets for his other companies.
• 13:34
  Mike Masnick: So it's, it strikes me as strange, just also the fact that, you know, for the last, two years he's been willing to go along with Modi's demand.
• 13:39
  Mike Masnick: So I'm not sure what pushed him over the edge here.
• 13:42
  Mike Masnick: And in fact, that leads into, you know, one of the other stories that we did wanna mention here, which is that.
• 13:46
  Mike Masnick: in Turkey, which is the other place where Musk has shown a, a willingness to roll over and, do what was demanded.
• 13:53
  Mike Masnick: He's been taking down the accounts of various, activists and opponents to the Erdogan government.
• 13:59
  Mike Masnick: And so again, we've seen it over and over again.
• 14:02
  Mike Masnick: When Musk is in agreement and aligned with the governments of these authoritarian countries, he seems to have no problem pulling down.
• 14:09
  Mike Masnick: content that the government is criticizing, and he did so again this week in Turkey, but in India, suddenly he's challenging it.
• 14:15
  Mike Masnick: So it's, it's a very strange situation and I, I really have no idea why.
• 14:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, it's funny in a way that our main story.
• 14:22
  Ben Whitelaw: This week is the fact that, Elon Musk doesn't have a consistent approach to speech.
• 14:26
  Ben Whitelaw: And that's, it's a, it's a story that isn't a story in a way, but it, it's, there's enough there, I think to kind of bring it to listeners and explain that.
• 14:34
  Ben Whitelaw: must, continues to be very hard to predict when it comes to, understanding why he says one thing and does something else.
• 14:41
  Ben Whitelaw: And not only that by why That seems to change from almost month to month.
• 14:47
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 14:47
  Mike Masnick: I mean, there's clearly no consistency and, and so I'm sure there's some other reason why X suddenly decided it was worth fighting this, But this one doesn't seem to fit the same pattern where you can sort of easily slot it into, well, he likes this government, he doesn't like that government, or he needs some, other thing here.
• 15:04
  Mike Masnick: this one is just surprising and I'm, I almost wouldn't be surprised if this lawsuit gets dropped very quickly, if Because of other back channel discussions.
• 15:12
  Mike Masnick: Musk is like, Hey guys, knock it off.
• 15:14
  Mike Masnick: I mean, maybe is it that he was distracted because he is running the US government and wasn't the one to make this decision.
• 15:19
  Mike Masnick: And then once this gets back to him, he will change his mind.
• 15:22
  Mike Masnick: I don't know.
• 15:23
  Mike Masnick: but it's, it is a slightly surprising development
• 15:25
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, it's not the only story in which he appears this week, Mike, and we both spotted as, as is always the case.
• 15:34
  Ben Whitelaw: We both spotted a story in the Verge this week that told of Musk back channeling again.
• 15:39
  Ben Whitelaw: the CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman about some issues that he had about.
• 15:45
  Ben Whitelaw: Moderators on Reddit, taking down and blocking links to X.
• 15:49
  Ben Whitelaw: and so this is a kind of story that picks up from last year, but is has been recently reported this week about how the, essentially these two CEOs were texting each other, probably sat back on the couch chilling on a, after a long day of, thinking about how they were gonna take over the US government And, and he was kind of complaining about this, development, and subsequently Huffman, banned some of the subreddits, deleted all of the comments.
• 16:13
  Ben Whitelaw: And so what did you make of this as an indicator of, Musk's again, inconsistent approach to
• 16:18
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I mean.
• 16:20
  Mike Masnick: it's yet another example of his pure hypocrisy.
• 16:22
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 16:22
  Mike Masnick: And so, you know, Huffman and Musk have been friendly for a while and, Huffman in the past has, clearly been inspired by some of Musk's actions and sort of, you know, freeing up, other tech CEOs to be a little more aggressive in their viewpoints.
• 16:36
  Mike Masnick: this, it's just crazy, right?
• 16:37
  Mike Masnick: Because we know that, Elon and X have blocked links to all sorts of competitors for various reasons, sometimes for a while, right?
• 16:45
  Mike Masnick: They were slowing down links to Substack for a while.
• 16:48
  Mike Masnick: They were blocking links to Mastodon.
• 16:51
  Mike Masnick: They were closing accounts of people.
• 16:53
  Mike Masnick: Overall X has, completely down ranked links because Musk wants to keep people on the platform and so it's, he's admitted a few months ago, he finally admitted it.
• 17:02
  Mike Masnick: People sort of recognized it, that posts with links don't get rated as highly in the algorithm, you know, so he's clearly.
• 17:09
  Mike Masnick: Done things to try and keep people within his platform to then go and complain to Huffman that a few subreddits had decided as a, as a kind of protest that they were no longer going to include X links or, links to X would no longer be allowed in those subreddits.
• 17:25
  Mike Masnick: That this was some sort of.
• 17:26
  Mike Masnick: Major breach that needed Hoffman to step in.
• 17:29
  Mike Masnick: It suggests a level of hypocrisy, which is not uncommon with Elon Musk, but it does seem notable.
• 17:36
  Mike Masnick: The other element of it was, it wasn't just the, blocking of links to X that he was concerned about, he was also concerned about, people calling out.
• 17:44
  Mike Masnick: doge employees, the various kids that Elon has brought into the federal government who are, wrecking havoc all over the place and, he was upset that some of those, the people were being named or talked about.
• 17:56
  Mike Masnick: There's a claim that it was like advocating violence against them, though I think that was somewhat exaggerated.
• 18:01
  Mike Masnick: people are saying like, even naming them is advocating violence against them, which is not.
• 18:06
  Mike Masnick: Accurate.
• 18:07
  Mike Masnick: and so he, he seemed to be partly upset about that.
• 18:09
  Mike Masnick: And then as part of that discussion, also apparently upset about some of the subreddits and the moderators within those subreddits, deciding that they weren't going to allow links to, the former Twitter,
• 18:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, does, it does make me think that I should be throwing my weight around via text a lot more.
• 18:24
  Ben Whitelaw: I.
• 18:25
  Ben Whitelaw: Do you know,
• 18:27
  Mike Masnick: Apparently that's the way, uh.
• 18:29
  Ben Whitelaw: think of it as a, as a weapon in my armory, but, um, is making me think that it's, there's maybe some, some people that I can make me do something for me, uh, via
• 18:38
  Mike Masnick: Well see if you can get into the chat with the officials from the US government and start throwing your weight around there.
• 18:44
  Ben Whitelaw: that would make for a good podcast next week.
• 18:46
  Ben Whitelaw: Um.
• 18:46
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:48
  Mike Masnick: Telling JD Vance to shut up would be, uh, there's a start.
• 18:51
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, bring me a coffee jd.
• 18:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, so, uh, we're, we're gonna talk a bit bit more about CEOs of platforms now because I, I've kind of been listening to a couple of podcasts with some CEOs of platforms this week, and there's a really interesting, difference in how they talk about content moderation.
• 19:10
  Ben Whitelaw: Let's start with Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snapchat.
• 19:13
  Ben Whitelaw: Who was on Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett this week and talks at length about a whole range of different issues, with a, a little segment about both Snapchat's approach to content moderation and also, other kind of tangential issues like how meta is thinking about, content moderation as well.
• 19:30
  Ben Whitelaw: And.
• 19:32
  Ben Whitelaw: We're gonna play a bit of a clip for you.
• 19:33
  Ben Whitelaw: This is kind of technical wizardry that we haven't tried on control or speech before, but you're now gonna be able to hear a little bit of that interview with Stephen Bartlett, because I think it's a really good, response, uh, and a really good interview around some of the issues we talk about here all the time on control or speech.
• 19:48
  Ben Whitelaw: And there's a great example, I think, of a CEO, who, who gets it, to a large degree.
• 19:52
  Ben Whitelaw: So have a listen.
• 19:54
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: You know, when you, when you think about self-expression, the importance of self-expression, the environment that you're in really matters.
• 20:01
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: Right?
• 20:01
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: And that's why we have content guidelines because we want people to feel like they're an environment where they can express themselves.
• 20:07
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: And I think some of the, the conversation about different content guidelines or having content guidelines or not having them, has been really interesting.
• 20:14
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: 'cause I think people are missing.
• 20:15
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: The broader point, if you have a, a platform with no content guidelines and it's full of people yelling at each other or saying really mean or offensive things or posting a lot of pornography, that's a really uncomfortable thing for most people.
• 20:26
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: Right.
• 20:27
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: That's, that's uncomfortable.
• 20:28
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: You say, oh, this, maybe this platform isn't for me.
• 20:30
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: Maybe I don't feel comfortable expressing myself here because all this stuff I'm seeing isn't really appropriate or, or aligned with my values.
• 20:37
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: And so one of the things we discovered really early on is if you want to create a platform where people feel comfortable expressing themselves, feel comfortable communicating with their friends and family, having content guidelines is really helpful because it means that the content experience is one that that feels more comfortable,
• 20:51
  CLIP: Interviewer: but isn't that.
• 20:52
  CLIP: Interviewer: People would say, well, that censorship, I'm thinking now of the video that Mark Zuckerberg released about Met has changed to their moderation systems, moving to Texas, realizing that, I think he said that they'd overindexed with their moderators in terms of left-leaning politics.
• 21:05
  CLIP: Interviewer: So a lot of the right-leaning content had been censored.
• 21:08
  CLIP: Interviewer: What do you make of that argument for content moderation that we don't wanna censor people?
• 21:13
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: I think it's a misunderstanding of the, the First Amendment and, and how it applies.
• 21:17
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: If we look at our country, uh, the way, you know, at least here in the United States with the First Amendment, that really focuses on the way that the government interacts with content creators or content publishers, and it says, Hey, it's not okay for the government to interfere with individuals or publishers self-expression.
• 21:34
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: Right.
• 21:35
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: That's not allowed.
• 21:35
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: Mm-hmm.
• 21:36
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: But one of the things the First Amendment also does is say, you know, platforms or individuals can make choices about what sort of content they.
• 21:45
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: Want to promote or want to have on their platform, that's part of the First Amendment.
• 21:48
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: You can't force the Wall Street Journal to, you know, put this article or that article or accept any article from any author all around the world.
• 21:55
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: The Wall Street Journal as a paper can decide what, you know, what authors you know, it wants to include on, on its pages.
• 22:02
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: And that's part of the protected First Amendment expression we have here in this country.
• 22:06
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: So this whole notion of, of censorship doesn't apply to, to.
• 22:10
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: Companies that are private businesses that actually have a First Amendment right to decide.
• 22:15
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: What content is on their platform and they may want to decide, we're open to literally anything.
• 22:20
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: Anything goes, no problem.
• 22:21
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: And it seems like some platforms are making that choice, but other platforms like ours say, Hey, in order to have a healthy set of discourse across our platform, in order to make sure people feel comfortable when they're viewing content on our platform, we don't want people to come across pornography, for example, or violent content or you know, hateful content that that's not something that makes people feel good.
• 22:41
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: And we actually.
• 22:42
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: Want to make sure that, that that content isn't on our platform because it doesn't comply with our, our guidelines.
• 22:47
  CLIP: Evan Spiegel: And that may be one of the reasons why in some of these studies, it shows that people feel better when they use Snapchat'cause they're not encountering, you know, really violent, uh, content when, when they're using Snapchat
• 22:59
  Ben Whitelaw: so listeners have heard Evan speak there about how Snapchat approaches content moderation.
• 23:03
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike, I mean, I think his response to Steven Bartlett around the First Amendment was particularly interesting and I wanted to note the fact that Bartlet has said a, a bunch of things in the recent memory around content moderation in relation to meta.
• 23:17
  Ben Whitelaw: So dunno if you remember, he posted on his LinkedIn page, which has many, many millions of followers about the fact that, Meta's move away from fact checking.
• 23:28
  Ben Whitelaw: And it's, changes to its content moderation policy represented one of the most important videos that, people will see this year and a course correction to what he seemed to suggest, and it was slightly coded, but seems to suggest was a kind of overreach around content moderation.
• 23:45
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and I've listened to a few kind of Stephen Barett podcasts.
• 23:48
  Ben Whitelaw: I don't love the guy, but he has a slight tendency to kind of air into the manosphere.
• 23:53
  Ben Whitelaw: I find, um.
• 23:55
  Ben Whitelaw: It's interesting that he, quizzes s spiegel quite openly about his content moderation, censorship Spigel has a really good response, I felt.
• 24:02
  Ben Whitelaw: were you surprised by how well he handled that and, the way he under seemed to understood it?
• 24:08
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 24:08
  Mike Masnick: I mean, partly and partly not.
• 24:10
  Mike Masnick: I, I.
• 24:11
  Mike Masnick: partly not because it was a great answer.
• 24:13
  Mike Masnick: I mean, it's an absolutely fantastic and very thoughtful and correct answer.
• 24:17
  Mike Masnick: Understanding the things that this is not a First Amendment issue, that, values determine what kind of community you want to build, and that is what users appreciate as well.
• 24:26
  Mike Masnick: And that there are reasons to do this that have nothing to do with censorship, but just what kind of community you're trying to build.
• 24:31
  Mike Masnick: I think it was a, a fantastic answer.
• 24:33
  Mike Masnick: SP's been.
• 24:34
  Mike Masnick: the founder and CEO of Snapchat for a while, he's gone through a bunch of these fights and, and arguments, and they've been involved in some of them, and I feel like he has a, a really deep grasp, so I'm not surprised in that he gets it right.
• 24:46
  Mike Masnick: the only thing I'm surprised in is that like I.
• 24:48
  Mike Masnick: It feels like every other CEO in the tech space no longer does.
• 24:52
  Mike Masnick: and if anything like Spiegel had the reputation historically, and this is probably unfair that he was, you know, he, he was a little bit more of like a frat boy, not really deep in the policy weeds on these things.
• 25:05
  Mike Masnick: And yet this answer suggests someone who's really thought deeply about these things and actually has a deeper understanding of it and is willing to explain it clearly and not you know what a lot of CEOs do is kind of deflect and mislead and sort of dance around it.
• 25:18
  Mike Masnick: And he was just very direct.
• 25:19
  Mike Masnick: He's just like, this is not a First Amendment issue.
• 25:21
  Mike Masnick: It's a values thing.
• 25:22
  Mike Masnick: We wanna build a community.
• 25:23
  Mike Masnick: This is what our people expect, this is what our users expect.
• 25:26
  Mike Masnick: And this is the kind of thing that we've decided that this is what our values are based on.
• 25:31
  Mike Masnick: And it was, you know, it's fantastic and clear and appreciative and you can hear, I really have, you know, I think I've maybe heard of Bartlett, but I've never seen any of
• 25:40
  Ben Whitelaw: Oh, really?
• 25:41
  Mike Masnick: videos before.
• 25:42
  Mike Masnick: I, I was not really familiar with him, and I only watched this one little section, you know, a little bit longer than the clip that we played, of him talking about the content moderation stuff.
• 25:51
  Mike Masnick: And, but I did get that sense even in the way that he frames the question when he, talks about meta and he was just like, well, you know.
• 25:57
  Mike Masnick: mark Zuckerberg made this decision because they were taking down too much, conservative speech and they had to move to Texas for it, which is like, we know is not true.
• 26:06
  Mike Masnick: But he, he seemed really bought into the narrative of what happened.
• 26:09
  Mike Masnick: And so it was really nice to see Spiegel just kind of push back on him.
• 26:12
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 26:12
  Ben Whitelaw: And Barla has a kind of Zuckerberg aesthetic, doesn't he?
• 26:15
  Ben Whitelaw: He's, he's got the kind of black T-shirt.
• 26:16
  Ben Whitelaw: He doesn't quite have the, the gold chain, but, um, you know,
• 26:20
  Mike Masnick: needs the Latin phrase on the t-shirt.
• 26:22
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah, exactly.
• 26:23
  Ben Whitelaw: Exactly.
• 26:24
  Ben Whitelaw: And, Barla has been, kind of, had some focus on him for.
• 26:28
  Ben Whitelaw: showcasing and highlighting kind of health misinformation on the podcast as well.
• 26:33
  Ben Whitelaw: So he's incredibly in the UK at least, he's incredibly well known.
• 26:37
  Ben Whitelaw: He's incredibly well listened to.
• 26:39
  Ben Whitelaw: He's got various books out and he does seem to kind of, I would say, spotlight some slightly odd.
• 26:46
  Ben Whitelaw: Health experts, inverted comm.
• 26:48
  Ben Whitelaw: And so again, you might expect S Spiegel or anybody on the podcast to somewhat side with him.
• 26:55
  Ben Whitelaw: And actually I thought Spiegel did a great job of kind of standing his ground One guy who didn't do a very good job of that was our next CEO, who is on a podcast this week.
• 27:03
  Ben Whitelaw: Neil Mohan of YouTube.
• 27:06
  Ben Whitelaw: He was on the SEMA four podcast mix signals with Ben Smith and Max Tan.
• 27:12
  Ben Whitelaw: We're gonna play a bit of a clip now of, how he was, responding to some questions about YouTube's content moderation policy and some of the tensions around the US administration and the kind of clash in ideals.
• 27:25
  Ben Whitelaw: You'll notice, I think in this clip, a very different sound, a very different tone, and he's not only, defensive I'd say, but also quite evasive in his answers.
• 27:36
  CLIP: Interviewer: You've said that the number one priority for YouTube is the safety of YouTube's ecosystem.
• 27:40
  CLIP: Interviewer: And we're in a moment when that's actually like a slightly unusual thing to say and a lot of platforms are really backing off anything like content moderation, probably because of pressure from this, this White House and this administration.
• 27:52
  CLIP: Interviewer: And I wonder if, if you feel like you are, there's tension between you and the, and the administration on, I guess, particularly issues around public health.
• 28:01
  CLIP: Interviewer: Hmm.
• 28:02
  CLIP: Interviewer: Um, I'll say a few things.
• 28:04
  CLIP: Interviewer: Um, I.
• 28:05
  CLIP: Interviewer: First and kind of probably most important and kind of.
• 28:10
  CLIP: Interviewer: Really at the top is, um, everything that we talk about, everything we just talked about in terms of the business, um, how content works on our platform, et cetera, is back to our mission statement, which is to give everyone a voice and show them the world and the first half of that mission statement.
• 28:29
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: Is really about, um, free expression and freedom of speech.
• 28:33
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: And I can say for myself, and I know for many of the colleagues that I work with every single day, that's why we come to work.
• 28:40
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: Like that's the power of YouTube, right?
• 28:42
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: Like that.
• 28:43
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: If you have an idea, you have a thought and you wanna share it with the world, then YouTube is a place where you can go and share it without somebody telling you that you don't sound the right way or you don't look.
• 28:55
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: The right way, or you're saying the wrong thing or what have you.
• 28:58
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: And that is core to our mission.
• 29:00
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: And everything that we do is ultimately, frankly, in, in service of that.
• 29:05
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: And so, um, it's, it's the reason why actually, I think we've had community guidelines from the very early days, um, and, um, and.
• 29:15
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: In order to allow creators to be able to share their ideas, have this free sort of voice, freedom of expression, and to earn a sustainable living from it.
• 29:26
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: We also have rules of the road in terms of how our platform works, right?
• 29:29
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: Like no porn or adult content or financial scams or what have you, right?
• 29:34
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: Like back to the question around like when you turn on the tv, like that's not what consumers are looking for when they turn it on and are.
• 29:42
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: Mm-hmm.
• 29:42
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: Advertisers, right?
• 29:43
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: The brands that support that content aren't looking for.
• 29:47
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: Uh, and so, um, our approach to responsibility is with all of that in mind, right?
• 29:52
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: But ultimately towards this goal of, of a freedom of expression.
• 29:56
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: That's how I've always looked at it.
• 29:57
  CLIP: Neal Mohan: Um, you know, and even in years past when you and I've talked about it, hopefully I've been consistent in terms of, of that, that sort of core thesis.
• 30:07
  Ben Whitelaw: So, yeah.
• 30:07
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike, what did you think about how Mohan responded to Ben Smith's?
• 30:11
  Ben Whitelaw: Kind of very pointed questions.
• 30:13
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I mean, this is the more typical, unfortunately, the more typical CEO's response that we hear on these kinds of questions where someone doesn't want to come out and say anything that then will be taken up by, you know, probably a bunch of idiots on various social media platforms, taken outta context and presented as, something to rally around.
• 30:31
  Mike Masnick: And so he says a lot of nothing, and he does so in a very sort of, Defensive way, and doesn't, directly address the issue.
• 30:37
  Mike Masnick: And he could have, right.
• 30:38
  Mike Masnick: I mean, it would've been great to have him come out and respond the same way that Spiegel does.
• 30:44
  Mike Masnick: and so, you know, I think this, the contrast between Mohan and Spiegel is really, really notable.
• 30:50
  Mike Masnick: And it's, you know, it's unfortunate for Mohan that they both came out around the same time, but it's a, just such a different answer to effectively the same question.
• 30:58
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, and, and also I noted the fact that Mohans Responses have changed significantly in the last two to three years as well.
• 31:05
  Ben Whitelaw: it was only, I think, probably three years ago, and I know the world has changed a lot that time, but he gave an interview to Caseon Newton, a platformer, in which he talked about working with, other partners in the space, civil society, organizations, nonprofits, kind of experts to help remove borderline content and that probably at that time made sense.
• 31:28
  Ben Whitelaw: you can tell from the clip that he, that idea is dead, you know, is very much, just doing the bare minimum and, and, and no more.
• 31:35
  Mike Masnick: Well, I think it's, in some sense it's even worse than that, right?
• 31:38
  Mike Masnick: Because this kind of answer it's a, not trying to say anything answer.
• 31:41
  Mike Masnick: It's an answer that's designed to not, to try not to get anyone upset by not actually saying anything and.
• 31:48
  Mike Masnick: It's a lost opportunity.
• 31:49
  Mike Masnick: It's an opportunity where he could come out and say the same things that Spiegel said, which is that, it's our place and we get to determine how things are.
• 31:58
  Mike Masnick: And like, yes, we're trying to enable free speech, but one of the best ways to do that is to have a setup that reflects values and that people don't feel harassed or feel that there is misinformation flowing there.
• 32:08
  Mike Masnick: and he didn't say that.
• 32:09
  Mike Masnick: And so, I think it's a lost opportunity.
• 32:11
  Ben Whitelaw: but maybe an opportunity.
• 32:13
  Ben Whitelaw: Gained in the sense that you can now send this to folks in the Republican party in the US and and justify, and you're shaking your head now, but you, and justify like we, you know, I've said publicly, something that you agree with and therefore I'm
• 32:30
  Mike Masnick: right.
• 32:30
  Mike Masnick: I mean, it it's not even, it's not even saying that.
• 32:32
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 32:32
  Mike Masnick: It's not even saying what the, Republicans want him to say.
• 32:34
  Mike Masnick: It's, it's saying nothing.
• 32:35
  Mike Masnick: that's the problem.
• 32:36
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 32:36
  Mike Masnick: You know, I mean, with, Zuckerberg at least I, I mean, okay, so yes, you could say that like, this isn't like the complete capitulation that Zuckerberg going on Rogan and saying a bunch of nonsense was like, just obviously.
• 32:48
  Mike Masnick: completely ridiculous untrue fantasy land stuff, that the Republicans got excited about.
• 32:54
  Mike Masnick: Nobody's gonna get excited about this.
• 32:56
  Mike Masnick: What he said was nothing.
• 32:57
  Mike Masnick: It was empty.
• 32:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 32:58
  Ben Whitelaw: But sometimes the bare minimum is all these guys.
• 33:00
  Ben Whitelaw: wanna do, isn't it?
• 33:01
  Mike Masnick: I mean, sure he can point to it, but I don't think, this would satisfy anyone.
• 33:04
  Mike Masnick: I don't think it satisfies anyone on any side of this debate, because it's not, the full throated endorsement of any particular position.
• 33:11
  Mike Masnick: It is clearly like trying to, tiptoe around landmines.
• 33:14
  Ben Whitelaw: Do you think that the US administration will, have the potential to go after Snapchat or put pressure on YouTube because they're not saying what they would like them to, they're not kind of towing the line or,
• 33:24
  Mike Masnick: We will see.
• 33:24
  Mike Masnick: I mean, you never know who the next target is gonna be.
• 33:27
  Mike Masnick: You know, the, obviously there are investigations going on now with the FTC that we've talked about where there're.
• 33:33
  Mike Masnick: You know, they want to go after tech, but we don't know who it is they're going after because most of the tech companies have sort of, towed the line and, kissed the ring.
• 33:40
  Mike Masnick: And so it's unclear.
• 33:42
  Mike Masnick: So maybe Snapchat just becomes a target, but I don't know.
• 33:46
  Mike Masnick: They haven't really been, you could see where it's like, it's been really easy because Snapchat is often considered one of the ones that kids use.
• 33:53
  Mike Masnick: And so whenever there are kids safety discussions, Snapchat will often come up.
• 33:56
  Mike Masnick: So, I could totally see a kind of moral panic.
• 33:59
  Mike Masnick: Begin around Snapchat and they'll say that they're not handling kids well and that they'll, do stuff around that.
• 34:05
  Mike Masnick: But I don't know, it's impossible to predict with this administration.
• 34:08
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, nonetheless, I think it's interesting to see two CEOs of two major platforms talking about content moderation in the same week.
• 34:16
  Ben Whitelaw: And it does have the sense of these platforms trying to shape the narrative and, be on the front foot with how they, talk about this topic.
• 34:24
  Ben Whitelaw: Spiegel talks about proactively scanning for.
• 34:27
  Ben Whitelaw: Pornography in a way that Spotify on our next story might have something to, uh, learn from.
• 34:34
  Ben Whitelaw: You found this story about, Spotify being unprepared, let's say for some graphic content upon the platform.
• 34:42
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, this was, this was almost hilarious, right?
• 34:44
  Mike Masnick: So anyone who's been in this space for any length of time knows that if you any kind of user generated content, like at some point you're going to have to deal with pornographic content and have a clear policy and a way to enforce it that is, even true with text, but.
• 34:58
  Mike Masnick: soon as you get to, video or imagery, you know, so Spotify has always been audio for the most part, and music, and so that was less of an issue.
• 35:07
  Mike Masnick: They've gotten bigger into podcasts and there's been some controversy there, but now sort of realizing how much stuff is video and how many podcasts are now video, they've sort of moved into the video space and apparently.
• 35:19
  Mike Masnick: Even though their policies are that they will not allow pornography, they were unprepared for, for, uh, sexually explicit material, suddenly showing up and getting very, very popular.
• 35:31
  Mike Masnick: And so they had the, top business podcasts.
• 35:36
  Mike Masnick: Their listing of top business podcasts apparently included.
• 35:39
  Mike Masnick: Some fairly pornographic material, which is not normally what I associate with business content.
• 35:45
  Mike Masnick: Uh, and they were sort of taken by surprise and had to respond and said, oh, of course.
• 35:50
  Mike Masnick: You know, it wasn't, we didn't intend for that, and that violated the rules and they eventually took it down once it was called out.
• 35:56
  Mike Masnick: But it suggests that, they may have moved into this sort of video market without preparing their trust and safety folks for the level of, pornography and, the ways that people are going to attack things like the trending lists and the top
• 36:11
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, indeed.
• 36:12
  Ben Whitelaw: And it's surprising because it wasn't that long ago that they were in broiled in the kind of Joe Rogan, scandal, and they faced a whole bunch of heat for their trust and safety approach, I would say.
• 36:24
  Ben Whitelaw: They then bought a company called Kinson, which actually did some smart work too.
• 36:30
  Ben Whitelaw: Identify misinformation and kind of false narratives deep within podcasts and, you know, kind of often hidden in, far reaching corners of the platform.
• 36:40
  Ben Whitelaw: full disclosure, I did some work for Kinson at some point before they were acquired by Spotify.
• 36:44
  Ben Whitelaw: That's how I know
• 36:45
  Mike Masnick: Ding, ding, ding.
• 36:45
  Mike Masnick: I finally get to do the ding, ding, ding.
• 36:48
  Ben Whitelaw: Ring the bell.
• 36:48
  Ben Whitelaw: And, um, so it's surprising that they have kind of fallen into the same trap of, you know, not necessarily tooling up or maybe skilling up around what has been something that has been known for a long time
• 36:59
  Mike Masnick: mean, everybody knows, and you don't wanna make too big of a deal of it, right?
• 37:02
  Mike Masnick: Because like, again, content moderation, scale is impossible, right?
• 37:05
  Mike Masnick: There's always gonna be something that slips through.
• 37:07
  Mike Masnick: People are gonna make mistakes, things are gonna get missed.
• 37:10
  Mike Masnick: So I don't wanna make too big of a deal of it, but it is noteworthy that like I.
• 37:14
  Mike Masnick: you would think any platform as they're expanding into video and pushing video heavily, they have to realize, and in fact, so I think the video that sort of made it onto the top business list was completely, it was taken directly from PornHub and in fact had like PornHub logos on it.
• 37:28
  Mike Masnick: And so somebody just ripped it, put it in there, and was able to, get a bunch of downloads.
• 37:33
  Mike Masnick: but the fact that it made it into the, top business podcast lists.
• 37:37
  Mike Masnick: you would feel that there would be a little bit of extra, review before something gets to that level.
• 37:43
  Mike Masnick: And it's, it's just sort of noteworthy that it appears that at least this particular attempt to get pornography, witnessed on Spotify made it past the, uh, the guards.
• 37:54
  Ben Whitelaw: detective ever have a porn problem?
• 37:58
  Mike Masnick: Uh, in the comments?
• 38:00
  Mike Masnick: Um, uh, not a bad one.
• 38:02
  Mike Masnick: I mean, we, we certainly had the issue of spam, right?
• 38:04
  Mike Masnick: And so, and a lot of spam is sort of like linking to pornographic content.
• 38:08
  Mike Masnick: Um, I.
• 38:09
  Mike Masnick: So we definitely have had that.
• 38:11
  Mike Masnick: we did have, at one point we had this weird thing where somebody was showing up and basically writing a novel in the comments to a very old tech post.
• 38:19
  Mike Masnick: It's, the comments are probably still there, and, it was like, I mean, just reams and reams of text
• 38:26
  Ben Whitelaw: well, like an,
• 38:26
  Mike Masnick: to do.
• 38:27
  Ben Whitelaw: like an erotic novel.
• 38:29
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 38:29
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 38:30
  Mike Masnick: it may still be somewhere in the tech archives.
• 38:33
  Mike Masnick: Uh,'cause I don't think we pulled it down.
• 38:35
  Mike Masnick: It was like, it was on like a really old post, so like nobody was reading it, it wasn't interfering with anyone, and so I can't remember if we left it up or if we pulled it down.
• 38:44
  Mike Masnick: It was.
• 38:45
  Mike Masnick: They were like coming back every so often and just like adding another chapter.
• 38:49
  Mike Masnick: It was massive.
• 38:50
  Mike Masnick: It was massive.
• 38:51
  Mike Masnick: We've had some weird things happen in the comments over time, especially like older comments that just go back ages and, people will put in all sorts of weird
• 38:58
  Ben Whitelaw: Maybe we'll do a, a special recording of the podcast in which we read out the erotic novel written on a, in the comments that are the tech out post decades ago.
• 39:07
  Mike Masnick: I, I, I don't even know if I could find it again.
• 39:10
  Mike Masnick: Uh, we were looking recently, we're, somewhere at 82, 80 3000 articles on Teched at this point.
• 39:16
  Mike Masnick: And so yeah, even finding that and over 2 million comments.
• 39:19
  Mike Masnick: So it's, uh, we, we've got a fair bit of
• 39:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, good luck finding that.
• 39:23
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, it's worth saying that Mike and I have been thinking about, accompanying the audio version of Controlled Speech with a video version and we have been uming and ing about it.
• 39:33
  Ben Whitelaw: We would love
• 39:34
  Mike Masnick: need to get to the top of the business list on Spotify.
• 39:38
  Ben Whitelaw: It seems like we have a way to do that.
• 39:40
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, but yeah, if, if, if listeners, I, we'll keep it clean, I promise.
• 39:45
  Ben Whitelaw: If listeners have, have a, a view on whether they would listen and watch, a Control Speech podcast on the platform of their choice, drop us a note Podcast at Control.
• 39:54
  Ben Whitelaw: speech.com.
• 39:55
  Ben Whitelaw: C-T-R-L-A-L-T speech.com and give us your thoughts.
• 39:59
  Ben Whitelaw: it might spur us on to, do a, version where we have both of our big heads on a screen together, talking of adult sites.
• 40:09
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike, the kind of other story that I noted this week was, one about OnlyFans and it's in relation to off.
• 40:17
  Mike Masnick: We're not starting an OnlyFans Ben.
• 40:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Revenue diversification, Mike, we've gotta make this podcast pace somehow.
• 40:24
  Ben Whitelaw: You promised.
• 40:25
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, so off comm has handed a, 1 million pound fine to OnlyFans for, failing to supply accurate information about how it prevents underage users from accessing explicit content.
• 40:39
  Ben Whitelaw: And this is a longstanding investigation, which has kind of finely come around this week.
• 40:44
  Ben Whitelaw: it's a bit of a gaff really.
• 40:46
  Ben Whitelaw: OnlyFans had told Ofcom that it's challenge age.
• 40:50
  Ben Whitelaw: So the age at which it prompts users to, tell them how old it is, was 23, only to find out from the tech provider that provided that service that it was actually set to 20.
• 41:02
  Ben Whitelaw: So there was a kind of gap of three years between what it told Ofcom and what was actually true.
• 41:09
  Ben Whitelaw: And that has led it to.
• 41:11
  Ben Whitelaw: Be given and to accept a 1 million pound fine.
• 41:14
  Ben Whitelaw: that in itself is, interesting, but I think what's really fascinating to me, Mike, is the release of this story and the timing of it.
• 41:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Okay.
• 41:22
  Ben Whitelaw: So last week we talked about the online Safety Act, the brand new, but long in the making legislation in the UK finally being rolled out and intermediaries in the UK being liable for, the SA.
• 41:36
  Ben Whitelaw: Only a week into that being true.
• 41:38
  Ben Whitelaw: do we have this announcement?
• 41:40
  Ben Whitelaw: And the announcement is actually not related to the online Safety Act at all.
• 41:44
  Ben Whitelaw: It's in relation to, a regulation that predates the OSA, it was in existence before the OSA came to being.
• 41:51
  Ben Whitelaw: So basically Ocom could have brought this, and did obviously bring it, against OnlyFans at any point, but it waited until the OSA had been rolled out.
• 42:00
  Ben Whitelaw: I.
• 42:01
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I think to potentially give the impression Ofcom kind of doing its job and, being the kind of enforcement power that it wants to be seen to be.
• 42:10
  Ben Whitelaw: and I read around the reports about this story, the Guardian, the ft, and others don't mention the OSA or the kind of more niche regulation.
• 42:21
  Ben Whitelaw: this enforcement is brought under, so it kind of gives the impression to the unsuspecting eye that actually this is related to the OSA and the Ofcom is suddenly kind of doing its job.
• 42:32
  Ben Whitelaw: So.
• 42:33
  Ben Whitelaw: The kind of cynical journalist in me thinks that this has been coincided very well with, the OSA last week.
• 42:38
  Ben Whitelaw: It's actually nothing to do with that, but, I have heard on the grapevine that there is some, enforcement being prepared around the OSA and there's, there's some naturally, as we've talked about in the podcast, there are, some, platforms that are being closely looked at.
• 42:52
  Ben Whitelaw: So.
• 42:53
  Ben Whitelaw: What did you make of the kind of timing of this?
• 42:54
  Ben Whitelaw: Are you as cynical as I am?
• 42:57
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I mean, I don't know it, the timing might be right just based on like, apparently, OnlyFans alerted ofcom to the error in January of 2024, which is, you know, a little over a year ago.
• 43:09
  Mike Masnick: There was the investigation and the back and forth and then sort of figuring out what it was gonna be.
• 43:13
  Mike Masnick: You know, the timing seems about right.
• 43:15
  Mike Masnick: I mean, having it come out now is not like Totally out of the ordinary, under that,
• 43:21
  Ben Whitelaw: Look at you being all friendly to off what?
• 43:24
  Ben Whitelaw: Have what?
• 43:25
  Ben Whitelaw: What have I made you do?
• 43:30
  Mike Masnick: But yes, I mean, I, it is, it is entirely possible that the exact timing of the release may have been, let's say, pushed back a few weeks or a month or something, recognizing that the OSA was about to go into effect and that everybody would be looking to Ocom and to see how and when they actually started enforcing things under the OSA.
• 43:50
  Mike Masnick: And so, you know, it wouldn't surprise me if.
• 43:53
  Mike Masnick: the timing was massaged in some way to make this work.
• 43:57
  Mike Masnick: but, you know, we'll see when, when the actual enforcements come out.
• 44:00
  Mike Masnick: But, yeah, it'll be interesting to see and to see whether or not this has any impact.
• 44:05
  Mike Masnick: And if people think like, oh, okay, Ofcom is actually, I.
• 44:08
  Mike Masnick: Trying to enforce stuff.
• 44:09
  Mike Masnick: it's possible.
• 44:10
  Mike Masnick: I do wonder, I mean, you could argue too that, Ofcom was, man, I'm gonna defend Ofcom again.
• 44:16
  Mike Masnick: They, they, they might reasonably have been concerned that if they had announced this, you know, three weeks ago, that it would confuse people into, because like it was pre OSA and so it's like, well, wait, I thought this law isn't going into effect for two more weeks.
• 44:29
  Mike Masnick: So, you know, why are they enforcing it now?
• 44:31
  Mike Masnick: And so, there may be some reasons where it actually did.
• 44:34
  Mike Masnick: Makes sense just to, keep everybody else from being too confused by it.
• 44:38
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, it would certainly have distracted from the narrative of the OSA, I guess, if this had come out.
• 44:43
  Ben Whitelaw: But, the way that the coverage has transpired, and I know it's difficult for journalists to necessarily know every nut and bolt of every single piece of.
• 44:50
  Ben Whitelaw: Legislation and, what it refers to.
• 44:51
  Ben Whitelaw: But, it was something that pricked my ears at least.
• 44:54
  Ben Whitelaw: let's round up Mike on a, slightly kind of more interesting, quirky story that you found, a platform that we may end up referring to in, a future episode of, the podcast in the opening section.
• 45:04
  Mike Masnick: We have to see what the prompt is.
• 45:06
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah.
• 45:07
  Ben Whitelaw: Tell us about C US and what it's doing.
• 45:09
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, it says us, S-E-Z-U-S.
• 45:12
  Mike Masnick: is this new platform?
• 45:14
  Mike Masnick: It, I had heard about it, I think late last year.
• 45:16
  Mike Masnick: There was some talk about it.
• 45:18
  Mike Masnick: and it is a sort of, Another Twitter like platform.
• 45:22
  Mike Masnick: It was created by Joe Trippy, who is a sort of semi-famous political consultant figure.
• 45:29
  Mike Masnick: sort of became famous in 2004 as the campaign manager for Howard Dean and his sort of upstart internet fueled campaign.
• 45:36
  Mike Masnick: and then ever since then has been sort of in and around specifically democratic politics, in the us and so.
• 45:42
  Mike Masnick: Late last year, there was some talk about how he wanted to set up his own social media platform and he wanted to do something different and it was going to be more respectful.
• 45:51
  Mike Masnick: And, you know, to some extent, like we've heard all that before.
• 45:54
  Mike Masnick: You know, like lots of people said that, especially after Elon Musk took over, was this idea that like, oh, you know.
• 46:00
  Mike Masnick: And, and usually presented in a way where you're just like, wow, this person is incredibly naive about the realities of, of human beings,
• 46:07
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:08
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 46:08
  Mike Masnick: and let alone getting a bunch of them together.
• 46:11
  Mike Masnick: but there do seem to be as, the app is now officially launched, they do seem to have created a few interesting elements to it that I think will be worth seeing how well they catch on.
• 46:21
  Mike Masnick: And so in particular, rather than just relying on like a, a.
• 46:25
  Mike Masnick: Team of trust and safety officials to determine who is violating the rules and who isn't.
• 46:30
  Mike Masnick: There is an element of sort of crowdsourcing stuff where they've built in, they call it a reputation engine that, so users themselves get to rate other people's posts.
• 46:40
  Mike Masnick: And so it's sort of a mix of like community notes and Reddit up votes and down votes and, even a little bit of like Wikipedia elements to it where it's like, sort of crowdsourcing reputation and the idea being that.
• 46:53
  Mike Masnick: users who have a high score, their content rises to the top users that have a low score.
• 46:59
  Mike Masnick: Their content, will be not as readily.
• 47:01
  Mike Masnick: It'll still be there, but it won't, work into algorithms or be as readily, shared and, viewable and, you know.
• 47:08
  Mike Masnick: It's an interesting idea.
• 47:10
  Mike Masnick: I have questions about how well it'll work in practice.
• 47:13
  Mike Masnick: You know, as soon as you get into this kind of thing, you worry about things about brigade and deliberative attacks on certain kinds of speech and how it can be abused and how, I mean, there's always fears about things like echo chambers and stuff, which I think might be a little bit overblown, but it's an interesting and different approach.
• 47:30
  Mike Masnick: And right now the one thing that I do believe very strongly is that.
• 47:34
  Mike Masnick: the more experiments, the better.
• 47:35
  Mike Masnick: And so, I'm happy to see an experiment.
• 47:37
  Mike Masnick: I'm happy to see how it works.
• 47:39
  Mike Masnick: I might be a little skeptical that this will work out as well as they sort of think it will.
• 47:44
  Mike Masnick: But again, what we need right now is experiments.
• 47:46
  Mike Masnick: We need differentiation.
• 47:47
  Mike Masnick: We need people to try different things.
• 47:49
  Mike Masnick: And so I'm excited to see them enter the space.
• 47:52
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I think it's an interesting, feature and an interesting idea that might kind of inadvertently affect how platforms moderate and act as a, way of slowing down harmful or egregious content.
• 48:02
  Ben Whitelaw: it kind of made me think a bit about the challenges of breaking through.
• 48:06
  Ben Whitelaw: a platform like that though, if somebody has a reputation and they have built up a reputation on the platform, does that mean that a kind of other voices can emerge and can content can emerge in a way that,
• 48:15
  Mike Masnick: you, you definitely have a fear of like, this becomes a sort of winner take all situation and the people with the most clout and the most power sort of stay that way.
• 48:23
  Mike Masnick: you have a little bit of that no matter what on any social media platform.
• 48:27
  Mike Masnick: Obviously people with bigger audiences just have bigger audiences as this is the natural way things are.
• 48:32
  Mike Masnick: but yeah, there is a concern that this leads into there's going to be a strata of users who are like the royalty.
• 48:39
  Mike Masnick: And have all the power.
• 48:40
  Mike Masnick: And we have seen how that has failed on other platforms.
• 48:43
  Mike Masnick: And so, most notably, dig, which is now coming back apparently, you know, which was like the early version of Reddit where people would vote up and vote down stories.
• 48:53
  Mike Masnick: they had some sort of ranking system where particular users, their votes, if they were considered, good signalers, their votes counted more.
• 49:02
  Mike Masnick: And that got to a point where it was actually kind of crazy where like the leading users on, Dig, we had this happen to us.
• 49:08
  Mike Masnick: in fact, someone came to us and said, Hey, I have like strong power signal on Dig.
• 49:14
  Mike Masnick: Do you want me to promote Teched
• 49:16
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 49:17
  Mike Masnick: and I know that in some cases there were people who were like.
• 49:20
  Mike Masnick: Sort of selling their ability to do that.
• 49:22
  Mike Masnick: That wasn't the person who approached us was just like, I like text articles.
• 49:25
  Mike Masnick: I would promote them.
• 49:26
  Mike Masnick: And I actually told him no.
• 49:27
  Mike Masnick: 'cause I felt that that was, I felt like cheating, um, to rely on someone like that.
• 49:31
  Mike Masnick: but like once you have that kind of power, then there's corruption, potential
• 49:36
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I remember talking to a guy called Rob Allen, whose, username on Reddit is Gallo Boob, and he had a ton of karma.
• 49:44
  Ben Whitelaw: He's like one of the most kind of like, like, largest Reddit uses for Karma.
• 49:47
  Ben Whitelaw: And he also used to get loads of approaches from companies and brands.
• 49:51
  Ben Whitelaw: In which he was kind of invited to basically shell on behalf of the company and he was pretty principled about it.
• 49:56
  Ben Whitelaw: But yeah, there are all these kind of unintended consequences of focusing on reputation and it relies on having mitigating systems in place to, to I guess avoid that.
• 50:05
  Ben Whitelaw: So really interesting experiment will be interesting to see if that can scale and if people, enjoy it or see if those ideas proliferate onto other platforms as well.
• 50:13
  Mike Masnick: and I'll note too that I do appreciate the fact that they're trying to build this in a decentralized way.
• 50:18
  Mike Masnick: they're using the decentralized social networking protocol, which is the, the Project Liberty project.
• 50:23
  Mike Masnick: And, there's a few different.
• 50:25
  Mike Masnick: Social media apps that are using that.
• 50:27
  Mike Masnick: As someone who believes in protocols over platforms and decentralization, I'm excited that they're doing that rather than trying to build up a brand new thing from scratch.
• 50:35
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, indeed.
• 50:36
  Ben Whitelaw: great.
• 50:36
  Ben Whitelaw: Thanks Mike.
• 50:37
  Ben Whitelaw: That brings us to the end of today's episode.
• 50:39
  Ben Whitelaw: Thanks to our listeners for tuning in.
• 50:41
  Ben Whitelaw: if you enjoyed today's episode or if you didn't hate it, you know what to do,
• 50:45
  Mike Masnick: No.
• 50:45
  Mike Masnick: Let's, let's raise the bar.
• 50:47
  Mike Masnick: Okay.
• 50:48
  Mike Masnick: Last week it was, it was, didn't hate it This week, this week.
• 50:52
  Mike Masnick: Let's get some.
• 50:53
  Mike Masnick: We really, really like the podcast.
• 50:56
  Ben Whitelaw: Okay.
• 50:56
  Ben Whitelaw: If you really, really like the podcast, I think these three reviews have gone to your head.
• 51:00
  Ben Whitelaw: But yeah.
• 51:00
  Ben Whitelaw: Okay.
• 51:01
  Ben Whitelaw: If it's, if you really, really like the podcast, leave us a review in which you tell us that you really, really like it.
• 51:07
  Ben Whitelaw: And we will really, really like you.
• 51:09
  Ben Whitelaw: And, if you like the podcast enough to sponsor an episode, we are, in the market for sponsors.
• 51:16
  Ben Whitelaw: you get a mention at the start and the end of the podcast, and a excellent.
• 51:20
  Ben Whitelaw: 10 minute interview, with one of us.
• 51:23
  Ben Whitelaw: And, our listeners are growing all the time and we're getting lots of really great feedback.
• 51:26
  Ben Whitelaw: So get in touch, podcast@controlalspeech.com.
• 51:30
  Ben Whitelaw: Thanks for your time as ever, Mike.
• 51:31
  Ben Whitelaw: It's been great to chat to you.
• 51:33
  Ben Whitelaw: thanks for all the listeners tuning in, and we'll speak to you next week.
• 51:38
  Announcer: Thanks for listening to Ctrl-Alt-Speech.
• 51:41
  Announcer: Subscribe now to get our weekly episodes as soon as they're released.
• 51:45
  Announcer: If your company or organization is interested in sponsoring the podcast, contact us by visiting ctrlaltspeech.Com.
• 51:52
  Announcer: That's C T R L Alt Speech.
• 51:54
  Announcer: com.
• 51:56
  Announcer: This podcast is produced with financial support from the Future of Online Trust and Safety Fund, a fiscally sponsored multi donor fund at Global Impact that supports charitable activities to build a more robust, capable, and inclusive trust and safety ecosystem.