Latest / Ctrl-Alt-Speech / Deepfake It Till You Make It

Transcript

Deepfake It Till You Make It · Ctrl-Alt-Speech

• 0:00
  Ben Whitelaw: So since you've been recording Controlled Alt Speech Mike, we've been opening each episode by borrowing a prompt from a social media platform or app.
• 0:09
  Ben Whitelaw: And, you know, we've had the big names, we've had Twitter, we've had Facebook.
• 0:14
  Ben Whitelaw: But this is the weirdest yet.
• 0:16
  Ben Whitelaw: Okay I wanted to warn you.
• 0:18
  Ben Whitelaw: The heads up has been given.
• 0:20
  Ben Whitelaw: So, are you ready?
• 0:21
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, sure.
• 0:22
  Mike Masnick: Hit me with it.
• 0:23
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike, I want you to tell me what you really, really want.
• 0:26
  Ben Whitelaw: and that is courtesy of Airtasker.
• 0:29
  Ben Whitelaw: the app for DIY outsourcing.
• 0:31
  Ben Whitelaw: That's not me.
• 0:32
  Mike Masnick: I thought that was, I thought that was courtesy of the Spice Girls.
• 0:39
  Mike Masnick: Uh, what, what I want is to know when it is that you and I will be replaced.
• 0:45
  Mike Masnick: By AI deep fakes of ourselves.
• 0:48
  Mike Masnick: And we can sit back and relax while the AI deep fakes discuss the news of the week.
• 0:54
  Ben Whitelaw: I'd love that.
• 0:55
  Ben Whitelaw: I'd love that.
• 0:55
  Ben Whitelaw: We've, maybe we should be training somebody on the podcast recordings to do that.
• 1:01
  Mike Masnick: There, I'm sure there are companies out there who would be more than willing to do that.
• 1:04
  Mike Masnick: So, but what about you?
• 1:06
  Mike Masnick: What, what is it that you really want?
• 1:09
  Ben Whitelaw: I, I really, really want our listeners to rate and review Ctrl-Alt-Speech.
• 1:13
  Ben Whitelaw: That's the only thing that makes me happy.
• 1:15
  Ben Whitelaw: We've had some great reviews over the last couple of weeks and We've got some great comments on Techdirt as well, which have been fantastic.
• 1:22
  Ben Whitelaw: But if you are enjoying the podcast here's your reminder once again to rate and review us wherever you get Podcasts and uh, thanks for listening Hello, and welcome to Ctrl-Alt-Speech your weekly roundup of major stories about online speech content moderation and internet regulation This week's episode is brought to you with financial support from the future of online trust and safety fund.
• 1:51
  Ben Whitelaw: And by this week's sponsor TaskUs, they're a leading company in the trust and safety field and provide a range of platform integrity and digital safety solutions, and we'll hear about them a bit more later.
• 2:03
  Ben Whitelaw: My name is Ben Whitelaw and I'm the founder and editor of Everything in Moderation.
• 2:07
  Ben Whitelaw: And I'm with Mike Masnick, as ever.
• 2:10
  Ben Whitelaw: How are you doing, Mike?
• 2:11
  Mike Masnick: I am doing okay.
• 2:12
  Mike Masnick: Uh, it is
• 2:13
  Ben Whitelaw: still still in, still in human form, I
• 2:15
  Mike Masnick: still in human form.
• 2:17
  Mike Masnick: I am not an AI just yet, but, uh, we'll see.
• 2:21
  Mike Masnick: We'll see.
• 2:21
  Mike Masnick: Uh, no promises for the future.
• 2:24
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm surprised nobody's tried to, AI deepfake you yet, I'll be honest.
• 2:28
  Mike Masnick: I am not that interesting.
• 2:31
  Ben Whitelaw: But you know, having, having, you know, Mike Masnick say something controversial about speech would, probably fly around the internet pretty
• 2:38
  Mike Masnick: I, I don't, I don't think so.
• 2:39
  Mike Masnick: There was someone who once tried to create a, uh, a fake, Twitter profile of me, which was, uh, use the name Ma Mike Nick.
• 2:48
  Mike Masnick: Uh, and it lasted for like three tweets and nobody paid attention to it.
• 2:54
  Mike Masnick: And then the guy gave up.
• 2:55
  Mike Masnick: So,
• 2:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Uh, I would, was it just not believable?
• 3:00
  Ben Whitelaw: What was the problem
• 3:01
  Mike Masnick: I mean, it was, you know, it was attempting to make fun of things that I say, it was sort of trying to be like a, you know, parody of me, but like, I'm not that interesting to parody.
• 3:09
  Mike Masnick: Like, I'm not, there's not that much, you know?
• 3:14
  Mike Masnick: You know, and plus whoever was doing it, I guess, you know, their heart just really wasn't in it.
• 3:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 3:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, you've really got to care about those things, aren't you, to continue them.
• 3:24
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, okay, well, fingers crossed that doesn't happen again, not in AI form either.
• 3:30
  Ben Whitelaw: We've got a great episode planned, Mike, We've got a range of stories that we've been prepping ahead of time and We've also got a great bonus chat with TaskUs' Phil Tomlinson About his time at the trust and safety professional association summit in dublin recently, which we mentioned on last week's podcast He's going to give us his key takeaways at the end of today's episode And also going to share some trust and safety learnings pegged to his conference lanyard, which is worth waiting for
• 3:56
  Mike Masnick: as someone who is obsessed with, conference lanyards and, and how to do them right, I have not heard this, the interview yet.
• 4:03
  Mike Masnick: I am looking forward to finding out what we can learn about trust and safety from conference lanyards.
• 4:08
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, it's an original take and phil really knows his stuff.
• 4:10
  Ben Whitelaw: So it's worth hanging around for So let's get, get into their mic.
• 4:14
  Ben Whitelaw: We've got, a whole range of stories and platforms and issues to be getting through today.
• 4:19
  Ben Whitelaw: We're going to start with a kind of new association, new coalition, really, of platforms that both of us spotted in our reading this week.
• 4:28
  Ben Whitelaw: talk to us about this new initiative to counter pig butchering.
• 4:32
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, this is really fascinating.
• 4:33
  Mike Masnick: And I don't know I assume our listeners have probably heard of this concept of pig butchering, which is the scam that has become really popular and a big deal, there've been a bunch of articles about it over the last few months year where it's, you know, it's an online scam, often a romance related scam, the reason it's called pig butchering is because it takes place over a fairly long period of time.
• 4:56
  Mike Masnick: It's not a one off scam.
• 4:58
  Mike Masnick: It's where, people try and.
• 5:00
  Mike Masnick: fake befriend you and sort of build up a relationship and trust, potentially romantic, relationship, and sort of drag you along for many, many months and get closer and closer and then eventually start trying to get money, Out of the person there are a number of different forms of this.
• 5:16
  Mike Masnick: And there's been a lot of really interesting reporting on the fact that most of the people involved in these scams are often in Southeast Asia are often victims of, human trafficking and are effectively prisoners, locked up in compounds and are forced to, scam to avoid.
• 5:35
  Mike Masnick: being beaten or, or worse, it's a really horrifying situation all around.
• 5:40
  Mike Masnick: But it's become a really big deal.
• 5:42
  Mike Masnick: And it's also one that's really difficult to track down and stop.
• 5:47
  Mike Masnick: Oftentimes it involves multiple different platforms.
• 5:50
  Mike Masnick: A lot of them start with just, you know, randomly texting different numbers on different platforms, whether it's regular text or WhatsApp or what, and then sometimes we'll move to other platforms to try and be more secure and hidden.
• 6:04
  Mike Masnick: It often involves cryptocurrency.
• 6:06
  Mike Masnick: There's some that involve dating sites.
• 6:09
  Mike Masnick: There are a number of different ways that, it occurs and it, it It's tricky to track down in part because it's using all of these different platforms and obviously the cryptocurrency element is fairly tricky as well.
• 6:19
  Mike Masnick: One of the common pig butchering scams, that is less about romance, but there may still be a romance component to it because it's a motivating factor for some people, uh, often involves telling people about some great investment.
• 6:33
  Mike Masnick: And that often involves cryptocurrency and we'll, we'll lead people to download a fake, crypto exchange app where, they get you to, put money into it and trade for, and it looks like for a while, it looks like you're, you know, making wonderful returns and then eventually the app disappears or all your money disappears in some form or another.
• 6:52
  Ben Whitelaw: So if people, I've had some people get in touch via.
• 6:55
  Ben Whitelaw: What's up?
• 6:56
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, you get those random spammy messages.
• 6:58
  Ben Whitelaw: Is that, what we're getting?
• 6:59
  Ben Whitelaw: A kind of pig, potentially pig butchering
• 7:01
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, almost certainly most of them are usually, you know, they, they often start with, like a very friendly, like, Hey, how's it going?
• 7:06
  Mike Masnick: Or like pretending that they know you.
• 7:08
  Mike Masnick: And sometimes they'll use a name or sometimes they'll use some sort of weird thing.
• 7:13
  Mike Masnick: Like, Hey, can't come, can't come by to paint the house today, but you know, I'll be there tomorrow.
• 7:17
  Mike Masnick: Like just something to get you to respond.
• 7:19
  Mike Masnick: The whole idea is like, it's a really.
• 7:21
  Mike Masnick: Friendly come on.
• 7:22
  Mike Masnick: Then what they hope is that some people being nice, we'll respond and say, Hey, sorry, wrong number.
• 7:28
  Mike Masnick: And the person will be like, Oh, I'm sorry.
• 7:30
  Mike Masnick: And then, you know, begin some sort of conversation that then leads into, you know, and it's, it's sort of preying on the fact that.
• 7:36
  Mike Masnick: some people out in the world, thankfully are nice, you know, and, and are trying to be helpful in this situation and a lot of the pig butchering scam is really built on preying on people for being nice, which is kind of, you know, horrific in its own way.
• 7:51
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 7:51
  Ben Whitelaw: So what are we seeing this week?
• 7:53
  Ben Whitelaw: What's, what's the, the link up between these companies?
• 7:55
  Mike Masnick: this is really interesting was that basically there's this coalition that's been formed called Tech Against Scams and it involves a bunch of different companies including Meta, Coinbase, Match, And a few others, especially in the cryptocurrency space, a few other crypto exchanges that are all saying that they're going to start to work together to try and stop these scams.
• 8:21
  Mike Masnick: And this is really important for all the reasons that I was describing in that, A lot of these involve a number of different platforms and tracking down who is using them and recognizing that the scam is happening across these platforms is a lot more difficult, but when these firms work together, hopefully the plan is that they can exchange certain information that allows them to track down when this is happening and to prevent the scam from actually, reaching fruition.
• 8:47
  Ben Whitelaw: Interesting.
• 8:48
  Ben Whitelaw: So this is a kind of part of a trend we're seeing really where platforms are starting to recognize that harms exist across platforms and proliferate very quickly across platforms in some cases.
• 8:59
  Ben Whitelaw: what do you hope that this will allow the platforms to do that they weren't able to do before?
• 9:03
  Ben Whitelaw: Do we know exactly what the link up will entail?
• 9:06
  Mike Masnick: I mean, it'll depend on the details, but, you know, we've definitely seen this in terms in the past where Meta and Twitter, would exchange information on political disinformation, trolling groups by, large state actors where you had Iran and Russia and China basically trying to, what was referred to as coordinated inauthentic behavior.
• 9:29
  Mike Masnick: Um, and it was.
• 9:31
  Mike Masnick: helpful when the different platforms could share notes and details and data on who was doing what and sort of realize like, Oh, okay.
• 9:39
  Mike Masnick: You know, this thing that we, we weren't sure if it was part of a larger campaign based on information from other apps, we were able to figure out that it was associated with this campaign and therefore deal with it, whether it's, you https: otter.
• 9:53
  Mike Masnick: ai That just larger view into the information rather than having it being separated out into, the separate silos of each of the different companies is really useful.
• 10:03
  Mike Masnick: And so I assume that the thinking here is something similar where they can start to share information.
• 10:08
  Mike Masnick: If they're seeing a pattern of activity that they know they lose track of once it moves off of one app onto another.
• 10:14
  Mike Masnick: So, I'm sure this happens quite a bit where something maybe starts on match.
• 10:20
  Mike Masnick: You know, if they're going for the romance angle, we'll move to WhatsApp for the private conversation.
• 10:25
  Mike Masnick: And then there'll be some sort of cryptocurrency component that comes in later.
• 10:29
  Mike Masnick: in the past, These companies might have that one little view, which is maybe not enough to do anything, but now when they can share and follow the path of what's happening, they might be able to intervene and shut down the accounts and, stop the scam from actually going through.
• 10:44
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, so they kind of have the full journey essentially mapped in some of the companies involved at least.
• 10:48
  Ben Whitelaw: You did mention that there was a couple that aren't, in this group that, you know, we might expect to be there.
• 10:53
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 10:54
  Mike Masnick: I mean, the, the main one is the concern is, Tether.
• 10:56
  Mike Masnick: Tether is a cryptocurrency, which is, ostensibly.
• 11:00
  Mike Masnick: tethered to the U S dollar.
• 11:02
  Mike Masnick: So the price is, you know, one tether to one U S dollar.
• 11:05
  Mike Masnick: there are some concerns about how real that is.
• 11:08
  Mike Masnick: And, and there's always been some concerned about tether being a little bit on the questionable side of things, but often a lot of the pig butchering scams do rely on tether.
• 11:18
  Mike Masnick: And there's been a bunch of reporting on this.
• 11:19
  Mike Masnick: It's not entirely clear why that is.
• 11:21
  Mike Masnick: I think.
• 11:21
  Mike Masnick: think it might have to do with the one to one peg between the dollar and tether, that it just feels easier for users and a little more comfortable than some other cryptocurrencies.
• 11:29
  Mike Masnick: but I know that has been a really big part of, a lot of the pig butchering scams and tether is not a part of this coalition.
• 11:36
  Mike Masnick: And I think that is kind of a notable omission.
• 11:38
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I mean, I think there's, presuming this does go well and that there is some impact from working together in this way, hopefully you will see other companies join the fold.
• 11:47
  Ben Whitelaw: And this, as you say, does feel like it's on the kind of more, slightly more informal side of these linkups where, it's, Kind of based on informal sharing of information.
• 11:56
  Ben Whitelaw: There are obviously more formalized groups, such as gift CT and stop, NCII non consensual intimate image abuse, where some of those groups that are formed out of nonprofits report more widely information that they're hearing.
• 12:13
  Ben Whitelaw: And there's a bit more of a transparency around that, but I think both of these examples are positive and right.
• 12:19
  Ben Whitelaw: And reflect the fact that.
• 12:21
  Ben Whitelaw: If you're an inauthentic actor or somebody who's looking to enact a scam You're going to work across platforms and the way that these companies are thinking about it is clearly in line with that.
• 12:33
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 12:33
  Mike Masnick: And I think it'll be interesting to see how well this works and, what they're willing to talk about publicly as, time goes on, and whether or not other groups join and, hopefully we start to see some success stories.
• 12:44
  Mike Masnick: I'm sure the scammers will start to, you know, modify their tactics cause that's what scammers do.
• 12:48
  Mike Masnick: But I think it's, a really interesting start and, we'll see sort of what else comes out of this.
• 12:54
  Ben Whitelaw: Brilliant Awesome.
• 12:55
  Ben Whitelaw: Thanks mike.
• 12:55
  Ben Whitelaw: Our second big story today is Another story from india last week.
• 13:00
  Ben Whitelaw: We talked about the banning of independent media outlets by youtube which super interesting For its own reasons this week wired have done a really great long read on You deep fakes within the political election there.
• 13:14
  Ben Whitelaw: And again, the election is a mammoth event in India is coming to a close in the next couple of weeks.
• 13:21
  Ben Whitelaw: And what this piece outlines really is the way that political kind of, parties are using AI to essentially produce deep fake videos to reach a larger audience and to encourage people to vote is a really, really interesting, piece.
• 13:36
  Ben Whitelaw: And they're doing it for a number of reasons.
• 13:38
  Ben Whitelaw: They're doing it because there's a number of different languages across India, 22, I think in total.
• 13:43
  Ben Whitelaw: And also because way that campaigning works there, and the large geography that the politicians are having to cover across states, makes it really difficult to reach people, en masse.
• 13:54
  Ben Whitelaw: And so, this is really the first election, obviously, where we're seeing, um, AI being used and the piece outlines one particular young guy, a 31 year old called Devendra Singh Jaden, who really is a kind of one man, AI expert.
• 14:10
  Ben Whitelaw: He's helping politicians create deep fakes of themselves.
• 14:14
  Ben Whitelaw: He's recording them speaking and creating.
• 14:18
  Ben Whitelaw: images of themselves that they can also use for calls to help encourage people to vote.
• 14:23
  Ben Whitelaw: And so that's really fascinating in itself.
• 14:25
  Ben Whitelaw: The scale of it is, Unbelievable as well.
• 14:28
  Ben Whitelaw: There's a note in the piece about how 50 million calls were made to Indian voters in the two months before voting started.
• 14:37
  Ben Whitelaw: And so these are basically, voters will get calls where a politician who has had their voice kind of cloned, is essentially speaking to them about why they should vote and why they should vote for that party.
• 14:49
  Ben Whitelaw: So it's a huge amount of people receiving calls.
• 14:52
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, not in the context really of, the Indian population, but, but the number is really significant.
• 14:57
  Ben Whitelaw: And, some companies, there are a number of different companies doing this.
• 15:00
  Ben Whitelaw: Some companies are doing 25 million calls in the case of just a few weeks.
• 15:05
  Ben Whitelaw: So they're getting through an awful, lot of calls and reaching an awful lot of people there's a couple other parts to it.
• 15:11
  Ben Whitelaw: I think which are really interesting the psychology of this type of work is fascinating as well.
• 15:16
  Ben Whitelaw: So this young guy who owns this company Called polymath synthetic media.
• 15:22
  Ben Whitelaw: He was saying that actually people love hearing from deepfaked politicians because they feel they never get to see representatives and they they feel like politicians should reach out to them and he what he might say this because he's in the game of producing deepfakes but he was saying that actually there's something kind of unique about hearing from a politician even if it's not them saying it live.
• 15:44
  Ben Whitelaw: it's essentially them having gone to some effort to reach out to them and to convince them to vote.
• 15:50
  Ben Whitelaw: and so that's really interesting, the psychology of it as well.
• 15:52
  Ben Whitelaw: But essentially It's a huge industry that's emerging in India alone.
• 15:56
  Ben Whitelaw: And we can expect to see this happening elsewhere, I think.
• 15:59
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 15:59
  Mike Masnick: I mean the thing that struck me about this is that for all the talk, you know, if you speak to anyone about deep fakes and politics, all of the discussion for the past few years has been about faking something bad.
• 16:12
  Mike Masnick: You know, picking an opponent or someone that, somebody doesn't want elected, creating a fake video of them saying something terrible.
• 16:19
  Mike Masnick: We had the, the story.
• 16:20
  Mike Masnick: um, last week's podcast of the claims, which turned out to be real, you know, deep fake video, there are all these concerns about deep fakes being used in a negative context.
• 16:30
  Mike Masnick: And what struck me about this was it was a case of, politicians deep faking themselves in order to effectively give themselves more range.
• 16:37
  Mike Masnick: And just like, you know, I'm looking forward to the deep fake Mike replacing me on this podcast so I can spend more time.
• 16:44
  Mike Masnick: I don't know, doing something else, but what else would I do with my time?
• 16:49
  Mike Masnick: I have no idea, but, uh, you know, it was really interesting to see that.
• 16:52
  Mike Masnick: And some of it is just, you know, doing these calls where it's clearly not the politician calling the person, but it does.
• 16:58
  Mike Masnick: feel more personalized.
• 17:00
  Mike Masnick: in some cases, it was not clear that, recipients of these calls were aware that it was a deep fake they were talking to in some cases.
• 17:08
  Mike Masnick: They were just providing a message and maybe the extent of the like true fakery was just adding in the person's name.
• 17:16
  Mike Masnick: So calling and saying, Hey Ben, I really hope you'll vote for me, you know, and just sort of presenting a message.
• 17:21
  Mike Masnick: There is some experimentation with actually being able to talk to the deep fake politicians.
• 17:27
  Mike Masnick: In the wired article, they sort of bury it pretty far down in the article that that does not work very well.
• 17:32
  Mike Masnick: And anyone who has played with generative AI these days probably gets a sense of like how badly those things will go.
• 17:38
  Mike Masnick: But here it was even like, you know, it would get stuck in a loop.
• 17:41
  Mike Masnick: It would keep repeating the same line over and over again.
• 17:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Who wants to speak to a politician really?
• 17:45
  Mike Masnick: well, yeah, you never know.
• 17:47
  Mike Masnick: But, um, it, it just struck me as a really, you Interesting use of it.
• 17:53
  Mike Masnick: Whereas everybody is like really afraid of how it would be used negatively here seeing it being at least attempted to be used in a way that, allows politicians to communicate better with the voting populace.
• 18:04
  Mike Masnick: And it, you know, it sort of reminded me of their, the famous stories of, how different politicians over time embrace new medium to get word out.
• 18:13
  Mike Masnick: So, you know, radio with.
• 18:15
  Mike Masnick: FDR and then television with JFK in the U.
• 18:19
  Mike Masnick: S.
• 18:19
  Mike Masnick: These examples are sort of canonical of, the candidate that learns how to embrace the new medium in a positive way to better connect with, the citizenry, makes a real difference.
• 18:29
  Mike Masnick: And so it struck me as just a really different kind of story compared to the, Oh no, AI deepfakes bad to the, Oh, Hey, here's a way to connect with voters.
• 18:39
  Ben Whitelaw: Right, but what the other thing that the piece mentions is that some of the things that the politicians were saying, obviously, was not necessarily true or factually correct, right?
• 18:48
  Ben Whitelaw: So there, there is that problem of like politicians, we hope saying, things that are true and abiding by certain standards, but that's not necessarily the
• 18:56
  Mike Masnick: yeah, but politicians lie all the time.
• 18:59
  Mike Masnick: I don't, I don't think there's a, there's a,
• 19:00
  Ben Whitelaw: mean, some, some or the most, right?
• 19:03
  Ben Whitelaw: This is, there's a whole, there's a whole theory about misinformation coming from, the top and from elected officials.
• 19:09
  Ben Whitelaw: And, so, so I'm less.
• 19:11
  Ben Whitelaw: Comfortable with the idea that this is, this is something that we should be comfortable with.
• 19:15
  Ben Whitelaw: Like,
• 19:16
  Mike Masnick: I, I'm not saying that anyone should be comfortable with it, but I'm saying it's, it's happening, right.
• 19:20
  Mike Masnick: And it's going to happen.
• 19:22
  Mike Masnick: And it's, it's worth recognizing how people are going to use this because I assume this is only going to increase, it is a way to better connect with certain voters.
• 19:31
  Mike Masnick: and therefore.
• 19:32
  Mike Masnick: whether it's good or bad is a wholly separate question.
• 19:35
  Mike Masnick: The reality is that it is happening and we should be thinking about it and it should change our thinking away from just thinking about AI as a deep fakes as being this thing that was going to be used to create fake negative videos, because it's people are going to come up with more and more creative ways to use it.
• 19:52
  Mike Masnick: And some of them may be really compelling.
• 19:54
  Mike Masnick: And some of them, may really.
• 19:56
  Mike Masnick: work in terms of like getting out the vote or convincing voters of certain things or connecting with voters.
• 20:01
  Mike Masnick: And there's all sorts of things that we're going to see.
• 20:04
  Mike Masnick: And this is sort of the first like big article that I've seen that sort of begins to grapple with some of those issues and some of those questions in terms of, you know, how does this appear?
• 20:14
  Mike Masnick: How will it be used beyond just this idea, which we haven't really seen that much of I'm going to make the politician that I don't like, or that I'm running against look terrible by faking a video.
• 20:26
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 20:26
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, talk to Mike about how it's playing out in the U S cause there was, the whole piece around robo calls in relation to the primaries.
• 20:33
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 20:34
  Ben Whitelaw: Which is a similar kind of trend.
• 20:37
  Ben Whitelaw: Do you expect to see this happening in, in the U S election later this year?
• 20:40
  Ben Whitelaw: And what, what are the kind of rules around that?
• 20:42
  Mike Masnick: mean, it is a big and kind of open question.
• 20:45
  Mike Masnick: The, the, just this week, a couple of things did happen in the U S related to this, which is the person who was behind the robocalls for Biden, the fake Biden robocalls saying like, don't, don't.
• 20:56
  Mike Masnick: It was whatever, uh, got, was indicted and, relatively quickly we'll be facing, jail time.
• 21:02
  Mike Masnick: Some pretty serious consequences for doing that.
• 21:05
  Mike Masnick: So it was great that they started talking.
• 21:06
  Mike Masnick: Now that that guy had sort of come out very publicly after it all happened.
• 21:11
  Mike Masnick: And the FCC announced that it is looking at putting in place rules for political advertising, using AI, having to declare that AI is involved.
• 21:20
  Mike Masnick: There are questions about whether or not.
• 21:22
  Mike Masnick: One, the FCC has that authority, they might not.
• 21:25
  Mike Masnick: There are questions about whether or not those rules would pass First Amendment muster.
• 21:29
  Mike Masnick: They might not.
• 21:31
  Mike Masnick: But you know, it's certainly something that is now being talked about in the U S whether or not candidates are going to use the technology in this way.
• 21:38
  Mike Masnick: I'm not as sure we are also dealing with, you know, on the present at the presidential level, certainly like not necessarily the most.
• 21:44
  Mike Masnick: technologically sophisticated, uh, individuals on, on either of the major parties.
• 21:49
  Mike Masnick: But, you know, we'll see.
• 21:51
  Mike Masnick: They both have teams of people who might try and experiment with stuff, and we will see where that leads.
• 21:57
  Mike Masnick: But right now, it's not clear that there's anything legally that can be done.
• 22:01
  Mike Masnick: There's a lot of talk about it, but there would certainly be First Amendment challenges on a lot of the legal side in the U.
• 22:06
  Mike Masnick: S.
• 22:07
  Ben Whitelaw: okay, I mean I noted in this white piece again about how this AI consultant working with politicians had actually been contacted by a number of different organizations in Canada and the U.
• 22:18
  Ben Whitelaw: S.
• 22:18
  Ben Whitelaw: as well to do work for them and had received kind of contacts from, you know, burner accounts on, on different social platforms asking for, you know, kind of deep fakes about politicians, not by politicians.
• 22:30
  Mike Masnick: right, the more traditional one that people expected that this guy was approached to do that.
• 22:36
  Mike Masnick: He claims that he wouldn't be in that business, that there were some scandals and, and that was not his interest.
• 22:41
  Mike Masnick: obviously that is still a concern and we will still see plenty of stories about that.
• 22:45
  Mike Masnick: And there may actually be some things, though that relates to another story that we, wanted to talk about as part of this this week, which was that, Nick Clegg at Meta has come out and said that they haven't seen a sort of massive influx of, the deep fakes in political context.
• 23:01
  Mike Masnick: And they were talking about sort of the early elections this year, the Taiwanese one being the main one, where there were a lot of concerns about how China in particular might use AI deep fakes to try and influence that election, and they didn't really see it, or at least not at a, systemic level.
• 23:16
  Mike Masnick: Um, and, and I think the quote was that he said it was a manageable amount that, you know, I think some of the concern was that these kinds of things would flood the systems and overwhelm them.
• 23:27
  Mike Masnick: And Clegg is claiming that meta at least has not seen it at that overwhelming level.
• 23:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 23:32
  Ben Whitelaw: And if we're kind of joining these two stories together, as you say, like if Nick Clegg and Meta are only looking for category A of the deepfake stories, which you obviously rightly point out is.
• 23:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Has probably not transpired in the way we thought, then that's one thing, but there is maybe this whole other kind of category of deepfake stories, which is not referring to when he says that there has not been a significant volume
• 23:57
  Mike Masnick: yeah.
• 23:58
  Ben Whitelaw: these videos.
• 23:58
  Ben Whitelaw: Right?
• 23:58
  Ben Whitelaw: That's, it's almost like if you kind of ignore or you're not looking the right place, you're not going to see the thing that you need to see.
• 24:04
  Mike Masnick: Well, the question how are we concerned or is Metta concerned about, the kind of deep fake that is talked about in the wired context.
• 24:13
  Mike Masnick: Is that a problem?
• 24:14
  Mike Masnick: I mean, again, most of those were sort of one to one communications that might be happening over WhatsApp.
• 24:19
  Mike Masnick: In fact, they probably are happening over WhatsApp in a lot of cases, but is that something that Metta is concerned about where it's a politician On their own behalf, as opposed to negatively, presenting Mr.
• 24:30
  Mike Masnick: Disinformation about, uh, an opposing candidate.
• 24:33
  Mike Masnick: It's kind of a different question than the one that everyone's been thinking about and the one that I think Clegg is referring to here.
• 24:39
  Mike Masnick: But again, you know, meta has put in place some policies where they do want to, be aware of, AI generated content and properly label it.
• 24:47
  Mike Masnick: So there are some concerns there.
• 24:49
  Mike Masnick: And also it is still early in this technology and it, it, you know, Maybe saying like, ah, it hasn't been that big of a deal is kind of like foreshadowing for like, it may be coming still.
• 25:02
  Ben Whitelaw: and we won't know until it really hits us right there's a there's a sense of kind of Everything will be fine until it's not.
• 25:09
  Ben Whitelaw: I think that's what I took from, from Clegg's comments this week.
• 25:13
  Ben Whitelaw: Brilliant.
• 25:13
  Ben Whitelaw: So, so really interesting piece from India via Wired and thanks for talking us through that, Mike.
• 25:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Let's go on to our, other stories this week.
• 25:22
  Ben Whitelaw: We've got a few really nice ones, um, including this first story, which actually hasn't been kind of fully reported out, but something that you spotted on, Blue Sky about how they're thinking about spam.
• 25:33
  Ben Whitelaw: Talk us through what you've seen.
• 25:34
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 25:35
  Mike Masnick: This was really interesting.
• 25:36
  Mike Masnick: Aaron Rodericks, who is the head of trust and safety for blue sky was formerly, uh, worked in integrity at Twitter.
• 25:44
  Mike Masnick: Famously fired by Elon Musk, uh, like so many people.
• 25:48
  Mike Masnick: Um, and, uh, He, there was a bit of a controversy that happened on blue sky in terms of labeling a certain user as spamming and without getting too deep into the weeds, basically this user was responding to a number of, uh, the user appears to have been someone in Gaza who was, looking for funds to try and get out of Gaza for obvious reasons.
• 26:13
  Mike Masnick: And was posting replies to a whole bunch of different accounts, basically linking them to, I can't remember if it was actually a GoFundMe or the equivalent of a GoFundMe, but basically saying like, help, uh, help me get out of Gaza.
• 26:26
  Mike Masnick: And it was, legitimately spam like behavior.
• 26:31
  Mike Masnick: It was responding.
• 26:32
  Mike Masnick: It was out of context.
• 26:33
  Mike Masnick: It had nothing to do with who they're responding to.
• 26:35
  Mike Masnick: They were responding to many, many people.
• 26:37
  Mike Masnick: There are a bunch of things about it that would tick any box for anything that was, spam like behavior and therefore blue sky labeled the account and the posts as being spam.
• 26:47
  Mike Masnick: And some people got very mad at that because some people were saying, you know, given the context of the message, should this be considered spam?
• 26:56
  Mike Masnick: It shouldn't be.
• 26:57
  Mike Masnick: And blue sky should remove the label.
• 27:00
  Mike Masnick: So Aaron posted a thread, which I thought was really interesting and very thoughtful and sort of laid out the transparently, like, this is how we think about this issue and saying that, this happens, but we have to judge it based on the actual behavior and not the content and not the details of what it is that they're spamming about.
• 27:20
  Mike Masnick: If it is spammy behavior, we have to label a spam.
• 27:22
  Mike Masnick: Otherwise, we're in this position where we're constantly making exceptions.
• 27:26
  Mike Masnick: We're constantly having to judge the value and the, righteousness of the spam.
• 27:32
  Mike Masnick: Uh, and that is not a workable solution.
• 27:35
  Mike Masnick: And so.
• 27:36
  Mike Masnick: I thought it was fascinating for a variety of reasons, in part, just the fact that Aaron was willing to come on the site and, explain all this publicly, because I honestly can't recall another platform being that public and that thorough in their explanation.
• 27:51
  Mike Masnick: Normally when there's some sort of trust and safety, content, moderation, controversy, you get a sort of, you know, worked over PR approved statement that says nothing, that doesn't really provide much transparency.
• 28:04
  Mike Masnick: People still get mad.
• 28:05
  Mike Masnick: People got very, very angry at Aaron.
• 28:07
  Mike Masnick: I think unfairly,
• 28:09
  Ben Whitelaw: Mm.
• 28:10
  Mike Masnick: You know, I think it was actually a really useful thing for him to do to explain it.
• 28:14
  Mike Masnick: Lots of people, I'm not saying everybody got angry.
• 28:17
  Mike Masnick: Lots of people really did respect it and pointed out, like, this is really valuable to have the head of trust and safety come out and explain the thinking on this and explain the nuances and trade offs and the reasons why Any organization really has to judge things based on behavior rather than the actual content.
• 28:34
  Mike Masnick: and so I just thought it was a really great thing.
• 28:36
  Mike Masnick: I think, it is predictable, but unfortunate that a lot of people still got really angry at them and came up with all sorts of excuses.
• 28:44
  Mike Masnick: This happens in, in the trust and safety field.
• 28:46
  Mike Masnick: All the time of saying like, well, if your rules lead to this, your rules are wrong.
• 28:50
  Mike Masnick: And it's like, like if, if you were in Aaron's shoes, this is the same decision almost anyone would make.
• 28:56
  Mike Masnick: Otherwise your platform is going to be a mess.
• 28:59
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I mean he he's really really honest about You know, he basically kind of writes through the trade offs that he's trying to make, right, and kind of unpacks his, thinking and, and that's really impressive, obviously, in a really difficult circumstances.
• 29:12
  Ben Whitelaw: And he even admits at one point, you know, that he doesn't have a good answer for how you, allow somebody in this situation to kind of somehow bypass the rules that have been set up this and he admits he doesn't want to create a system for that.
• 29:25
  Ben Whitelaw: So there are a few alternatives, though.
• 29:26
  Ben Whitelaw: I think some people posted in in the comments to his piece about, spam labeling or other labeling, I guess, having a time limit.
• 29:34
  Ben Whitelaw: Limit to it and it kind of it being something that is obviously Personal to this user's situation now, but maybe shouldn't be the case in I don't know 48 hours or a week or a month or whatever it might be Do you think there's kind of scope there?
• 29:47
  Ben Whitelaw: Do you think there's do you think there is ways designing a system still?
• 29:50
  Mike Masnick: there are lots of interesting things.
• 29:52
  Mike Masnick: And I actually do think that blue sky is really open to those things.
• 29:55
  Mike Masnick: I mean, a lot of what they're doing is about user controls.
• 29:58
  Mike Masnick: And I imagine that tools for that kind of thing will happen.
• 30:01
  Mike Masnick: I mean, already, if you look at it, within blue sky, you have control over your own moderation.
• 30:07
  Mike Masnick: tools and settings.
• 30:08
  Mike Masnick: And that includes like, how do you deal with things that are labeled in different ways?
• 30:13
  Mike Masnick: So, you could set it up so that your account handles.
• 30:17
  Mike Masnick: spam in different ways, whether or not it's blocked entirely or hidden or shown to you.
• 30:22
  Mike Masnick: So if you disagree with the labeling there, you can treat it differently.
• 30:26
  Mike Masnick: And that's basically.
• 30:26
  Mike Masnick: Part of the control that something like blue sky gives you.
• 30:30
  Mike Masnick: And of course there are alternative, apps that are beginning to pop up that let you experience blue sky, content, not through the blue sky app, and they can set up different rules as well.
• 30:40
  Mike Masnick: And if one of those apps decides that we're going to make an exception and this kind of spam, we don't consider spam, they can effectively ignore the label that the blue sky moderation team is, putting on this kind of content.
• 30:51
  Mike Masnick: so something like a timed moderation setup, I think would be really cool.
• 30:56
  Mike Masnick: Um, you know, it's not there now, but it wouldn't surprise me if it comes at some point.
• 31:00
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I mean, I suppose it's all complexity to add right to an probably already quite complex system.
• 31:06
  Ben Whitelaw: I, even as somebody who thinks he knows a fair bit about moderation, hasn't gone in and really customize my feeds and the way that my moderation works on BlueSky because it's kind of a big thing to set up, right.
• 31:16
  Ben Whitelaw: You need to kind of think through what it is you want to see and what you don't want to see.
• 31:19
  Ben Whitelaw: And
• 31:19
  Mike Masnick: It's not, it's not that hard.
• 31:20
  Mike Masnick: Play around with it.
• 31:21
  Mike Masnick: It's fun.
• 31:22
  Mike Masnick: It's fun.
• 31:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I feel like they could onboard it better, but I think this Aaron talking it through in this way is a really helpful thing and, um, fair play to him for doing that.
• 31:30
  Mike Masnick: I really appreciate the transparency and the thoroughness of the transparency as well.
• 31:34
  Mike Masnick: But let's, move on to the next story.
• 31:37
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 31:37
  Ben Whitelaw: And so this is a story that, I was reading this week about, uh, it was published in Lawfare about spammaflash, which, if folks don't know, it's where basically Chinese operatives post via thousands of different accounts, promoting the Chinese government.
• 31:54
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, And, uh, it's often used to kind of harass Chinese dissidents elsewhere outside the country.
• 32:01
  Ben Whitelaw: Now, this has been something that has been noted since 2019.
• 32:04
  Ben Whitelaw: It's been something that, Grafica stumbled across in some of its work.
• 32:08
  Ben Whitelaw: And Meta last year did a big report, in which it unveiled that it took down almost 9, 000 accounts linked to the kind of Chinese state.
• 32:18
  Ben Whitelaw: Which we're posting essentially kind of, missing this information.
• 32:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Now, spam flash historically has not been very successful, which is basically kind of not very targeted, not very high quality, the accounts tend to kind of promote each other, but this new report, Based on some work from, Elise Thomas, who works for the Institute of Strategic Dialogue says that actually these spambolage accounts are starting to become more sophisticated and the way they're doing that is basically kind of hitching their cart to, Donald Trump and making themselves to be kind of MAGA supporting accounts.
• 32:55
  Ben Whitelaw: So she notes three or four different accounts who've changed their username.
• 33:00
  Ben Whitelaw: They've changed their banner.
• 33:01
  Ben Whitelaw: They've started to tweet more like.
• 33:03
  Ben Whitelaw: Essentially Republican supporters, and they're building up kind of larger audiences that are being retweeted by, people with serious, uh, reach and clout on platforms, including Alex Jones and in some places.
• 33:15
  Ben Whitelaw: So, this is a really kind of interesting evolution of something that's been there for a while, but which is starting to kind of, I guess, become more sophisticated, in the run up to the elections later this year.
• 33:27
  Ben Whitelaw: And what we don't know is really the scale of it.
• 33:30
  Ben Whitelaw: At least kind of mentioned that it's quite hard to know how many accounts there are how linked they are they move a lot again across platforms And it's not just on meta or on the major platforms where they exist They're on smaller websites and forums as well.
• 33:43
  Ben Whitelaw: So understanding the sheer size of it is difficult But yeah, I thought this is a really interesting kind of read and something i'd recommend listeners delving into
• 33:52
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 33:52
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I thought it was interesting.
• 33:53
  Mike Masnick: It also, I thought the timing was interesting that it came out like three weeks after Wired had a, big article that basically said that.
• 34:00
  Mike Masnick: It was, why China is so bad at disinformation.
• 34:03
  Mike Masnick: I'm basically talking about the, how unsuccessful these accounts have been.
• 34:06
  Mike Masnick: And, you know, there's a quote in here in the wired piece that effectively said it was, like they were at the level that Russia was at in 2014.
• 34:14
  Mike Masnick: So sort of 10 years behind Russia, which is generally seen as being much better at the disinformation online game.
• 34:20
  Mike Masnick: And it's interesting then that, now with this report, the lawfare report it's, you know, it's basically saying they've, they've moved up to maybe 2016 in terms of, you know, creating MAGA supporting accounts and sort of just generating nonsense online and sort of, worming their way into, MAGA circles and getting retweets and stuff like that.
• 34:38
  Mike Masnick: it's sort of an interesting evolution.
• 34:40
  Mike Masnick: I don't find it that surprising.
• 34:42
  Mike Masnick: You assume that sooner or later, The Chinese trolls are going to start to figure this stuff out.
• 34:47
  Mike Masnick: but it is interesting to see, how that's advanced in, just the last few years.
• 34:51
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, a couple of elections behind but making ground it seems okay let's We swiftly on to a story that is super interesting.
• 35:00
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike talks a lot about a lot of issues that you cover a lot in tech that we can week out, a tick tock block.
• 35:07
  Mike Masnick: Yes, but a different one.
• 35:09
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, not that one.
• 35:11
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 35:11
  Mike Masnick: So this was interesting in that, France, there's a island in the Pacific or set of islands, New Caledonia, which is controlled by France and there's some controversy happening there because they've changed the law that will allow.
• 35:26
  Mike Masnick: People who have lived in New Caledonia for, I think it's a decade, to begin to vote.
• 35:32
  Mike Masnick: And so, folks there are concerned, especially people who have been advocating for independence of New Caledonia, are worried that this will sort of further entrench, their being beholden to France.
• 35:45
  Mike Masnick: And so, there's been some.
• 35:47
  Mike Masnick: Protests and some violence, and it's been kind of a mess.
• 35:52
  Mike Masnick: And the response was that suddenly New Caledonia started blocking TikTok.
• 35:58
  Mike Masnick: So this is not about worries about China having access to information or about propaganda or anything.
• 36:05
  Mike Masnick: This was very much a, huh.
• 36:08
  Mike Masnick: There's a bunch of people who are mad and it feels like they are organizing and spreading information about protests and everything via TikTok.
• 36:16
  Mike Masnick: And the easiest way to deal with that is just to shut down access to TikTok across all of New Caledonia, um, which is like horrifying for a lot of reasons.
• 36:26
  Mike Masnick: And You know, there have been other cases certainly of like, apps being shut down during protests and, you know, it being concerns that were raised, but here this is, a pretty big step for a supposedly, Western liberal democracy.
• 36:41
  Mike Masnick: To say, gosh, this is, this is kind of a mess.
• 36:44
  Mike Masnick: We're just going to block this app and we're not really going to explain why.
• 36:47
  Mike Masnick: I mean, a lot of this is kind of assumptions that it's connected to the protests and the violence.
• 36:52
  Mike Masnick: But, uh, it's, it's a big step and I think a lot of people are raising concerns about it.
• 36:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 36:57
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, I remember when Nigeria blocked Twitter or shut Twitter during the protest a few years ago.
• 37:04
  Ben Whitelaw: And I wonder what folks in France would have said about that at the time, right?
• 37:08
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, France, a country where speech and liberty is of utmost importance.
• 37:14
  Ben Whitelaw: it is funny how things kind of, you know, Do shift very quickly.
• 37:17
  Ben Whitelaw: And, this isn't something that, the DSA does, doesn't cover, the French territories and it's, it's something that will be interesting to see how that kind of shapes up.
• 37:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Because I think the, it does, have a jurisdiction or issue.
• 37:33
  Ben Whitelaw: But, you know, this is right in the midst of some really.
• 37:36
  Ben Whitelaw: Interesting kind of regulatory changes in the EU and people should be concerned about this.
• 37:41
  Ben Whitelaw: I think, Okay, we will shift now to our last story of today's podcast in terms of the news roundup.
• 37:49
  Ben Whitelaw: And we've got a story from X slash Twitter, and I wanted just to kind of quickly flag the kind of beef that's been happening in Australia recently, really with, the e safety commission there.
• 38:00
  Ben Whitelaw: So, Linda Yacarino actually was on stage, today talking about this and has called, the Australian government out for overreaching in terms of basically this whole episode, but essentially just to unpack it for listeners, they might remember, we probably mentioned on the podcast a few weeks ago that the e safety commission tried to, have Twitter take down a stabbing video, um, a series of videos on the platform, uh, after, an event in Wakeley in a part of Australia where, a minister was stabbed and.
• 38:31
  Ben Whitelaw: That happened, they removed a bunch of URLs and Twitter geo blocked the content there.
• 38:37
  Ben Whitelaw: But Twitter then they kind of fought back and has said that they actually don't think it should have been the case.
• 38:43
  Ben Whitelaw: They should allow people to kind of decipher themselves.
• 38:46
  Ben Whitelaw: And so the eSafety Commission then went back to the federal court in Australia, applied for an injunction.
• 38:50
  Ben Whitelaw: last week that injunction was, um, there was an extension applied for and that was rejected.
• 38:56
  Ben Whitelaw: And what has happened is that, um, Therefore, this content is now going to be kind of banned in Australia.
• 39:03
  Ben Whitelaw: But it's going to be available to everyone else at this point in time.
• 39:07
  Ben Whitelaw: And so you have this kind of ongoing standoff between these platforms and this, regulator in Australia, which.
• 39:14
  Ben Whitelaw: It's ongoing, right?
• 39:15
  Mike Masnick: yeah, and I think it's worth clarifying a little bit on the details here, which was just that, this is a common thing when a country says that certain content is illegal, a lot of platforms will geo block it.
• 39:26
  Mike Masnick: So just that, Territory, country, whatever has the content block.
• 39:31
  Mike Masnick: And that is considered sort of the best practice for a variety of good reasons.
• 39:35
  Mike Masnick: And here, what the problem was, was that the, Australian e safety commissioner came in and said that geo blocking it was not good enough because Australians could use VPNs and get around it, which is always the case, right?
• 39:46
  Mike Masnick: You can always get around geo blocking with VPNs.
• 39:49
  Mike Masnick: And that is a really major concern because effectively what the They're saying in that case is we should be able to block content globally, which is, you know, there are all sorts of jurisdictional questions.
• 40:01
  Mike Masnick: And this is like, I've talked about this, like one of the earliest stories on tech or 27 years ago was about the jurisdictional questions of the internet.
• 40:08
  Mike Masnick: And this is a thing that will never go away because.
• 40:12
  Mike Masnick: The internet is global and while there are, you know, there have been elements of fracturing of that global internet.
• 40:18
  Mike Masnick: And in fact, we did a whole podcast on the, you know, one of our first ones was, you know, Is the internet still global?
• 40:24
  Mike Masnick: But there is this big question of, how do you deal with that kind of thing?
• 40:28
  Mike Masnick: And there have been other cases.
• 40:29
  Mike Masnick: There was a big one that was fought in Canada and the U S seven or it was really started a decade ago.
• 40:36
  Mike Masnick: With Equus tech, which was this company that was mad about some, former partner or a former employee who was, selling similar stuff that potentially violated its IP.
• 40:47
  Mike Masnick: And they wanted Google to block access to anyone.
• 40:50
  Mike Masnick: Google was willing to geo block it, but said a global, block would not count.
• 40:55
  Mike Masnick: That went back and forth in the courts in both Canada and in the U S and it.
• 41:00
  Mike Masnick: Got to this point where the U S said you can't force Google to block it globally.
• 41:04
  Mike Masnick: And Canada said, yes, we can.
• 41:06
  Mike Masnick: And it kind of ended there.
• 41:08
  Mike Masnick: It's possible that, because of, uh, uh, trade agreement between the U S and Canada that came out later that that was effectively wiped out, but nobody's really tested that.
• 41:18
  Mike Masnick: And there was concern that that would lead to a bunch of.
• 41:20
  Mike Masnick: folks, like, rushing to Canada to try and get global injunctions, and that didn't really happen.
• 41:25
  Mike Masnick: Um, but now there is concern.
• 41:27
  Mike Masnick: It's sort of the same situation here in Australia.
• 41:29
  Mike Masnick: If Australia thinks that it has the right to do global injunctions, I personally think that would be really problematic.
• 41:34
  Mike Masnick: You don't want one country to be able to determine the speech rules for the entire globe.
• 41:39
  Mike Masnick: Um, and so this is a case where I'm certainly willing to criticize, the The former Twitter for lots of different things.
• 41:46
  Mike Masnick: And it's sort of very hypocritical stance on a lot of speech issues, but this is one where I think it's totally right.
• 41:51
  Mike Masnick: It should be fighting any kind of global injunction.
• 41:54
  Mike Masnick: And I think it was correct to stand its ground.
• 41:55
  Mike Masnick: And so far it looks like after a little bit of time that the Australian courts agree with, with experts.
• 42:02
  Mike Masnick: Or X Twitter or whatever.
• 42:04
  Mike Masnick: I guess it's so tough to say X.
• 42:06
  Ben Whitelaw: It's X now,
• 42:06
  Mike Masnick: Uh, I cannot, I cannot bring myself to agree to that, but, um, I think that this is one where they definitely made the right decision.
• 42:15
  Mike Masnick: It was the right call to fight it.
• 42:17
  Mike Masnick: And I'm glad that the Australian court shot down the e safety commissioner.
• 42:21
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 42:22
  Ben Whitelaw: It's X slash Twitter as the good guy for once.
• 42:25
  Ben Whitelaw: It seems who'd have thought it brilliant.
• 42:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Thank you, Mike.
• 42:29
  Ben Whitelaw: Thanks for clarifying.
• 42:31
  Ben Whitelaw: The situation Australia there, that was really helpful.
• 42:33
  Ben Whitelaw: So we've now got a bonus chat with TaskUs where Phil Tomlinson, who's the SVP of global offerings.
• 42:39
  Ben Whitelaw: He and I spoke early this week about his trip to Dublin for the.
• 42:43
  Ben Whitelaw: TSPA, EMEA Summit, and he's going to walk through his key takeaways and his thoughts for how collaboration, the trust and safety industry is taking shape.
• 42:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Enjoy that.
• 42:54
  Ben Whitelaw: And thanks for listening.
• 43:05
  Ben Whitelaw: So we talked in last week's Ctrl-Alt-Speech podcast about the flurry of trust and safety events happening at the moment.
• 43:11
  Ben Whitelaw: And one such event was the TSPA's EMEA summit in Dublin, the Trust And Safety Professionals Association's big European summit.
• 43:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Now, unfortunately neither Mike nor I I could make it even though I'm just across the water in London, but we're very lucky to have a very respected industry figure who's here to share his key takeaways from the event.
• 43:30
  Ben Whitelaw: Phil Tomlinson.
• 43:31
  Ben Whitelaw: Great to have you here.
• 43:32
  Phil Tomlinson: Ben, good to see you again, my friend.
• 43:34
  Phil Tomlinson: Thank you so much for having me.
• 43:35
  Ben Whitelaw: How's things?
• 43:36
  Phil Tomlinson: Things are good.
• 43:37
  Phil Tomlinson: As you were saying, I was at the, uh, TSPA event in Dublin last Friday.
• 43:42
  Phil Tomlinson: the power of collaboration with a focus on, EMEA, Europe, Middle East and Africa.
• 43:47
  Phil Tomlinson: I have to say, you know, as someone who's attended, I think that was my fourth or fifth event so far that the TSPA have put on.
• 43:53
  Phil Tomlinson: So pretty much most of the, except the APAC summit last year.
• 43:57
  Phil Tomlinson: I think this was my favorite.
• 43:58
  Phil Tomlinson: And I'll tell you why a couple of reasons.
• 44:00
  Phil Tomlinson: Obviously, you know, a home game is always nice.
• 44:03
  Phil Tomlinson: I'm based in Dublin, so didn't have to get on a 12 hour flight to be there.
• 44:06
  Phil Tomlinson: So that's, you know, from a personal perspective, that was nice.
• 44:08
  Phil Tomlinson: But, you know, joking aside, the level of thought that went into the programming, the level of thought that the TSPA put into, the flow, you know, it was kind of a little bit like Glastonbury music festival.
• 44:20
  Phil Tomlinson: It was like, do I go to this or do I go to that?
• 44:21
  Phil Tomlinson: And you kind of have to make some trade offs.
• 44:23
  Phil Tomlinson: And I think that the quality of the representation from, as is known as the global South, and just really the, the insight and the nuance and, and the voices that were, highlighted, I thought was a, was a real treat.
• 44:36
  Phil Tomlinson: so yeah, well done to the TSPA Charlotte and Maggie and the team.
• 44:39
  Phil Tomlinson: I think they played a blinder.
• 44:40
  Ben Whitelaw: brilliant.
• 44:41
  Ben Whitelaw: Sounds fantastic.
• 44:41
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm now even more jealous.
• 44:42
  Ben Whitelaw: I couldn't make it.
• 44:43
  Ben Whitelaw: tell us about, you know, you obviously say you went to a lot of events.
• 44:46
  Ben Whitelaw: You have to choose between tracks.
• 44:48
  Ben Whitelaw: Tell us kind of what your key themes were, your main takeaways from the summit.
• 44:53
  Phil Tomlinson: Yeah.
• 44:53
  Phil Tomlinson: So I think maybe I'll, I'll do that by highlighting a couple of the sessions that I really enjoyed.
• 44:58
  Phil Tomlinson: You know, I attended a session, looking at cyber security and online harm in the context of the MENA region.
• 45:05
  Phil Tomlinson: So Middle East, North Africa, focusing sort of on the Arabic speaking countries in, in that region, by actually, an ex colleague of mine at, at Twitter.
• 45:12
  Phil Tomlinson: Um, he did a fantastic job.
• 45:14
  Phil Tomlinson: He, you know, He spent time at Twitter, then at Meta, focusing on these issues at these large platforms, has since gone on to create his own consultancy.
• 45:21
  Phil Tomlinson: Fascinatingly, he sees himself as a bridge between public and private.
• 45:26
  Phil Tomlinson: As, as you probably know, there's been tensions and misunderstandings between the governments of the Middle Eastern countries and these large platforms for years.
• 45:34
  Phil Tomlinson: I mean, sometimes culminating in, in the platforms being temporarily shut down or banned or whatever, right?
• 45:40
  Phil Tomlinson: he's acting as a liaison or as he says, a fixer, which I love it as a, as a fixer between, you know, local government representatives, local law enforcement, and these platforms as someone who's, who sort of comes from that world, who's fluent in not just the language, but the sort of cultural nuance of, of how these, um, societies operate.
• 45:57
  Phil Tomlinson: And it was also worked for the best part of a decade.
• 46:00
  Phil Tomlinson: On the platform side, he's in this unique position and he, it was just a fascinating, talk showing the power of collaboration and also the need for bringing in folks who can act as kind of integrators between these two worlds.
• 46:13
  Phil Tomlinson: Right.
• 46:13
  Phil Tomlinson: And, uh, when these platforms take a very global.
• 46:16
  Phil Tomlinson: Policy approach, which I completely understand.
• 46:18
  Phil Tomlinson: I've been on the platform side.
• 46:20
  Phil Tomlinson: It's very hard to make policies for hundreds of different countries or languages or whatever it might be.
• 46:25
  Phil Tomlinson: So, you know, taking a view that, we sort of need this API between these two worlds in order for us to both Empower the people and the voices in those regions, but also stay on the right side of the law and the right side of norms and culture, but also allow the platforms to kind of scale what they want to do in those regions.
• 46:42
  Phil Tomlinson: So that was a fascinating, um, session.
• 46:44
  Phil Tomlinson: Really enjoyed that.
• 46:46
  Phil Tomlinson: Another one that really struck me was, a panel discussion focusing on, you know, the difficulties of Multilingual support in a trust and safety context.
• 46:56
  Phil Tomlinson: And, you know, you always hear about these long tail languages or, lesser spoken languages in the region and, it's kind of a, widely known that certain languages don't get the kind of support that they should at a platform level.
• 47:09
  Phil Tomlinson: and this was sort of a group of folks drawn from industry and, someone from Ofcom as well, who.
• 47:15
  Phil Tomlinson: Um, really spoke about how platforms trying to adapt both in sort of hiring folks with those backgrounds, but also thinking about the role of AI, particularly generative AI, in a world where, you know, you need to support 150, 170 languages as a platform, right?
• 47:31
  Ben Whitelaw: And is that something that's kind of evolved?
• 47:32
  Ben Whitelaw: You're thinking how has TaskUs thinking particularly about the language piece, because I work across.
• 47:37
  Ben Whitelaw: All countries and for different kind of platforms as well within that.
• 47:41
  Phil Tomlinson: Yeah, exactly.
• 47:42
  Phil Tomlinson: You know, that resonated for me as someone who sort of operates a outsourcing business where we.
• 47:48
  Phil Tomlinson: You know, we have presence around the world in places where, you know, for example, we have a European language hub in Thessaloniki in Greece, our APAC language hub out of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
• 47:58
  Phil Tomlinson: We also have sites in Taiwan and other places where we deliver multilingual support and, you know, it's hard, right.
• 48:04
  Phil Tomlinson: It's hard to scale those kinds of teams.
• 48:08
  Phil Tomlinson: It's sometimes hard to find the talent that you need in those, markets.
• 48:11
  Phil Tomlinson: And I think Taskus is really laser focused on.
• 48:14
  Phil Tomlinson: You know, as an employer value prop as a, you know, as an attractive place to work in those markets, you know, how do we bring in folks, who have the language skills, who understand the, you know, the socio political landscape of the markets that they're supporting, do they need a visa?
• 48:29
  Phil Tomlinson: Do they need relocation assistance?
• 48:31
  Phil Tomlinson: Do they need other enablements in order for them to come and,, Join us in Thessaloniki or KL or some other location.
• 48:37
  Phil Tomlinson: So that's a big focus for us, particularly this year, in EMEA where we've seen a lot of demand for services, uh, multilingual services, you know, the kind of core European languages, as well as Nordics, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian.
• 48:50
  Phil Tomlinson: So that's been a, it's been a fascinating journey.
• 48:52
  Phil Tomlinson: And I think one that we're.
• 48:53
  Phil Tomlinson: Continually trying to improve,
• 48:55
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, and is that prompted by regulation basically kind of Insisting that the number of moderators match the kind of speakers of that language in market.
• 49:05
  Ben Whitelaw: Is that how it works?
• 49:06
  Phil Tomlinson: I think, in part, absolutely right.
• 49:08
  Phil Tomlinson: We've seen the DSA come into effect for, you know, the second tranche of companies below the VLOPS, I think in, was it February of this year, traditionally the demand for kind of high scale language support has come from the large enterprise platforms.
• 49:20
  Phil Tomlinson: We're now seeing that demand filtered down to the, what I would call the mid market or the, or the smaller that they're not small by any, by any Man, these are multi billion dollar companies, but, uh, these are companies that are, beginning to now invest in, support ecosystems that goes beyond just, English and a couple of handful of other major languages for them, and that's where someone like TaskUs really does, add value, right, we can offer them up to 30 languages, in locations that I said are both attractive and, we can deliver high quality from, uh, and to your point, yeah, you know, meet the, the surging and sort of, you know, the peaks and troughs of demand that come from a, an industry that's becoming more and more regulated.
• 49:58
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah makes a lot of sense and mike and i've talked in previous podcasts about the the arabic Uh language question as well.
• 50:05
  Ben Whitelaw: We did a podcast on uh, meta's banning of the word shaheed and you know, that's a You Yeah, really interesting.
• 50:11
  Ben Whitelaw: I think again region of the world obviously very current as well.
• 50:14
  Ben Whitelaw: Um going back to the dublin summit I wondered kind of What you were taking away from it as like practical things to implement if somebody like myself who unfortunately couldn't make it.
• 50:23
  Ben Whitelaw: Where are you thinking about kind of using the nuggets from that conference in your day to day work?
• 50:28
  Phil Tomlinson: Yeah.
• 50:28
  Phil Tomlinson: I mean, it's a great question.
• 50:30
  Phil Tomlinson: Um, going back to the overarching theme of, the power of collaboration, I certainly see scope for.
• 50:36
  Phil Tomlinson: Multiple parties.
• 50:38
  Phil Tomlinson: So you think about kind of large enterprise platforms, you think about startup, there's a, as you know, yourself, there's a, a wealth of startups that have come up in the last 24 months around the problem of trust and safety, either developing these kinds of niche boutique solutions, building kind of middleware type tooling or everything in between.
• 50:55
  Phil Tomlinson: So certainly I think there's, there's opportunities for companies like task us to partner with some of these really smart startups out there.
• 51:02
  Phil Tomlinson: And in fact, we've done that, you know, recently Launched a partnership with a, AI data labeling platform out of London called V7.
• 51:10
  Phil Tomlinson: Um, we've been working with the good folks over at Cinder for a while.
• 51:13
  Phil Tomlinson: You know, there's a, there's a lot of that collaboration, as platforms sort of see that there's no one company that's going to solve everything.
• 51:20
  Phil Tomlinson: Right.
• 51:21
  Phil Tomlinson: This, this is too big and broad of an issue.
• 51:23
  Phil Tomlinson: And if there's a company out there saying, Hey, we have everything, I'd be.
• 51:26
  Phil Tomlinson: I'll be questioning that, right?
• 51:27
  Phil Tomlinson: We, we want to specialize at things that we know we can do well and bring in partners and then sort of over time, build our capabilities in that way.
• 51:34
  Phil Tomlinson: So that's the first thing I would say is, you know, let's pull down the veil of the fog of war of competition and say, okay, how do we collaborate?
• 51:42
  Phil Tomlinson: How do we, how do we augment and, compliment each other in the sort of Complex ecosystem that is trust and safety.
• 51:49
  Phil Tomlinson: The other thing that really struck me was, you know, the power of, giving a platform to voices that don't always have a say in these conversations.
• 51:58
  Phil Tomlinson: So, like I said, you know, it was amazing to see folks from Myanmar and, and Sub Saharan Africa and North Africa and the Middle East speaking very prominently and with great authority on stuff that, uh, you know, frankly, I, it was eye opening to me.
• 52:11
  Phil Tomlinson: I've been in the industry.
• 52:12
  Phil Tomlinson: Almost 20 years and I learned a whole bunch of stuff on Friday, you know, to that end, um, in the July main TrustCon event that's taking place in in san francisco.
• 52:21
  Phil Tomlinson: I think this is the third one The previous two years TaskUs has sponsored.
• 52:26
  Phil Tomlinson: Uh, we've been a sort of a marquee sponsor of the event this year We're taking a slightly different approach and we're going to put in place a kind of like a scholarship.
• 52:35
  Phil Tomlinson: I call it a scholarship It's more like a a travel support program where we're going to pay for folks from around the world who may not otherwise have a chance to come to San Francisco and, have to spend long, you know, airfare and three nights in one of the most expensive cities in the world to come and attend the conference, we're going to pay for a bunch of folks.
• 52:53
  Phil Tomlinson: We're working with the TSPA to, to facilitate bringing people into the conference so that they can.
• 52:58
  Phil Tomlinson: Make their voices heard, but also network enable, find jobs, find synergy, find compatriots in a world where you can sometimes feel very alone and isolated.
• 53:06
  Phil Tomlinson: Right.
• 53:08
  Ben Whitelaw: That's really nice to hear.
• 53:08
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, it's, like you say, one, one company can't win outright.
• 53:12
  Ben Whitelaw: If it's one of those rising tide lift or boat situations.
• 53:16
  Ben Whitelaw: And I think that's really nice to hear that Task Us is thinking in that way.
• 53:18
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and, and in terms of TrustCon, that is a conference I'm hoping to be at.
• 53:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike and I will be doing a live recording of control alt speech there.
• 53:26
  Ben Whitelaw: So I'm going to plug that, but, what are you most looking forward to about that event and, and, um, Are there particular sessions that you got, in your head as you're definitely going to attend or once the TaskUs putting on,
• 53:37
  Phil Tomlinson: Yeah.
• 53:37
  Phil Tomlinson: So I, I haven't yet kind of mapped out exactly.
• 53:41
  Phil Tomlinson: I'm trying to think if I'm not even sure if the,
• 53:43
  Ben Whitelaw: it's not public, I
• 53:44
  Phil Tomlinson: I don't think the agenda has been announced yet.
• 53:45
  Phil Tomlinson: So, uh, I hope to attend a bunch of things once it gets announced, I can tell you that TaskUs, has put a number of proposals on the table for that event.
• 53:56
  Phil Tomlinson: We're pretty confident in having some of those accepted and, and we're hoping to, in addition to, sponsoring folks from all around the world to come and attend, like I said, lifting all boats.
• 54:06
  Phil Tomlinson: We're hoping to.
• 54:07
  Phil Tomlinson: Have an organic kind of grassroots presence where we, we will have task as employees and affiliates speaking with authority and on the various stages and, and rooms.
• 54:16
  Phil Tomlinson: But you know, we'll have to hold off until the agenda is formally announced, uh, I don't want to, I don't want to be a spoiler here.
• 54:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Great.
• 54:23
  Ben Whitelaw: But people, if they're listening, they can come and find you at TrustCon.
• 54:26
  Ben Whitelaw: They can come and find your team.
• 54:27
  Ben Whitelaw: They can talk to you about some of the issues we've talked about.
• 54:29
  Ben Whitelaw: And, um, you'll be around
• 54:30
  Phil Tomlinson: Absolutely.
• 54:31
  Phil Tomlinson: I I'll be there.
• 54:32
  Phil Tomlinson: I've got my flights booked already.
• 54:33
  Phil Tomlinson: I can't wait.
• 54:34
  Phil Tomlinson: It's one of my favorite weeks of the year.
• 54:36
  Phil Tomlinson: You know, I heard someone say on Friday, it's, you know, it's It's a little bit like a school reunion, right?
• 54:40
  Phil Tomlinson: If you've been around trust and safety long enough, you see the same faces and you see the same, people.
• 54:45
  Phil Tomlinson: So, you know, it feels a little bit like you're a high school reunion, except you actually like these people.
• 54:49
  Phil Tomlinson: So that's,
• 54:51
  Ben Whitelaw: No one bullied you.
• 54:52
  Phil Tomlinson: no, absolutely.
• 54:54
  Phil Tomlinson: No one bullied you.
• 54:54
  Phil Tomlinson: Uh, the other thing I would say props to the T I, this is a small thing, but I want to call out, so last year's TrustCon in San Francisco, I gave them some feedback.
• 55:03
  Phil Tomlinson: I thought very.
• 55:04
  Phil Tomlinson: Nicely worded feedback saying, Hey, I don't like the lanyard.
• 55:08
  Phil Tomlinson: So that, you know, my, one of my big bug bears of conferences.
• 55:11
  Phil Tomlinson: And if you've been to as many as I have, you get this lanyard and it's got your name on it and whatever.
• 55:15
  Phil Tomlinson: And then 10 seconds later, it's flipped the other way around.
• 55:17
  Phil Tomlinson: And all anyone can see is the name of the conference and maybe the company you work from.
• 55:21
  Phil Tomlinson: For someone who's very bad at remembering names.
• 55:23
  Phil Tomlinson: This is a nightmare for me.
• 55:24
  Phil Tomlinson: Cause I'm like, Oh, there's someone's face that I know I should know their name, but I have to look at this as the land is not helping me out.
• 55:30
  Phil Tomlinson: So I said to the TSPA, Hey, we should think about a solution for this.
• 55:34
  Phil Tomlinson: On Friday, I get there.
• 55:35
  Phil Tomlinson: They had the best lanyards I've ever seen that double anchored name on both sides, big bold letters, and I'm.
• 55:41
  Phil Tomlinson: I know I'm sort of joking a little bit by saying this, but for me, it highlights the attention to detail that the TSPA has put into these events and actually realizing as trust and safety professionals, you realize small changes make big downstream impacts and the fact that now me and anyone else who was there didn't have to like squint or pretend you knew someone's name or wait to be introduced and have that awkward.
• 56:03
  Phil Tomlinson: I actually think.
• 56:03
  Phil Tomlinson: There's probably five, 10, 15 percent more engagement that that simple lanyard change is driving.
• 56:08
  Phil Tomlinson: And I think as trust and safety professionals, we're used to living in the detail.
• 56:11
  Phil Tomlinson: You're used to living in that nuance.
• 56:13
  Phil Tomlinson: And there was a nice little allegory of how, you know, folks are taking a very kind of iterative human centric approach to just, you know, a conference, which was
• 56:21
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I love that.
• 56:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 56:23
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm looking forward to wearing my lanyard in in san francisco already.
• 56:26
  Ben Whitelaw: That is a that's a teaser in the in the most positive sense
• 56:29
  Phil Tomlinson: Yeah.
• 56:29
  Phil Tomlinson: Look out for the lanyards.
• 56:30
  Phil Tomlinson: They're a top notch.
• 56:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Awesome Phil.
• 56:33
  Ben Whitelaw: Thanks very much for for joining us today.
• 56:35
  Ben Whitelaw: Thanks for taking the time to unpack what you learned from the TSPA dublin event and yeah looking forward to seeing you and many other listeners in san francisco in Not very long now in about six weeks time.
• 56:47
  Phil Tomlinson: Yeah.
• 56:47
  Phil Tomlinson: Thank you for having me, Ben.
• 56:48
  Phil Tomlinson: It's always a pleasure.
• 56:49
  Phil Tomlinson: And I look forward to seeing you over in San Francisco.
• 56:51
  Phil Tomlinson: If not before.
• 56:52
  Ben Whitelaw: Brilliant.
• 56:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Take care.
• 56:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Thank you
• 56:57
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