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Transcript

Some Assembly Required · Ctrl-Alt-Speech

• 0:00
  Ben Whitelaw: So Mike, what fun thing did you see on the internet this week?
• 0:02
  Mike Masnick: so this one, usually our fun things are, kind of, you know, random, silly, fun things.
• 0:07
  Mike Masnick: This one actually might be somewhat relevant to people who listen to this podcast, which is this new AI system called Jev from this company called Typesafe, which has just become all the rage among people playing with AI tools this week.
• 0:23
  Mike Masnick: It is, in some ways, really simple.
• 0:25
  Mike Masnick: It's not an LLM.
• 0:27
  Mike Masnick: It doesn't generate text.
• 0:28
  Mike Masnick: It doesn't talk to you.
• 0:30
  Mike Masnick: It doesn't do any of the things that we associate with AI.
• 0:32
  Mike Masnick: It is just sort of a incredibly fast, incredibly cheap universal classifier, which for trust and safety people, having a good classifier is everything, and this just suddenly, like, completely revolutionized the space of classifiers, and I've been just having fun with it and, and I've been seeing lots of people having fun with it.
• 0:57
  Mike Masnick: It's just a really unique, simple tool.
• 0:59
  Mike Masnick: You just give it stuff, and you say,"Classify it,""Put it into these buckets," or,"Give me a yes/no," or in some cases you can,"Give me a percentage," like how likely versus unlikely is this.
• 1:14
  Mike Masnick: and it just does it, incredibly fast and incredibly cheap, and it's just like a sort of new AI tool that lots of people are having fun with.
• 1:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I can, I can vouch for this as well.
• 1:24
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm building a little system with a friend of mine, and it groups articles very accurately that are similar to one another in a way that, like, would've been very much more expensive and time-consuming prior.
• 1:34
  Ben Whitelaw: So I think this is a, a geeky if- but still
• 1:38
  Mike Masnick: a, a, a geeky thing, but I, I've been saying to people I now look around my life and see Jev-shaped problems where, whereas before I didn't.
• 1:47
  Mike Masnick: And so it's, yeah, it's, it is unique.
• 1:49
  Mike Masnick: What about you?
• 1:50
  Mike Masnick: What, what fun thing have you found?
• 1:51
  Ben Whitelaw: Well, I, I've come across an app, I'm sure there are other apps like it, called Persodex, which is a weird name.
• 1:59
  Ben Whitelaw: it's a kinda hybrid of person and Rolodex, as you might expect.
• 2:03
  Ben Whitelaw: but what it does, it essentially is a layer that sits on your Apple, contacts, I think it's Apple only, iOS only at the moment, and allows you to kind of add information, location data, notes to your contact.
• 2:18
  Ben Whitelaw: contact's obviously famously good for holding names and numbers, but doesn't-- they're not very good for anything else, and they get outdated, and you can't necessarily...
• 2:26
  Ben Whitelaw: They don't become useful until you know exactly who you want to, to contact.
• 2:29
  Ben Whitelaw: Whereas Persodex is, is apparently good for showing where people are.
• 2:33
  Ben Whitelaw: If you show up in a country, you can pull up Persodex and see if people are around.
• 2:38
  Ben Whitelaw: You can, know a bit about the conversation you had six or 12 months ago because you've kind of added it to the app.
• 2:43
  Ben Whitelaw: So, you know, I'm actually going to New York in a few weeks.
• 2:46
  Ben Whitelaw: I would love to be able to kinda use this to say, Who's in New York and how can I hang out with them while I'm there?" So I'm gonna give it a go.
• 2:54
  Ben Whitelaw: if any Ctrl-Alt-Speech listeners are based in New York and are around in October,
• 2:58
  Mike Masnick: get into Ben's persedex.
• 3:00
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:01
  Ben Whitelaw: Sounds a bit creepy but, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm up for it.
• 3:05
  Ben Whitelaw: get in touch and let's talk.
• 3:14
  Ben Whitelaw: Hello and welcome to Ctrl-Alt-Speech, the podcast where we make sense of the major debates shaping online speech, platform power, content moderation, and the future of the internet.
• 3:23
  Ben Whitelaw: It's September the 24th, 2026, and this week we're making sense of the New York noise about AI regulation, highlighting three ways that internet users are embarking on governance.
• 3:34
  Ben Whitelaw: And for our extended Patreon episode, what recent stories about Discord and Alo say about the state of age assurance right now.
• 3:41
  Ben Whitelaw: Ctrl-Alt-Speech is the highly effective, age-appropriate musings of Mike Masnick, founder and editor of Techdirt, and me, Ben Whitelaw, founder and editor of Everything in Moderation.
• 3:51
  Ben Whitelaw: I think most of our, what we say is, 18 plus.
• 3:54
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, it's, it's, it's...
• 3:55
  Mike Masnick: checking IDs at the door, Ben?
• 3:58
  Mike Masnick: Do we need a bouncer?
• 3:59
  Mike Masnick: If we're gonna have to hire a bouncer to, check IDs before you listen to this podcast.
• 4:04
  Mike Masnick: we must see your ID.
• 4:05
  Mike Masnick: Uh, here's a question for the audience.
• 4:07
  Mike Masnick: Do we have any teenagers listening to this show?
• 4:11
  Mike Masnick: email us, podcast@ctrlaltspeech.com.
• 4:14
  Mike Masnick: I'm sort of curious.
• 4:15
  Mike Masnick: I'm thinking we might not get any responses to that, but I'm, I am sort of curious.
• 4:21
  Mike Masnick: obviously I think our audience skews more professional, but, uh, you know, th-this is a topic that, is important, and we do talk about kid safety stuff and all sorts of things.
• 4:30
  Mike Masnick: And one of the points that we do try and make is that kids' views on these things absolutely do matter, and people who are trying to make laws around this stuff should be talking more to kids to actually get their perspective and not what adults assume kids' perspective is, so
• 4:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 4:44
  Ben Whitelaw: Agreed.
• 4:44
  Ben Whitelaw: And there was actually one listener who I chatted to at a conference last year who said that they made their, son or daughter listen for the first time, and they subsequently went on to keep listening.
• 4:54
  Ben Whitelaw: So, um, perhaps that, person will get in touch.
• 4:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Obviously, kids don't email, so feel free to Snap me or whatever the the latest thing is.
• 5:03
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, listeners, if you, if you get to, the end of today's free episode and you want 20 minutes more analysis from us, or you wish the episode dropped yesterday, which is a kind of funny thing to say when you're talking about the future, you can become a Patreon supporter.
• 5:18
  Ben Whitelaw: You can find out more about that Go to patreon.com/ctrlaltspeech to see our tiers, to get the great benefits of becoming a supporter, and to help us keep this podcast going each week.
• 5:28
  Ben Whitelaw: big love to the supporters who already do fork out for those extended episodes and early episodes.
• 5:34
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike, we've got a, couple of really chunky stories, I think, this week that incorporate a lot of different elements.
• 5:40
  Ben Whitelaw: and so we're gonna do our best to kinda tie them all together.
• 5:42
  Ben Whitelaw: We're gonna start with, I guess, what has been the big news story across a number of different, beats, I'd say, this week, which is the UN General Assembly.
• 5:50
  Ben Whitelaw: All the world's major leaders in one place, all of them in a room talking about various things, including AI regulation.
• 5:57
  Ben Whitelaw: And, you know, your fair leader, Donald Trump, has has bestowed us with some great wisdom.
• 6:04
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, that's just one of a number of elements, I guess, that, we wanted to kinda touch on in the opening segment today.
• 6:09
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 6:09
  Mike Masnick: Well, I will note that not all of the world's leaders are there because, uh, China's Xi did not go, though is now in the US, or I don't know if he's left at this point, but flew into DC to meet with Trump there, but did not go to New York and did not present at the UN General Assembly.
• 6:27
  Ben Whitelaw: No.
• 6:28
  Ben Whitelaw: There's some very good photos that I've been seeing today of them hanging out together, and I don't know if you remember the Obama-Xi Jinping, Winnie the Pooh episode?
• 6:38
  Mike Masnick: Oh, I am very familiar with the Winnie the Pooh and the fact that this is, this is an interesting, content moderation thing, which is that you're not really allowed to mention Winnie the Pooh in China on the internet because of the comparisons between Xi and, and Winnie the Pooh.
• 6:52
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 6:53
  Ben Whitelaw: I was actually talking to a, a Ctrl-Alt-Speech listener, about that content moderation issue, and then I saw pictures of Trump and, Xi Jinping together, and I thought, it's kind of happening again." Um,
• 7:03
  Mike Masnick: see, you see the Winnie the Pooh, uh, comparison?
• 7:06
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I do.
• 7:07
  Ben Whitelaw: It, it's not quite Tigger as Donald Trump, but, uh,
• 7:10
  Mike Masnick: I was gonna say,
• 7:11
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah, the s- the
• 7:12
  Mike Masnick: it's not, not...
• 7:13
  Mike Masnick: Ior.
• 7:15
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 7:16
  Ben Whitelaw: So yeah, I'm, I'm expecting more memes.
• 7:18
  Ben Whitelaw: but kind of talk us through what you parsed from all the noise, about AI regulation and all, all of the different media reports that have come out of New York this week.
• 7:26
  Mike Masnick: yeah, obviously, as we've been discussing the last few weeks, there's been a whole bunch of discussion about AI regulation.
• 7:32
  Mike Masnick: I mean, this has been going on for quite some time, but it sort of felt like it was building to some sort of crescendo with, with all of the concerns about AI safety and everything and, discussions about regulation and all this kind of stuff.
• 7:44
  Mike Masnick: And you have all these world leaders together in one place, and you know that it's going to be a topic of conversation.
• 7:49
  Mike Masnick: And you had Donald Trump going up there and renaming AI.
• 7:54
  Mike Masnick: Uh, suddenly it's super intelligence, or as he said,"SI." We should now refer to it as SI.
• 8:01
  Mike Masnick: So, first of all, that's not gonna happen.
• 8:03
  Mike Masnick: as much as people dislike the term AI, it is the term, it is the term that is going to stick.
• 8:08
  Mike Masnick: It is what everyone is used to.
• 8:09
  Mike Masnick: There's no way to, change that.
• 8:11
  Mike Masnick: and it is sort of weird because one of the other announcements that he made is that he's launching an AI force, not an SI force.
• 8:19
  Mike Masnick: If he's changing it to SI, he maybe should have thought about that.
• 8:22
  Mike Masnick: But he's launching an AI force, which he is saying is modeled on his super successful launch of the Space Force as a another branch of the military.
• 8:33
  Mike Masnick: what does that mean?
• 8:35
  Mike Masnick: I don't know.
• 8:36
  Mike Masnick: And I think that is the larger summary about almost everything that happened, not just from Trump, but from all the world leaders who made grand pronouncements and there was a, you know, what is it, a declaration, from a bunch of UN members that w- like, this grand declaration about and regulation.
• 8:57
  Mike Masnick: and the summary is that, what does it mean?
• 9:01
  Mike Masnick: Uh, probably nothing.
• 9:02
  Mike Masnick: it feels like the sort of thing that everybody felt that they had to say something about.
• 9:08
  Mike Masnick: They had to announce these big grand plans, and we're going to deal with it.
• 9:11
  Mike Masnick: We know that it is a challenge, and we know that it needs to be regulated, and therefore, we are going to do something.
• 9:18
  Mike Masnick: But what does it actually mean?
• 9:20
  Mike Masnick: What are they actually going to do?
• 9:22
  Mike Masnick: Nobody has any idea.
• 9:23
  Mike Masnick: I don't think anyone has any concrete plans.
• 9:26
  Mike Masnick: I don't think anyone is putting anything into action.
• 9:28
  Mike Masnick: Everyone is just talking and saying stuff because they feel that they need to comment on it, but nobody seems to have a good idea.
• 9:35
  Mike Masnick: Nobody seems to know what is actually going to work.
• 9:37
  Mike Masnick: And so it was a, a bunch of nothing, and to some extent, that feels like a really wasted opportunity, right?
• 9:44
  Mike Masnick: You had all these people together, and they're not experts in AI.
• 9:48
  Mike Masnick: They're not experts in how to regulate this stuff, really.
• 9:51
  Mike Masnick: But you did have this opportunity and, and, you know, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei spoke and, talked to people.
• 9:58
  Mike Masnick: You had all these chances for education.
• 10:00
  Mike Masnick: You had all these chances to have, more serious and more thoughtful discussions.
• 10:05
  Mike Masnick: But, you know, maybe they were happening in the back rooms, but all the stuff that happened publicly felt like noise.
• 10:12
  Mike Masnick: It didn't feel like there was any useful signal.
• 10:14
  Mike Masnick: It didn't feel like there was anything that really moved the ball forward.
• 10:17
  Mike Masnick: Didn't feel like there was anything that was legitimate in any way that, both the governments of the world will actually, bother to do anything real with or that the people developing the technology are going to take seriously.
• 10:30
  Mike Masnick: So the whole thing felt like pageantry, right?
• 10:33
  Mike Masnick: it was all for show, which is a very Donald Trump thing.
• 10:35
  Mike Masnick: Everything he does is sort of pageantry.
• 10:37
  Mike Masnick: But there was very little out of all of the different announcements and speeches and talks and roundtables that came out of this that felt substantive, that felt like we're going to see some actual change that we can recognize and tie back to this moment.
• 10:52
  Mike Masnick: And so to me, it was, it was a lot of, noise and very, very little signal.
• 10:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, and a continuation, I'd say, of the kind of regulatory conversations that are being had about the major platforms and about the social media space, I'd say.
• 11:05
  Ben Whitelaw: If you go into the, comments of various presidents and prime ministers that spoke, they essentially say the same kind of thing, but applied to frontier labs, big AI companies.
• 11:17
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, you take Macron, he was saying, that should be a kind of open source initiative that doesn't make Europe bound to or tied to the US or China.
• 11:26
  Ben Whitelaw: So again, a kind of very similar type of message to his tech sovereignty piece that he's been, banging on about for the last few years.
• 11:33
  Ben Whitelaw: Andy Burnham, the UK Prime Minister, again, not known for his kind of tech credentials, but was talking about being an honest broker in the global discussion about AI, which I think is what UK has often been, because of where it's kind of geographically placed and, because of its influence.
• 11:48
  Ben Whitelaw: and that kind of happened in a few other cases as well.
• 11:50
  Ben Whitelaw: So it's, it's like these leaders didn't necessarily do anything new.
• 11:53
  Ben Whitelaw: They just kind of continued the same type of, approach, which I think is, probably what you're seeing, right?
• 12:00
  Ben Whitelaw: There was no, There's a stalemate as, as a result.
• 12:03
  Mike Masnick: it's understandable to some extent because I think the reality is that nobody's quite sure what to do and what will actually be effective, but they feel that they need to do something.
• 12:12
  Mike Masnick: you know, this is the same political conundrum that we had around social media, where there was this general feeling that something needed to be done,
• 12:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Mm.
• 12:21
  Mike Masnick: people would say things or, like, toss out proposals, and occasionally you get somebody doing something.
• 12:26
  Mike Masnick: But, like, these are really, really complicated topics.
• 12:28
  Mike Masnick: This is a thing that we are often discussing here that require a ton of nuance and a ton of understanding, and misdiagnosing the problems and the challenges lead to very bad solutions that probably make the, challenges and the problems much worse in the long run.
• 12:44
  Mike Masnick: And so to some extent, I'm almost glad that this was a lot of nothing because I don't think we really understand what are the real...
• 12:54
  Mike Masnick: Like, there's easy to sort of cherry-pick little things and say,"This is the problem.
• 12:58
  Mike Masnick: This is the thing that we're concerned about." There's the sort of, I, I think very distracting discussion on the sort of like the big sexy humanity is gonna die and, very cinematic kinds of stories that I think are pretty silly, and not very helpful.
• 13:11
  Mike Masnick: But we don't, we don't have a clear definition of what is the challenge that we're trying to solve for.
• 13:17
  Mike Masnick: What is it that we're trying to fix?
• 13:19
  Mike Masnick: what harms are we trying to prevent?
• 13:20
  Mike Masnick: These are all really important things, and they're really nuanced, and there's not-- we don't have clear answers for that.
• 13:25
  Mike Masnick: And because of that, it's probably better that we're not rushing into the breach and saying,"This is how we're going to fix the things that we haven't even decided are the actual problems yet." but it did feel like here was an opportunity to have some more thoughtful discussions about what, are the real harms?
• 13:40
  Mike Masnick: What are the real challenges?
• 13:41
  Mike Masnick: What are the real opportunities?
• 13:43
  Mike Masnick: We could have that open discussion, but the world is not great right now and hasn't been for some time, I think, in having serious adult conversations about nuance and trade-offs in all of these things.
• 13:55
  Mike Masnick: And so it may be for the best in the long run that, people, politicians especially feel that they need to speak up, and the media has to build stories out of it because that's what both sides do.
• 14:05
  Mike Masnick: and you know, the, tech folks are gonna do the tech folk thing and, act humble before the, the, leaders of the world, while at the same time, notably, both OpenAI and Anthropic released new models this week, even right after they were saying,"Well, we're pacing, we're pacing," blah, blah, blah.
• 14:22
  Mike Masnick: you know, this feels like this should've been a momentous and important week, and the reality is that I don't think we will ever, point back to this week as anything, you know, anything that comes in the future came out of what happened this week.
• 14:35
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 14:35
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, and, let's be fair to the UN and the kind of people who gather together.
• 14:39
  Ben Whitelaw: it might be the case that the conversations were had and that that will facilitate or catalyze a bunch of, smarter, more thoughtful decisions about how AI is regulated.
• 14:49
  Ben Whitelaw: there's only so much that a bunch of people can do in a few days in New York.
• 14:52
  Ben Whitelaw: But from what was kind of shared publicly, a lot of it felt very similar.
• 14:57
  Ben Whitelaw: I think it will come down-- Again, this is, this is a kind of broader question about where intergovernmental, bodies like the UN actually can play a role, and to what extent is it going to be states who are gonna eventually determine how this plays out through regulation that they impose on companies that act in their, jurisdictions, right?
• 15:17
  Ben Whitelaw: And I was reading an interview by, with rather, the UN under-secretary general, who's kind of coordinating a lot of the discussions on the sidelines about some of these regulatory letters.
• 15:27
  Ben Whitelaw: And he, he said, The emphasis lays with member states and their appetite for a more robust capacity for international oversight." It's kind of, we can only do so much as the UN, frankly.
• 15:37
  Ben Whitelaw: if states don't want to do it because they're pursuing a, growth agenda or they feel like AI is important for, economic development, then there's, you know, there's not much we can do, frankly.
• 15:47
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and I think that showed in the letter that you mentioned.
• 15:50
  Ben Whitelaw: 22 signatories, a number of countries that you would expect to be on there weren't on there.
• 15:55
  Ben Whitelaw: So can kind of read between the lines and, and maybe guess who is taking that kind of growth innovation approach and, at least taking a back seat while other people figure it out.
• 16:05
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, and, the reality is, like, the more important discussion was probably the one that was happening a few hundred miles to the south in the White House between the Chinese and, and American, you know.
• 16:17
  Mike Masnick: I don't think Trump and Xi necessarily would have a, particularly useful or fruitful discussion on AI regulation, but I imagine some of the people around them probably did.
• 16:27
  Mike Masnick: But right now, the reality is that those are the only two countries that matter because all of the leading models are coming out of those two countries and there is...
• 16:35
  Mike Masnick: That fight is continuing, and it, feels very sort of cliché and useless to say, like,"Oh, it's this, you know, the battle between the US and Chinese models." but that is where the fight is happening, and that is where the discussion is happening.
• 16:49
  Mike Masnick: And if those two sides continue to battle it out, and the fear is that, if these tools continue to become more and more useful, as I think they are, and I know some people disagree with that, but I think it's pretty clear at this point that the tools have gotten more and more useful, there is a question of who's going to be providing the underlying, systems.
• 17:08
  Mike Masnick: And the Chinese models have gotten really, really, really good.
• 17:13
  Mike Masnick: they are behind the American frontier models, and there is an argument that the Chinese models are really built off of the backs of the American models, so that if the American model makers slow down, that, naturally the Chinese models will slow down as well because they're really relying on them in the first place.
• 17:30
  Mike Masnick: But, every other country, to some extent, doesn't matter as much if those two countries just keep their, feet on the gas in terms of, driving those companies to, build the next, more powerful model.
• 17:42
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 17:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Can we talk about the US for a second?
• 17:45
  Mike Masnick: Uh, must we?
• 17:47
  Ben Whitelaw: because we, y- y- talked about, you made that kind of driving metaphor there.
• 17:50
  Ben Whitelaw: I was gonna say I'm getting kind of car sick by the l- you know, the very jerky left and rights that the US administration is taking in terms of where it's going with AI regulation.
• 18:02
  Ben Whitelaw: And there's a couple of more stories this week that showed that.
• 18:04
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, Trump announcing at the weekend that he was gonna appoint a new AI czar
• 18:09
  Mike Masnick: SIzar, AIzar, SI...
• 18:11
  Ben Whitelaw: czar,
• 18:11
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, yeah
• 18:13
  Ben Whitelaw: uh, without any other kind of congressman really knowing about it.
• 18:17
  Ben Whitelaw: then there was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying on Monday that the government isn't gonna take liability away from the AI labs, which feels like a fairly important addition to the conversation, but wasn't really picked up.
• 18:29
  Ben Whitelaw: and raises a question about what an AI or AI czar might do if they are appointed.
• 18:35
  Mike Masnick: Yep.
• 18:35
  Mike Masnick: and now there's, there are reports that Bessent may be the leading, candidate to become the AI czar.
• 18:41
  Mike Masnick: So his, comments actually do matter.
• 18:43
  Mike Masnick: But apparently, there's a sort of knife fight going on within the administration over who gets to be the AI czar.
• 18:50
  Mike Masnick: and so there are a number of names that have, been proposed.
• 18:53
  Mike Masnick: There was a, an article that listed out a, bunch of these names.
• 18:56
  Mike Masnick: and, a bunch of them are sort of industry-connected people, a lot of people associated with, the venture capital firm a16z, uh, who are now in the administration who are potential AI czar, but there may also be Scott Bessent, who I don't think of as a particularly, knowledgeable person on AI.
• 19:13
  Mike Masnick: doesn't seem to have that much expertise.
• 19:15
  Mike Masnick: Well, doesn't seem to have that much expertise on lots of things that he's now opining on.
• 19:20
  Mike Masnick: But we've had AI czars before, and we had David Sacks for quite some time.
• 19:25
  Mike Masnick: you know, he's no longer the AI czar, but he's apparently still in the good graces of Trump and advising him on AI policy, and he's been very vocal about all these discussions and sort of mocking both Anthropic and OpenAI over the last few weeks and, and all the existential risk stuff.
• 19:41
  Mike Masnick: he's sort of been completely mocking them and saying that they're really just going for regulatory capture, which he might not be wrong about.
• 19:48
  Mike Masnick: I mean, there's lo- very little that I agree with David Sacks on.
• 19:51
  Mike Masnick: I, I think he's not great.
• 19:53
  Mike Masnick: but he might be right on that particular point.
• 19:56
  Mike Masnick: there've been a couple other people who have been very temporarily considered the AI czar.
• 20:01
  Mike Masnick: I think one of them lasted four days before before he was let go.
• 20:05
  Mike Masnick: so it'll be interesting to see who actually becomes the AI czar, but also if they have any real power or what it is that they can actually do.
• 20:12
  Mike Masnick: and again, like US policy is all over the map.
• 20:14
  Mike Masnick: You have some people in or around the administration who hate big tech and hate the AI companies and wanna punish them and limit them and all this stuff, and then you have other people who are like,"Let everything go." And you had Trump say that didn't need any guardrails other than your very smart and high IQ president, which, you know, is really concerning.
• 20:34
  Mike Masnick: I mean, he did talk about that, the AI force would be filled with high IQ people.
• 20:38
  Mike Masnick: He's a little obsessed with IQ, which is kind of embarrassing in all sorts of other ways.
• 20:44
  Mike Masnick: But
• 20:44
  Ben Whitelaw: he also said that the kind of dangers posed by AI, this was in his speech earlier this week, were similar to the climate change hoax.
• 20:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, hi- his words, not mine.
• 20:55
  Ben Whitelaw: important distinction there, um, for people who are listening.
• 20:59
  Ben Whitelaw: and so y- that mindset, that view is going to trickle down, to an AI czar or to any kind of approach to AI regulation, I think so.
• 21:06
  Ben Whitelaw: it's a hell of a ride kind of watching what the US is doing, I'd say
• 21:09
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I mean, the simple fact is that we don't have adult leadership in the US government right now, and that is a problem when you want to have serious discussions about how do you deal with this technology, whether it is through regulatory means or, or other means.
• 21:22
  Mike Masnick: it would be nice to have, like, serious people in charge, and we just don't have that.
• 21:26
  Mike Masnick: So that's the reality that we have to deal with.
• 21:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 21:30
  Ben Whitelaw: I don't, I don't have anything to say about that.
• 21:33
  Ben Whitelaw: Can we find some adults to preside over the US administration, please?
• 21:38
  Ben Whitelaw: perfect segue, I'd say, Mike, to our eye-catching section.
• 21:41
  Ben Whitelaw: we're, we're bringing a bit of hope this week because there are a few stories that I think are kind of evidence of internet users embarking on governance and, partaking in acts of internet governance in ways that I think are really, really hopeful and we wanted to flag those to
• 21:56
  Mike Masnick: Hope?
• 21:57
  Mike Masnick: On this podcast?
• 21:58
  Mike Masnick: Ben, what is happening?
• 22:00
  Mike Masnick: Is this a cry for help?
• 22:03
  Ben Whitelaw: Don't ask
• 22:03
  Mike Masnick: We don't do hope here.
• 22:06
  Ben Whitelaw: Don't
• 22:06
  Mike Masnick: We do trade-offs and sadness and misery all around.
• 22:11
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 22:11
  Ben Whitelaw: I g- I think I got six hours sleep last night for the first time in a few months, and it's had an effect on me.
• 22:16
  Ben Whitelaw: so, let's go through those and, and, you know, you can be the judge.
• 22:20
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, the, the first thing to kind of flag is this, great new piece from New Public looking at a service called MySky.
• 22:26
  Ben Whitelaw: you know, MySky has, has actually been around, A while, let's say.
• 22:29
  Ben Whitelaw: I haven't actually been in partaking in it, and, and so I only found out about it as a result of this New Public piece.
• 22:35
  Ben Whitelaw: And it's a great interview with Rene Di Resta and Jonathan Stray, who came up with the idea and have kind of rolled it out.
• 22:42
  Ben Whitelaw: we talk about algorithms all the time on the podcast, Mike, platforms offer algorithms, but it's incredibly hard to see how they work, why you're being recommended certain content, and you have no control over it.
• 22:52
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, you can like certain posts or hover over certain, videos maybe to help tell the algorithm what you're into.
• 22:58
  Ben Whitelaw: that's it.
• 22:58
  Ben Whitelaw: You have very little control.
• 22:59
  Ben Whitelaw: And what MySky does is that it uses the AT protocol and is, accessible via BlueSky to give users some, customizable dials to shape that content that you see.
• 23:11
  Ben Whitelaw: And so, so I, because I found out about it this week, I went on and I, did that.
• 23:15
  Ben Whitelaw: and you can do that by looking at how much time you want the content to be served over.
• 23:20
  Ben Whitelaw: So if you want just to look at content over the last 24 hours, you can do that.
• 23:23
  Ben Whitelaw: You can do it over a week if you want.
• 23:25
  Ben Whitelaw: it can be kinda tweaked according to whether you want to see more content from people you follow versus people who aren't.
• 23:31
  Ben Whitelaw: You can do it based upon whether it's, you know, content is popular on the platform and trending.
• 23:35
  Ben Whitelaw: And so it's a really, it's a great way.
• 23:37
  Ben Whitelaw: I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I, as, as much as I did.
• 23:41
  Ben Whitelaw: And now it won't be for everyone.
• 23:43
  Ben Whitelaw: it's not gonna be something that everyone will go on and do.
• 23:45
  Ben Whitelaw: But I think it's a great example that we should hold up as, as something that's positive and, yeah, hopeful.
• 23:50
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 23:51
  Mike Masnick: it's really wonderful and, actually if you go back to my original"Protocols, Not Platforms" paper, which in part inspired the At Protocol in the first place, this was part of the discussion that I had, was that, it would be great if people could, you know, manually tweak their own dials, right?
• 24:07
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I think so much of the concern, and including much of the, the sort of general hatred of algorithms, where a lot of people are like,"Oh, algorithms bad," which, I've always had an, an issue with, is because of the lack of transparency, that they don't understand who is making the decisions, who is turning the knobs, who is deciding what it is that you wanna see, and therefore there's the opportunity for there to be manipulation.
• 24:31
  Mike Masnick: a lot of people have the natural concern and they think that, oh, it's like, you know, I'm being manipulated to make me angry because, you know, a lot of people are fed a lot of content that makes them feel angry, and so they, they fear that.
• 24:42
  Mike Masnick: Or, or it might be, you know, to try and sell me stuff or whatever it is.
• 24:46
  Mike Masnick: And there's just a lot of concern from that lack of transparency, and this brings in You know, it gives you so much transparency and control over this and, and so you can understand why certain things were recommended, and then you can adjust that if you wanna see, different types of things or different reasons for having things recommended to you.
• 25:04
  Mike Masnick: Having that control is really, really powerful.
• 25:07
  Mike Masnick: you know, it's probably too much and overwhelming for some people, but just having it there and having the ability to, play around and turn the knobs yourself, and even to learn like what that means.
• 25:18
  Mike Masnick: Because again, like, you know, when you have this assumption that all the, algorithmic decisions are done for evil reasons, sometimes you don't even realize like how things turn out.
• 25:28
  Mike Masnick: Even if you have control of the knobs, you might begin to realize like,"Oh, it's interesting to see what things get recommended when I, tweak the knobs this way or that." And so this, as a demonstration of that and clearly showing it and doing it in a sort of nice UI fashion, I think is really, really powerful and educational at the same time.
• 25:44
  Mike Masnick: And so I'm, I'm a huge fan of this project.
• 25:47
  Mike Masnick: I think it's, fantastic.
• 25:48
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, agreed.
• 25:49
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm gonna update listeners when I have a further tweak, in the coming weeks.
• 25:53
  Ben Whitelaw: But great start, great example of, people building, in interesting ways.
• 25:58
  Mike Masnick: and we're seeing, you know, we're seeing the influence of this spread elsewhere.
• 26:02
  Mike Masnick: And so YouTube just announced giving users more control over their algorithms.
• 26:06
  Mike Masnick: It's not nearly to this level at all, and it's not to the level of, like, even a Blue Sky where, you can bring in your own algorithm and, and do things that way.
• 26:17
  Mike Masnick: But, I think we're beginning to see this recognition and, you know, we've seen others do similar things.
• 26:23
  Mike Masnick: Threads, people would joke, on Threads about dear algo, like, you know, trying to tell the algo what to do, and then Threads actually implemented that.
• 26:31
  Mike Masnick: So allowing users to have some influence, direct influence over the algorithm is now becoming more of a standard thing, and I think that's a good thing.
• 26:41
  Mike Masnick: And the My Sky feed is an extreme version of that, but a really cool one.
• 26:45
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, agreed.
• 26:47
  Ben Whitelaw: talking of YouTube, Mike, we shouldn't gloss over the fact that at the event, the, the Made On YouTube event that, a lot of this was announced this week, Neal Mohan, who we've covered on the podcast before, he's the CEO of YouTube, he said that YouTube wouldn't stump up the£6 billion as part of the big Meta settlement, the multi-state settlement that we covered on the podcast a few weeks ago.
• 27:11
  Ben Whitelaw: and he claimed that YouTube has been focusing on child safety for a long time.
• 27:14
  Ben Whitelaw: It would continue to do so, and basically that means that the Meta will now pay 70% of that overall 18 billion uh,'cause that was the kind of deal, right?
• 27:23
  Ben Whitelaw: we can get
• 27:23
  Mike Masnick: So yeah, a reminder, some of the payment that Meta would make to the states was conditional on getting TikTok and YouTube to agree to the same restrictions, which is, to some extent an anti-competitive, you know, way to, build an industry standard.
• 27:39
  Mike Masnick: so this would save Meta some money, obviously, save YouTube some money if they're not paying into the system as well, but also means that Meta might not then be able to define the specific features and standards.
• 27:52
  Mike Masnick: And, you know, one of the points that I had raised regarding that whole discussion was, this was Meta deciding for the rest of the industry what they wanted to do, and my fear was that meant that we wouldn't get more interesting experimentation from others or, different attempts to do different things.
• 28:08
  Mike Masnick: Whereas, what Neil Mohan is saying here is basically like:"Hey, we have other ideas on what actually helps keep kids safe, and we don't wanna have our hands tied by some other company and a bunch of state AGs that tell us what we have to do when we actually have better ideas." And so that is encouraging.
• 28:26
  Mike Masnick: I still think what we will likely see is states and state AGs continuing to go after YouTube and pressuring them to accept these same sorts of feature changes.
• 28:37
  Mike Masnick: But, I think it's a good thing Because, you know, so far, TikTok and YouTube had been pretty quiet in re- in response to, to Meta's, all-out war to try and get them to sign on to the same deal.
• 28:50
  Mike Masnick: And so it's good for him to just take a stand and say like:"No.
• 28:54
  Mike Masnick: Look, that's stupid.
• 28:55
  Mike Masnick: We're not gonna do that."
• 28:56
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 28:56
  Ben Whitelaw: And the question is what, what will Meta do next?
• 28:59
  Ben Whitelaw: Because I expect they will have a plan for f- for this.
• 29:04
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, I, I said on the podcast that, I feel like they were playing checkers and everyone else was playing chess when they concocted this idea, and I wouldn't be surprised if they have a next move, because it was fairly predictable that YouTube would turn around and say,"We're not paying." so I don't know what it will be, but I think they'll have something up their sleeve.
• 29:20
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 29:20
  Mike Masnick: I mean, it's, it's not even the payment I think that matters so much as the feature changes, right?
• 29:24
  Mike Masnick: That, that's the, the bigger issue to me.
• 29:27
  Mike Masnick: and again, like the features, and I don't necessarily think that the features that Meta agreed to put in place even make sense on Instagram and, Facebook.
• 29:35
  Mike Masnick: but, YouTube is a very different platform, and I, I like, yeah, I keep trying to make this point too.
• 29:40
  Mike Masnick: Like, each of these platforms, uh, is used differently and in different ways and with different audiences.
• 29:45
  Mike Masnick: And YouTube especially is much more of a, a sit back and, watch kind of platform.
• 29:50
  Mike Masnick: It's much more akin to television than traditional social media, and yet some of these feature requirements that Meta would be placing on them are really specific to specifically social media.
• 30:01
  Mike Masnick: And so the whole thing seems very strange.
• 30:04
  Mike Masnick: It would be nice for YouTube to, take a really strong stand here and say like, No, that's, that's stupid for us.
• 30:10
  Mike Masnick: We're not gonna do that."
• 30:11
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 30:11
  Ben Whitelaw: we're, we're doing what we never do, Mike, which is kind of rapidly going through our eye-catching stories.
• 30:15
  Ben Whitelaw: So we can, fit...
• 30:16
  Ben Whitelaw: one more eye-catching story in before we go to our extended Patreon episode.
• 30:20
  Ben Whitelaw: And, again, fun example of, users on Reddit this time enacting a bit of power to define what, their online space looks like
• 30:27
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I really love this story.
• 30:28
  Mike Masnick: I think this is, this is a really interesting, example of sort of community governance, for interesting challenges.
• 30:34
  Mike Masnick: We're sort of used to so many of the trust and safety stories that we talk about, or content moderation stories that we talk about, are sort of big companies making decisions and, going back to what I was saying before with the algorithms.
• 30:44
  Mike Masnick: Like, there is some feeling of uncomfortableness with the idea that you have big, powerful companies with different interests than you making big decisions about what kind of speech or what kinds of things you can do online, and that, it has sort of a weird feeling.
• 30:59
  Mike Masnick: But, we know that, communities have, setups that, have rules and, and moderation themselves, and seeing that in action is really interesting.
• 31:06
  Mike Masnick: So this is a story about a specific subreddit, the Crafts subreddit, which is a very big subreddit,
• 31:12
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm not a member, but, but
• 31:13
  Mike Masnick: I am not a member either.
• 31:15
  Mike Masnick: Uh, but, you know, it talks about crafting and making stuff and knitting and, and all sorts of things along those lines.
• 31:22
  Mike Masnick: And there was a debate about whether or not people should be allowed to post Harry crafts and discussions about them.
• 31:31
  Mike Masnick: And what was happening is that, as I'm sure many listeners on the podcast know, J.K.
• 31:38
  Mike Masnick: Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, has become somewhat controversial and
• 31:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Don't start unpacking that
• 31:45
  Mike Masnick: I will not unpack that other than, you know, yes.
• 31:49
  Mike Masnick: She's become very controversial because she's said some things that have upset lots of people and, and I would say, the one thing I will say on this is I think has done a lot of damage, that was, really unnecessary and, deeply harmful.
• 32:02
  Mike Masnick: and so that has led to whenever people are posting"Harry Potter" related crafts, the discussion related to them has gone off the rails within this particular subreddit.
• 32:12
  Mike Masnick: And that has become a moderation challenge for the moderators within that subreddit, and often those discussions have nothing to do with the actual crafts and very much everything to do with J.K.
• 32:23
  Mike Masnick: Rowling and the mess that she has made.
• 32:26
  Mike Masnick: and so the entire subreddit basically had a discussion of whether or not we should just stop allowing any discussions on"Harry Potter" related crafts.
• 32:35
  Mike Masnick: And they had an incredibly open and pretty thorough process in which they asked everybody to weigh in, and there was a big discussion and then voting, and it wasn't a entirely one-sided thing.
• 32:47
  Mike Masnick: It w- there were, viewpoints across the board.
• 32:50
  Mike Masnick: And then on the voting, it sort of narrowly came out with a narrow majority saying that they thought that we should just ban discussions of, Harry Potter" crafts.
• 33:01
  Mike Masnick: And so the moderator team of the subreddit says that that is the new rule.
• 33:06
  Mike Masnick: you cannot post anything related to"Harry Potter." You can post things that are...
• 33:11
  Mike Masnick: If it's not directly, if it just sort of looks like a"Harry Potter" thing but doesn't directly reference"Harry Potter" or that world, you can still do that.
• 33:19
  Mike Masnick: but what I thought was, was really interesting was the openness of this discussion and the thoughtfulness, and people talked about like slippery slope,"Oh, now we're getting political, now we're gonna ban this." And, what they said very, very clearly is like,"No." this is not even a political statement about J.K.
• 33:35
  Mike Masnick: Rowling or her views on things.
• 33:37
  Mike Masnick: It is very much that it becomes impossible to have a sensible community when any time any"Harry Potter" content shows up here, the conversation just goes completely off the rails.
• 33:48
  Mike Masnick: And so it's almost a, you know, a, form of preservation to say,"We're just not gonna deal with that.
• 33:54
  Mike Masnick: That kind of content is just not allowed."
• 33:56
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 33:57
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, like massive credit to these moderators, you know, which we forget and we gloss over because Reddit is, essentially kind of helmed by these subreddit moderators.
• 34:04
  Ben Whitelaw: But these are volunteers who are, moderating gigantic communities, at some points with often hundreds of thousands or millions of users, and they're doing this very kind of deliberative, inclusive approach to how standards and, and rules are set, and I think that's fantastic.
• 34:21
  Ben Whitelaw: We've seen examples of these kind of community council, or jury approaches working really well in some, in some areas.
• 34:28
  Ben Whitelaw: And I think, again, like it's not very sexy'cause it's kind of slow and, deliberate, and it involves polls and processes and being transparent and documenting thinking.
• 34:39
  Ben Whitelaw: but again, that's, what I think the grunt work of, looking after online spaces is about.
• 34:43
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 34:44
  Mike Masnick: I mean, there's a lot of work and a lot of research and, plenty of academic research on sort of like community governance that often gets ignored in these discussions and-- but I think is really, really important and sort of understanding that and understanding that, community governance really, really matters, and it's not all just like one super rich, super powerful dude deciding how the community works, and recognizing these other kinds of models and ones that are more engaging and involve people and actually, try to come to some sort of agreement recognizing pros and cons to different approaches and just saying like,"This is the reality, this is what we're trying to deal with.
• 35:21
  Mike Masnick: how should we best deal with it?" And coming to a conclusion saying,"These are the new rules based on this open discussion," is, whether or not you agree with any of the, the position, it's somewhat refreshing and somewhat encouraging that, like, a community can make an adult decision that is like, let's talk about the trade-offs, let's talk about the different issues here, and then let's just make a call on what's gonna be best for our community and go with it." that's, really great.
• 35:44
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, agreed.
• 35:45
  Ben Whitelaw: we're gonna touch on a bit of that in the extended Patreon episode, Mike, which we'll go into now.
• 35:50
  Ben Whitelaw: we'll wrap up today.
• 35:51
  Ben Whitelaw: I, I hope listeners don't feel too much hope and positivity because that's not really our thing.
• 35:57
  Mike Masnick: We, we could, we could change the podcast.
• 36:00
  Mike Masnick: we can, We can be hopeful for the future
• 36:01
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 36:02
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, okay.
• 36:02
  Ben Whitelaw: Well, don't promise anything too much.
• 36:04
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, listeners, thanks for joining us.
• 36:06
  Ben Whitelaw: if you enjoy the podcast, rate and review it wherever you get your podcasts.
• 36:09
  Ben Whitelaw: become a Patreon supporter to get this next segment, and we'll jump into that now.
• 36:14
  Ben Whitelaw: It's all about Discord's age assurance rollout and how Ofcom is going after Aylo, the owner of the largest porn site in the world, Pornhub, and what that means for the future of the internet
• 36:29
  Announcer: That's the end of this week's free edition of Ctrl Alt Speech.
• 36:32
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• 36:39
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• 36:42
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• 36:49
  Announcer: Thanks for listening