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Presidents & Precedents · Ctrl-Alt-Speech

• 0:00
  Ben Whitelaw: So Mike, I feel like control or speech is a kind of counseling.
• 0:05
  Ben Whitelaw: It certainly is for me, but it's been one of those weeks.
• 0:08
  Ben Whitelaw: And so I want to kind of check in on you and make sure you're okay.
• 0:12
  Ben Whitelaw: And for that, I'm going to use the better help prompts that you get when you use it's app.
• 0:16
  Ben Whitelaw: And I'm going to ask you.
• 0:18
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike, you deserve to be happy.
• 0:19
  Ben Whitelaw: What kind of therapy are you looking for today?
• 0:23
  Mike Masnick: Oh,
• 0:24
  Ben Whitelaw: Do you feel, do you feel, are you in a therapy space?
• 0:27
  Mike Masnick: Oh, am I ever, uh, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm sort of tempted to say, is there, is there a kind of therapy that sort of puts me out for four years and lets me check in again later?
• 0:43
  Mike Masnick: But, um, yeah, I mean, more seriously, I think, anything that, gets me ready to, to fight.
• 0:50
  Mike Masnick: Because I think there's going to be, two to four to more years of having to fight for basic internet rights.
• 0:57
  Mike Masnick: And so, that's, that's where I'm at.
• 0:59
  Mike Masnick: Uh, what about you, since you also deserve to be happy, you are not in the U S you are in a different country entirely, but what kind of therapy are you looking for Ben?
• 1:09
  Ben Whitelaw: Well, I'm, I do need therapy, but for other reasons, I want to, I want to give my therapy sessions to some of the people on that we're going to talk about today, Mike, I'm going to delegate.
• 1:18
  Ben Whitelaw: the counseling to a certain Elon Musk who, uh, I think, I think, you know, for all that he's done this week probably does need to talk through some things.
• 1:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, so yeah, let's get on with it and, talk through today's stories.
• 1:39
  Ben Whitelaw: Hello and welcome to control old speech, your weekly roundup of the major stories about online speech, content moderation, and internet regulation.
• 1:48
  Ben Whitelaw: It's November the 8th.
• 1:49
  Ben Whitelaw: 2024.
• 1:50
  Ben Whitelaw: And this week's episode is brought to you with financial support from the future of online trust and safety fund.
• 1:55
  Ben Whitelaw: My name is Ben Whitelaw.
• 1:56
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm the founder and editor of everything in moderation, a weekly newsletter that hopefully some of you read.
• 2:02
  Ben Whitelaw: And I'm joined with the brilliant Mike Masnick from TechDirt.
• 2:06
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike, talk us through your emotions if you can.
• 2:12
  Mike Masnick: Well, yeah, it's, um, the election did not go quite as I had hoped it would go is the simplest version of that.
• 2:21
  Mike Masnick: And so I think a lot of people are kind of in a, state of, you know, shock and certainly concern and surprise about what the country told us.
• 2:30
  Mike Masnick: and so it's, you know, it's been, uh, it's been a rough week, I think.
• 2:35
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, where did you watch the election out of interest?
• 2:38
  Ben Whitelaw: Where were you, taking it all in?
• 2:39
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I was just at home and, um, actually wasn't even paying that much attention, as the first results came in, because everybody had sort of warned us that like, Oh, you know, it'll probably take days like last time.
• 2:50
  Mike Masnick: And there will probably be, false claims of election interference and, the election was rigged and stolen and so really don't pay too much attention.
• 3:01
  Mike Masnick: until later.
• 3:02
  Mike Masnick: And so, you know, I started checking in, you know, I sort of would peek at things.
• 3:06
  Mike Masnick: and some of the, early exit polls that were coming out where people were saying, Oh, you know, Hey, this County, even if Harris is winning, not, not winning by nearly as much as Biden did
• 3:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 3:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Yep.
• 3:20
  Mike Masnick: And that started to keep repeating itself over and over again.
• 3:24
  Mike Masnick: so, by the time I went to sleep on Tuesday night, I was pretty much convinced that it was, it was definitely not gonna go well.
• 3:33
  Mike Masnick: Um,
• 3:34
  Ben Whitelaw: It was, it was, you could kind of see it coming, couldn't you?
• 3:36
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, I went to bed at about 2 AM, uh, UK time.
• 3:39
  Ben Whitelaw: And, uh, by that point that you could kind of see which way it was, going to end up, I mean, whichever kind of way you voted politically, I mean, you could probably say that trust and safety was not the winner of, in either way.
• 3:52
  Ben Whitelaw: I think, I think that's fair to say.
• 3:55
  Ben Whitelaw: we're fully expecting the Trump administration to take some pretty kind of strong measures around topics that we cover every week, don't we?
• 4:02
  Ben Whitelaw: So we're going to, I think we're going to, what we try and do today.
• 4:05
  Ben Whitelaw: we did talk a lot, a lot about it last week, but it's important to cover.
• 4:08
  Ben Whitelaw: So what we're going to try and do is talk a bit about why we maybe got to where we were and a little bit of what happened this week when it came to trust and safety issues that we preempted in last week's episode.
• 4:19
  Ben Whitelaw: And then we're going to spend a bit more time to think about.
• 4:21
  Ben Whitelaw: Where we're going from here, and then we're going to sprinkle in a few other stories from.
• 4:25
  Ben Whitelaw: Around the world because, Hey, there are trust and safety issues that, exist outside of the United States.
• 4:31
  Ben Whitelaw: So it's really important for us on the podcast to, to make sure that we cover that breadth.
• 4:35
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 4:35
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:36
  Mike Masnick: And, and we will continue to do that.
• 4:37
  Mike Masnick: And obviously I am, you know, obviously the U S what happens in the U S impacts the rest of the world in many ways as well.
• 4:44
  Mike Masnick: And I am in the U S and I am directly dealing with this.
• 4:47
  Mike Masnick: but it is important to us and there's always been important to us on the podcast to, explore what is happening around the world.
• 4:53
  Mike Masnick: and a recognition that the U S is not the only place in the world.
• 4:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, indeed.
• 4:58
  Ben Whitelaw: And we know we've got stories from Canada and Australia, but we're going to start in the U S because that that's where everyone's eyes have been this week.
• 5:04
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, we touched Last week, Mike on the fact that moderation and trust and safety issues often kind of into weave with politics and power.
• 5:13
  Ben Whitelaw: And you know, you can't really get more of a indication than that than the US election results this week.
• 5:19
  Ben Whitelaw: And we both read a kind of a wide range of stories, but in looking at The issues that played out and how the election played out.
• 5:26
  Ben Whitelaw: From everything you've read this week, what has been your sense of how we got to a Donald Trump administration?
• 5:32
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, so this is kind of interesting because obviously as you mentioned we spent a lot of time Last week, talking about misinformation and, lies and how they were spreading on social media.
• 5:42
  Mike Masnick: And I've seen some people talking this week about, the information ecosystem and this idea that, Elon Musk taking over Twitter kind of led to this result.
• 5:54
  Mike Masnick: And I don't think.
• 5:56
  Mike Masnick: the evidence actually supports that in any meaningful way.
• 6:00
  Mike Masnick: And I know that some people are going to disagree with me and I am not a political scientist, but from what I've seen, I actually think the story of this election has so little to do with the internet and trust and safety and disinformation.
• 6:17
  Mike Masnick: Compared to what everyone was expecting.
• 6:19
  Mike Masnick: the story that I've seen that makes the most sense, and I may be biased and this may be, just cognitive dissonance at work or whatever, trying to explain what, what has happened.
• 6:31
  Mike Masnick: but the strongest story that seems to have come across is just inflation.
• 6:36
  Mike Masnick: Sucked.
• 6:37
  Mike Masnick: and it, it was bad around the world and there was a rejection of incumbency around the world, no matter which left or right or, or wherever on the political spectrum, different parties lie within different countries.
• 6:50
  Mike Masnick: It was just rejection of the status quo and almost entirely when you get down to what it was, was because of.
• 6:58
  Mike Masnick: Price of groceries, that's not to say that there wasn't other stuff mixed in and that there is like something about this election that told us about America and racism and bigotry and hatred, which I think was Is all there and is a portion of it, but we're seeing around the world, this rejection of incumbency, obviously in the UK, you guys had a big rejection of the conservatives that were in power for a long time.
• 7:25
  Mike Masnick: Uh, in France, there's been a pushback and, even in India, it wasn't a complete, uh, rejection of Modi, but it was pretty, pretty big.
• 7:35
  Mike Masnick: clear intent that, the Indian populace is not happy with Modi.
• 7:39
  Mike Masnick: So just almost everywhere where we're seeing elections occur, we're seeing people say, we don't really like the status quo.
• 7:48
  Mike Masnick: And when you dig into the data, a lot of it seems to just come down to, inflation and, you know, the price that they see at the grocery store.
• 7:56
  Mike Masnick: And that is the interpretation that they have of the economy.
• 8:00
  Mike Masnick: And that's.
• 8:01
  Mike Masnick: You know, there's a part of me that actually wonders if really what it is is that most people, the average voter tunes out of all of the specifics and nitty gritty.
• 8:13
  Mike Masnick: And because there's so much information flowing, it's not that they're swayed by particular disinformation.
• 8:19
  Mike Masnick: It's that there's just so much going on.
• 8:22
  Mike Masnick: Most of them are not paying attention to any of it.
• 8:25
  Mike Masnick: And it just comes down to the thing of You know, gas prices are much higher and the price of what I'm paying for at the grocery store is much higher.
• 8:34
  Mike Masnick: And so, we don't, we don't like these guys.,
• 8:36
  Ben Whitelaw: So that does seem to be what the general consensus is among analysts and media, Mike, is that it just didn't have.
• 8:44
  Ben Whitelaw: The kind of role that we thought it would do, particularly when we were discussing it last week.
• 8:48
  Ben Whitelaw: so what are the kind of major, how do we diagnose it then?
• 8:51
  Ben Whitelaw: If we're, from a trust and safety perspective, if all of the things you thought that would happen actually didn't come to pass at all, there wasn't this big AI surge, there wasn't the disinformation that we thought would happen, we didn't see, I guess, many really egregious, maybe our definition of egregious has, has changed, um, over the past few years, we didn't see any like Significant stories in their own right of, platform manipulation in any way, where we just complete, we'd look in the wrong direction.
• 9:18
  Ben Whitelaw: Uh, you and I, should you and I be even doing this job?
• 9:22
  Mike Masnick: Uh, no, I mean I I I don't think you know, so there were definitely attempts right and so There were certainly and we we'd spoken a little bit about you know, Russian attempts at disinformation.
• 9:33
  Mike Masnick: And, you know, and there was a New York Times article, about how, you know, Russia was, was even more brazen and sort of admitted that they were engaged in all these disinformation attempts.
• 9:43
  Mike Masnick: I think though, there's sort of two lessons that I, I would have as takeaways is that.
• 9:49
  Mike Masnick: the specific idea, and I've argued this in the past.
• 9:52
  Mike Masnick: So this, this might be just me confirming my prior beliefs and then I'll get to a, a second belief, but that the idea that people are sort of easily misled or led along by disinformation online is something I've always been a little bit skeptical about, and there is.
• 10:11
  Mike Masnick: Some element of that, that definitely happens on the margins.
• 10:15
  Mike Masnick: People are definitely influenced by their information environment.
• 10:18
  Mike Masnick: And,, there are people who are, sort of, you know, wallow in that and are completely convinced by it, but a lot of it still comes back to just sort of confirmation bias and people sort of go into the, the worlds that they want to inhabit.
• 10:32
  Mike Masnick: And the internet has built up this ecosystem that allows them to do that.
• 10:37
  Mike Masnick: And so it's not even so much like disinformation leading people astray, but it's disinformation just reinforcing people's prior beliefs.
• 10:46
  Mike Masnick: And I'm saying this in an admission that this is partly me reinforcing my own prior beliefs.
• 10:52
  Mike Masnick: Um, so that leads me to the second sort of larger takeaway, which is.
• 10:57
  Mike Masnick: We need to rethink the information ecosystem.
• 11:00
  Mike Masnick: And I think lots of people are thinking about this, but I think they're thinking about it in the wrong way.
• 11:04
  Mike Masnick: And that scares me a little bit because I think a lot of people are looking at this as in, Elon Musk and all the disinformation and lies that were spread on X had an impact here, which I don't think they did.
• 11:19
  Mike Masnick: And therefore people are going to say, well, we have to do something to stop that.
• 11:23
  Ben Whitelaw: Hmm.
• 11:24
  Mike Masnick: and I don't think that that makes a difference.
• 11:26
  Mike Masnick: If the people who are doing that, we're really just looking for the confirmation bias.
• 11:31
  Mike Masnick: And so what it's saying to me is like, we need to just rethink the way that people educate themselves and get information in general.
• 11:39
  Mike Masnick: I go back to all the time and I know it's a frustrating response, but it's something that I do think is important.
• 11:44
  Mike Masnick: It's just sort of general media literacy.
• 11:46
  Mike Masnick: You know, the other part of this is that like, when it comes to this idea that like, Oh, people are just unhappy because of inflation or, you they just don't feel like the country's going in the right direction.
• 11:58
  Mike Masnick: part of that is there's just like an education gap where people don't understand one, like how the president impacts the economy, what different policies are doing.
• 12:08
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 12:08
  Mike Masnick: I mean, if you spent the time and you looked at it in the U S.
• 12:12
  Mike Masnick: the whole world faced inflation and sort of reaction to, the COVID 19 pandemic and sort of how that was handled.
• 12:19
  Mike Masnick: the U S handled the inflation way better than most of the rest of the world.
• 12:23
  Mike Masnick: And this is like the stunning thing, whereas like inflation was less bad.
• 12:27
  Mike Masnick: In the U S than elsewhere.
• 12:29
  Mike Masnick: We came out of it without actually going into a technical recession, but like the average person who is not going to wade into all of that and doesn't understand like less bad than elsewhere.
• 12:41
  Mike Masnick: That doesn't matter to them.
• 12:42
  Mike Masnick: It's still bad,
• 12:44
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 12:44
  Mike Masnick: but also people just don't understand like, why did that occur?
• 12:47
  Mike Masnick: and then the sort of ridiculous part is like, there are all these democratic programs, like the uh, inflation reduction act and the other sort of, like chips act and all this investment, which because the Biden administration was sort of very careful in how they lay things out and didn't want to deal with like waste, fraud, and abuse, all of like the benefits of these programs.
• 13:09
  Mike Masnick: Really start to roll out next year, just in time for the Trump administration to take credit for them, even as like all the Republicans voted against them and talked about how awful they were going to be.
• 13:20
  Mike Masnick: And so they're definitely going to take credit for all the benefits as they come into effect.
• 13:25
  Mike Masnick: which, you know, sucks for a whole bunch of reasons.
• 13:28
  Mike Masnick: And so, you know, there is this element of like.
• 13:30
  Mike Masnick: people need to be better educated on this stuff and thinking through, like, how do we do that?
• 13:37
  Mike Masnick: And there is some sense of like a clear rejection on, the mainstream media is not informing the public well anymore.
• 13:44
  Mike Masnick: And there is a sense that certainly a lot of people feel that.
• 13:48
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 13:48
  Mike Masnick: so my feeling is that it looks like a lot of people just tuned out entirely and didn't want to get at the details.
• 13:54
  Mike Masnick: And we need to think about how do we, how do we better educate public?
• 13:59
  Mike Masnick: And, people are unfortunately.
• 14:02
  Mike Masnick: Moving towards sort of like simplistic, sloganeering towards complex problems.
• 14:07
  Mike Masnick: And so you have someone like a Joe Rogan, right.
• 14:09
  Mike Masnick: Who reaches millions of people through his podcast, who doesn't understand complexity, like even remotely and is very quick to jump to very simplistic solutions.
• 14:20
  Mike Masnick: And so.
• 14:21
  Mike Masnick: I don't know how we do it.
• 14:23
  Mike Masnick: I mean, obviously like, this is something that I spend a lot of time on and, and, you know, you and I talk about this, where it's like, we're trying to talk through the nuances and complexities of really, really complex things where there aren't simple solutions to them.
• 14:36
  Mike Masnick: but I know that that's not like.
• 14:38
  Mike Masnick: there's no like mainstream interest in like, gee, there's no easy answer.
• 14:43
  Ben Whitelaw: No, no, no.
• 14:44
  Ben Whitelaw: Exactly.
• 14:44
  Ben Whitelaw: It's, it's the thing we always come back to.
• 14:46
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, I, I was, it reminded me of one thing, Mike, which is somewhat of a segue, but it reminded me of witches.
• 14:52
  Ben Whitelaw: It reminded me of, it reminded, I'm reading, I'm reading Nexus, the new book from Yuval Noah Harari, which is about a kind of, history of information.
• 15:02
  Ben Whitelaw: And it's the third in his trilogy.
• 15:04
  Ben Whitelaw: And he talks about witches and how, after the advent of the Gutenberg press, there was this period, which actually was way longer than we all thought you know, a significant period of time, almost 200 years.
• 15:16
  Ben Whitelaw: I think he says, if my memory serves right, where, because of the Gutenberg press ideas, perpetuated that had no.
• 15:23
  Ben Whitelaw: Scientific or factual grounding and one of them was the fact that there was a lot of witches around and, and this very popular tract got disseminated at scale and led to the death of thousands and thousands of women because they were believed to be witches.
• 15:40
  Ben Whitelaw: And this week made me think that we were in a similar kind of trough.
• 15:44
  Ben Whitelaw: in our understanding of how information gets disseminated that we, you know, we'd created this thing 20, 30 years ago, much like the Gutenberg press thought it was going to lead to, wonderful kind of ideas and the spread of knowledge and, people being kind of connected in ways that they've never been connected before.
• 16:03
  Ben Whitelaw: And actually what it led to was the death of lots of women because they thought they were witches.
• 16:08
  Ben Whitelaw: And I think you're right.
• 16:09
  Ben Whitelaw: I think we're kind of.
• 16:10
  Ben Whitelaw: It doesn't feel like it on the day to day basis, but it feels like we're in that period of unknowing, to some extent.
• 16:15
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and we, I don't know how we get to the place where we know more than we do, but I think it's going to take a long time and, you know, I'm not sure how much a Trump administration is going to help towards that, but we're just, we're just there and we're going to have to deal with it.
• 16:29
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 16:30
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 16:30
  Mike Masnick: And, and, and we'll get into like kind of what this means.
• 16:33
  Mike Masnick: for, you know, internet policy and internet speech in a moment.
• 16:36
  Mike Masnick: But, you know, I, I think that is, that is a really interesting take.
• 16:40
  Mike Masnick: Uh, Clay Shirky, who's a, a sort of well known media commentator had written something similar, but I think almost 20 years ago where he talked about the advent of the Gutenberg press.
• 16:48
  Mike Masnick: And his, his argument was that it took a century of, pure upheaval.
• 16:52
  Mike Masnick: and, in the modern day, we sort of think of it as like, okay, There was before the Gutenberg press, you know, where people didn't have access to information, it was, closely hoarded.
• 17:01
  Mike Masnick: Then we had the Gutenberg press and yeah, there was like some upheaval and you had the reformation and Martin Luther and all this kind of stuff, but like people sort of figured it out and then suddenly like people were spreading information.
• 17:10
  Mike Masnick: He's like, no, like there was, he, he said a hundred years of upheaval, maybe it's 200 years before society sort of came to terms with that.
• 17:18
  Mike Masnick: And you know, his argument, and this was like 20 years ago when, Shirky wrote about it was that, you know.
• 17:24
  Mike Masnick: this is to be expected with the internet, like there's going to be this period of upheaval before society wraps its head around it.
• 17:30
  Mike Masnick: And I think that's true.
• 17:31
  Mike Masnick: And that's always sort of resonated with me, though.
• 17:34
  Mike Masnick: I hope that it would be more of a soft landing and maybe we're sort of discovering that maybe, maybe it's not.
• 17:39
  Mike Masnick: And so, there is this part of me, this is me just sort of thinking out loud where it's like, is there a way to make Complexity cool, right?
• 17:47
  Mike Masnick: Like, is there a way to get across this idea that, complexity and nuance and trade offs are important for people to understand?
• 17:55
  Mike Masnick: And that people should want, people should want to listen to our podcast where we point out that there aren't easy answers and that, you know, we should be as popular as Joe Rogan.
• 18:05
  Ben Whitelaw: I know.
• 18:06
  Ben Whitelaw: I know.
• 18:06
  Ben Whitelaw: And, you know, and moderation, actually, you know, moderation in the kind of political sense in, in the sense of, balance and evenness.
• 18:13
  Ben Whitelaw: And, you're right that there's nothing, there's nothing that necessarily attracts people to that as a concept.
• 18:18
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, and that, it's certainly not something that the, platforms prioritize.
• 18:22
  Ben Whitelaw: And, you know, value within the algorithms that they, you know, users, use to consume content.
• 18:28
  Ben Whitelaw: So I think you're right.
• 18:28
  Ben Whitelaw: I think there's, there's something in that.
• 18:30
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, we should, look ahead, Mike, seeing as we're, we're starting to think about that and, and talk a bit about what a Trump administration could or might mean for internet safety, internet policy at large, from what you've read this week, what are the kind of standout, Themes or potential narratives that we're going to see and end up talking about in the podcast over the coming months and years.
• 18:52
  Mike Masnick: not too much good.
• 18:54
  Ben Whitelaw: Damn it.
• 18:55
  Ben Whitelaw: I was really hoping for something nice to look forward to.
• 18:59
  Mike Masnick: I mean, we'll see, because it's a little tough to tell, what is reality and what was, what was sort of bluster, obviously there's project 2025, which Trump has denied that was going to be his platform, though.
• 19:11
  Mike Masnick: We already see, I mean, it's, it's really Trump.
• 19:14
  Mike Masnick: Trolls online saying like, okay, can we now admit that?
• 19:17
  Mike Masnick: Yes, of course.
• 19:18
  Mike Masnick: project 2025 was our plan all along.
• 19:21
  Mike Masnick: You know, we'll see what actually comes into play.
• 19:24
  Mike Masnick: There's a
• 19:25
  Ben Whitelaw: Just, just on that, Mike, what, what it's in there related to kind of internet policy specifically, cause I'm familiar with some parts of it, but you probably know more than I do.
• 19:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 19:34
  Mike Masnick: internet policy.
• 19:35
  Mike Masnick: You know, a whole section of it was written by Brendan Carr, which I, I think broke the law.
• 19:40
  Mike Masnick: Uh, he's not supposed to write that.
• 19:42
  Mike Masnick: Well, he is an FCC commissioner, and he is, most people expect that he will become the chair that Trump will appoint him as the chair.
• 19:49
  Mike Masnick: He's been kissing up to Trump for, years.
• 19:52
  Mike Masnick: so he wrote a whole policy.
• 19:53
  Mike Masnick: He is very much against section 230.
• 19:57
  Mike Masnick: He thinks incorrectly though, you know, what is incorrect and what is correct now no longer matters.
• 20:03
  Mike Masnick: Um, he thinks that the FCC gets to say what section 230 means, which is exactly the opposite of the intent of folks who wrote the law.
• 20:13
  Mike Masnick: And so I think we can look to that in terms of, you know, he's going to use the power of the government to do a few things, including reinterpreting Section 230 or helping to get rid of Section 230 in order to try to force platforms to allow for, pro MAGA, pro Trump speech.
• 20:33
  Mike Masnick: across any platform and suggest that there's a sort of common carrier esque concept on social media platforms, which I think is very problematic.
• 20:43
  Mike Masnick: So that is one element that will come out.
• 20:46
  Mike Masnick: the other, which might sound like the reverse, but it's not quite the reverse, is that there's a lot of focus in Project 2025 on, um, pornographic content and obscene content and an idea that that needs to be banned across the board.
• 21:00
  Mike Masnick: and so, there will be a sort of very puritanical attack on adult content in all forms.
• 21:07
  Mike Masnick: And with their definition of adult content, which might also be expanded to include Any kind of LGBTQ content.
• 21:15
  Mike Masnick: we've already seen Republican states, Republican led states their attempts to sort of ban books, I think that goes into overdrive and at a federal level and focused on the internet.
• 21:26
  Mike Masnick: So things around age verification.
• 21:29
  Mike Masnick: I think that will be a big push.
• 21:31
  Mike Masnick: I think things like COSA will be a big push.
• 21:34
  Mike Masnick: what stopped COSA this year was Republicans in the house being worried that if a Harris administration came into effect next year, that Lina Khan and the FTC would be in charge of enforcing COSA and that she would use it to censor conservatives.
• 21:51
  Mike Masnick: But now that they're not going to have that restriction, suddenly I get the feeling they will likely flip and say, COSA is wonderful.
• 21:58
  Mike Masnick: And let's go forward with it because since we have the power.
• 22:01
  Mike Masnick: To censor LGBTQ content, which has always been the concern that many of us have raised about COSA, that it is now fine and dandy.
• 22:09
  Mike Masnick: and so I think what we will see is this combination of, they will try and stop any attempt.
• 22:15
  Mike Masnick: To, remove or moderate disinformation, they will see that as an attack, but they will push for anything that allows them to control what kind of speech is online.
• 22:24
  Mike Masnick: And that will include the removal of all sorts of important and valuable content.
• 22:28
  Mike Masnick: and, it's, it's going to be messy.
• 22:31
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah, no, I agree.
• 22:32
  Ben Whitelaw: And just on the point around, ID check laws and designed to kind of cure the pornography epidemic and, protect children is a really good piece actually by tech policy press, by, A woman called Anna Bonestell, who writes for fight for the future, who makes this really interesting case that we're going to see loads more bills like this.
• 22:50
  Ben Whitelaw: We're going to see many more laws passed.
• 22:52
  Ben Whitelaw: We're going to see states really go hard on this because it has been a feature of the Biden administration.
• 22:57
  Ben Whitelaw: And, with what we know about Trump and, his preferences is kind of going to be increased as well.
• 23:01
  Ben Whitelaw: So we'll include that in the show notes, but there are a couple of other things as well that we can expect, Mike, the TikTok band being one of them.
• 23:09
  Ben Whitelaw: Trump seems to have kind of flipped from where he, he used to be in terms of wanting a TikTok ban to really not caring anymore as well.
• 23:15
  Ben Whitelaw: It seems to be something to do with, uh, he's been funding his, election, program, right?
• 23:20
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 23:20
  Mike Masnick: one of the biggest, uh, I think it was the fourth largest, donor to the Trump campaign holds a, huge, uh, Portion of, tick tock equity.
• 23:29
  Mike Masnick: so, Trump had come out against the band.
• 23:32
  Mike Masnick: The band is supposed to go into effect basically at the same time as the inauguration is supposed to happen early next year in January.
• 23:38
  Mike Masnick: I imagine that, no matter what happens in that case, that Trump will probably instruct the DOJ to drop that case.
• 23:45
  Mike Masnick: and it'll go away.
• 23:47
  Mike Masnick: The other thing that'll be interesting to watch for is sort of what happens in the antitrust world.
• 23:52
  Mike Masnick: and this is kind of like, a big kind of up in the air thing where there are disagreements within, within both parties, to be honest, about antitrust and how it should work.
• 24:03
  Mike Masnick: And there is a belief that, the efforts to curb the power of, big companies to merge and to buy up competitors and all that kind of stuff, a lot of that is going to go away.
• 24:12
  Mike Masnick: But at the same time, I think that the Trump administration and, and, parts of the Republican, Senate and Congress sort of still see antitrust as a really cool weapon to punish companies that don't bend a knee and don't obey Trump's, you know, that suck up to him.
• 24:30
  Mike Masnick: And so, you know, we saw this in the first Trump administration, where, uh, AT& T and, Time Warner, where he tried to use, the justice department and antitrust laws to block the merger, which was sort of seen as like a favor to Rupert Murdoch.
• 24:46
  Mike Masnick: Like, it's all transactional stuff, right?
• 24:48
  Mike Masnick: There was no, no policy meeting behind it.
• 24:50
  Mike Masnick: And so, there are all these, Antitrust efforts against the big tech companies right now.
• 24:55
  Mike Masnick: and like a lot of that was led by Lena Kahn.
• 24:57
  Mike Masnick: and so there's the belief she'll get fired immediately.
• 25:00
  Mike Masnick: And will the Trump administration then back down from these, antitrust efforts?
• 25:05
  Mike Masnick: And I'm not sure they will, because he still hates Google, hates Meta, even though both of those companies are now totally trying to suck up to him and be like, Oh, you're wonderful.
• 25:13
  Mike Masnick: We love you.
• 25:14
  Mike Masnick: Um, and so.
• 25:15
  Mike Masnick: And so it'll be interesting to see how he leverages antitrust in this world.
• 25:21
  Mike Masnick: I think there will be, for companies that he favors, we're going to see all sorts of consolidation and, there'll be all sorts of opportunities for mischief there.
• 25:29
  Mike Masnick: but for Google and Meta, It will be very interesting to see how those things work out.
• 25:34
  Mike Masnick: You know, the first Google antitrust case, which, you know, has gone against Google, but it's, still a long way.
• 25:40
  Mike Masnick: They're still in the remedy stage now.
• 25:42
  Mike Masnick: And then we still have to work through all the appeals.
• 25:44
  Mike Masnick: It'll be years.
• 25:45
  Mike Masnick: That one was actually the one that was brought under the original trump administration where he His justice department rushed out an antitrust case in the waning days of 2020 because like he decided like that was going to be one of his big moves in trying to get re elected in 2020 So they brought this really like weak case which The justice department actually improved under the Biden administration and made it stronger.
• 26:09
  Mike Masnick: I still thought it was a weak case.
• 26:10
  Mike Masnick: I was little surprised with how that one came out.
• 26:12
  Mike Masnick: There are other cases that are ongoing, but they're still very early that I think are actually much stronger, but I don't know.
• 26:18
  Mike Masnick: It's not about the strength or weaknesses of the cases anymore.
• 26:21
  Mike Masnick: It's about whether or not Trump wants to punish a company or not.
• 26:24
  Mike Masnick: And so I think that will have a pretty big impact on a bunch of things.
• 26:29
  Mike Masnick: so, a lot of this is really kind of Up in the air.
• 26:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 26:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Okay.
• 26:33
  Ben Whitelaw: So in summary, not sure where the antitrust winds will blow.
• 26:36
  Ben Whitelaw: Maybe there'll be a TikTok ban.
• 26:38
  Ben Whitelaw: Almost certainly there'll be some online ID laws.
• 26:41
  Ben Whitelaw: Who knows about the rest?
• 26:42
  Mike Masnick: yeah, and you know, it is important to note that like on the online ID laws and everything, there is a case at the Supreme Court right now, and that will matter, and there will be oral arguments for that in January, And there's decent possibility that even with the Supreme Court, that they would actually reject the online ID laws, it could go either way.
• 27:04
  Mike Masnick: but it wouldn't surprise me if they reject it.
• 27:05
  Mike Masnick: And that will be interesting because there's this kind of, I think it was something to watch if we're looking for things to watch in terms of how all this plays out is what happens in the courts.
• 27:16
  Mike Masnick: Because.
• 27:17
  Mike Masnick: the way a lot of this has gone down is that, people who have been supporting the sort of Trump view on free speech, which is, you know, laughable.
• 27:27
  Mike Masnick: He has no view on free speech other than like my speech is good.
• 27:30
  Mike Masnick: And my supporter speech is good.
• 27:31
  Mike Masnick: And everybody else's speech is bad.
• 27:33
  Mike Masnick: Judges that have been trying to like, That were appointed by Trump and we're sort of trying to play the role of being very Trumpist.
• 27:40
  Mike Masnick: We're willing to completely ignore a century's worth of first amendment precedent.
• 27:46
  Mike Masnick: You know, the, the key case that I'm thinking of is in the fifth circuit about Texas's social media law, the net choice case, where Andy Oldham, who wrote the ruling in that case, he just came out with another ruling this week.
• 27:57
  Mike Masnick: We don't need to talk about it in that case.
• 27:59
  Mike Masnick: That case is continuing.
• 28:01
  Mike Masnick: he basically rejected a hundred years worth of first amendment, precedent, which historically was not like Republican conservative judges were very supportive of that sort of very broad first amendment protections.
• 28:14
  Mike Masnick: And so the real question is how much of that lives through, like how much of people who were trained on the first amendment in that, uh, Tradition.
• 28:22
  Mike Masnick: Remember that and say, like, these principles about the First Amendment are more important than the principles of helping whoever Trump wants to help.
• 28:31
  Mike Masnick: And that's where the war is going to be played out.
• 28:34
  Mike Masnick: And the one sort of interesting twist on this.
• 28:37
  Mike Masnick: Is Elon Musk again, like it comes back to him in some way or another, which is that a lot of these cases started when the belief was incorrectly that all of these platforms were, you know, left woke,, you know, Trump hating platforms and therefore we have to bring them to heel now that Elon Musk owns a platform and president Trump himself.
• 28:58
  Mike Masnick: Owns a platform, which, you know, for whatever that's worth, will they begin to realize that these laws would be really problematic for themselves as well?
• 29:07
  Mike Masnick: And does an Elon Musk sort of pop up in these cases and say, like, hey, this is a violation of my First Amendment rights in a way that convinces the judges like, oh, wait, let's, you know, It's stupid.
• 29:20
  Mike Masnick: it's ridiculous that it would come to that, but I'm sort of curious to see how that, that aspect plays out.
• 29:25
  Mike Masnick: And I'm sort of going to watch the courts on that side of things.
• 29:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 29:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Well, we'd be saved by their own ego, essentially.
• 29:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, I mean, there's been a whole, whole bunch of, there's been a whole bunch of stories written this week about, Elon Musk's involvement in the election.
• 29:41
  Ben Whitelaw: Charlie Wurtzel in the Atlantic writes another good one about how the questions around anti conservative bias has kind of slipped away now that he's.
• 29:49
  Ben Whitelaw: Basically part of the campaign team.
• 29:51
  Ben Whitelaw: So that's not surprising, but there's also talk of him actually taking a, obviously a stronger role in the Trump administration and having his own political career in the future.
• 29:59
  Ben Whitelaw: So I think again, this idea of politics and trust and safety and of content moderation being intertwined is something we're going to see time and time again.
• 30:07
  Ben Whitelaw: but the online ID question is a nice segue, I think, Mike, into the, to our next story as we, Go to the opposite side of the world talk about Australia's
• 30:15
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 30:16
  Mike Masnick: Let's leave the U S please.
• 30:17
  Mike Masnick: Please.
• 30:18
  Ben Whitelaw: Sooner the better.
• 30:20
  Ben Whitelaw: this is a big story.
• 30:21
  Ben Whitelaw: If you've been following it, it's kind of rumbled on over the last couple of months.
• 30:25
  Ben Whitelaw: We, we touched on it briefly in the podcast.
• 30:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Essentially, Australia is going to be banning under 16s from social media platforms.
• 30:33
  Ben Whitelaw: the age is the new thing this week.
• 30:35
  Ben Whitelaw: We knew it was going to happen.
• 30:36
  Ben Whitelaw: We knew that some children, some teens were not going to have access to social media, but this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that it will be, 16 under which, kids will not have access to social media.
• 30:49
  Ben Whitelaw: the guys of this is, is to kind of protect children and their mental health and protect them from harm, which obviously we know is a big concern for, many people.
• 30:58
  Ben Whitelaw: And, what's basically going to occur is that a number of platforms under a very broad definition, which I'm sure we'll get into, Mike, are going to have to put, protection so that basically kids under under 16 will not have access.
• 31:10
  Ben Whitelaw: And, those who currently have access, will be essentially kicked off the platforms.
• 31:15
  Ben Whitelaw: So I wanna start with that definition, Mike, because it's something we talked a bit about before we came on there.
• 31:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Started recording.
• 31:21
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm gonna read it out'cause it's incredibly broad and.
• 31:25
  Ben Whitelaw: is, is almost kind of laughable in its capsule nature.
• 31:28
  Ben Whitelaw: So the definition of a social media service as per Australia's online safety act is as follows.
• 31:34
  Ben Whitelaw: It's the sole and primary purpose of the service to enable online social interaction between two or more end users.
• 31:40
  Ben Whitelaw: The service allows end users to link to or interact with some or all of the other end users.
• 31:46
  Ben Whitelaw: The service allows end users to post material on the service.
• 31:50
  Ben Whitelaw: That's.
• 31:51
  Ben Whitelaw: everything.
• 31:54
  Mike Masnick: That's the internet.
• 31:55
  Ben Whitelaw: That's it's email.
• 31:57
  Ben Whitelaw: It's the weird forums.
• 31:58
  Ben Whitelaw: I go on to, to, you know, rant about my football team.
• 32:01
  Ben Whitelaw: It's everything.
• 32:01
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 32:02
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 32:02
  Mike Masnick: It's the entire internet.
• 32:03
  Mike Masnick: that is basically defines the internet
• 32:06
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and so what does this mean in practice as, the kind of Australian government tried to roll this out?
• 32:10
  Ben Whitelaw: Do you think, cause one of the criticisms has been, there's no thought really about, the kind of implementation of this.
• 32:17
  Ben Whitelaw: It's only.
• 32:18
  Ben Whitelaw: It's been rushed out, political reasons again, and there hasn't been much thought or guidance as to how platforms do this.
• 32:25
  Ben Whitelaw: are they meant to deal with something like this?
• 32:27
  Mike Masnick: it's, I mean, like so much internet policy, it's just disconnected from reality.
• 32:33
  Mike Masnick: It's like, mean, Yes, there are reasons to be concerned about the way that kids use the internet and all this stuff, but, but kids use the internet to communicate with grandparents, to communicate with friends.
• 32:44
  Mike Masnick: There's all of these things.
• 32:45
  Mike Masnick: And all of that is effectively banned
• 32:47
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 32:49
  Mike Masnick: You know, uh, text messaging is bad.
• 32:51
  Mike Masnick: Like you can't use FaceTime.
• 32:53
  Mike Masnick: Under this
• 32:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 32:54
  Mike Masnick: fall under the, under the law, you know, any kind of WhatsApp signal, any, any kind of like two way messaging, would appear to be banned for those under 16, you know, YouTube would be banned.
• 33:06
  Mike Masnick: And, there are concerns about like, you know, there's, there's bad content on YouTube, but you know, for most.
• 33:12
  Mike Masnick: Kids today, YouTube is TV.
• 33:14
  Mike Masnick: I mean that it's, it's how they consume content.
• 33:16
  Mike Masnick: They're not using it mostly as like a two way medium, but they're using it to consume content that is coming to them.
• 33:23
  Mike Masnick: And there's lots of really good content on there, frankly, for kids and educational content, and that would, be banned.
• 33:29
  Mike Masnick: There's all of these things in here that and I've talked before about like, The failure of like, this is not the way that you handle these things for a variety of reasons.
• 33:38
  Mike Masnick: You know, kids should be taught how to use technology properly.
• 33:42
  Mike Masnick: And instead, this is saying like, you can't touch this at all.
• 33:46
  Mike Masnick: And then suddenly at age 16, we're suddenly going to let kids loose on this without any real training or practice or understanding of how it works and not expect that to be a complete and total disaster, you know, I understand that, like, you don't want to let young kids alone onto these services without understanding how they work, but this bans them entirely, like teach them how to use it properly, teach them what the risks are.
• 34:12
  Mike Masnick: it's the same thing that we had the harms versus risks story that we had a few weeks ago about, you know, you take people out, you teach them how to cross the street and this is the opposite.
• 34:21
  Mike Masnick: This is saying, you know, kids can't cross the street until they're 16.
• 34:25
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 34:25
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 34:26
  Ben Whitelaw: You're stuck on one side of the road forever.
• 34:28
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, it's not, it's not how the world works.
• 34:31
  Mike Masnick: And, and so, I feel like Australia does this unfortunately frequently where they pass these laws without any real, recognition of reality.
• 34:41
  Mike Masnick: and they sort of build this, fantasy world where Oh, well, you know, there are some challenges and therefore we're just going to completely wipe it out.
• 34:48
  Mike Masnick: It's again, like to go back to a theme that is coming through a little bit on this podcast.
• 34:52
  Mike Masnick: It's very, it's a simplistic solution to a complex problem with lots of trade offs without a willingness from the government to actually look at the complexity and how do we balance these things?
• 35:02
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah, for sure.
• 35:03
  Ben Whitelaw: And you know, I guess there's a philosophical question about how much harm do you allow children to, be confronted with on the internet, but there's also the kind of details of, how they're trying to implement this.
• 35:14
  Ben Whitelaw: And there really is very little details about it.
• 35:16
  Ben Whitelaw: So the government aren't specifying a technical method for, um, platforms to, check user's age.
• 35:25
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, there are, there's a lots of age assurance.
• 35:27
  Ben Whitelaw: technology and age verification technology out there, which has, which has kind of like, differing views.
• 35:32
  Ben Whitelaw: And then we don't need to get into that now, but if you're a government essentially with a kind of policy, that's, presumably trying to win a lot of votes, trying to keep kids safe and appease parents, then it's odd that they haven't gone to the length of specifying that,
• 35:46
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 35:47
  Mike Masnick: and in fact, the Australian government last year did a report on age verification and age assurance stuff that said none of these technologies work and yet they then come forth with this proposal and it's just like mind blowing where they know because they, they had like a, actually.
• 36:03
  Mike Masnick: Good report that looked at all the different technologies and said, they're like dangerous for privacy.
• 36:07
  Mike Masnick: There's no good technology that actually does age verification well.
• 36:11
  Mike Masnick: And yet then they come out with this policy and it's just like, how can those two things happen in the same government?
• 36:16
  Mike Masnick: And,
• 36:16
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah, no, it's true.
• 36:19
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, thing before we move on this question of, okay, how, what are the better ways of.
• 36:24
  Ben Whitelaw: Verifying age or ensuring that people of a certain age don't use certain services.
• 36:28
  Ben Whitelaw: And I come back to this idea of, you know, verifying at the app store level, which, a few people have talked about in the last year or so, UL Roth, who's appeared on the podcast before, has talked about this and written about this.
• 36:41
  Ben Whitelaw: you feel that's a kind of better way forward in terms of achieving some of these goals, which obviously Australia are trying to do?
• 36:46
  Mike Masnick: yeah, I mean, as a tool, it's, it's not a, uh, It's not the worst one.
• 36:51
  Mike Masnick: There are limitations
• 36:52
  Ben Whitelaw: that's, that's praise for me, Mike.
• 36:54
  Ben Whitelaw: I've got to say,
• 36:54
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, that's true.
• 36:56
  Mike Masnick: Uh, there are worse ways of doing it, but it's not, it's not great either for a variety of reasons.
• 37:00
  Mike Masnick: you know, one, not everybody uses these apps through their phones, like people do have computers and the app stores don't apply in those scenarios also, and this is an admission, like literally this week I helped one of my kids lie about their age.
• 37:15
  Mike Masnick: In order to get access to it, to certain services.
• 37:18
  Mike Masnick: And, you know, but part of that was actually having a conversation with the kids saying, like, I understand you want access to this feature.
• 37:24
  Mike Masnick: And at your age, you are not allowed to have access to that feature.
• 37:28
  Mike Masnick: Let's talk through what else this is giving you access to and how we're going to handle it.
• 37:32
  Mike Masnick: And that's the point that I actually do think is important is like learning how to talk to your, talk to kids and.
• 37:38
  Mike Masnick: train them into how they handle things and not just how to handle problematic things, but to recognize like you might come across stuff that is problematic.
• 37:47
  Mike Masnick: And in those cases, like come talk to us and like, feel free to, to, recognize that there may be problematic things.
• 37:54
  Mike Masnick: And we are here to help you if that, comes up, never be afraid to come talk to us about that kind of stuff.
• 37:59
  Mike Masnick: But that is like, that's part of the education process rather than, you know, Oh, we just have to completely ban kids.
• 38:05
  Mike Masnick: And so that same thing is going to still happen.
• 38:08
  Mike Masnick: Kids are going to want access to something, this or that.
• 38:10
  Mike Masnick: And parents are going to say, well, yeah, of course, like that feature, they should be able to have access to.
• 38:14
  Mike Masnick: Therefore I'm going to lie or change the data that I gave this service already.
• 38:19
  Mike Masnick: And so, just this idea of focusing it on like the age specific part of it.
• 38:24
  Mike Masnick: Is it's just not, it's not a realistic solution.
• 38:28
  Ben Whitelaw: no, there's a lot of detail to be fleshed out for sure, and I'm going to be really interested to see how this plays out.
• 38:33
  Ben Whitelaw: There's, there's a lot to be desired.
• 38:35
  Ben Whitelaw: I think about, the way that this is, has been conceived.
• 38:38
  Ben Whitelaw: I guess the only plus side for the platforms is it's not due to happen for at least a year, even if.
• 38:44
  Ben Whitelaw: The, kind of law gets passed in the next couple of weeks.
• 38:47
  Ben Whitelaw: So, we'll definitely update listeners on this, as we go in the next couple of weeks.
• 38:51
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 38:51
  Ben Whitelaw: then.
• 38:51
  Ben Whitelaw: So, our other kind of major story we wanted to talk about this week, Mike was, from a country, not too far away from United States, um, Canada, which has taken its own kind of strange approach to the question of foreign interference and the question of Tik TOK.
• 39:06
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 39:07
  Ben Whitelaw: more.
• 39:08
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 39:08
  Mike Masnick: So is a weird one where, Canada is affected effectively kicking bite dance and tick tock out of the country, but not in the way that you might think
• 39:20
  Ben Whitelaw: A halfway house.
• 39:22
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, they have just said that the company cannot operate as a company in Canada in terms of having offices.
• 39:31
  Mike Masnick: They cannot have employees in Canada because they see that as a national security threat, but the app can still function.
• 39:39
  Ben Whitelaw: Weird.
• 39:40
  Mike Masnick: So everyone can still use Tik TOK in Canada, but there can't be Tik TOK employees in Canada.
• 39:47
  Ben Whitelaw: So the theory is, is that having kind of, is it, is it, it's not Chinese nationals working for TikTok.
• 39:53
  Ben Whitelaw: It's anybody.
• 39:54
  Mike Masnick: no idea because this makes no sense.
• 39:58
  Mike Masnick: Like, unless the concern is that the employees of the company are like, they're for some sort of espionage national security.
• 40:08
  Mike Masnick: don't understand how the concern would be more about the employees than the app itself.
• 40:13
  Mike Masnick: Like everywhere else that we hear concerns, it's always about the app itself.
• 40:18
  Mike Masnick: And in fact, like if you want to have more say in how the app operates, you would think you would probably want.
• 40:24
  Mike Masnick: A local version of the company.
• 40:27
  Mike Masnick: And in fact, in other cases and in other countries, we have all these laws that force you to have local representation for that very reason.
• 40:35
  Mike Masnick: You know, I often make fun of those as sort of the hostage laws, right.
• 40:38
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 40:39
  Mike Masnick: And here, Canada is going in the.
• 40:41
  Mike Masnick: Other direction entirely, but allowing the app to operate.
• 40:44
  Mike Masnick: It makes no sense.
• 40:45
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I think the theme of this podcast this week, this episode is like, none of this makes sense.
• 40:51
  Mike Masnick: The world has gone crazy.
• 40:56
  Mike Masnick: I, like, I can't, I don't, I can't fathom the rationale for this.
• 41:01
  Mike Masnick: I, I, it's like the app can still go, but people can't work here.
• 41:05
  Ben Whitelaw: Odd.
• 41:06
  Mike Masnick: Then you have less control over it.
• 41:08
  Mike Masnick: And if there are national security concerns about how the app works, like you have less say in that there's nothing else that you can do.
• 41:15
  Mike Masnick: so I, I don't, I don't get it.
• 41:17
  Mike Masnick: It makes, it makes no sense to me.
• 41:18
  Ben Whitelaw: It's very rare that you're lost for words, Mike, and that I also have no, no questions to come back to you on.
• 41:23
  Ben Whitelaw: It's one of those.
• 41:24
  Ben Whitelaw: It doesn't make any sense.
• 41:25
  Ben Whitelaw: And the Reuters piece that, kind of documents this also has.
• 41:28
  Ben Whitelaw: No, further information.
• 41:29
  Ben Whitelaw: So, I mean, you know, it's, it kind of sums up how I think we're both feeling after this week.
• 41:35
  Ben Whitelaw: It sums up how, how this episode has gone.
• 41:39
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, yeah, I mean, we'll have to, come back to listeners with a few more thoughts in the coming weeks.
• 41:44
  Ben Whitelaw: That's, that's all I can say to,
• 41:45
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, it's, it's, it's just a strange one.
• 41:48
  Mike Masnick: It's like, you know, I read the story and I kept waiting for like the explanation of how this makes sense.
• 41:53
  Mike Masnick: And, and again, unless you think that they're using the fact that there's a local subsidiary in Canada to engage in like actual espionage, which I don't.
• 42:03
  Mike Masnick: Doesn't make any sense.
• 42:05
  Mike Masnick: Like, why would you do that?
• 42:06
  Mike Masnick: Like, that's the only rationale, like maybe they found out that, yeah, like China was using TikTok as like a tool to sneak spies into Canada.
• 42:15
  Mike Masnick: I don't know.
• 42:16
  Mike Masnick: It it's like
• 42:18
  Ben Whitelaw: Start sounding like a spy novel.
• 42:20
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:22
  Mike Masnick: Maybe, maybe I'll spend the next four years writing novels.
• 42:24
  Mike Masnick: That's what I should do.
• 42:26
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 42:26
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, well make time for control of speech on a Friday.
• 42:31
  Ben Whitelaw: You can do whatever you want.
• 42:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Otherwise, um,
• 42:33
  Mike Masnick: go.
• 42:35
  Ben Whitelaw: that takes us to the end of this week.
• 42:36
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike, we have done our best to process, to, try to counsel you through what has been a tricky week.
• 42:43
  Ben Whitelaw: And, I think hopefully you feel like you've got something off your chest.
• 42:47
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, and for
• 42:48
  Mike Masnick: I will say, I will say that, uh, I've been having very nice conversations with people all week.
• 42:53
  Mike Masnick: and there has been this sense of, I met a new neighbor this week.
• 42:58
  Mike Masnick: I, I had my, physical this week and I ended up sitting and just, Chatting with my doctor about America and the election for longer than we probably should have just as sort of, therapy moment both of us, So there is this element of you know when things go crazy people do need to sort of come together and talk and find community and that's not saying like find community with the people who are trying to do horrible things and, destroy lives and everything, but find the people who, who have compassion and who have empathy and try and build community.
• 43:33
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I think that's, that's like the most important thing at this point.
• 43:36
  Mike Masnick: And that is where, for all the harms and problems of the internet, the internet does help enable that and that should be encouraged.
• 43:45
  Ben Whitelaw: agreed.
• 43:45
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, everything in moderation, I'm going to be starting to do kind of weekly calls with readers and other folks interested in safety as part of that effort to kind of bring people together and help them understand each other.
• 43:56
  Ben Whitelaw: And hopefully that's also what control or speech is a bit about.
• 43:59
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, it's about, you know, trying to bring some of these issues to light, to listen to a wide range of, folks who, who think about these things on a regular basis.
• 44:08
  Ben Whitelaw: And.
• 44:09
  Ben Whitelaw: if you do like the podcast and you want to, support us in what you do, the best way of doing so is by giving us a review, give us a rating on the podcast platform that you use.
• 44:19
  Ben Whitelaw: And, uh, if nothing else that'll, that'll keep Mike and I going in the, uh, the dark depths of the next, couple of days and weeks, at least.
• 44:26
  Ben Whitelaw: So thanks for listening as ever, uh, appreciate you tuning in and we'll speak to you next week.
• 44:33
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• 44:36
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• 44:40
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• 44:47
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• 44:49
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• 44:50
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