Latest / Ctrl-Alt-Speech / Censors & Sensibility

Transcript

Censors & Sensibility · Ctrl-Alt-Speech

• 0:00
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike, this might be the most middle-aged British thing I've ever said.
• 0:05
  Ben Whitelaw: And that's, that's a fairly high bar, right?
• 0:07
  Ben Whitelaw: Because I, I do really mark myself out, in loads of ways across those two kind of categories, but.
• 0:13
  Ben Whitelaw: and I don't want you to kind of like, you know, be embarrassed on behalf of me.
• 0:16
  Ben Whitelaw: But I have started to do some birdwatching
• 0:19
  Mike Masnick: Oh yes.
• 0:21
  Ben Whitelaw: and I've got, an app for it, which is called Merlin Bird id, which kind of detects the sounds of birds.
• 0:28
  Ben Whitelaw: And you can upload pictures of birds you see, and it registers them and confirms that they are.
• 0:32
  Ben Whitelaw: The species that they are.
• 0:34
  Ben Whitelaw: and on the kinda marketing for this app, it, has the prompt who's singing.
• 0:40
  Ben Whitelaw: So I thought we'd start today, um, with a, self humiliation.
• 0:44
  Ben Whitelaw: And also, uh, the question of who's singing, who's been singing this last week?
• 0:49
  Mike Masnick: Well that, that is a, an excellent prompt.
• 0:51
  Mike Masnick: And I will note that I have also recently started using the, Merlin Bird app, which is a.
• 0:56
  Mike Masnick: A, proud production of my alma mater, Cornell University.
• 1:01
  Mike Masnick: So I'm, I am contractually obliged to, to use the app.
• 1:06
  Mike Masnick: It is actually very cool.
• 1:07
  Mike Masnick: it is sort of like a real life Pokemon app where you go out and find birds and it is, it's fun.
• 1:14
  Mike Masnick: It's one of these things that's like actually fun technology, which is nice and, and resonant.
• 1:19
  Mike Masnick: Discuss in a moment.
• 1:21
  Mike Masnick: Uh, but in terms of who is singing this week, it sure seems like a bunch of Australian politicians are singing about how wonderful it is that they're banning children from various internet services that they like, and they're, they're awfully, awfully happy about it, which is just sort of a slightly odd feeling.
• 1:41
  Mike Masnick: But, uh, who's singing in your neck of the woods?
• 1:44
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 1:45
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, the person that comes to mind is, is Elon Musk, but he's very much not singing.
• 1:50
  Ben Whitelaw: He's, he's,
• 1:51
  Mike Masnick: He's singing some sort of tune.
• 1:53
  Ben Whitelaw: He is, he's singing some tune, but he's, I would say he's squawking, he's very upset about what's happened this past week.
• 2:00
  Ben Whitelaw: So, um, he's not somebody I want to listen to a lot more of, but we're gonna talk about him anyway, as ever.
• 2:14
  Ben Whitelaw: Hello and welcome to Control Alt Speech, your weekly roundup of the major stories about online speech, content moderation, and internet regulation.
• 2:22
  Ben Whitelaw: It's December the 11th, 2025, and this week's episode is brought to you by CCIA, an international not-for-profit trade association, representing a broad cross section of communications and technology firms that promote open markets, open systems, and open networks.
• 2:37
  Ben Whitelaw: My name is Ben White Law.
• 2:38
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm the founder and editor of Everything in Moderation, and I'm back with a newly minted.
• 2:44
  Ben Whitelaw: And I and I, and I mean, you know, literally minted, but also, profiting, uh, over the last week, which we'll talk about.
• 2:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike Masnick.
• 2:54
  Ben Whitelaw: How are you, Mike?
• 2:55
  Mike Masnick: I'm good.
• 2:56
  Mike Masnick: I'm, happy to be back.
• 2:57
  Mike Masnick: I had fun last week at, the Wired conference where I was, but, uh, missed being here.
• 3:02
  Mike Masnick: I listened to the podcast that you and Avi did, which I thought was very.
• 3:07
  Mike Masnick: Great.
• 3:07
  Mike Masnick: Fascinating.
• 3:08
  Mike Masnick: She's always a fascinating person to talk to, so I was
• 3:11
  Ben Whitelaw: She is.
• 3:12
  Mike Masnick: en enjoyed that.
• 3:12
  Mike Masnick: But, yeah.
• 3:13
  Mike Masnick: Also, last week I started learning about how to mint coins.
• 3:17
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, that was my kind of rather mysterious intro.
• 3:20
  Ben Whitelaw: I wanna get into that, but I want to hear what the juice was from the wide event.
• 3:24
  Ben Whitelaw: This was the, big interview event, right?
• 3:27
  Ben Whitelaw: Uh, it's happening in San Francisco.
• 3:28
  Ben Whitelaw: you got up on stage, you, talked about, a kind of big unveiling of a, manifesto, which we're gonna talk about.
• 3:34
  Ben Whitelaw: But what's the juice, what's the gossip from, from the wide event?
• 3:37
  Mike Masnick: Um, it, it was good.
• 3:39
  Mike Masnick: It was actually really interesting.
• 3:40
  Mike Masnick: Why are, they've been doing this event for a few years and, I've gone the past three years in a row.
• 3:46
  Mike Masnick: and I really like it.
• 3:48
  Mike Masnick: I mean, it's super well produced and they have really thoughtful conversations with really interesting.
• 3:54
  Mike Masnick: People.
• 3:55
  Mike Masnick: And so like this year there was John Chu, who's the Hollywood film director who grew up right near San Francisco.
• 4:02
  Mike Masnick: And, and so had all these sort of local stories, which was kind of fascinating.
• 4:07
  Mike Masnick: then, he's most recently directed the two Wicked films, the second of which just came out and was talking about that experience.
• 4:14
  Mike Masnick: he directed, crazy Rich Asians and, You know, he is just a Hollywood guy, but he had some really interesting perspectives on technology having grown up around here.
• 4:25
  Mike Masnick: And, you know, there were a bunch of other conversations as well.
• 4:28
  Mike Masnick: I thought that were really good.
• 4:30
  Mike Masnick: there were people from Doge.
• 4:32
  Mike Masnick: they were on stage right before me.
• 4:34
  Mike Masnick: There were a bunch of, the Doge folks who, Wired, has done some really great reporting on Doge.
• 4:39
  Mike Masnick: And so they got a bunch of folks.
• 4:42
  Mike Masnick: Related to Doge to come on stage and talk about it.
• 4:45
  Ben Whitelaw: Interesting.
• 4:46
  Ben Whitelaw: How, how are they doing post post Elon?
• 4:49
  Mike Masnick: well, there, there are some different, levels of that.
• 4:53
  Mike Masnick: Uh, I was backstage with some of them, before they went on, was before I went on.
• 4:57
  Mike Masnick: So got to chat a little bit with them, which I'm not sure how much publicly I can say.
• 5:02
  Ben Whitelaw: Now we're talking, this is what I meant, the juice.
• 5:04
  Ben Whitelaw: Let's
• 5:04
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 5:06
  Mike Masnick: I mean, it, it was interesting.
• 5:07
  Mike Masnick: I mean, one of the interesting things is that one of them who had been somewhat famously fired from Doge, is now back in government and had just started, like a week before with the IRS and claimed on stage that he's like trying to build, better technology tools for the IRS.
• 5:25
  Mike Masnick: He had been fired from Doge for talking to the press.
• 5:28
  Mike Masnick: but somehow was able to get back into government, and then go and talk to the press, which I, I,
• 5:36
  Ben Whitelaw: Well, that, that sounds like a very sensible, uh, chain of events that have happened there.
• 5:42
  Ben Whitelaw: Rehire the guy who was fired and yeah, let him loose at a big meter event.
• 5:48
  Mike Masnick: I mean it was a little curious'cause I'm not sure if they knew he was gonna go talk at this wired event and get lots of attention,
• 5:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Leopard leopards in spots,
• 5:59
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:00
  Mike Masnick: There, there was a bit of that.
• 6:02
  Mike Masnick: Um, but no, it was a really good event.
• 6:03
  Mike Masnick: There's always really good people, so a lot of really good conversations as well.
• 6:07
  Mike Masnick: just, fascinating stuff to think about and really sort of big picture thinking.
• 6:11
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah.
• 6:12
  Ben Whitelaw: Including your new resonant.
• 6:14
  Mike Masnick: Yes,
• 6:15
  Ben Whitelaw: Computing manifesto to give it its full title.
• 6:18
  Ben Whitelaw: This is, an exciting new masnick, project Talk us.
• 6:23
  Ben Whitelaw: It's, I know it's been on kind of in stealth mode for quite a long time, and this was the first unveiling.
• 6:27
  Ben Whitelaw: Talk us through what it is and, why you decided to do it.
• 6:29
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 6:30
  Mike Masnick: So this is, I mean, it's a group effort.
• 6:31
  Mike Masnick: I, I wanna be clear, this is not a Masnick effort.
• 6:35
  Mike Masnick: Uh, there's a, there
• 6:36
  Ben Whitelaw: solely.
• 6:37
  Mike Masnick: there were a lot of people involved and it was just sort of a group of people, mostly sort of Silicon Valley based.
• 6:42
  Mike Masnick: A lot of people who sort of work in tech, some sort of like investor, some Thinker type people, some designers, we had a lot of different perspectives, just people who were sort of all thinking that, you know, honestly, a, I think, you know, similar to the stuff that we talk about here on this podcast where we're talking about, how can the internet be better and how do we think about within the speech context, which is much of the internet, if not,
• 7:06
  Ben Whitelaw: Mm.
• 7:06
  Mike Masnick: know, the vast majority of the internet.
• 7:08
  Mike Masnick: Like, how do we make it so that it is more for humanity?
• 7:12
  Mike Masnick: Rather than just for some giant companies.
• 7:14
  Mike Masnick: and like everybody sort of had this sense that, you know, it feels like the industry is going in the wrong direction and it's sort of like always focused on growth hacking and, know, engagement maxing.
• 7:28
  Mike Masnick: And there's this very sort of, you know, what we often sort of refer to as like the tech bro culture, which.
• 7:35
  Mike Masnick: It wasn't always like this, and a lot of people, even within the industry, are really kind of uncomfortable with it.
• 7:41
  Mike Masnick: But the thing that we all felt in talking about was that we didn't have a language to talk about it other than sort of these, very amorphous general things.
• 7:50
  Mike Masnick: So as we sort of were getting together and chatting about this stuff, we said, can we, put together.
• 7:55
  Mike Masnick: something that turned into the manifesto that just expresses this idea and maybe lays out some kinds of principles around like, how can we think about this?
• 8:05
  Mike Masnick: And where we came down was this concept of resonant computing.
• 8:08
  Mike Masnick: and I will say that we went through a.
• 8:10
  Mike Masnick: Many, many other options.
• 8:13
  Mike Masnick: Uh, and we had a few that we would like, let's try this out for a week.
• 8:18
  Mike Masnick: And,
• 8:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 8:20
  Mike Masnick: about, you know, and go and talk to people and sort of drop things into conversation and see if it felt really uncomfortable or if it felt okay.
• 8:27
  Mike Masnick: and once we hit on resonant computing, it just like I mean, it resonated, right?
• 8:32
  Mike Masnick: It was like the, um.
• 8:36
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, and, what we've seen, you know, we started sort of quietly passing it around before we did the announcement last week, was that.
• 8:44
  Mike Masnick: it did it.
• 8:44
  Mike Masnick: Like so many people have responded with like, oh my gosh.
• 8:48
  Mike Masnick: Like, yes, I've been thinking this, but I didn't have the words, or I didn't quite know how to express it, and I'm so glad that there are other people thinking about it.
• 8:54
  Mike Masnick: And so we've gotten, I, I haven't looked lately, but uh, as of yesterday we had almost a thousand signatures, on the document, including some really big names.
• 9:04
  Mike Masnick: We have like, Tim O'Reilly and Audrey Tung, who's the digital minister in Taiwan.
• 9:09
  Mike Masnick: We had, Larry Lessig there.
• 9:12
  Mike Masnick: A bunch of people have been signing on to the document.
• 9:15
  Mike Masnick: Kevin Kelly, who's like an early wired guy as well.
• 9:19
  Mike Masnick: And just all sorts of excitement about it.
• 9:21
  Mike Masnick: Like so many people saying like, yes, yes, this is, this is exactly what we've been sort of feeling.
• 9:27
  Mike Masnick: and so we're, really sort of excited by the reaction and, we're now in the process of figuring out like, what more can we do with this?
• 9:33
  Mike Masnick: And, I think it's useful to have that language, I think.
• 9:37
  Mike Masnick: not to be sort of tooting our own horn, but like I do think that this podcast is a part of that concept of like getting people to think about like, how can we do things in a better, more humanistic way?
• 9:48
  Mike Masnick: and really figuring out.
• 9:50
  Mike Masnick: Having the language to talk about it is useful, but then beginning to think through what are the principles and what are the ways that we actually build an internet for people as opposed to just like engagement maxing tech bro stuff.
• 10:04
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I mean the principles, I would definitely, and I've signed up by the way, it should go without saying, um, um, the principles, the five principles that you have in the manifesto are things that I would say that.
• 10:16
  Ben Whitelaw: Control speech kind of seeks to do.
• 10:18
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, I know that it's fundamentally about building products and companies and software fundamentally, but I, I think we often talk about how media is a kind of part of that ecosystem, right?
• 10:29
  Ben Whitelaw: For those things to succeed for the people, and the companies and the products to kind of rise to the top.
• 10:34
  Ben Whitelaw: You need a media that understands, their benefits and needs them to be framed in the right way.
• 10:39
  Ben Whitelaw: And I think we do a lot of that, as you say.
• 10:41
  Ben Whitelaw: And it's just great to see so many kind of, yeah, smart people come together to create this new language that is, is not a kind of anti language.
• 10:49
  Ben Whitelaw: It's not, it's not like saying we we're opposed to the old way of doing things.
• 10:53
  Ben Whitelaw: It's like, no, no, this is fresh and constructive and positive,
• 10:58
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 10:59
  Mike Masnick: And, and that was deliberate.
• 11:00
  Mike Masnick: And, and some people, we've actually had a few people say they wouldn't sign on because we, don't call the existing companies evil and we don't trash the way things were done.
• 11:09
  Mike Masnick: and you know, there are people doing that.
• 11:11
  Mike Masnick: and that was not the goal of this.
• 11:13
  Mike Masnick: It's not just to say, and in fact we talk about it in the manifesto that like.
• 11:17
  Mike Masnick: There are incentives that work here and understanding incentives is like everything to me.
• 11:21
  Mike Masnick: and that was really important.
• 11:23
  Mike Masnick: It's like, yes, there are some bad people in tech, nobody's denying that, but I think we don't get to a better world if we assume that everybody in tech is just automatically evil and has evil intentions.
• 11:34
  Mike Masnick: And it's not just sort of, the outgrowth of the incentive structures that are in place, and the way you'd fix that is you have to fix the incentive structures.
• 11:41
  Mike Masnick: And to do that, you have to sort of call out where the incentive structures are leading us down the wrong, wrong path.
• 11:46
  Mike Masnick: And this is part of that process.
• 11:48
  Mike Masnick: And so that's, you know, I think we're, we're gonna have a lot more to say on it as, as we go.
• 11:53
  Mike Masnick: this was like, we had no idea, this was a lot of, a lot of it was just like, let's get this out there and see how people respond and people are responding fantastically.
• 12:02
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and there's a, a really interesting Google Doc that has some of the, kind of these that are being worked on and it's alive with comments.
• 12:10
  Ben Whitelaw: It's alive with people.
• 12:11
  Ben Whitelaw: It's really nice to see.
• 12:12
  Ben Whitelaw: I feel very hopeful,
• 12:14
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I mean.
• 12:14
  Ben Whitelaw: about the manifesto.
• 12:15
  Mike Masnick: one of the things that we said was like, you know, it's funny to say it in the sense of a manifesto, but like we're trying to be somewhat modest and humble about, about it in that we say like, we don't have all the answers.
• 12:26
  Mike Masnick: it's not like there were whatever, a dozen of us that worked on this and like we're not.
• 12:30
  Mike Masnick: everybody, right?
• 12:31
  Mike Masnick: And so we set up this Google Doc to have these thesis principles and, and have people, you know, let's, let's all talk about this is a conversation.
• 12:39
  Mike Masnick: and we're, we're super excited to see how many people have already jumped in and really thoughtful.
• 12:44
  Mike Masnick: You know, some of them are critiques and some of them are ideas and it's, it's just been, it's actually been like really kind of energizing to be thinking about this and working on this.
• 12:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, really great to see it wasn't the only thing you did last week as, as well as the manifesto.
• 12:58
  Ben Whitelaw: You also launched a new tech dirt coin, which is the references to minting and, being minted.
• 13:04
  Ben Whitelaw: talk us through what that's about, where people can kind of find said coins.
• 13:09
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, so this is, it's just a fundraiser for Tech Dirt.
• 13:13
  Mike Masnick: and a little bit of an experiment for us.
• 13:14
  Mike Masnick: Um, you know, we've done different kinds of fundraising in the past.
• 13:18
  Mike Masnick: and you know, there's like this whole concept of challenge coins.
• 13:21
  Mike Masnick: They're very popular, especially in like the military, and law enforcement.
• 13:24
  Mike Masnick: But they, you know, they come in all different ways and we were sort of looking to it.
• 13:28
  Mike Masnick: And we thought like, Hey, might be cool to like create a tech dirtt coin for people who donate.
• 13:34
  Mike Masnick: and so we set it up.
• 13:35
  Mike Masnick: There's links all over Tech Dirtt.
• 13:37
  Mike Masnick: If you go to any tech Dirtt story at the bottom of it, there'll be a big picture and a link.
• 13:41
  Mike Masnick: But if you, uh, donate a hundred dollars or more, you will once we, we're, running this through the beginning of January, January 5th, and we'll find out how many people want the coins, and then we will mint them in early January and send them out in late January or early February.
• 13:58
  Mike Masnick: And so you can have a physical coin.
• 13:59
  Mike Masnick: This is not a cryptocurrency.
• 14:01
  Mike Masnick: This is.
• 14:02
  Ben Whitelaw: It's not Ponzi
• 14:02
  Mike Masnick: No, no.
• 14:03
  Mike Masnick: This is, this is a very cool, very nicely designed, designed by our producer Lee, designed the coin.
• 14:11
  Mike Masnick: Uh, it, looks fantastic.
• 14:13
  Mike Masnick: I can't wait to get my hands on a physical copy.
• 14:17
  Ben Whitelaw: just to be clear, so this is, you talk about kind of funding tech, tech doesn't have ads.
• 14:22
  Ben Whitelaw: You have, donations, there's various ways to make money, but this, this is a kind of attempt to diversify its revenue, to keep it going, to keep it kind of sustainable without doing some of the kind of shitty stuff that the Resident computing manifesto maybe would suggest,
• 14:37
  Mike Masnick: This, this is an.
• 14:38
  Ben Whitelaw: to keep it clean.
• 14:39
  Mike Masnick: is an attempt to stick with the belief of the resident computing things.
• 14:42
  Mike Masnick: I mean, the media space is a very difficult space as you well know.
• 14:45
  Mike Masnick: and I feel like a lot of the properties now, a lot of media properties somewhat successfully in, at times have focused on pay walls, overloading with ads.
• 14:56
  Mike Masnick: Registration walls demanding to suck up all your information.
• 15:00
  Mike Masnick: You have to give your email to read this article.
• 15:03
  Mike Masnick: all things like that that I understand.
• 15:05
  Mike Masnick: I understand why it's done, but.
• 15:07
  Mike Masnick: I, you know, I want people to just like going to tech and like reading it and not feel restricted.
• 15:14
  Mike Masnick: I want them to be able to share the articles I want people to, to enjoy going there.
• 15:19
  Mike Masnick: I don't wanna annoy, I, my, business model in my head should not be about annoying people, and it shouldn't be about making it frustrating and making you pay to get rid of an annoyance or to get past an annoyance.
• 15:31
  Mike Masnick: But to do that, unfortunately, that takes away a lot of the leverage that that other publications use, that sort of pressure people into, into supporting them.
• 15:39
  Mike Masnick: And so this is an experiment and we're saying, you know, like, look, we're not going to annoy you.
• 15:44
  Mike Masnick: our content is gonna be out there and you can get it and see it.
• 15:46
  Mike Masnick: We don't lock it up under any kind of, restrictive way.
• 15:50
  Mike Masnick: But we need money to, to be able to keep doing that.
• 15:54
  Mike Masnick: And so we thought what might be really fun is we can, give a coin.
• 15:57
  Mike Masnick: and we've gotten, great response so far.
• 16:00
  Mike Masnick: bunch of people have gotten the coin we put in because you know, the coin will be sent in 2026.
• 16:05
  Mike Masnick: 2026 is the 30th anniversary of section two 30, which is obviously an important law that we talk about all the time.
• 16:11
  Mike Masnick: and, uh, so the coin is a commemoration of 30 years of section two 30.
• 16:17
  Mike Masnick: and so we're sort of excited to talk about that and get that out in the world.
• 16:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Great.
• 16:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Well, very, very nice idea.
• 16:24
  Ben Whitelaw: the perfect gift for any relative.
• 16:27
  Ben Whitelaw: I'd say,
• 16:27
  Mike Masnick: Yes, though it won't ship until January or February, so you could, you could tell people you're getting it, getting them the gift and maybe like, we'll print you a certificate or something, but not, not for Christmas.
• 16:39
  Ben Whitelaw: The, the gift that keeps on giving.
• 16:41
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, yeah, that really exciting stuff.
• 16:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Obviously we'll include links in the show notes for both the resident computing manifesto and also the tech that coin.
• 16:50
  Ben Whitelaw: we should crack on today's stories, Mike, not least, because we have a really great bonus chat with, CCI i's Tricia McCleary, who you spoke to very recently.
• 16:59
  Ben Whitelaw: What's in store for listeners if they stick around?
• 17:01
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, we had a really, really interesting conversation about a story that's happening in Australia.
• 17:06
  Mike Masnick: We're gonna talk about another story that's happening in Australia in a moment.
• 17:09
  Mike Masnick: this is not about the social media ban, but about another thing that they're working on, which is to get digital platforms to pay a tax.
• 17:17
  Mike Masnick: somewhat for letting users share news stories, but even with the new version, even if they say you can't share news stories, they still wanna force the digital platforms to pay news publishers.
• 17:28
  Mike Masnick: And so the Australian government is currently asking for comments on its latest proposal.
• 17:31
  Mike Masnick: So Tricia and I.
• 17:32
  Mike Masnick: Have a really interesting conversation about what's happening, how the existing news bargaining code that's been in place for a few years now has really been kind of a failure, and how this is an admission, that it's a failure, and how people should be thinking about these kinds of efforts, whether they're linked taxes or these kinds of bargaining codes, and their impact on all different stakeholders, not just the digital platforms and the news publishers, but also the users and people who like to read the news as well.
• 17:58
  Ben Whitelaw: Mm.
• 17:59
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 17:59
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm really looking forward to this.
• 18:00
  Ben Whitelaw: the news bargaining code has been a big topic of discussion.
• 18:04
  Ben Whitelaw: It's been versions of it in other countries.
• 18:06
  Ben Whitelaw: no one has cracked this, so, so great to have Tricia on the podcast to, talk a bit more about that.
• 18:11
  Ben Whitelaw: before we dive in to.
• 18:12
  Ben Whitelaw: The other big Australia story this week.
• 18:15
  Ben Whitelaw: just wanna say a big thank you to all listeners of the podcast.
• 18:17
  Ben Whitelaw: we've had some great feedback over the last few weeks.
• 18:19
  Ben Whitelaw: We get some great messages on Blue Sky.
• 18:22
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• 18:24
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• 18:27
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• 18:31
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• 18:35
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• 18:41
  Ben Whitelaw: but it all helps.
• 18:42
  Ben Whitelaw: cool.
• 18:42
  Ben Whitelaw: So let's dive in there, Mike.
• 18:43
  Ben Whitelaw: We, I have a theory.
• 18:45
  Ben Whitelaw: it's actually a, a, a fairly well known phenomenon, the idea of a Friday news dump,
• 18:51
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 18:51
  Ben Whitelaw: This has been happening for years and years and years.
• 18:54
  Ben Whitelaw: goes back to the kind of days when print publications were huge.
• 18:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Politicians would wanna send the news out on a Friday when all the journalists were in the pub.
• 19:02
  Ben Whitelaw: and there were a few people to kind of cover stories.
• 19:04
  Ben Whitelaw: The people who wanted the organization that wanted their stories covered in the weekend papers would obviously wait till the very last second on Friday to give exclusives.
• 19:13
  Ben Whitelaw: But it really, it really kicks us in the nuts on control alt speech because, you know, we record on a Thursday and then all this stuff happens on a Friday.
• 19:22
  Ben Whitelaw: dunno why it still persists, but the stories we're gonna talk about today are two such stories.
• 19:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Right after we, we finished recording last week, we had, The announcement of the European Commission fining, X slash Twitter 120 million Euro for, a breach of the transparency and, Deceptive design obligations of the Digital Services Act.
• 19:46
  Ben Whitelaw: And so we're gonna unpack that.
• 19:48
  Ben Whitelaw: I know it's a, I know it's a week old, but there's so much to talk about.
• 19:51
  Ben Whitelaw: I think we need to get into it.
• 19:52
  Ben Whitelaw: this is the first ever, non-compliance find that the EU has, announced it's something that has been two years in the making.
• 20:00
  Ben Whitelaw: We've, talked about this investigation.
• 20:02
  Ben Whitelaw: probably a dozen times in various guises, but it was announced in December, 2023, and it's been rumbling along in the backgrounds.
• 20:08
  Ben Whitelaw: And for folks who didn't necessarily catch exactly what it entails, this is about three things.
• 20:13
  Ben Whitelaw: it's about X is deceptive use of the blue check mark.
• 20:17
  Ben Whitelaw: Which the EU has said constitutes deceptive design under Article 25 of the DSA, and basically has led to it believes users being defrauded, at scale because people think that three check marks mean that the users are authentic.
• 20:33
  Ben Whitelaw: And as we know, they're not.
• 20:35
  Ben Whitelaw: there is no checks in place.
• 20:36
  Ben Whitelaw: and then it's also about two other things.
• 20:38
  Ben Whitelaw: Not very sexy, not very glamorous, but still important.
• 20:41
  Ben Whitelaw: the ad repository that, the DSA asks all platforms, the large platforms to have and to maintain.
• 20:49
  Ben Whitelaw: It says that x has not been doing that sufficiently well, and therefore it fails its transparency and accessibility, obligations.
• 20:56
  Ben Whitelaw: And then the final one is, data access for researchers.
• 20:59
  Ben Whitelaw: And so all these things together, have led to this giant, fine of 120 million euros.
• 21:06
  Ben Whitelaw: I didn't think this was coming, Mike.
• 21:08
  Ben Whitelaw: I'll be honest.
• 21:09
  Ben Whitelaw: my instant reaction is like.
• 21:10
  Ben Whitelaw: It's a huge sigh of relief that the EU actually got round to doing this'cause because my sense, and, from reading some of the coverage elsewhere, a lot of people thought they weren't going to to do this.
• 21:21
  Ben Whitelaw: They thought they were gonna kind of skip it.
• 21:22
  Ben Whitelaw: and kowtow, we could say to the US administration and some of the big tech players that, have been sitting in the front row.
• 21:32
  Ben Whitelaw: The inauguration, and so this is in, in of itself, the fact that the fines happened.
• 21:37
  Ben Whitelaw: It's a big, big deal.
• 21:39
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I mean my reaction was kind of funny.
• 21:41
  Mike Masnick: similar but in a different way, which is when I saw this announced, I just immediately said the amount of absolute nonsense that is going to come out of this one fine is incalculable, and we're already seeing that.
• 21:56
  Mike Masnick: Right?
• 21:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, the reaction has been overwhelming, right.
• 22:00
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 22:01
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 22:01
  Mike Masnick: And, I mean, the reality is, as you know, like the EU had to do something ex and Elon Musk basically were deliberately.
• 22:09
  Mike Masnick: Ignoring the, the rules and, and to me the, like, the verification part is the biggest, which is that, you know, and I had called this out when he changed verification in the first place, which was like just a fundamental misunderstanding of verification, from the very beginning.
• 22:24
  Mike Masnick: He always thought of verification as a status symbol, and yes, like it had in some ways had become a status symbol, but that was not its underlying purpose.
• 22:32
  Mike Masnick: And to totally change the underlying purpose from like, we are verifying that this is who you really are to one that is, you can pay$8, right?
• 22:42
  Mike Masnick: Like, or more.
• 22:44
  Mike Masnick: Somebody I just saw a friend of mine who apparently still uses X and is apparently paying for verification, said that he.
• 22:51
  Mike Masnick: Just got a bill for like$400 to renew.
• 22:55
  Mike Masnick: His verification was like before he is saying, you know, he paid a hundred dollars and they renewed at 400.
• 23:01
  Mike Masnick: And he's like, it's worth it to me at a hundred dollars.
• 23:04
  Mike Masnick: It is not worth it to me at 400.
• 23:05
  Mike Masnick: He was trying to get a refund and apparently it was not working.
• 23:09
  Mike Masnick: but like verification has a specific meaning and it is not the way X is doing it.
• 23:16
  Mike Masnick: So I think that is a completely legitimate thing for them to call out.
• 23:20
  Mike Masnick: the other two I think, are a little bit more complicated.
• 23:22
  Mike Masnick: The, researcher access is also, I think, important, but, tricky.
• 23:26
  Mike Masnick: And it's easy to say, yes, researchers should have access, but the question is access to what and how.
• 23:31
  Mike Masnick: and here it just feels like X was just like, you know, no, uh, which is, not good enough under the law.
• 23:38
  Mike Masnick: And then the transparency thing, and, and I've gone on this.
• 23:41
  Mike Masnick: you know, there's a, whole bunch of things you can talk about transparency, where I think transparency is really important and good, but government mandated transparency is often problematic and it's often sort of like a backdoor method towards trying to influence certain ways that things are done.
• 23:58
  Mike Masnick: But again, just feels like, Elon was just like, screw it.
• 24:01
  Mike Masnick: And the thing that I thought was funny about all this is, I remember deeply, I don't know if you remember, but back when Elon first announced he was buying, he announced that he was buying, trying to buy Twitter in April.
• 24:13
  Mike Masnick: That came to an agreement on the deal, which he later tried to back out of at the end of April and in May, Terry Britton, our favorite.
• 24:20
  Mike Masnick: Went to, meet with Elon Musk at his offices, Tesla's offices.
• 24:26
  Mike Masnick: And they had this session where, you know, that Terry said what he was gonna say, and Elon was like, yeah, sure.
• 24:32
  Mike Masnick: That sounds great.
• 24:33
  Mike Masnick: and they filmed this video, which, Brion knew what he was doing of getting Elon to say, oh yeah.
• 24:40
  Mike Masnick: Like, we're totally, we're totally in alignment.
• 24:42
  Mike Masnick: We're 100% agreed with the approach that the EU is taking
• 24:45
  Ben Whitelaw: I remember.
• 24:46
  Mike Masnick: had no clue what he was actually agreeing to.
• 24:50
  Mike Masnick: And now that comes back to bite him, where, he gets fined under DSA, which was the law that he claimed he was 100% aligned on, which is, uh, obviously always, always nonsense.
• 25:01
  Mike Masnick: But the thing that that is really crazy is he's running around and the US government is helping him go around and say that this is all about their content moderation decisions and censorship, which is just not true.
• 25:13
  Mike Masnick: Right?
• 25:13
  Mike Masnick: Like.
• 25:14
  Mike Masnick: You could argue that the, transparency mandates maybe touch on that in a sort of oblique and indirect way, but this is not about content moderation at all.
• 25:24
  Mike Masnick: It's just not, but he's just presenting it that way.
• 25:27
  Mike Masnick: And the US government, because they're still siding with Musk.
• 25:31
  Mike Masnick: Even, even, you know, depending on whether or not Musk and Trump are, are friends or not, is still an open question.
• 25:37
  Mike Masnick: But they're like running with this story that it's all about censorship.
• 25:40
  Mike Masnick: And, one of the things I wrote up in my article was like the FTC recently fined a Chinese technology company for violating coppa, which is the children privacy protection law in the us.
• 25:51
  Mike Masnick: And it's the same thing, right?
• 25:52
  Mike Masnick: Like you have a foreign company that is not obeying.
• 25:54
  Mike Masnick: The law, like you might issue a fine, and like the FTC did that on a vaguely similar issue and nobody ran around saying, oh, you know, the US government is censoring Chinese companies or whatever.
• 26:10
  Mike Masnick: Or
• 26:10
  Ben Whitelaw: No, I mean the, the kind of, there's a lot of, you know, when I do it, it's fine, but when you do it, it's not okay.
• 26:17
  Ben Whitelaw: There's a lot of that.
• 26:18
  Mike Masnick: That that is the, the sort of MAGA way, but yes.
• 26:22
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah.
• 26:22
  Ben Whitelaw: and some of the quotes are hilarious.
• 26:24
  Ben Whitelaw: You, like, you had JD Vance saying, the EU should support free speech.
• 26:29
  Ben Whitelaw: Not attack American companies over garbage.
• 26:33
  Ben Whitelaw: It's, and it's, it's like the kind of a administration attack dog being wheeled out to kind of parrot, basically kind of Musk's view.
• 26:40
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, the, US envoy to the EU was saying, making out that this is the EU only ever gave fines to American companies.
• 26:47
  Ben Whitelaw: Which again is like basically just kind of, because some of the major companies are
• 26:51
  Mike Masnick: which other companies you want them to go after?
• 26:53
  Mike Masnick: And, they have, looked at other companies, but the US companies are the largest.
• 26:57
  Mike Masnick: And so that's just, that's what's gonna happen.
• 27:00
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, and it's also not true.
• 27:01
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, Hena Kinnan, who is Terry Breton's replacement as tech policy chief in the eu, she said, you know, we've opened investigations into 10 companies and three of them are American and seven of them are, seven of'em are not.
• 27:14
  Ben Whitelaw: So, that's not a massive proportion.
• 27:16
  Ben Whitelaw: there is probably some significance in the fact that, they've gone after X slash Twitter first.
• 27:23
  Ben Whitelaw: It's, it's the oldest kinda outstanding investigation.
• 27:26
  Ben Whitelaw: one of the other ones that was, also announced last week, which kind of resulted in some compliance was TikTok, which obviously Chinese platform.
• 27:35
  Ben Whitelaw: so it, the kind of optics are for now, for now.
• 27:38
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, the optics are obviously such that there is, we talked about the kind of transatlantic policy.
• 27:45
  Ben Whitelaw: Beef that has been brewing, over the last 12 to 18 months.
• 27:49
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, this feels like a kind of coming to head of that and you know, makes sense in lots of ways that.
• 27:55
  Ben Whitelaw: EU would pick Musk and pick the US administration because of, I guess, the antagonism that has erupted between the, the US and the eu.
• 28:03
  Ben Whitelaw: And, you know, Trump's national security strategy, kind of explicitly calls out a kind of re.
• 28:08
  Ben Whitelaw: retrenchment from European values and says that Europe is decaying.
• 28:12
  Ben Whitelaw: So it's, it is all, all kind of like knits neatly together.
• 28:16
  Ben Whitelaw: Now you kind of see the bigger picture now that this fine has been, been applied.
• 28:20
  Ben Whitelaw: But yeah.
• 28:21
  Ben Whitelaw: didn't like that it happened on a Friday, but it it's good.
• 28:24
  Ben Whitelaw: It's good though'cause you're back in the chair.
• 28:26
  Ben Whitelaw: We can
• 28:26
  Mike Masnick: we go.
• 28:29
  Ben Whitelaw: the other kind of funny thing to mention.
• 28:31
  Ben Whitelaw: Which I just think is, it's so musk.
• 28:33
  Ben Whitelaw: Is that after, the announcement was made, I think what the EU tried to do was.
• 28:38
  Ben Whitelaw: Promotes the post OnX in which it announced this, this big find.
• 28:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Right?
• 28:43
  Ben Whitelaw: And somebody from X slash Twitter said, no, no, no, you're not doing that.
• 28:49
  Ben Whitelaw: You are now banned from promoting or making ads on the X platform.
• 28:54
  Ben Whitelaw: So, the only thing that they had up their sleeve was, you're no longer allowed to give us money
• 29:00
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 29:01
  Ben Whitelaw: for, that's the only, the only stick they had left.
• 29:04
  Mike Masnick: They, claimed it was an exploit.
• 29:05
  Mike Masnick: They claimed that the, European Commission exploited their advertising system, which a lot of people were like, no, that's always the way it's worked.
• 29:13
  Mike Masnick: And it's you're just coming up with an excuse to punish them.
• 29:17
  Mike Masnick: it's very petty.
• 29:18
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 29:18
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 29:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Super petty.
• 29:21
  Ben Whitelaw: there's a kind of long way for this story to run is the other thing to mention here is like, we don't necessarily know when this will all play out.
• 29:26
  Ben Whitelaw: I was looking at the timelines, Following this kind of announcement, and there is a, it could be up to three and a half months before actually x slash Twitter pay for this.
• 29:35
  Ben Whitelaw: Fine.
• 29:36
  Ben Whitelaw: There's an up to 90 day process where.
• 29:39
  Ben Whitelaw: X may appeal.
• 29:41
  Ben Whitelaw: I don't think that's been confirmed yet.
• 29:42
  Ben Whitelaw: as of recording, there's also, they're expected to kind of go back on both the blue checks and the ad and the data access, obligations to, see how they can come to a negotiation there.
• 29:55
  Ben Whitelaw: Then there's a whole month where the DSA can say.
• 29:57
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, look at that evidence, see how they feel about what X have proposed.
• 30:02
  Ben Whitelaw: And then there's another 30 days where the EU then makes a decision about, the evidence that's been put forward to them.
• 30:07
  Ben Whitelaw: So it could be a fairly long time before anybody pays anybody any money.
• 30:11
  Ben Whitelaw: and you, you never know where Musk is concerned, what he's got up
• 30:14
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I was gonna say like, you, you actually think he'll pay or, or what?
• 30:17
  Mike Masnick: You know, so I.
• 30:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 30:21
  Ben Whitelaw: but it's a, it is a very interesting development, very much on the, in the wheelhouse of control speech.
• 30:25
  Ben Whitelaw: And I'm sure, listeners will have followed it this week.
• 30:29
  Ben Whitelaw: we'll move on to an another story that actually happened on Friday as well.
• 30:33
  Ben Whitelaw: we've had a lot in the last few months about visas, about H one B visas and.
• 30:38
  Ben Whitelaw: The announcement that was made last week is about how these, these kind of restrictions around visas are gonna now apply to trust and safety workers and other people who work in the kind of information integrity space.
• 30:49
  Ben Whitelaw: And this was some news that went down really badly, wasn't it?
• 30:53
  Ben Whitelaw: It's affecting potentially a lot of people.
• 30:54
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, basically said there, there had been talk before from Marco Rubio and stuff about, limiting sensors, that, which is always nonsense, right?
• 31:04
  Mike Masnick: but, you know, the suggestion had been that it would focus on people like proton and saying like, oh, you can't come to the US anymore.
• 31:10
  Mike Masnick: You know, the policymaker level of people or like.
• 31:14
  Mike Masnick: The Brazilian judge who went after Musk last year, you it was stories like that.
• 31:20
  Mike Masnick: But what they're now saying is that H one B visas are basically to be denied to anyone anywhere around the sort of information integrity ecosystem.
• 31:28
  Mike Masnick: So anyone who's worked in trust and safety, anyone who's done anything on content moderation.
• 31:33
  Mike Masnick: Anyone who's worked on fact checking, like, uh, anyone who, who's done, misinformation, disinformation research, all of this kinda stuff that is reason to reject your H one b.
• 31:45
  Mike Masnick: application.
• 31:46
  Mike Masnick: Now, H one B visas.
• 31:47
  Mike Masnick: this is for, employment.
• 31:49
  Mike Masnick: It's an employment visa to come to work in the United States.
• 31:52
  Mike Masnick: And obviously there are a lot of people who work in those fields who are here in the US on an H one B Visa because you have a lot of global expertise.
• 32:02
  Mike Masnick: you know, people who are working on stopping CS.
• 32:05
  Mike Masnick: and have expertise may not be allowed to come work in the us.
• 32:09
  Mike Masnick: there are a bunch of these things and it's just like this purely, again, very petty, based on the false belief that anyone who works on any of these issues is involved in censorship.
• 32:20
  Mike Masnick: whereas.
• 32:21
  Mike Masnick: It itself to me is actual government censorship.
• 32:24
  Mike Masnick: It is punishing people for speech around fact checking or, trust and safety things or research on disinformation.
• 32:33
  Mike Masnick: It is the, the US government treating people differently based on their speech, which is, that's what censorship is, you know, trust and safety.
• 32:40
  Mike Masnick: It's not that fact checking is not that, for all their talk of how much they believe in the marketplace of ideas.
• 32:46
  Mike Masnick: They hate the marketplace of ideas when it includes fact checking.
• 32:50
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 32:51
  Mike Masnick: you know, so this is.
• 32:53
  Mike Masnick: I think people are going to protest it.
• 32:55
  Mike Masnick: and there's already been some talk of, trying to challenge this rule, though I don't, I'm not exactly sure how they would that or, find like someone who, who has standing to challenge this rule.
• 33:06
  Mike Masnick: but it just seems like a complete mess.
• 33:09
  Mike Masnick: Very petty and just is, you know, sticks with the, false.
• 33:13
  Mike Masnick: Story that, the MAGA world believes that all of disinformation trust and safety work and fact checking is all about censorship when it's really very rarely has anything to do with that.
• 33:25
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, it made me think of the last manifesto I read before yours, before the resident computing manifesto, and that was the Jimbo, the kinda Mark Andre Techno Optimist Manifesto, which called out trust and safety workers as the
• 33:40
  Mike Masnick: The enemy of progress.
• 33:42
  Ben Whitelaw: the enemy of progress.
• 33:44
  Ben Whitelaw: and I just thought, you know, that was, I think kind of middle of 2024.
• 33:49
  Ben Whitelaw: At that stage, were kind of thinking, well, that's a kind of mad thing to say.
• 33:54
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, like there's a misunderstanding there of what trust and safety
• 33:57
  Mike Masnick: From a person who is on the board of Meta, but we will leave that aside for now.
• 34:03
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah, yeah.
• 34:05
  Ben Whitelaw: And funding.
• 34:05
  Ben Whitelaw: God knows how many other companies that have trust and safety teams.
• 34:09
  Ben Whitelaw: anyway, but yeah.
• 34:11
  Ben Whitelaw: You can see a kind of direct line from, from that point almost, you know, because it's, we know the links between, Andresen and, the US administration and how connected those kind of ecosystems are now.
• 34:22
  Ben Whitelaw: And it, it's silly now to think that that was a, a mad thing to say.
• 34:26
  Ben Whitelaw: It's actually foreshadowing of, of this, this single story, right?
• 34:31
  Ben Whitelaw: these visas being, restricted for people who do important work.
• 34:35
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I mean, it's pretty crazy, right?
• 34:36
  Mike Masnick: I mean, there's definitely been a bunch of different things that sort of all foreshadowed this, and certainly the attacks on, Stanford, and the internet observatory and, projects like that, and all these efforts to sort of understand the flow of information and truthful versus untruthful information or manipulating information, all this stuff.
• 34:56
  Mike Masnick: And what's funny is that.
• 34:58
  Mike Masnick: At the same time, all this is happening in the administration is insisting that all of this stuff is bad.
• 35:03
  Mike Masnick: They're doing things that suggest that, like they're now talking about like foreign influence campaigns.
• 35:08
  Mike Masnick: It's like, yeah, how do you stop that?
• 35:09
  Mike Masnick: You have a good trust and safety team that tries to root out foreign influence campaigns.
• 35:14
  Mike Masnick: the whole freak out over when Charlie Kirk was assassinated and suddenly they were all demanding.
• 35:19
  Mike Masnick: Like, well, you have to take down all of this content from social media.
• 35:23
  Mike Masnick: It's like, so you want trust and safety.
• 35:25
  Mike Masnick: It's just, you know.
• 35:26
  Mike Masnick: The hypocrisy is always the same thing, where it's like, yeah, we want you to take on the stuff we don't like, we just don't like it when you take on the stuff we like, you know?
• 35:34
  Mike Masnick: So,
• 35:34
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 35:34
  Mike Masnick: um, there's no principle there other than we should be able to do whatever we want and you shouldn't be able to do the stuff we don't want you to do.
• 35:42
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah,
• 35:42
  Mike Masnick: which is not of particularly strongly values-based position.
• 35:47
  Mike Masnick: It's
• 35:48
  Ben Whitelaw: Not what I call a principle, but I, it does cut the mustard in some, some corners.
• 35:54
  Ben Whitelaw: So this, this is also, you know, Alice Hunsberger who writes Trust and Safety Insider, the newsletter that comes out at the start of the week from everything in moderation.
• 36:02
  Ben Whitelaw: She wrote about these visas and she said she got.
• 36:04
  Ben Whitelaw: overwhelming number of messages from people who work in trust and safety and in fact, checking and in, research kind of worried about what this means for them, understandably.
• 36:14
  Ben Whitelaw: And, you know, she, she's put out some really helpful resources, over the past week, which will include in the show notes for people who, who might be worried about what happens when these visas change.
• 36:24
  Ben Whitelaw: But it's, again, I think it's one of those things where people aren't going to talk about it.
• 36:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Very openly for obvious reasons, but it's something that a lot of people are likely to, to face, and, and that's a real, that's a real trouble, um, a real troubling issue for us.
• 36:37
  Ben Whitelaw: one story, Mike, that we'll go onto next, actually didn't happen last Friday.
• 36:40
  Ben Whitelaw: It had the, had the decency of happening this
• 36:43
  Mike Masnick: incredible.
• 36:45
  Ben Whitelaw: So, you know,
• 36:46
  Mike Masnick: So this was planned, uh, uh, a while in advance, but yes.
• 36:50
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, so this is the Australia Social Media Ban Thunder Sixteens, which we talked about on the podcast last week.
• 36:58
  Ben Whitelaw: 10 platforms, who've been designated by the eSafety Commission, as needing to take reasonable steps to prevent under sixteens from creating or, or using accounts that came into place yesterday, as of Wednesday.
• 37:12
  Ben Whitelaw: And so we have seen a lot of coverage about this story, which we've been talking about a very long time.
• 37:17
  Ben Whitelaw: understandably, because it's just gone into force.
• 37:19
  Ben Whitelaw: people don't know anything.
• 37:21
  Ben Whitelaw: There's no, all, all that's happened is that platforms have essentially kind of tried to stop under sixteens using their accounts.
• 37:29
  Ben Whitelaw: And so the way that news outlets and media have covered that is by essentially.
• 37:33
  Ben Whitelaw: Getting under sixteens to open their phones in front of a camera.
• 37:38
  Ben Whitelaw: And it's a wonderful I would say, hearkening back to an old time in journalism where, it's a bit like you, when you have school results day and you, you know, you have to kind of train your camera on the, the opening of the envelope or the, the face of the, the 16-year-old as they, as they get the results.
• 37:54
  Ben Whitelaw: This is slightly different, but similar-ish and.
• 37:57
  Ben Whitelaw: There's lots of vox pops, lots of kind of, mics being shoved in un under 16 euros.
• 38:02
  Ben Whitelaw: Faces asking them how do they feel, in the very instant that this popup comes on their screen and they're told that they no longer can see their snaps.
• 38:10
  Ben Whitelaw: Uh, funny, funny set of days of, of coverage.
• 38:15
  Ben Whitelaw: what have you been seeing as you've been following the story over the last kind of 24 or 48 hours?
• 38:18
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I mean, a few different things.
• 38:20
  Mike Masnick: So one is just, numerous stories and everybody kind of expected this of kids getting around the bands sort of showing how, how silly they were.
• 38:28
  Mike Masnick: My favorite, there are a bunch of these, but my favorite one was someone uploaded a photo of a golden retriever.
• 38:34
  Mike Masnick: and that apparently let them in.
• 38:36
  Mike Masnick: So it's like, yeah, you wonder how, how thorough these, these things are.
• 38:41
  Mike Masnick: So, and you have a bunch of kids sort of talking about like, you know, how easy it's to get through, and even how they're like joking with their parents about like, ha ha, like, we're not supposed to be using this service.
• 38:52
  Mike Masnick: But one of them uploaded a picture of, uh, or held up a picture of her mom.
• 38:57
  Mike Masnick: And I was able to get through and then sent it to her mom.
• 39:01
  Mike Masnick: I was like, I I'm you now.
• 39:03
  Mike Masnick: Uh,
• 39:04
  Ben Whitelaw: The mom was complicit in the
• 39:06
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 39:07
  Mike Masnick: And so, you know, so there's a bunch of those kinds of stories, but I think that there is a more serious sort of discussion going on where people are like, kids are saying, like, this is really.
• 39:18
  Mike Masnick: Awful.
• 39:18
  Mike Masnick: This is obnoxious.
• 39:19
  Mike Masnick: You're treating us, as if we have no agency ourselves.
• 39:22
  Mike Masnick: Like we have rights ourselves.
• 39:25
  Mike Masnick: And you think that we're just, you know, you're, gonna solve big problems by banning us from, from the tools that we use that often we use to establish important relationships and have, things that are, helpful, have support groups, and.
• 39:40
  Mike Masnick: You're just sort of ripping that all away and not dealing with any of the underlying problems.
• 39:45
  Mike Masnick: And so I thought it was really good to see.
• 39:47
  Mike Masnick: I've seen a few kids who are probably not liked by their, many of their friends going around saying like, no, this is good.
• 39:55
  Mike Masnick: This is good.
• 39:55
  Mike Masnick: We need this.
• 39:56
  Mike Masnick: But like almost.
• 39:57
  Mike Masnick: The vast majority of comments I've seen from kids are saying like, you know, this is, why are we doing this?
• 40:03
  Mike Masnick: Like, this just feels really outta place.
• 40:06
  Mike Masnick: And then at the same time, as I sort of alluded to in the intro, you have the politicians down in Australia who are so over the top gleeful about this in ways that are really.
• 40:18
  Mike Masnick: Kind of unseemly.
• 40:20
  Mike Masnick: I mean, you had Julian and Grant, who's the eaf commissioner saying like, I'm trying to contain my excitement.
• 40:26
  Mike Masnick: You're excited about blocking kids from their friends.
• 40:30
  Mike Masnick: Like
• 40:31
  Ben Whitelaw: Mm.
• 40:31
  Mike Masnick: is like, movie evil kind of stuff.
• 40:34
  Mike Masnick: and then you just have totally outta touch stuff.
• 40:36
  Mike Masnick: I mean, the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, who's this was like one of his big things.
• 40:41
  Mike Masnick: He really wanted, this is going on about how this will save us all.
• 40:46
  Mike Masnick: It's like, what are you talking about?
• 40:48
  Mike Masnick: And like, for Australian kids, allowing them just to have their childhood, it's this weird moral panic nostalgia, like.
• 40:57
  Mike Masnick: If only we got rid of cell phones, kids would magically be back how I grew up, decades ago.
• 41:04
  Mike Masnick: It's like the world moves on and it changes.
• 41:06
  Mike Masnick: And this is just the same moral panic that we see over and over again.
• 41:10
  Mike Masnick: And just doing a complete ban.
• 41:11
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I've talked about this a bunch of times.
• 41:13
  Mike Masnick: I don't need to repeat everything that I always say, but like, this is not teaching kids how to adapt to the modern world.
• 41:19
  Mike Masnick: It is just, keeping them out of it and then suddenly saying like, when you turn 16, suddenly you'll be able to.
• 41:23
  Mike Masnick: Manage it when you haven't had the training, when you haven't gone through the process of learning this stuff.
• 41:28
  Mike Masnick: and without trying to do anything that tackles any of the underlying issues that actually do make things unsafe.
• 41:34
  Mike Masnick: it's just, it feels like a very, very stupid, very blunt policy that will have a ton of negative consequences, and I doubt it will have particularly, many good consequences.
• 41:46
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I think that's fair.
• 41:47
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, there's, there's a lot of chat about, this story and I, I would agree with lots of what you said there.
• 41:51
  Ben Whitelaw: I think the thing that's, that stood out for me, Mike, was the reactions of a couple of really big charities and NGOs who focus on.
• 41:59
  Ben Whitelaw: Children's welfare.
• 42:00
  Ben Whitelaw: So unicef very surprisingly put out a statement, headlined, age restrictions alone, won't keep children safe, and Save the Children said something similar, that, you know, the focus must be on making social media safer children.
• 42:14
  Ben Whitelaw: and, and the the sense from those two pieces is that actually this alone, this kind of band for under sixteens isn't necessarily gonna.
• 42:21
  Ben Whitelaw: definitively work, which AC counters this, as you say this, I think sense from the eSafety Commission and from the Australian political establishment, that it's a done deal.
• 42:31
  Ben Whitelaw: It's gonna help children, it's gonna save lives.
• 42:33
  Ben Whitelaw: And these statements add a lot more kind of nuance.
• 42:35
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, the UNICEF one says, social media bans come with their own risks and they might even backfire, which is a really interesting note for a charity of its size to, call
• 42:45
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 42:45
  Mike Masnick: UNICEF even goes even further.
• 42:46
  Mike Masnick: 'cause they say, they actually call out the, full opposite side where they say social media is not a luxury for many children, especially those who are isolated or marginalized.
• 42:55
  Mike Masnick: It is a lifeline
• 42:56
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 42:57
  Mike Masnick: which makes you wonder like, did anyone in Australia talk to UNICEF before this?
• 43:01
  Mike Masnick: Did they talk to save the children before this?
• 43:03
  Mike Masnick: For all the talk that they're saving, saving children and bringing back childhoods to not talk to unicef, to not talk to save the children.
• 43:11
  Mike Masnick: Like, honestly, it wouldn't have surprised me if these two organizations would've just gone along with it because sometimes they've done that.
• 43:18
  Mike Masnick: Here.
• 43:18
  Mike Masnick: For them to come out against it after it went to to effect is really noteworthy.
• 43:23
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I also kind of wonder to what extent UNICEF have come to this conclusion over the last year since the law was put in place.
• 43:31
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, I would be really interested to know, maybe we can find out over the course of the next few weeks kind of where this view has come from.
• 43:36
  Ben Whitelaw: Is it something they've always had?
• 43:37
  Ben Whitelaw: Is it something they've arrived at from speaking to experts?
• 43:40
  Ben Whitelaw: I think we know a lot more now than we did 12 months ago, but it's fascinating that these.
• 43:45
  Ben Whitelaw: Two organizations have come out saying pretty much the same thing, in such a kind of consequential week for social media use in Australia.
• 43:52
  Ben Whitelaw: But, you know, again, a long running story that isn't quite the end.
• 43:56
  Ben Whitelaw: But as, as a significant milestone, certainly we are gonna wrap up and go to our, our excellent bonus chat with Trisha from CCIA in a second, Mike.
• 44:05
  Ben Whitelaw: But you wanted to kind of touch on one last story that was you found interesting.
• 44:10
  Ben Whitelaw: Twitter.
• 44:11
  Ben Whitelaw: The Twitter, not, not X.
• 44:12
  Ben Whitelaw: Twitter is potentially making a comeback.
• 44:15
  Mike Masnick: Well, we'll see about that.
• 44:18
  Mike Masnick: Basically, this is a fun one.
• 44:20
  Mike Masnick: We'll do it quick, but like, it's basically these two trademark lawyers, looked at what Elon is doing and the rebranding to X and said he has abandoned the Twitter trademark and trademarks on tweets.
• 44:32
  Mike Masnick: and so they are trying to get them to declared as abandoned and then claiming them themselves for their own commercial use and they're trying to launch something.
• 44:42
  Mike Masnick: Called, uh, what, what, what are they calling it?
• 44:45
  Mike Masnick: Better?
• 44:45
  Mike Masnick: Twitter.
• 44:46
  Ben Whitelaw: Twitter.
• 44:47
  Mike Masnick: It's Twitter new, the company's called, they, they're calling it Operation Bluebird.
• 44:52
  Mike Masnick: it's sort of like the trademark angle is fun.
• 44:55
  Mike Masnick: And normally it's very difficult to get a trademark declared abandoned.
• 45:01
  Mike Masnick: usually you need to wait like three years is usually the, time limit, and they have to have done nothing with it within three years.
• 45:08
  Mike Masnick: But this is a little different because Elon has been so vocal about like, we're not Twitter, it's not tweets.
• 45:14
  Mike Masnick: And so, I'm skeptical just because I think getting, trademark abandonment declared is like very, very difficult and happens so rarely.
• 45:22
  Mike Masnick: But a bunch of trademark lawyers, who are, knowledgeable on this stuff kind of say like, well, there's a strong case here and these two guys are trademark lawyers, so maybe they can do it.
• 45:32
  Mike Masnick: The thing that I find.
• 45:33
  Mike Masnick: Really silly about this story is like all of their communication beyond the trademark angle, which is like, oh, we're launching this Twitter new and we need the, public square to come back and, we're gonna do it right And like none of the other.
• 45:48
  Mike Masnick: Okay.
• 45:48
  Mike Masnick: And so I am biased.
• 45:50
  Mike Masnick: The bell
• 45:50
  Ben Whitelaw: Ding, ding.
• 45:51
  Mike Masnick: ding, ding, ding.
• 45:52
  Mike Masnick: I'm on blue sky, which, you know, has.
• 45:54
  Mike Masnick: I think the new Twitter, uh, but they wanna build a new one and they seem to, because they're trademark lawyers, I would, I would guess they seem to overindex on the name.
• 46:05
  Mike Masnick: If only we have the trademarks, then we would become the new public square and suddenly have this great thing and they insist that they're gonna do it right because they are going to have trust and safety as if nobody has ever thought.
• 46:18
  Mike Masnick: And they're like, we're gonna do it right as if nobody tries to do it right.
• 46:22
  Mike Masnick: It just seemed incredibly naive about all this.
• 46:26
  Mike Masnick: and just seem to really think that everything is based on the trademark.
• 46:29
  Mike Masnick: And if they can get the trademark for themselves, that suddenly they can build the new Twitter that will work.
• 46:35
  Mike Masnick: I am fairly skeptical of that for a variety of reasons.
• 46:40
  Mike Masnick: Again, I'm biased, but whatever.
• 46:43
  Mike Masnick: And then even on the trademark side, I'm not convinced that they'll, successfully get it, maybe I'd put the odds at 50 50 at this point that they could get the trademark.
• 46:52
  Ben Whitelaw: Interesting.
• 46:53
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, I, for one, welcome, another platform that we can critique the trust and safety credentials of, you know, I think the, the more the merrier at
• 47:01
  Mike Masnick: I, I, I love watching people do the speed run.
• 47:03
  Mike Masnick: Uh, you know, a assuming that they know how content moderation works and then discovering in real time that they have no clue.
• 47:09
  Mike Masnick: That is wonderful fodder for me to write about.
• 47:12
  Mike Masnick: So,
• 47:12
  Ben Whitelaw: Exactly.
• 47:13
  Ben Whitelaw: dust down that post.
• 47:16
  Ben Whitelaw: It's, it's gonna make a comeback.
• 47:18
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, yeah,
• 47:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, talking of comebacks, Trisha has already appeared on the podcast and she's back
• 47:24
  Mike Masnick: She is, she is back again.
• 47:26
  Mike Masnick: And we had a great conversation last month, about the AI and, open internet related stuff and, and permission based internet.
• 47:34
  Mike Masnick: And this is in that same vein, but specifically looking at, um.
• 47:38
  Mike Masnick: This other problematic proposal.
• 47:40
  Mike Masnick: I've always joked for years, I've joked that Australia is where like good internet policy goes to die.
• 47:46
  Mike Masnick: It is the upside down, of, uh, internet policy of everywhere else.
• 47:51
  Mike Masnick: it just takes these stances and doesn't seem to care about the consequences.
• 47:55
  Mike Masnick: We're seeing that with the age verification thing, but now we're also seeing it with what has been in existence for a while now, the news bargaining code, and now they're working on this new.
• 48:04
  Mike Masnick: News bargaining incentive, which was basically an admission that the news bargaining code didn't work.
• 48:10
  Mike Masnick: And they're, they're trying to, sort of up the ante.
• 48:13
  Mike Masnick: I, I, I guess a bit.
• 48:14
  Mike Masnick: and it's a problematic proposal and it's out for comment right now.
• 48:18
  Mike Masnick: So they're Australia's asking people to comment on it.
• 48:21
  Mike Masnick: And so we had Tricia McCleary, who's the media advocacy manager at CCIA on for this really interesting discussion.
• 48:28
  Mike Masnick: About this proposal and what it means and what it will mean for, platforms, news providers, and more importantly, for consumers of news, which is all of us.
• 48:39
  Mike Masnick: And so let's jump right into that conversation now.
• 48:52
  Mike Masnick: Okay, Tricia, welcome back to the Control Alt Speech podcast.
• 48:58
  Mike Masnick: we wanted to talk today about the news bargaining code and I guess this new news bargaining initiative in Australia.
• 49:06
  Mike Masnick: Can you talk a little bit about the history?
• 49:07
  Mike Masnick: What is the news bargaining code?
• 49:10
  Tricia McCleary: Absolutely.
• 49:11
  Tricia McCleary: And thanks so much for having me, Mike.
• 49:12
  Tricia McCleary: so Australia's news media bargaining code came into effect in 2021, often described as the world's first link text, quote unquote, even though the government, of course does their best to avoid that term.
• 49:25
  Tricia McCleary: at its core, it's a law that forces certain digital services and Australian news publishers, into mandatory bargaining over.
• 49:34
  Tricia McCleary: Payments for news content, so just for linking to news.
• 49:37
  Tricia McCleary: and then of course, that process going on with an arbitrator able to set the price if those negotiations break down.
• 49:43
  Tricia McCleary: we're looking back, the code emerged from a previous investigation back around 2017, by Australia's competition authority.
• 49:52
  Tricia McCleary: Argued that digital services had stronger bargaining power, compared to traditional news outlets.
• 49:58
  Tricia McCleary: The government really positioned the code as a way to support journalism amid the broader decline of, you know, advertising revenue in this kind of digital transition that newsrooms were undergoing.
• 50:09
  Tricia McCleary: As well as kind of, I don't wanna say collapse, but kind of this transition of legacy media business models.
• 50:15
  Tricia McCleary: but four years later.
• 50:16
  Tricia McCleary: So yeah, flash forward to 2025.
• 50:19
  Tricia McCleary: we're seeing that the code really hasn't lived up to the government's expectations.
• 50:22
  Tricia McCleary: Uh, last year, a parliamentary review deemed the code.
• 50:26
  Tricia McCleary: Limited INE effectiveness and now it's seeking those new methods of supplementation.
• 50:31
  Tricia McCleary: and, you know, enter this consultation they've had right now, which I know we'll get into in a few.
• 50:36
  Tricia McCleary: But that is in the form of an incentive, which is what they're calling it though it does really operate as a tax.
• 50:44
  Tricia McCleary: but because, the code failed to meaningfully.
• 50:46
  Tricia McCleary: Strengthen the sustainability of public interest journalism and really disproportionately benefited larger media companies and overall did not address right.
• 50:55
  Tricia McCleary: Those long-term structural challenges facing the news factor.
• 50:59
  Tricia McCleary: They are seeking a new way to almost bring digital services back to the table.
• 51:06
  Tricia McCleary: like, okay, if you're saying you won't enter these deals, we will.
• 51:12
  Tricia McCleary: Tax you anyway, and then you might get that money back depending on what deals you choose to enter.
• 51:18
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, if I could summarize it, like my sense, and correct me if I'm wrong, my sense is basically this whole thing has always been about just, shifting money from certain companies to certain other companies, which is an odd thing, I think for the government to be in the business of, of sort of deciding.
• 51:34
  Mike Masnick: I, I understand taxing for the purpose of funding the government, but taxing saying these companies pay money to these other companies always felt a little strange to me.
• 51:45
  Mike Masnick: But that seems to be the main focus of both the original bargaining code, which again, as you mentioned.
• 51:52
  Mike Masnick: doesn't seem to have worked.
• 51:54
  Mike Masnick: and now this new initiative, which is basically just kind of, it feels like doubling down on the fact that the original version didn't work.
• 52:03
  Mike Masnick: It doesn't seem to fix anything other than putting more pressure, on companies to, take money and transfer it to other companies.
• 52:10
  Mike Masnick: Are there other lessons that you think.
• 52:13
  Mike Masnick: Because right now there are certainly other countries out there.
• 52:17
  Mike Masnick: Canada obviously put in place a similar law.
• 52:20
  Mike Masnick: There've been attempts in the US and specifically in California.
• 52:24
  Mike Masnick: there's been talk of other countries doing similar things as well.
• 52:29
  Mike Masnick: but as you noted, the one in Australia really I think almost everybody recognizes that it hasn't lived up to the promises.
• 52:36
  Mike Masnick: are there lessons that we can take from.
• 52:38
  Mike Masnick: The Australian experiment.
• 52:40
  Tricia McCleary: Yeah, absolutely.
• 52:41
  Tricia McCleary: Um, and I think what you're saying is completely right.
• 52:43
  Tricia McCleary: It really is a little bit of a pr spin on a wealth transfer.
• 52:47
  Tricia McCleary: Um, but the law has been in effect for a few years, right?
• 52:51
  Tricia McCleary: And the picture is.
• 52:52
  Tricia McCleary: It is mixed in a, couple of senses, right?
• 52:54
  Tricia McCleary: So the code has resulted in commercial agreements that did transfer money to Australian publishers, right?
• 53:01
  Tricia McCleary: There are of course different estimates there, but a lot, quite a few believe that was in the sense of several hundred million Australian dollars in aggregate.
• 53:09
  Tricia McCleary: but as expected and as many people did warn, about these predictable side effects.
• 53:14
  Tricia McCleary: We've been seeing a bit of a concerning sense in the fragmentation of the news industry and things like that.
• 53:20
  Tricia McCleary: I always think back to, Tim Burners Lee, who founded the worldwide web right back, back in the day, said that this draft legislation when Australia was considering it really risked, breaching a fundamental principle of the web.
• 53:34
  Tricia McCleary: By requiring that payment for linking, which is something I know that we talked about kind of with this permission based landscape that we spoke about during the last episode.
• 53:42
  Tricia McCleary: but the code really introduced structural fragility into the information ecosystem, right?
• 53:48
  Tricia McCleary: These shifts didn't affect the larger outlets, right?
• 53:50
  Tricia McCleary: Who had the means and, you know, obviously audience to continue.
• 53:54
  Tricia McCleary: they really constrained the visibility of smaller and local independent publishers who rely heavily on referral traffic, although the bill initially, or the law right?
• 54:03
  Tricia McCleary: Said that those were the very newsrooms they were setting out to save.
• 54:07
  Tricia McCleary: Right.
• 54:07
  Tricia McCleary: I feel like the ecosystem overall kind of became more brittle, not more resilient compared to what they were hoping.
• 54:13
  Tricia McCleary: it also distorted incentives within the new sector itself.
• 54:16
  Tricia McCleary: Right.
• 54:17
  Tricia McCleary: You know, larger incumbents captured that line share of negotiated deals.
• 54:21
  Tricia McCleary: It widened the resources gap.
• 54:22
  Tricia McCleary: between metropolitan outlets and smaller regional, publishers.
• 54:27
  Tricia McCleary: And I think that dynamic in a lot of cases reinforces consolidation concerns within media and has made it harder, not easier for, emerging or local.
• 54:36
  Tricia McCleary: Newsrooms to, compete or to innovate.
• 54:39
  Tricia McCleary: Right?
• 54:39
  Tricia McCleary: And I think most notably, right, it not only has achieved intended outcomes, but has made things even worse, Like Australia's news sector has not experienced a research and, and sustainability as a result.
• 54:51
  Tricia McCleary: and as we see, like you said, the states and the us you know, federal government considering as well as quite a few other international ones, I think there's a couple, couple takeaways.
• 55:00
  Tricia McCleary: Um.
• 55:01
  Tricia McCleary: Money alone does not solve systemic problems.
• 55:03
  Tricia McCleary: You know, it's kind of like putting that bandaid on something rather than seeking out a sustainable way of funding.
• 55:09
  Tricia McCleary: wealth transfers may certainly right, help newsrooms in some capacity, but they don't fix those changes or react to the changes we're seeing in the digital economy or the advertising economy or shifts in consumer habits where.
• 55:22
  Tricia McCleary: readers are, you know, seeking out different means of getting their news and getting their information And I think, so overall, the, the model has spread.
• 55:29
  Tricia McCleary: We're seeing kind of this contagion in a couple of different places.
• 55:32
  Tricia McCleary: Right.
• 55:33
  Tricia McCleary: I know New Zealand has had called into question what this means, Brazil, South Africa.
• 55:38
  Tricia McCleary: Um, as well as back home and they've continued to borrow from the Australian playbook.
• 55:43
  Tricia McCleary: and Canada really also adopted a very similar approach with its online news act.
• 55:48
  Tricia McCleary: and that results in limited news, availability, arms to smaller publications that rely on those internet traffic.
• 55:54
  Tricia McCleary: Again, like we've said, right, like most of the benefits did overall go to larger established media companies, those who had maybe the legal teams or the means to strike deals, quote unquote.
• 56:05
  Tricia McCleary: but again, local, regional, independent outlets, these policymakers say they wanna help the most.
• 56:10
  Tricia McCleary: Were not uniformly strengthened.
• 56:12
  Tricia McCleary: So I think it's a good warning for.
• 56:14
  Tricia McCleary: Governments to heed, right?
• 56:15
  Tricia McCleary: And again, as we always say, it's having a healthy information ecosystem and news is crucial to democracy and in times of, you know, natural disaster and things like that.
• 56:27
  Tricia McCleary: But it's important to note that we've seen this happen quite a few times now, and even Australia is admitting the limitations of their own code, um, and figuring out how to, how to fix it.
• 56:38
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I haven't looked at the numbers recently, but I think about a year ago I had looked, there was a, an organization that was tracking, journalist hirings and firings, and, you know, publication, openings and closings in Australia and found that, there were still a ton of layoffs and, and some, especially smaller news orgs seemed to be shutting down, which was, again, we were sort of told the opposite would happen.
• 56:59
  Mike Masnick: And so.
• 57:00
  Mike Masnick: That was kind of unfortunate.
• 57:01
  Mike Masnick: So you discussed a little bit in the opening that now the Australian government has effectively admitted that this was a failure..
• 57:07
  Mike Masnick: They're doing this new thing called the news bargaining incentive as opposed to the news bargaining code.
• 57:12
  Mike Masnick: and they have a comment period.
• 57:13
  Mike Masnick: Open right now.
• 57:15
  Mike Masnick: they're looking for feedback on that.
• 57:17
  Mike Masnick: and that closes on December 19th, I believe,
• 57:21
  Tricia McCleary: that's right.
• 57:21
  Mike Masnick: Australian time.
• 57:22
  Mike Masnick: So translate that
• 57:24
  Tricia McCleary: I know.
• 57:25
  Mike Masnick: to,
• 57:26
  Tricia McCleary: Add or subtract hours.
• 57:28
  Mike Masnick: Um,
• 57:28
  Tricia McCleary: not sure.
• 57:29
  Mike Masnick: you, can you, a little bit about what are they looking at with the news bargaining incentive?
• 57:34
  Tricia McCleary: Yeah, so really it's been interesting to see the Australian government speak about this.
• 57:40
  Tricia McCleary: So back in 2024, they released a report.
• 57:43
  Tricia McCleary: Acknowledging the limitations of the code.
• 57:45
  Tricia McCleary: and then we heard a consultation is on its way.
• 57:48
  Tricia McCleary: it'll be here soon, and then a year later, so just back in November of this year, did they release that?
• 57:54
  Tricia McCleary: So they've really been framing this as an update to reinforce the original one.
• 57:59
  Tricia McCleary: And address those limitations officials continue to kind of position this incentive as a way to strengthen this framework.
• 58:06
  Tricia McCleary: but I think the review has made it clear that the weaknesses are unlikely to be solved by layering on, you know, even more bargaining mandates.
• 58:13
  Tricia McCleary: So instead of focusing on bargaining over content right now, they're imposs.
• 58:18
  Tricia McCleary: Almost as, I don't wanna say scheme, right?
• 58:19
  Tricia McCleary: I know it sounds evil, but a little bit of a scheme that acts like a revenue linked levy, on a very small number of digital services.
• 58:27
  Tricia McCleary: If the government decides they have not.
• 58:29
  Tricia McCleary: You know, stricken enough deals with news publishers or, you know, if they're not spending enough money.
• 58:34
  Tricia McCleary: but despite it being labeled, it really functions almost like a retroactive tax on this handful of companies and global companies, but almost all American based as well, based only on their Australian revenue.
• 58:46
  Tricia McCleary: and the government keeps saying, we're not trying to raise revenue.
• 58:48
  Tricia McCleary: Like, that's not the plan here.
• 58:50
  Tricia McCleary: If a company doesn't enter into those government favored commercial agreements, it must make ultimately a mandatory payment to the government.
• 58:58
  Tricia McCleary: So the way we are looking at this is it's almost structurally indistinguishable from a tax.
• 59:04
  Tricia McCleary: I think what's most important to note here is that we've seen kind of waves of.
• 59:07
  Tricia McCleary: Technological transition in news from newspapers, radio, tv, the internet, now, AI tools and functionalities, right?
• 59:14
  Tricia McCleary: And so while Australia seeks out digital services to Foot the bill, it significantly misunderstands the online ecosystem, nor does it account for future innovations, down the line or how people, how the way people are getting their news will evolve.
• 59:29
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 59:29
  Mike Masnick: So while this comment period is open, what, kinds of comments are you hoping or expecting to see people make?
• 59:37
  Tricia McCleary: Yeah, a couple things.
• 59:37
  Tricia McCleary: I think one.
• 59:39
  Tricia McCleary: it really is a discriminatory tax, regardless of whatever you wanna call it, how you wanna spin it, how you wanna wrap it with a bow.
• 59:45
  Tricia McCleary: Like if the government is imposing a payment triggered by company's revenue and it's failure to enter into these agreements, that's a tax.
• 59:52
  Tricia McCleary: Right?
• 59:53
  Tricia McCleary: And I think rules like this also raise a couple of concerns under trade agreements such as the Australia Free Trade Agreement that the US has entered with them, which are obviously discouraged as discriminatory taxes.
• 1:00:04
  Tricia McCleary: targeting those digital services.
• 1:00:06
  Tricia McCleary: I think revenue thresholds, again, as an entity are inherently discriminatory, just like past service tax as we've seen.
• 1:00:14
  Tricia McCleary: Um, it really targets a small set of American companies.
• 1:00:17
  Tricia McCleary: Revenue bears no relationship to influence, particularly in the news industry or market power or consumer news consumption.
• 1:00:25
  Tricia McCleary: and within the consultation they're asking questions about, oh, what the thresholds should be, but regardless of that, right, shifting the threshold doesn't fix that fundamental, Defect.
• 1:00:33
  Tricia McCleary: And then most importantly, I think really that this approach does nothing to make journalism sustainable.
• 1:00:39
  Tricia McCleary: It's like you said earlier, like simply reallocating money from a few digital services into select publishing businesses.
• 1:00:46
  Tricia McCleary: It doesn't consider how people find information.
• 1:00:50
  Tricia McCleary: Why traditional advertising models have declined, or how to really build a resilient local newsroom over the long term.
• 1:00:57
  Tricia McCleary: So ultimately, it's our hope that the Australian government really reconsider this approach, given that it's looking to extend a lifeline to a law that isn't even working.
• 1:01:05
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 1:01:06
  Mike Masnick: then just to wrap up the conversation, what do you think it does to the overall online information ecosystem?
• 1:01:15
  Mike Masnick: When we have something like a link tax that, changes the way that the internet has always worked historically, where, you know, you could link to anything.
• 1:01:23
  Mike Masnick: But here where it's introducing this idea of a link text, what, what is the larger impact of that?
• 1:01:29
  Tricia McCleary: I think it goes back to our initial conversation, right, and this concept of an open web and how important it is.
• 1:01:34
  Tricia McCleary: Link Tax has really undermined that.
• 1:01:36
  Tricia McCleary: Open architecture, you know, and the importance of linking and the importance of having the ability to freely share information.
• 1:01:43
  Tricia McCleary: I think when linking or indexing news becomes expensive or at times legally risky, depending on how countries are approaching it, digital services can naturally, naturally pull back, right?
• 1:01:54
  Tricia McCleary: Depending on the approach, they can show less news, invest less in surfacing local reporting, shifting resources towards other content.
• 1:02:01
  Tricia McCleary: I think that means less discoverability for credible journalism.
• 1:02:05
  Tricia McCleary: Um, reduced referral traffic for small publishers who rely on that either for, grassroots audiences or advertising as well.
• 1:02:13
  Tricia McCleary: it's a more fragmented news environment, which I think is.
• 1:02:16
  Tricia McCleary: difficult considering that we look at how people use the internet in times where traditional media might not be getting information quickly enough, or crowdsourcing, I think to like the citizen app for crime and things like that, or just how like.
• 1:02:31
  Tricia McCleary: X and different social media platforms have been used in times of um, like during the California wildfires, right?
• 1:02:38
  Tricia McCleary: I think there are also fewer opportunities for new outlets to emerge if they don't have that ability to connect with digital audiences and ultimately users have less access to reliable information.
• 1:02:49
  Tricia McCleary: I think the irony is that this policy were seeing in Australia and other ones that are considering is that although it's intended to help journalism, it really is reducing the visibility of said journalism.
• 1:03:00
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:00
  Mike Masnick: it's definitely a, a big concern.
• 1:03:02
  Mike Masnick: Again, the, there's an open comment period.
• 1:03:04
  Mike Masnick: Now it ends next week.
• 1:03:06
  Mike Masnick: By the time, hopefully by the time you hear this, if you listen to this soon after.
• 1:03:09
  Mike Masnick: Of the podcast comes out.
• 1:03:10
  Mike Masnick: but, uh, Trisha McCleary from CCIA, thank you so much for joining us and, telling us all about what is happening down under.
• 1:03:17
  Tricia McCleary: thanks so much for having me.
• 1:03:21
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