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Sorry, This Episode Will Not Cheer You Up · Ctrl-Alt-Speech

• 0:00
  Ben Whitelaw: So you would have seen this week, Mike, that Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, the Washington post owner has been in the news for not, not some great reasons.
• 0:09
  Ben Whitelaw: And, uh, in his honor, you know, to kind of herald the fact that he's lost so many subscribers in such a short space of time, we're going to use the prompt that comes up on the Amazon app to begin today's episode.
• 0:21
  Ben Whitelaw: So I want you to search or ask a question.
• 0:27
  Mike Masnick: Oh man.
• 0:28
  Mike Masnick: Uh, well, in honor of Mr.
• 0:30
  Mike Masnick: Pezos, who I wrote about a few times this past week over his, decision to, uh, be the cowardly lion of this particular election, I am searching for some hope as we head into election season that, uh, I don't know, man, this is, this is a stressful one.
• 0:49
  Mike Masnick: So
• 0:50
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 0:51
  Mike Masnick: about you?
• 0:52
  Mike Masnick: What do you have?
• 0:53
  Mike Masnick: Are you searching or asking any questions today?
• 0:55
  Ben Whitelaw: Well, I feel for you.
• 0:57
  Ben Whitelaw: I feel for.
• 0:58
  Ben Whitelaw: All of our us listeners and anybody who's got an investment in the kind of election next week.
• 1:03
  Ben Whitelaw: But my question, you know, that I'm wrestling with is, how much actually should we be kind of thinking about startup culture and, the focus that it has on growth when we're thinking about trust and safety, because the story we've got today, I think really puts that in a spotlight.
• 1:25
  Ben Whitelaw: Hello, and welcome to control all speech, your weekly roundup of the major stories about online speech, content moderation.
• 1:34
  Ben Whitelaw: It's November the 1st, 2024.
• 1:36
  Ben Whitelaw: And this week's episode is brought to you with financial support from the future of online trust and safety fund.
• 1:41
  Ben Whitelaw: And by today's sponsor Concentrix, the technology and services leader driving trust and safety and content moderation globally.
• 1:48
  Ben Whitelaw: My name is Ben Whitelaw, and I'm back in the hot seat with my co host Mike Masnick of TechDirt.
• 1:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike, how are you doing?
• 1:55
  Ben Whitelaw: How was your week off?
• 1:56
  Mike Masnick: Oh, week off.
• 1:57
  Mike Masnick: I didn't have a week off, Ben.
• 1:58
  Mike Masnick: I don't know if you noticed, but I was wrangling the robots to see if they could take over our job.
• 2:04
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, actually I did listen.
• 2:06
  Ben Whitelaw: Uh, I did listen.
• 2:07
  Ben Whitelaw: I was kind of on the beach, obviously chilling out.
• 2:09
  Mike Masnick: Nice.
• 2:10
  Mike Masnick: Nice.
• 2:11
  Ben Whitelaw: no, I was, I saw that you had this experiment that you ran with, with Notebook LM.
• 2:16
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 2:17
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 2:17
  Ben Whitelaw: went pretty well.
• 2:18
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 2:19
  Mike Masnick: I thought, you know, I thought the reactions we got were pretty interesting.
• 2:22
  Mike Masnick: I mean, people I think were pretty impressed by the quality of it and that it actually sounded like two human beings having a discussion.
• 2:28
  Mike Masnick: and so, that was the cool part about it.
• 2:30
  Mike Masnick: And I, I sort of discussed it in the intro last week that I recorded.
• 2:34
  Mike Masnick: It is really impressive when you look at it.
• 2:37
  Mike Masnick: It's only when you start to like dig deeper into the, quality of the discussion, it's just unable to actually drive insight, but as a summary machine.
• 2:47
  Mike Masnick: And a human sounding summary machine.
• 2:49
  Mike Masnick: It's really impressive.
• 2:51
  Mike Masnick: and so I, I really enjoyed it, but it was sort of, it was fun.
• 2:53
  Mike Masnick: And just the experiment on my part of like trying to make it, trying to force it to be insightful was, was a really interesting experiment.
• 3:03
  Mike Masnick: And I said this last week, I said, you know, it probably would have been faster, for you and me to just get on, on the microphones and talk about stuff, then trying to, teach the AI not to be so boring and, you know, and just sort of so middle, right?
• 3:18
  Mike Masnick: Like it just didn't, you know, wouldn't go deeper on, things.
• 3:23
  Mike Masnick: And so that's kind of the restrictions that you have with an AI model.
• 3:27
  Ben Whitelaw: right.
• 3:27
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, it's put a lot of pressure on us this week.
• 3:29
  Ben Whitelaw: I'll be honest because, because, you know, there will be some listeners who like maybe, maybe miss those folks
• 3:35
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 3:35
  Mike Masnick: That's right.
• 3:36
  Ben Whitelaw: a sad that we're back.
• 3:37
  Ben Whitelaw: but I'm, I am glad fundamentally that you having conducted that experiment didn't think that actually you were out of a job that you, you know, that you did that and thought, actually there's merit in Ben being here.
• 3:49
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 3:49
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 3:50
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 3:50
  Mike Masnick: That's right.
• 3:51
  Mike Masnick: It could, I could have set it up so that from now on, it's me talking with an AI, you know,
• 3:55
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, exactly.
• 3:56
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, exactly.
• 3:57
  Ben Whitelaw: So
• 3:58
  Mike Masnick: half human, half robot.
• 4:00
  Ben Whitelaw: I'll try and bring my A game today.
• 4:02
  Ben Whitelaw: Don't worry
• 4:02
  Mike Masnick: There we
• 4:03
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, so we, you know, you mentioned the election.
• 4:06
  Ben Whitelaw: We're going to cover a number of stories this week that have been published about trust and safety in relation to the election this week.
• 4:12
  Ben Whitelaw: and when a big story that's been rumbling on for the best part of two weeks now, but before we start, it's worth mentioning, we have a really good chat with the folks at Concentrix at the end of today's discussion about how to get the best, the most ROI from your trust and safety strategy.
• 4:27
  Ben Whitelaw: How to think about, you know, create a compelling business case for trust and safety, which is going to be increasingly difficult.
• 4:33
  Ben Whitelaw: as we go forward as teams shrink and obviously depending on what happens in the election next week.
• 4:37
  Ben Whitelaw: So, really timely conversation, but we should be.
• 4:42
  Ben Whitelaw: Jump straight in, Mike.
• 4:42
  Ben Whitelaw: There's no time to waste today as we know.
• 4:45
  Ben Whitelaw: So we're going to start with the election and talk about their absolute kind of deluge of stories related to, next week's vote.
• 4:52
  Ben Whitelaw: try and pick your way through what you read this week.
• 4:55
  Ben Whitelaw: And for, for listeners who obviously can't see Mike right now, he has his hands.
• 5:00
  Ben Whitelaw: Over his eyes and, and kind of bowed in quite a somber manner.
• 5:05
  Ben Whitelaw: So, um, just have that image in mind as you, hear him talk through the coverage this week.
• 5:11
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 5:12
  Mike Masnick: Well, I was, I was right before we started, I was counting up, I think I have nine different election misinformation related stories that I, I sort of wanted to all try and weave together because I think they're all sort of related and important and it feels like everyone's trying to cover the story from slightly different angles and there's some really great journalism going on.
• 5:31
  Mike Masnick: but the summary is gosh, what a pain Mess.
• 5:33
  Mike Masnick: I, I, I mean, obviously like the election itself is a mess and I've expressed that already, and we'll see what happens, but everyone is sort of, you on edge.
• 5:44
  Mike Masnick: but think I'm sort of going to try and bucket these nine stories into two different.
• 5:49
  Mike Masnick: Um, the first is a whole bunch of, there were a bunch of reporting that was done on advertisements, particularly on meta, because meta has this ability for, people to look at because they publish all of their, political advertising.
• 6:02
  Mike Masnick: And so reporters have been digging in on the political advertising front and seeing what is going on, on the platform.
• 6:08
  Mike Masnick: And the summary is, it is a complete disaster.
• 6:11
  Mike Masnick: and I don't know exactly how much trust and safety resources Meta are putting towards this, but one of the interesting things is, as you look at some of these different articles, you begin to realize how big a challenge it is.
• 6:22
  Mike Masnick: So this is both a.
• 6:24
  Mike Masnick: somewhat a criticism of Meta and how they're handling advertising on the platform related to the election at a time when Mark Zuckerberg has come out and said that he is done with politics and he is doing nothing with politics.
• 6:35
  Mike Masnick: And yet his platform is being used for all sorts of political nonsense going on right now.
• 6:40
  Mike Masnick: So not.
• 6:41
  Mike Masnick: Engaging in politics is politics and is a political decision.
• 6:46
  Mike Masnick: And we see that in terms of what is happening on the advertising platform.
• 6:49
  Mike Masnick: But because you have all these different reporters looking at the collection of ads and you're seeing all of these different things happening, it's kind of interesting to see all of the different challenges because they're coming in From all different ways.
• 7:01
  Mike Masnick: So ProPublica had a, big story exploiting Meta's weaknesses, deceptive political ads, but that one is all about like just outright scams.
• 7:10
  Mike Masnick: These are fraudsters and, hucksters and grifters who are using political ads to try and trick people into all sorts of things, you know, buying nonsense, signing up for lists.
• 7:21
  Mike Masnick: You know, there was one where they were selling like, Probably cheap knockoff Trump coins.
• 7:26
  Mike Masnick: But when the guy bought them, it actually turned out he was signing up for like monthly subscription.
• 7:30
  Mike Masnick: So like every month he's being charged 30 bucks that he didn't even realize.
• 7:35
  Mike Masnick: And just like, you know, there was another one who had like set up a business in the name of his girlfriend at the time, and it's just a totally fraudulent business, but they're doing all these political ads and she's getting blamed for.
• 7:49
  Mike Masnick: There's just like outright scammers trying to trick people.
• 7:53
  Mike Masnick: Often using sort of political theming and imagery.
• 7:56
  Mike Masnick: And you look at that and you say, wow, you know, that's kind of crazy.
• 8:00
  Mike Masnick: But at the same time, then you have Forbes, which had a really wonderful article about how Facebook took more than$1 million for ads showing election lies.
• 8:11
  Mike Masnick: And they were looking at people who were.
• 8:13
  Mike Masnick: misrepresenting things about the election.
• 8:16
  Mike Masnick: And there were questions about how much money, Facebook is making.
• 8:19
  Mike Masnick: Obviously the headline is talking about the, the million dollars, but then there's a question of like, who, is behind some of these ads and whether or not they're being done for political purposes or for scamming purposes or for what, you know, a lot of them do look like they're people trying to influence the election through misinformation and Meta's policies in terms of whether or not they actually violate their policies seems pretty loose, like some of them are getting taken down, ProPublica found the same thing after they reported stuff, Meta took down some of the ads, but other ads, they say, oh, these are actually fine, we're trying to be as hands off as possible on some of this stuff, and yet some of it's outright election misinformation, um, not always entirely clear, From whom or how, then I'm going to move on.
• 9:06
  Mike Masnick: Like I'm going through these, these rapid fire because the,
• 9:08
  Ben Whitelaw: coming.
• 9:09
  Ben Whitelaw: Keep'em coming.
• 9:10
  Mike Masnick: the Washington post had a really good article saying, these look like Harris ads, but it was actually Trump backers who bought them.
• 9:17
  Mike Masnick: and this was a case where you have a.
• 9:21
  Mike Masnick: political action committee set up by Elon Musk and funded by Elon Musk that has bought all of these Facebook ads.
• 9:28
  Mike Masnick: Interesting.
• 9:29
  Mike Masnick: You know, Facebook ads, even though it's Elon Musk, the owner of X, it's possible they're buying ads elsewhere.
• 9:34
  Mike Masnick: Also, they've set up this whole like fake, Harris campaign page called progress 2028.
• 9:41
  Mike Masnick: They're sort of playing off of, you know, there's this project 2025.
• 9:44
  Mike Masnick: Five.
• 9:44
  Mike Masnick: thing which was set up by the Heritage Foundation and is sort of seen as Donald Trump's plan for the election, though he insists that it is not.
• 9:53
  Mike Masnick: But it's, a lot of the people who wrote it were former Trump staffers and everything and everyone kind of expects that they will go into the government if he wins next week.
• 10:00
  Mike Masnick: and so this Completely fabricated fictional progress.
• 10:04
  Mike Masnick: 2028 is sort of, trying to be the flip side, even though it's entirely made up by, right wing interests.
• 10:10
  Mike Masnick: And it's just full of like extreme, stereotypical made up nonsense that people are claiming a future Harris administration wants to
• 10:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Is that just to discredit her?
• 10:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Is
• 10:22
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 10:23
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 10:23
  Mike Masnick: It's basically trying to, discredit her and, you know, argument and, and yeah, don't want to get political, but there's this argument that goes around that, she's like this extreme left wing, socialist, communist, whatever you want to say, which is utter nonsense.
• 10:40
  Mike Masnick: Um, but so they're trying to present it.
• 10:42
  Mike Masnick: So they're creating this fake plan that suggests like.
• 10:45
  Mike Masnick: These sort of massive amounts of government control, they get into online censorship is like one of the big planks on this, this progress, 2028, again, like a made up conspiracy theory, thing that, that people are pushing.
• 10:59
  Mike Masnick: And then they're creating these ads that are designed to look like Harris ads.
• 11:02
  Mike Masnick: And in fact, they're.
• 11:03
  Mike Masnick: using the targeting features to customize them, and in certain ways.
• 11:07
  Mike Masnick: So like, you know, when targeting, people that they think are likely Jewish, they're presenting one position on Israel and Palestine.
• 11:17
  Mike Masnick: And when they're targeting people who they are likely to be Muslim, they're presenting the totally opposite position in terms of Israel and Palestine.
• 11:26
  Mike Masnick: And so, it's very, very scammy and very, very concerning.
• 11:31
  Mike Masnick: And yet they're using these ads.
• 11:33
  Mike Masnick: And I would guess that the ads are probably showing up on, X as well, but we don't know that meta at least releases this library.
• 11:39
  Mike Masnick: There's something to be said about that.
• 11:41
  Mike Masnick: You know, you have this sort of.
• 11:42
  Mike Masnick: looking for lost keys under the lamppost concept, you know, so like, we're all seeing what's happening on Meta because Meta thankfully is transparent about the ads that show up, but you know, it's, you know, we don't know what's happening on other platforms now, the other element in all of this, and this came up in a couple of other stories
• 12:03
  Ben Whitelaw: You've been
• 12:03
  Mike Masnick: that, Yeah, I've been busy.
• 12:06
  Mike Masnick: Uh, so the New Yorker had a really interesting story on, basically like U S government folks who are trying to counter, election interference, but it has a really interesting look at.
• 12:18
  Mike Masnick: Different attacks on the U S system and how Russia, China, Iran, in particular, trying to, to influence the election often through social media, including social media ads, the New York times also had a similar piece on this.
• 12:30
  Mike Masnick: Again, lots of links, how Russia, China, and Iran are interfering in the presidential election.
• 12:35
  Mike Masnick: And the general summary is that, you know, they sort of saw what happened, whether it worked or not.
• 12:40
  Mike Masnick: In 2016 with Russia trying to use, ads and trolling operations, and they've all gone all in on it and using every, every path they can to try and influence the election or just to, to sow chaos.
• 12:53
  Mike Masnick: And so, all of this combined gives you this picture of this is a very chaotic election and against the backdrop of over the last four years, as we've reported multiple times this year, there's been a concerted effort, especially among.
• 13:08
  Mike Masnick: Republicans and sort of the, the MAGA world to argue that any attempt to call out disinformation and election interference from foreign players and everything is a form of election interference and censorship itself, which has caused a lot of players to sort of back down.
• 13:25
  Mike Masnick: And it's sort of cleared the field for this, right?
• 13:29
  Mike Masnick: And so you're in this world now where there is this free for all, where the companies are sort of taking a step back.
• 13:34
  Mike Masnick: Zuckerberg says he's not going to get involved in politics.
• 13:36
  Mike Masnick: YouTube says they're not going to police certain kinds of content anymore.
• 13:40
  Mike Masnick: All of these things are happening and now everyone is rushing in and taking advantage of it.
• 13:45
  Mike Masnick: And some of it are depending on how you want to.
• 13:47
  Mike Masnick: Call it like legitimate political actors.
• 13:50
  Mike Masnick: If you can call, uh, Elon Musk funded PAC, a legitimate political actor.
• 13:54
  Mike Masnick: Some of it are, just outright grifters and fraudsters.
• 13:58
  Mike Masnick: Some of it are nation States trying to influence the election.
• 14:01
  Mike Masnick: All of this is happening at once.
• 14:04
  Mike Masnick: And it is just, as you can hear from me going through these stories, it's, it is impossible To consider how much chaos is involved.
• 14:12
  Mike Masnick: And so to some extent, it's like easy to look at the Facebook ad side of it and say like, how could they allow this to happen?
• 14:19
  Mike Masnick: But at the same time, you're like, they're also having to deal with all of these different things and these different influences.
• 14:24
  Mike Masnick: And how do you sort out which ones are which and which ones are legitimate and which ones are not?
• 14:29
  Mike Masnick: Cause there are also legitimate advertisements going on as well.
• 14:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 14:33
  Mike Masnick: And, and just fighting this.
• 14:35
  Mike Masnick: Force, and then I I'm not letting you talk, Ben, because I have too much to say.
• 14:39
  Mike Masnick: I will let you speak in a second.
• 14:41
  Mike Masnick: There's all of this other stuff, which this is not even, this is all on just the advertising side.
• 14:45
  Mike Masnick: And we didn't even get to the fact that there's like so much disinformation happening directly on the platforms.
• 14:52
  Mike Masnick: And here, I'm just going to focus briefly on, there were a few stories this week on.
• 14:56
  Mike Masnick: Elon directly turning X into not just a, full time 100 percent propaganda program for Donald Trump, which he is supporting and clearly has said he is supporting, but he's set up this election integrity group on X.
• 15:14
  Mike Masnick: And I find this funny because, you know, all the social media companies felt.
• 15:18
  Mike Masnick: Compelled to set up election integrity efforts following the 2016.
• 15:22
  Mike Masnick: Some of them had, you know, some stuff before, but it was a big deal.
• 15:25
  Mike Masnick: After the 2016 election, everyone was taking election integrity seriously.
• 15:29
  Mike Masnick: And it was about how do we fight all these things?
• 15:30
  Mike Masnick: How do we deal with all these things?
• 15:32
  Mike Masnick: And as.
• 15:33
  Mike Masnick: Some of these other companies are taking a step back from actually doing that kind of work X is using that name election integrity to set up this group, which is 100 percent nonsense.
• 15:44
  Mike Masnick: It's just conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, and it's, it's flooding the system.
• 15:49
  Mike Masnick: And there was a, a CNN article.
• 15:51
  Mike Masnick: Again, I'm not going to stop with links.
• 15:53
  Mike Masnick: There was a CNN article about how election officials are outmatched.
• 15:57
  Mike Masnick: And there was, you know, there were Republican.
• 15:59
  Mike Masnick: election officials in Arizona who are saying like they're getting death threats and they're getting, you know, there's one, uh, Stephen Richer, an election official in Maricopa County, which is sort of, uh, a Republican stronghold for the most part, who's saying he's trying to get notices, he was trying to have a friend hand deliver a letter to Elon Musk to ask him to knock it off because he's facing death threats.
• 16:23
  Ben Whitelaw: Wow.
• 16:24
  Mike Masnick: It's, you know, the entire world is upside down in terms of everything that we've talked about in terms of like disinformation, where you now have like the owner of a platform who is actively engaging in spreading and increasing conspiracy theories, one more link in all this was the, the, uh, I see your face.
• 16:43
  Mike Masnick: I know you want to talk,
• 16:46
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 16:50
  Mike Masnick: what, and tried to not follow any political stuff.
• 16:53
  Mike Masnick: Didn't try to express that he wasn't interested in political stuff at all.
• 16:56
  Mike Masnick: And immediately was shown, election information, Elon Musk, conspiracy theory, nonsense, his entire feed filled with that.
• 17:04
  Mike Masnick: It is impossible to avoid on that platform right now.
• 17:08
  Mike Masnick: And so we're in this, this zone.
• 17:10
  Mike Masnick: I mean, obviously, you know, we're a few days out from the election and it is just.
• 17:15
  Mike Masnick: nonstop craziness and, and, full of
• 17:18
  Ben Whitelaw: Oh, what's up?
• 17:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, and I feel for you, I feel for you that having to having to have read those articles and then regurgitate them like that.
• 17:26
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, yeah, I want to get your kind of thoughts on like, what are the most worrisome parts of that, because there are so many kind of pieces at play.
• 17:34
  Ben Whitelaw: But I mean, the I guess the thing that sits across all of those different stories that you mentioned there is the fact that the election, just puts so much pressure.
• 17:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 17:43
  Ben Whitelaw: On platforms and so much kind of pressure on trust and safety teams and affords all of these different actors that you mentioned, you know, the kind of grifters and the foreign, you know, meddlers and the kind of other discredited, activists to, you know, who purport to be, somebody that they're not, they all provide cover.
• 18:00
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, they get cover given to them by the election because there is so much going on and there's so much attention on it and teams and platforms are stretched.
• 18:08
  Ben Whitelaw: that for me is the kind of, as you quite neatly summarized, overwhelming feeling is that in some ways, there's no, you know, There's no other way of going about this.
• 18:16
  Ben Whitelaw: We just have to kind of almost get through it.
• 18:18
  Ben Whitelaw: Is that your sense is it just like get through it?
• 18:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Or could we have predicted that this was going to happen?
• 18:23
  Ben Whitelaw: And two, three years ago after the last election put a plan in place.
• 18:28
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 18:28
  Mike Masnick: I mean, what's the saying?
• 18:30
  Mike Masnick: There's no way out, but through, I mean, I think we sort of have to go through it, but, this is kind of a reflection of what has really happened over the last four years.
• 18:38
  Mike Masnick: And in particular, I mean, I mentioned it.
• 18:40
  Mike Masnick: Back there that, the attacks mainly by Republicans on all of this, on trust and safety, on content moderation, on research around disinformation, that has been a concerted effort to create this kind of chaos, and now we're seeing it.
• 18:58
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 18:59
  Mike Masnick: we'll see what happens over the next week, the next few months.
• 19:03
  Mike Masnick: it's obviously very much up in the air and very much uncertain, but a lot of it is because of, these attacks, like right now would be, the right time.
• 19:12
  Mike Masnick: Like if we had, and I know that there are still people fighting the fight.
• 19:16
  Mike Masnick: I don't want to say that the entire field has been abandoned.
• 19:18
  Mike Masnick: I know that there are people within these companies who take election integrity really, really seriously.
• 19:22
  Mike Masnick: Not at X, but, but at other companies.
• 19:24
  Mike Masnick: Um, and I know that there are researchers who are still working on this and doing a really valiant effort in trying to prevent the worst things from happening and prevent misinformation from, creating real harms, because that's the fears that, you know, there is a real risk of violence.
• 19:39
  Mike Masnick: As it is not.
• 19:40
  Mike Masnick: certain, but there is a real risk that the misinformation and disinformation that is being pushed by any of these actors, you know, whether it's intentionally or not, is going to lead to violence.
• 19:50
  Mike Masnick: And that is incredibly scary.
• 19:52
  Mike Masnick: And it's, you know, not the kind of thing that we should be dealing with and I don't, I, you know, yes, in a, sane and thoughtful world, people would be preparing for this and there would be plans in place and, I, I sort of, skipped over it really quickly, the New Yorker piece about the government agency that is, tracking the foreign interference, it's the foreign malign influence center.
• 20:16
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 20:16
  Mike Masnick: they seem to be doing really good work, but to what end, right?
• 20:19
  Mike Masnick: You know, if they alert social media companies to things that are happening, you know, the Republicans are going to claim it's election interference and censorship, and it's like, that's crazy, right?
• 20:31
  Mike Masnick: I mean, this is what the government should be doing.
• 20:33
  Mike Masnick: The government is supposed to be, if they find out that there's foreign influence trying to, to, undermine an election, we want them to alert the people who need to know about it.
• 20:42
  Mike Masnick: And we've built this world in which.
• 20:44
  Mike Masnick: A unfortunately large number of people believe that this is government censorship and interference in elections when it's, it's the opposite is trying to stop that.
• 20:55
  Mike Masnick: And so, yeah, I'm, I'm sort of exasperated as I think you can hear my voice because what a terrible world that we've ended up in, through all of this.
• 21:03
  Mike Masnick: And I don't.
• 21:04
  Mike Masnick: I don't have a good answer to it.
• 21:05
  Ben Whitelaw: No, no.
• 21:07
  Ben Whitelaw: And.
• 21:07
  Ben Whitelaw: just this, the example you gave there of, of that Elon Musk funded PAC setting up its own kind of community within X to talk about election integrity, inverted commas, and to kind of flag issues is of itself, just the kind of microcosm of it was looking at, looking at it here, they've managed to nab the handle at America.
• 21:30
  Mike Masnick: Oh yeah.
• 21:31
  Mike Masnick: He's, he stole it.
• 21:32
  Mike Masnick: He, he's, I mean, it's his site, right?
• 21:34
  Mike Masnick: So he can do that, but he took it away from someone.
• 21:36
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 21:37
  Mike Masnick: and I had written about this about a month ago when it happened.
• 21:39
  Mike Masnick: He just took the at America handle from this guy who had been actually critical of Elon Musk and of Donald Trump.
• 21:47
  Mike Masnick: And, and he, he just took the handle from that guy.
• 21:49
  Mike Masnick: I mean, he can do it.
• 21:50
  Mike Masnick: It's his site, but like, I don't know.
• 21:52
  Mike Masnick: It just gives you a sense of how much he's willing to just, use this platform that he bought to his political ends.
• 21:58
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 21:59
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 21:59
  Ben Whitelaw: And one of the fascinating things, to be honest, about content moderation and online speech is the way in which it butts up against politics and power.
• 22:07
  Ben Whitelaw: And, you know, that's always what's kind of fascinated me.
• 22:09
  Ben Whitelaw: That's why I started writing.
• 22:11
  Ben Whitelaw: Everything in moderation in kind of 2018, because it, you could see even back then it was things were taking shape, but this is the most kind of clear and kind of obvious version of that right where you have speech being manipulated for the purpose of kind of political gains.
• 22:26
  Ben Whitelaw: And, I think I want to go back to wherever we were before.
• 22:30
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 22:30
  Mike Masnick: I mean, you know, but there's, again, there's no way out but through, but like, the one thing I'll note is I've seen a few people saying that this is why he bought Twitter in the first place.
• 22:39
  Mike Masnick: And I don't think that's true.
• 22:40
  Mike Masnick: I think it's just a happy accident for him.
• 22:43
  Mike Masnick: You know, I don't think he really expected to get involved, all that involved in politics, even if, it's come out how his sort of, shift to the right wing, predated when most people thought it was, and he was already there when he decided to buy it.
• 22:56
  Mike Masnick: But there isn't any indication that he was really looking at purchasing Twitter as a like political vehicle.
• 23:03
  Mike Masnick: But, you know, once he decided to go all in on politics, it became the perfect vehicle and he could pull all these levers.
• 23:09
  Mike Masnick: And, you know, what's crazy about it, and I wrote a story about it, not including this link in the show notes, but I wrote a story Today about like, just how crazy it is.
• 23:17
  Mike Masnick: If you look at what all the platforms, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, we're being accused of for the last eight years, honestly, where they really were not being particularly political.
• 23:29
  Mike Masnick: And we're really trying to be as unbiased and centrist as possible in how they handle all these things.
• 23:35
  Mike Masnick: And they were getting screamed at and they were being called before hearings every few months and the Republicans filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming that because spam filters were filtering more Republican emails, it was election interference.
• 23:49
  Mike Masnick: Just, just last week, the attorney general from Missouri, who is just absolutely crazy, said he's starting an investigation to Google because search results put Donald Trump search results further down than Kamala Harris was results, which is nonsense.
• 24:03
  Mike Masnick: you know, so they're claiming all this bias and then like Elon
• 24:06
  Ben Whitelaw: he's seen all
• 24:08
  Mike Masnick: is doing with X Not just goes beyond what they claimed these other platforms were doing.
• 24:13
  Mike Masnick: it's so far beyond it's it's like, he's doing all of that and more and the other platforms weren't.
• 24:20
  Mike Masnick: And yet the narrative for a lot of people is still that all of these other platforms were trying to undermine Trump when they weren't.
• 24:28
  Mike Masnick: and they're sort of giving Elon a pass when he is literally doing way worse.
• 24:33
  Mike Masnick: Then anything they even accused these platforms of.
• 24:35
  Mike Masnick: and it's like, I understand like hypocrisy is just like the nature of politics right now, but it, it is stunning and I feel like it needs to be called out.
• 24:44
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, no, you're right.
• 24:45
  Ben Whitelaw: And, I expect we're going to talk about this at length next week, Mike, if we, if we manage to get to next week and next Friday and who knows.
• 24:54
  Ben Whitelaw: So I reckon we kind of draw a line under that there, but
• 24:57
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 24:57
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 24:58
  Ben Whitelaw: from what you've shared, you know, it is, it is a mess and, you know.
• 25:01
  Ben Whitelaw: For all our listeners who are based in the States and who kind of are voting, you know, my heart goes out to you and hope it all goes well.
• 25:09
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, it's a big week for everyone.
• 25:11
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, okay.
• 25:13
  Ben Whitelaw: So onto a, different story now, but one that's no less.
• 25:18
  Mike Masnick: It's not getting any lighter.
• 25:19
  Ben Whitelaw: No, I'll be honest.
• 25:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 25:21
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, and so we're going to talk a bit now about suicide.
• 25:24
  Ben Whitelaw: So a kind of bit of a warning upfront that, we're going to be talking about references to suicide.
• 25:29
  Ben Whitelaw: So, and many of you would have heard about this story that has been in the news for a couple of weeks now, around character AI, so, we didn't record last week.
• 25:37
  Ben Whitelaw: So we're going to talk a bit about what's happened and also some kind of minor updates have emerged this week.
• 25:43
  Ben Whitelaw: And a little bit about also what I certainly think, you know, why this is interesting and what we should be kind of questioning around this story.
• 25:50
  Ben Whitelaw: So just for those who are catching up, Character AI.
• 25:53
  Ben Whitelaw: if you don't know is a AI tool that allows you to create as a user, kind of digital versions of people.
• 26:01
  Ben Whitelaw: And you can interact with those in the form of a kind of chat bot.
• 26:04
  Ben Whitelaw: There are many, many millions of these characters.
• 26:08
  Ben Whitelaw: You can build your own, you can kind of use others on the platform and it has become very popular.
• 26:14
  Ben Whitelaw: Over the last few years since it was founded.
• 26:16
  Ben Whitelaw: So there's around I think back in January, at least there's 20 odd million users, some 16 million bots.
• 26:22
  Ben Whitelaw: It's a big platform.
• 26:24
  Ben Whitelaw: Uh, it was founded by a couple of folks from Google.
• 26:27
  Ben Whitelaw: Some actually really eminent AI researchers.
• 26:30
  Ben Whitelaw: One who was involved in.
• 26:32
  Ben Whitelaw: The creation of the transformer back in 2017, which is kind of the piece of tech that sits under the LLMs that everyone kind of knows a bit about now.
• 26:39
  Ben Whitelaw: And also the guy who created the kind of initial version of Lambda.
• 26:43
  Ben Whitelaw: is kind of Google's initial AI product.
• 26:45
  Ben Whitelaw: So two really eminent, AI researchers and, and kind of creators.
• 26:50
  Ben Whitelaw: they built character AI this week.
• 26:52
  Ben Whitelaw: It, over the last couple of weeks, it's become known for being involved in a story about, about the death, the suicide of a 14 year old called Sewell Setzer, who developed.
• 27:03
  Ben Whitelaw: Over a period of time, a relationship with one of the bots, um, the New York times reported that the, he would spend a lot of time talking to the bot, telling it its feelings, developing a relationship.
• 27:12
  Ben Whitelaw: It sometimes became romantic.
• 27:14
  Ben Whitelaw: and this bot was actually a kind of character from the game of thrones and, basically became his friend and they developed a kind of friendship and the kind of interaction between the bot and this young teenager ended up causing.
• 27:29
  Ben Whitelaw: Him to commit suicide with his father's gun.
• 27:32
  Ben Whitelaw: And this is obviously a story that has been widely reported because it's very emotive.
• 27:37
  Ben Whitelaw: It's something that everyone can kind of, understand.
• 27:39
  Ben Whitelaw: And there's been a court filing, been brought against Google for that, which I know you kind of have some thoughts around Mike.
• 27:45
  Ben Whitelaw: So before we get into kind of, I guess, what's interesting about this story, like, what did you make of this when, when this story broke and like,
• 27:52
  Mike Masnick: Hey
• 27:52
  Ben Whitelaw: talk a bit about the kind of your thoughts on, on the actual kind of finding itself.
• 27:55
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I mean, obviously very, very tragic situation and horrifying and in all sorts of ways very sad.
• 28:02
  Mike Masnick: it reminded me somewhat, you know, we had had some conversation around this when we talked about the sextortion scams and earlier this year, an article around that.
• 28:13
  Mike Masnick: but, um, Something of a similar reaction in some ways to some of the things I thought about in that story, where, you know, what is very much brushed over in the story is the fact that this kid had access to a gun.
• 28:27
  Mike Masnick: And that seems to just, you know, everybody ignores that part of it.
• 28:31
  Mike Masnick: and yet, over and over again, we have found, and there have been studies going back quite some time, that access to a, gun is one of the leading, reasons why, suicide happens.
• 28:44
  Mike Masnick: and yet everyone brushes over and is quick to blame the technology.
• 28:47
  Mike Masnick: And I'm not saying that the technology is blameless here, but there are other factors and I, I find the lawsuit itself, to be not particularly compelling.
• 28:57
  Mike Masnick: I know some people have read the lawsuit and found it very compelling.
• 29:00
  Mike Masnick: Um, I think the lawsuit is really compelling.
• 29:01
  Mike Masnick: very poorly done.
• 29:02
  Mike Masnick: It clearly is taking things completely out of context.
• 29:07
  Mike Masnick: It is presenting stuff in a way that is, I think, unfairly presented.
• 29:11
  Mike Masnick: And it also, completely brushes over the, The access to the weapon, it sort of says, well, it was stored, in accordance with Florida law, which is like, basically like it's attempt to say like, well, you know, we did fine.
• 29:24
  Mike Masnick: Uh, not that Florida's gun laws are particularly good.
• 29:28
  Mike Masnick: Um, and, um, And it feels like,
• 29:33
  Ben Whitelaw: this always very
• 29:35
  Mike Masnick: very tricky to talk about without sounding callous.
• 29:38
  Mike Masnick: And so I want to be very careful here and again, point out like this is a horrible and tragic situation.
• 29:46
  Mike Masnick: of the issues with, suicide is that it is,, it is reasonable and understandable to look for who do we blame.
• 29:56
  Mike Masnick: when someone decides to, take their own life.
• 29:59
  Mike Masnick: and that is often a really, really complicated thing.
• 30:02
  Mike Masnick: And the easy answers are almost never, there.
• 30:05
  Mike Masnick: and there was a story many years ago that I had covered and made a lot of news around an attempt to, hold a mother legally liable for, a fake account that she had helped create to get back at one of her daughter's, former friends.
• 30:23
  Mike Masnick: Uh, yeah, it was a big story and there was a big back and forth.
• 30:28
  Mike Masnick: And there was this whole attempt to hold the mother liable.
• 30:31
  Mike Masnick: And there were attempts to like, claim she had like violated.
• 30:34
  Mike Masnick: It was over MySpace and using MySpace terms of service.
• 30:37
  Mike Masnick: And there was all of this nonsense.
• 30:39
  Mike Masnick: And one of the points that was driven home to me at that time, by some psychologists who work on, issues around and related to suicide is that any attempt to claim after the fact that you can definitively say, this is why someone decided to end their own life is almost always wrong because it is almost always more complicated than that.
• 31:01
  Mike Masnick: and you run into really serious problems when you can say, we can easily determine what is the cause of the suicide and then hold that.
• 31:10
  Mike Masnick: Entity liable, whether it's a person or whether it's a company, there are potentially some exceptions to that, but I don't think we reached the level here.
• 31:19
  Mike Masnick: You know, the, the, the New York times article about this and the lawsuit indicate that this child was already having some other, it was diagnosed with other, anxiety and depression and was not necessarily.
• 31:34
  Mike Masnick: Fully being treated for those things at the time.
• 31:37
  Mike Masnick: There are things in the lawsuit about how, you know, when he turned 14, he suddenly became more withdrawn from his parents and more focused on other issues.
• 31:46
  Mike Masnick: And that happens to a lot of 14 year olds.
• 31:49
  Mike Masnick: Um, you know, that is part of, teenager hood.
• 31:54
  Mike Masnick: Um, and so how much of it can you actually blame on character AI and how much not, and I I've read some of the transcripts and I think.
• 32:02
  Mike Masnick: You know, some of the transcripts are taken a little bit out of context as well, where they're really trying to make this case that the, AI bot was like encouraging him to hurt himself and, it's not as clear as they make it out to be in the lawsuit and in the article.
• 32:19
  Mike Masnick: And again, like, I don't want to sound heartless about it, and I know that that's how this can come off, but it is one of these situations where it is a lot more complicated and human reality is complicated.
• 32:31
  Mike Masnick: And yes, it is absolutely tragic that he ended up taking his own life.
• 32:36
  Mike Masnick: but I just feel like this rush to sort of see who can we blame for it and how do we sue this company, is misguided.
• 32:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 32:43
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, the transcripts are, very, very impactful.
• 32:47
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, this, this character bot says, he actually says you shouldn't talk like that.
• 32:53
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, when he, when he talks about kind of harming himself and freeing himself from the world, but the bot actually says, don't talk like that.
• 32:59
  Ben Whitelaw: I won't let you hurt yourself.
• 33:00
  Mike Masnick: yes.
• 33:02
  Ben Whitelaw: And so obviously, you know, you can make a case either way, I think, as you're pointing out for this, but I guess, child safety advocates would say that actually the fact that there was the bot was kind of prompting him to even get to that point rather than go to a parent or go to somebody else to do that is, I think, where many people are.
• 33:19
  Ben Whitelaw: compelled by this story.
• 33:20
  Ben Whitelaw: And I want to kind of just spend a bit of time and I think, you know, we talked about that before we could go back and forth on that.
• 33:26
  Ben Whitelaw: I want to spend a bit of time to kind of talking a bit about, you know, some of the other parts of play here, because character AI has obviously subsequently come out and said that it's Doing some work to improve safety on the platform.
• 33:36
  Ben Whitelaw: it has removed a number of bots, a number of the kind of characters.
• 33:41
  Ben Whitelaw: It has taken away the chat of some of the existing bots, which has really upset a number of users who pay for the platform.
• 33:49
  Ben Whitelaw: So their, their whole histories with all of these characters has disappeared.
• 33:52
  Ben Whitelaw: And it's, there's a whole thread on, on Reddit about how upset those folks are.
• 33:56
  Ben Whitelaw: you get the sense of the kind of, character AI is, is doing much about this or is kind of responding in the way that you'd like.
• 34:02
  Ben Whitelaw: And we should say at this point as well, we had, the kind of head of content policy at character AI on the podcast a matter of weeks ago, Catherine Weems, before she joined.
• 34:13
  Ben Whitelaw: The company.
• 34:14
  Ben Whitelaw: So she was co host on the podcast with me before she started her new job.
• 34:19
  Ben Whitelaw: So, you know,
• 34:19
  Mike Masnick: What a time to join.
• 34:21
  Ben Whitelaw: what a time to join.
• 34:22
  Ben Whitelaw: I haven't spoken to her since, she is a friend of everything moderation.
• 34:26
  Ben Whitelaw: I really respect her work.
• 34:27
  Ben Whitelaw: We haven't spoke.
• 34:28
  Ben Whitelaw: So I'm, you know, we're talking about this story, without knowing much of the details,
• 34:32
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, Yeah,
• 34:33
  Ben Whitelaw: in the way that you'd like,
• 34:35
  Mike Masnick: I mean, from what they've said, you know, it'll be interesting to see is actually implemented.
• 34:40
  Mike Masnick: Obviously, you know, Catherine is a good step.
• 34:43
  Mike Masnick: hopefully that leads to real things.
• 34:45
  Mike Masnick: I think, there are clearly, and what does come out of it is that there were clearly more steps that could have been taken particularly in terms of like intervention issues.
• 34:55
  Mike Masnick: Now, this is also tricky in lots of ways.
• 34:57
  Mike Masnick: And it's easy to say in retrospect, well, of course they should have had something that recognizes if anyone starts talking about self harm or suicide in any way, immediately direct them towards help.
• 35:07
  Mike Masnick: That is also tricky in some ways, because one, are a whole bunch of different potentially bad things that could happen.
• 35:14
  Mike Masnick: And how do you, train a bot to handle every bad thing because other bad things are going to slip through.
• 35:20
  Mike Masnick: Though there is the argument that things around self harm and suicide and eating disorders are such obvious ones and such major ones that obviously you should plan ahead for that.
• 35:29
  Mike Masnick: But then there's the question of how do you do that in a way that will be effective?
• 35:33
  Mike Masnick: And this is where there is research being done.
• 35:35
  Mike Masnick: And I don't, I, I've read some of the research and I've spoken to some of the researchers and I've spoken to some of the psychologists who have been, been looking into these things and there is this belief that, one of the most helpful ways of dealing with people who are, are having thoughts of self harm is to meet them where they're at.
• 35:53
  Mike Masnick: And that often involves being very careful about how you suggest interventions, but suggesting interventions.
• 35:58
  Mike Masnick: So, you know, figuring out ways to get people to help, but if you jump in in a way that is seen as, as scolding or, sort of shaming.
• 36:09
  Mike Masnick: people.
• 36:09
  Mike Masnick: That doesn't always help.
• 36:10
  Mike Masnick: Obviously, like, different people are different.
• 36:12
  Mike Masnick: And so, some of that is true, too.
• 36:14
  Mike Masnick: Like, different people react different ways to different kinds of interventions.
• 36:17
  Mike Masnick: And so, figuring out a way to, and I've, I had heard an interview with, somebody who runs a different, a, a competitor to Character AI, who was talking about, the potential of there being problems if the intervention is done in an inauthentic way, that it just turns people off.
• 36:34
  Mike Masnick: you can look at it in different ways.
• 36:35
  Mike Masnick: Some people say, well, there's just, you know, concerned about turning people off from the product and losing business or whatever, but there is also the thing of if the intervention is done poorly, it just drives people away, not towards help, but potentially in the other direction, figuring out how to do interventions well is incredibly important
• 36:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 36:53
  Mike Masnick: AI is getting there now.
• 36:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I think you're right.
• 36:58
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, I want to talk a bit about other interventions outside of the ones that we we use to kind of stop a user from becoming unsafe.
• 37:07
  Ben Whitelaw: I want when I was reading this story, Mike, I was thinking about the moments that could have.
• 37:13
  Ben Whitelaw: The company could have avoided this situation, right?
• 37:15
  Ben Whitelaw: And there's three that come to mind.
• 37:17
  Ben Whitelaw: I just want to kind of briefly talk to you and then get your thoughts.
• 37:20
  Ben Whitelaw: So, so the first is like, Character AI was founded in 2021 by these two Google Googlers, um, who left the company because they actually said they didn't think that the company was capable of doing anything fun, with AI.
• 37:35
  Ben Whitelaw: Okay.
• 37:35
  Ben Whitelaw: So it's kind of, they've, got funding to do something fun that is Character AI.
• 37:38
  Ben Whitelaw: It took them over two years to hire somebody.
• 37:41
  Ben Whitelaw: who did trust and safety.
• 37:42
  Ben Whitelaw: that's the person who, who brought Catherine in.
• 37:45
  Ben Whitelaw: And so the first thing for me is like, why did it take so long?
• 37:47
  Ben Whitelaw: Why did it take over two years, they had more than 20 million users.
• 37:52
  Ben Whitelaw: They had more than 60 million bots.
• 37:54
  Ben Whitelaw: There must've been some trust and safety issues that came up where somebody was probably having to kind of, do it in addition to their actual job.
• 38:01
  Ben Whitelaw: That for me is like chance for intervention.
• 38:03
  Ben Whitelaw: Number one.
• 38:04
  Ben Whitelaw: The second is when.
• 38:06
  Ben Whitelaw: It received investment and actually, and, and Dresden Horowitz invested in, in March, 2023.
• 38:11
  Ben Whitelaw: So kind of 18 months ago, roughly.
• 38:14
  Ben Whitelaw: and it got me thinking like there must've been some kind of due diligence about that purchase and the input about the investment, sorry.
• 38:20
  Ben Whitelaw: And, you know, I would have loved the kind of legal firm, involved in that or parties on either side to, have some sort of questions about what safety measures are in place.
• 38:30
  Ben Whitelaw: If we're going to kind of invest in this company, can we be sure that it's not going to cause us or the users who we are essentially kind of investing in any, undue harms that's number two.
• 38:40
  Ben Whitelaw: And then the third one is actually when, alphabet slash Google, semi acquired slash invested, literally three months ago.
• 38:49
  Ben Whitelaw: So they, they, they basically bought back the character AI team, the two Googlers who used to work at the company.
• 38:55
  Ben Whitelaw: as we've seen a number of.
• 38:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Tech platforms do with other smaller startups.
• 38:59
  Ben Whitelaw: we would know that there was a legal advisory firm involved in that.
• 39:02
  Ben Whitelaw: Why was the question not asked about, is this team staffed up?
• 39:07
  Ben Whitelaw: Do we have the necessary skills and expertise when it comes to trust and safety for this to be responsible acquisition, whatever you want to call it?
• 39:15
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, those are three moments where I just think like, More could have been done.
• 39:19
  Ben Whitelaw: There could have been more questions asked.
• 39:22
  Ben Whitelaw: And unfortunately the incentives are not in place for any of those parties to really do that.
• 39:26
  Ben Whitelaw: But it just seems like, from an investment perspective, from a founder perspective, from, A bigger company acquiring a smaller company perspective.
• 39:34
  Ben Whitelaw: Those are the people who get the chance to make big calls about trust and safety.
• 39:40
  Ben Whitelaw: And then the outcomes of that trickle down to trust and safety professionals, some of whom are listening to this podcast, and then they're having to deal with the consequences of that.
• 39:49
  Ben Whitelaw: is that an unfair kind of characterization?
• 39:50
  Ben Whitelaw: Is it, is it a bit pie in the sky to presume that those questions should have been asked?
• 39:54
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I think this this is a much larger question, and it has to do with kind of like how the industry views trust and safety.
• 40:01
  Mike Masnick: and, the argument that I've been making for years is that they need to view trust and safety as a marketing thing in terms of making a platform better.
• 40:09
  Mike Masnick: Because that's how you do.
• 40:10
  Mike Masnick: That's how you avoid problems like this.
• 40:12
  Mike Masnick: That's how you don't get the awful headlines.
• 40:14
  Mike Masnick: You don't get the lawsuits, and you have just a better platform that people enjoy using more and more.
• 40:19
  Mike Masnick: Unfortunately, in part because of what we're talking about in the first part, the attacks on trust and safety as if it is this awful, like, paternalistic, you know, nanny state kind of thing,
• 40:30
  Ben Whitelaw: Compliance function,
• 40:31
  Mike Masnick: Compliance function, Exactly.
• 40:33
  Mike Masnick: It becomes a selfless thing.
• 40:34
  Mike Masnick: And you mentioned Andreessen Horowitz invested in character AI.
• 40:38
  Mike Masnick: Mark Andreessen last year wrote this big tech optimist manifesto, which included the line that trust and safety is the enemy of progress.
• 40:48
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 40:49
  Mike Masnick: So no, they don't care.
• 40:50
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 40:50
  Mike Masnick: I mean, Mark Andreessen has made it 100 percent clear that he thinks trust and safety is anti progress.
• 40:56
  Ben Whitelaw: And how, how much do you think that would have shaped a startup's kind of approach to trust and safety
• 41:00
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 41:01
  Mike Masnick: Oh, absolutely.
• 41:02
  Mike Masnick: You know, and, and, like a lot of people look up Mark and, I'm.
• 41:07
  Mike Masnick: Sort of stunned because, you know, I've, don't know Mark well, but I've, I've interacted with him a few times.
• 41:12
  Mike Masnick: And historically he struck me as much more thoughtful on this stuff.
• 41:16
  Mike Masnick: He is still on the board of MEDA.
• 41:18
  Mike Masnick: You know, he has to have been exposed to the necessity and importance of trust and safety.
• 41:24
  Mike Masnick: and yet he seems to have gone in the other direction and really dug into this idea that trust and safety is this like crazy woke idea that is, is problematic.
• 41:35
  Mike Masnick: and, I had written a response to his tech optimist manifesto last year, where I sort of pointed it out, like, you have to have a long term view and you have to think about.
• 41:46
  Mike Masnick: if you want to be tech optimist, you don't want to blow up the world, right?
• 41:50
  Mike Masnick: You don't want to destroy society in the process.
• 41:52
  Mike Masnick: And so taking a few steps earlier on to say, how do we develop these things safely?
• 41:58
  Mike Masnick: How do we not have horrible things happen that lead to lawsuits and regulation and compliance and, and horrible headlines is you take.
• 42:07
  Mike Masnick: Take some, put some effort up front to doing these things more carefully.
• 42:11
  Mike Masnick: You're not going to get everything right.
• 42:13
  Mike Masnick: There are always going to be mistakes that come through and there are going to be problems along the way, but actually make a real effort up front and recognize that trust and safety up top saves you from all of these problems down below.
• 42:26
  Mike Masnick: And, and, you know, he's in his own world and, that filters down.
• 42:29
  Mike Masnick: as much as people look up to Elon Musk, they also look up to Mark Andreessen.
• 42:33
  Mike Masnick: Both of them are seen as sort of leading lights in what they say among entrepreneurs and engineers right now is, is seen as gospel.
• 42:40
  Mike Masnick: and that can be really problematic.
• 42:42
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I mean the, yeah, the interventions that you mapped out there in terms of making it harder for users to get them in a situation where they're unsafe, I think is one thing I'd like to see more interventions in, for companies as well.
• 42:55
  Ben Whitelaw: Like, I don't think it should be all about users.
• 42:57
  Ben Whitelaw: And I think a combination of the two is necessary if we're to avoid situations like this.
• 43:02
  Ben Whitelaw: So, I mean, I think.
• 43:03
  Ben Whitelaw: we probably could do a few, add a few more stories to today's episode, Mike, but I think we probably, upset our listeners quite frankly enough this week, we've probably exacerbated the dread they feel about next
• 43:15
  Mike Masnick: Yeah,
• 43:16
  Ben Whitelaw: already.
• 43:17
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, so I, I feel like, we should kind of
• 43:19
  Mike Masnick: yeah, we'll see.
• 43:20
  Mike Masnick: I mean, I hope, I hope everything, turns out well in the next week and maybe we can revisit some of the other stories we had wanted to cover because I think there were, we had some other interesting stories, but we, you know, these ones we sort of really had to go deep on this week
• 43:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 43:32
  Mike Masnick: you know, they're tough stories.
• 43:34
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 43:34
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, so yeah, sorry, folks, if you've, listened to the podcast and you're, your head is now as low as Mike's was at the start of the episode and, your hands are over your eyes as well, but
• 43:44
  Mike Masnick: But I will say, I will say as, as a nice segue again, that the bonus chat that we have after this is talking about, making the case for trust and safety.
• 43:54
  Mike Masnick: And, and a lot of what we talked about today in this episode was really about why, companies need to understand the, the business case for trust and safety, the long term benefits of trust and safety.
• 44:04
  Mike Masnick: And so, I think the conversation that we have after this gets at that.
• 44:08
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah, you're listening now to Dom Sparks and David Elliott, the director of trust and safety.
• 44:12
  Ben Whitelaw: Uh, EMEA for concentrics and the head of technology who do a really good job of unpacking that.
• 44:17
  Ben Whitelaw: so hopefully if we haven't, left you with much hope, I hope they do.
• 44:31
  Ben Whitelaw: David, Dom, first of all, thanks very much for being on control or speech.
• 44:34
  Ben Whitelaw: It's great to have you here.
• 44:36
  Ben Whitelaw: Appreciate you making the time.
• 44:37
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah, so let's dive straight into the conversation.
• 44:39
  Ben Whitelaw: I want to really just understand a bit more about how you're thinking about return on investment of trust and safety, to kind of set the scene.
• 44:46
  Ben Whitelaw: We've, we've seen that there's a growing conversation around ROI and trust and safety over the last few years as platforms have.
• 44:52
  Ben Whitelaw: assessed budgets, cut staff, actually a trust con, was actually one of the most over subscribed sessions.
• 44:58
  Ben Whitelaw: So this is a really timely topic to be diving into.
• 45:01
  Ben Whitelaw: Let's start by how, how you're thinking about it and why the industry should be thinking about it more.
• 45:05
  Dom Sparkes: So for me, within my role at Concentrix, you know, solutions is, is what I do every day for our client.
• 45:12
  Dom Sparkes: And we'd all love it that trust and safety just is done for the right reasons.
• 45:17
  Dom Sparkes: it needs to be there obviously for, child safety, for user safety, et cetera.
• 45:21
  Dom Sparkes: But there's a finance person somewhere along the line that needs to justify any kind of spend.
• 45:25
  Dom Sparkes: So for me over the last, Blimey, 20 years of being in trust and safety.
• 45:29
  Dom Sparkes: This has been a topic that has, cropped up probably on a weekly basis.
• 45:33
  Dom Sparkes: For a lot of organizations, I think these days, I think there needs to be a realization that, yeah, trust and safety has to be done in some shape or form.
• 45:40
  Dom Sparkes: Pretty much every organization needs trust and safety in some shape or form, be it large or small.
• 45:45
  Dom Sparkes: And I think increasingly the ROI of that, isn't in perfect science.
• 45:50
  Dom Sparkes: as we know that there's a lovely, beautiful, beautiful Phrase in marketing.
• 45:52
  Dom Sparkes: I think it was John Warner maker.
• 45:54
  Dom Sparkes: I think a hundred years ago said half the money I spend on my advertising is wasted.
• 45:58
  Dom Sparkes: I just don't know which half.
• 46:00
  Dom Sparkes: And I think that that quote sort of possibly applies to certain trust and safety elements.
• 46:05
  Dom Sparkes: so I think it's really important.
• 46:06
  Dom Sparkes: So you've got the obvious ROI in terms of things like growing users through having better services, Those trust and safety ROI benefits that can improve profit.
• 46:16
  Dom Sparkes: You've got those that are more cost avoidant, you know, making sure there's not brand reputation issues, regulatory fines, and those sorts of things, but the level of which they can be measured is really difficult.
• 46:27
  Dom Sparkes: And I think we need a collective conversation with organizations within industry to work out what They are for different people.
• 46:33
  Dom Sparkes: There isn't one answer.
• 46:34
  Dom Sparkes: You know, I think we'd love to have one.
• 46:36
  Dom Sparkes: This is the benefit of, trust and safety ROI.
• 46:39
  Dom Sparkes: And I have seen a, uh, a guy at Adavinta, created a metric, but I don't think it can be applied to every single.
• 46:46
  Dom Sparkes: So for me, this is a really important topic to help create better solutions for our clients, for our clients to understand what they're buying, how they buy it, how they use it.
• 46:55
  Dom Sparkes: and increasingly you use those benefits and ROI metrics across organizations as well, not just within the department.
• 47:02
  Ben Whitelaw: Hmm.
• 47:02
  Ben Whitelaw: Interesting.
• 47:03
  Ben Whitelaw: We'll come back to that, I think.
• 47:04
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, David, from a technology perspective, how do you think about ROI?
• 47:07
  Ben Whitelaw: How does ROI, how can it be baked into the kind of technology services, that platforms and other intermediaries use?
• 47:14
  David Elliott: I dare say it might even be easier to justify ROI when you bring technology into the conversation.
• 47:20
  David Elliott: Companies that do have not just a regulatory obligation to ensure that trust and safety is, part of their culture.
• 47:30
  David Elliott: Operating a model of, say, content moderators to ensure that their platforms are clean they're not destroyed by bad actors.
• 47:36
  David Elliott: I'm sure they can do that with people, but that's going to be very costly not necessarily as effective as using technology.
• 47:42
  David Elliott: I mean, I know that's bloody obvious, but the explosion of Gen AI the bad actors have a wider army of weapons now to bypass and get past humans and get their narrative misinformation, disinformation, and new types of content that may not be hashed, for example.
• 48:00
  David Elliott: And then all of a sudden have an explosion new HC SAM on a platform.
• 48:04
  David Elliott: So the technology, you can justify as, a weapon against bad actors weapons, makes sense.
• 48:10
  Ben Whitelaw: So in terms of the different types of platforms that are out there, we've got obviously social platforms, marketplaces, dating apps, is there a kind of single way that, that we can be thinking about ROI or do different platforms have to think differently about that, Don, why don't you have a go at that first?
• 48:26
  Dom Sparkes: I think it would be dangerous if people started thinking about it in the same way.
• 48:29
  Dom Sparkes: Um, I think that could lead people down the wrong path because it's got to be dependent on, their goals.
• 48:36
  Dom Sparkes: obviously for certain platforms, you mentioned dating there, obviously there's a huge safety component without a doubt.
• 48:41
  Dom Sparkes: And that's, that needs to be looked after and that should be measured and monitored.
• 48:45
  Dom Sparkes: it's always harder for platforms starting or trying to create ROI when they haven't done anything at all.
• 48:52
  Dom Sparkes: So from day one, that's really hard.
• 48:53
  Dom Sparkes: So I think if you're looking to create ROI metrics, mix and match the word ROI with benefits is the first thing I'd say.
• 49:02
  Dom Sparkes: and for those industries to then start looking at, well, what is that for them?
• 49:06
  Dom Sparkes: What can help their services?
• 49:07
  Dom Sparkes: What creates a safe environment for their users, safe environments, without doubt, improve businesses and improve bottom lines.
• 49:14
  Dom Sparkes: How provable that is will take time.
• 49:17
  Dom Sparkes: Because you need something to compare against, but yeah, I don't believe any one metric or selection of industry standards can necessarily help us.
• 49:26
  Dom Sparkes: That said, a collection of different things that could be applied and measured in different ways and different approaches can be incredibly useful.
• 49:36
  Dom Sparkes: across that dating or gaming or retailers.
• 49:39
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and can you give a kind of good example of a platform that, that's thinking about ROI or, or things that you've, you've really thought, okay, this, company, this, platform, this, this org has a clear sense of how they want to position ROI within your'cause.
• 49:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Anything you've seen that, strikes you?
• 49:54
  Ben Whitelaw: Mm-Hmm.
• 49:55
  Dom Sparkes: Well, I have, I have seen one recently.
• 49:56
  Dom Sparkes: It's more on the vendor side, actually, rather than an actual platform.
• 50:00
  Dom Sparkes: So yeah, a company called Pasabi who do, um, fraud and review detection.
• 50:05
  Dom Sparkes: and they have created a rather lovely model for working out.
• 50:09
  Dom Sparkes: The ROI on application fraud.
• 50:11
  Dom Sparkes: So if you use their platform, and I'm sure this would apply for other similar platforms as well.
• 50:15
  Dom Sparkes: If you use their platform, then the amount it can save in terms of, cost of fraud, it can show that by the investment you make in them, what it can do on the platform, uh, and then what that can save you,
• 50:26
  Ben Whitelaw: Mm.
• 50:27
  Dom Sparkes: that sort of stuff, that's really clear, and it's probably easier for tech providers to do ROI than, than service providers, as
• 50:34
  Ben Whitelaw: David, any other examples that come to mind?
• 50:37
  David Elliott: I do like Sabis, that Dom's example there and what they're doing in the marketplace, world and trying to, uh, assign a metric in terms of ROI when it comes to fraud is interesting.
• 50:50
  David Elliott: there are, other companies, uh, Arwin, spring to mind and they have as part of their standard solution, I think, develop the impact of bad actors on your own social media channels.
• 51:00
  David Elliott: And the impact that has on your reputation, and then that can be defined by a monetary value and a reputation value, they have built in solutions like that into their social media moderation solution.
• 51:11
  David Elliott: so they spring to mind, there's, players now, I don't know if you've seen in the past week.
• 51:17
  David Elliott: they've developed that, appeals board and for Europe, that would be driven out of Dublin, a slightly different conversation, but one could argue that there will be cost savings in terms of what we're doing in terms of what they're doing with that appeals board.
• 51:31
  David Elliott: Eradicating red tape and bureaucracy and getting to the cause of user frustration quicker and for a nominal fee, then that will have a positive impact on.
• 51:43
  David Elliott: The social media channels that are signed up for initially Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to make those platforms that bit more transparent, easier to use for the user, get rid of those cases and the impact that that has on cost and resources quicker and that will have a positive impact on cause, which can be justified with a monetary value, which equates to a positive or a Y And those 2 examples spring to mind.
• 52:05
  David Elliott: I,
• 52:07
  Ben Whitelaw: obviously it goes back to your point about regulation being often the driver of, further focus on ROI and platforms being more careful with how they're spending their resources being clear on what outcomes they're driving, how can businesses and people listening to the podcast, folks who are, are based in platforms, or other intermediaries who were making a case to their bosses for investment, how would you advise that They use kind of ROI metrics to be more compelling in doing so.
• 52:35
  Ben Whitelaw: What would you say to them?
• 52:35
  Ben Whitelaw: And you can use your own experience here.
• 52:37
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm sure you've both done it concentrics and other places of work too.
• 52:41
  Ben Whitelaw: Hmm.
• 52:41
  David Elliott: I'm working on a case at the moment, very manual, exercise of, user generated content on social media channels for.
• 52:50
  David Elliott: Or an NGO, essentially what they're doing is any case of racism or a bad actor acting improper on the own social media channels is manually moderated by a human.
• 53:01
  David Elliott: And I just think that this NGO, they haven't invested the time and effort into looking whether or not this.
• 53:07
  David Elliott: Sort of process can be automated and the mind boggles that in today's age that we live in a technology that someone hasn't looked into this and that's costing them a fortune.
• 53:16
  David Elliott: These are pretty highly scaled individuals that could be working on more paying activities outside of manual moderation when 99 percent of what they're moderating could be outsourced to a platform.
• 53:30
  David Elliott: their time is then freed up to do other payload activities.
• 53:34
  David Elliott: I mean, if that isn't a case in point that okay, the day goes live, you've got to set up fee.
• 53:39
  David Elliott: You've got a license fee and for the solution they use, but in truth, you look at the cost saving in.
• 53:47
  David Elliott: 6 months time, maybe even before that, very quickly, you see the return on investment of embracing a piece of technology and for very obvious, content that should be moderated.
• 53:59
  David Elliott: in mind, Dom and I come from a BPO, a CX company, we live by bums on seats, and that's essentially, for want of a better way of putting it, I hope I don't get sacked for this, but that's essentially our product.
• 54:11
  David Elliott: But that doesn't mean that there isn't a need for humans to be involved, even when technology is able to automate 99 percent of the moderation needs for a platform or for an NGO in this case.
• 54:25
  David Elliott: And that 1 percent is the tough part.
• 54:28
  David Elliott: Bit, that's moderation that requires a human nuance and the understanding of colloquialisms, empathy language, for example, evolves.
• 54:37
  David Elliott: We need people to understand the new terms that are come up to the fore of that day.
• 54:42
  David Elliott: And there will always be, people involved in the moderations.
• 54:46
  David Elliott: piece will always be, uh, unfortunately, the term I use is, you know, I hate it.
• 54:50
  David Elliott: A cost, a human cost, uh, involved in moderation and technology will only do so, so much.
• 54:57
  David Elliott: but the human, the loop, element will remain, I think.
• 55:00
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 55:01
  Ben Whitelaw: So, so the kind of advice there is to review almost all processes that are existing right now to see if you can a deeper ROI, a clearer ROI.
• 55:10
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, which I think is a good one.
• 55:11
  Ben Whitelaw: You never, never stand still really.
• 55:13
  Ben Whitelaw: Dom, what, what do you think?
• 55:14
  Ben Whitelaw: Interesting.
• 55:15
  Dom Sparkes: I've got, um, a slightly different case where looking at helping a client with their trust and safety journey journey.
• 55:22
  Dom Sparkes: and actually we're not starting with the trust and safety department with starting elsewhere.
• 55:27
  Dom Sparkes: So if you imagine TNS is a red thread throughout this whole organization, you know, how can, or how does.
• 55:33
  Dom Sparkes: Yeah.
• 55:33
  Dom Sparkes: TNS impact the legal department.
• 55:36
  Dom Sparkes: How does it impact it?
• 55:37
  Dom Sparkes: How does it impact wellbeing and looking at all those bits first before looking at the actual trust and safety department.
• 55:43
  Dom Sparkes: And I think part of that is to, we'll do a number of things.
• 55:46
  Dom Sparkes: Look at those synergies, where can we make sure their value is placed across the organizational chain?
• 55:52
  Dom Sparkes: Hopefully that will bring TNS to life a little bit within the organization.
• 55:56
  Dom Sparkes: So, you know, to be able to say to the legal department, if we do this right, you'll have less work to do and and less risk.
• 56:02
  Dom Sparkes: That should be a tick.
• 56:03
  Dom Sparkes: If we can get it right for it, there's gonna be better security.
• 56:06
  Dom Sparkes: Tick.
• 56:07
  Dom Sparkes: If on the wellbeing side, you know, the teams are really well looked after tick, and then after that, well how are we gonna do it in terms of the moderation, that sort of stuff, because that's relatively easy,
• 56:16
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 56:17
  Dom Sparkes: and if you can get buy-in from all those other departments first.
• 56:20
  Dom Sparkes: it's almost much easier to buy TNS, is often considered like an insurance.
• 56:25
  Dom Sparkes: No one wants to pay for insurance, but we have to.
• 56:28
  Dom Sparkes: So how can we make it drive more value from day one?
• 56:30
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 56:31
  Ben Whitelaw: Okay.
• 56:31
  Ben Whitelaw: So thinking about the different kind of matrix of metrics that you can draw upon from across the organization as part of that ROI case, good stuff.
• 56:38
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, you have this workshop coming up.
• 56:40
  Ben Whitelaw: What is it you want, people to take away from that?
• 56:43
  Ben Whitelaw: in a nutshell, what's the reason for, coming along in Amsterdam chatting about this
• 56:48
  Dom Sparkes: Or would love to garner the room's collective intelligence to bring together different viewpoints and share those with different people.
• 56:55
  Dom Sparkes: So if there's people in the room, you know, from the dating industry, they're going to have certain metrics, definitions, benefits that the retail industry could benefit from.
• 57:03
  Dom Sparkes: And likewise, the other way around.
• 57:05
  Dom Sparkes: I think, like I said earlier on, I don't think one metric exists or should exist actually, it's probably more and more.
• 57:12
  Dom Sparkes: So I would love people to walk away and be able to go back to their organizations, be able to sell interest and safety a little bit more confidently, or if they're a vendor to be able to have better cases to sell their services to their, to potential clients.
• 57:25
  Ben Whitelaw: brilliant, I think it's a great point to end today, Dom, David.
• 57:29
  Ben Whitelaw: Thanks so much for your time.
• 57:30
  Ben Whitelaw: thanks for sharing your, those cases and your knowledge today.
• 57:33
  Ben Whitelaw: It's been great to have you here.
• 57:34
  Ben Whitelaw: And, uh, thanks for taking part of Control Alt Speech.
• 57:37
  Dom Sparkes: Thank you.
• 57:37
  David Elliott: Thank you.
• 57:40
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• 57:43
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• 57:47
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• 57:54
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• 57:56
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• 57:57
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