Ben Whitelaw: 0:08

Hello and welcome to Control Alt Speech, what is normally your weekly roundup of the major stories about online speech, content moderation, and internet regulation. you'll notice that there is no prompt as we usually start each episode with, and. That's because we're taking a break from the usual news roundup to bring you some special behind the scenes type episodes to listen to over the month of August when Mike and I are doing lots of traveling and taking a bit of a break from the podcast. We've got some really fun ideas coming, including an episode in which we answer questions from you, our listeners. But today we're gonna discuss the future of the podcast. How we keep it going. And to be honest, just talk a bit about some stuff we're thinking about and kicking around, about the podcast what it's been like to do over the last 18 months. I'm Ben Whitelaw. I'm the founder and editor of Everything in Moderation, and I'm with Mike Masnick, my trustee partner in crime who is just back from Trust Con

Mike Masnick: 1:03

yes. We are giving some evidence of when we are recording this.

Ben Whitelaw: 1:06

Yeah, true, true. Um, yeah, you've just had a, a kind of big few days in which you took controlled speech to the stage in front of real people. Took about how that was first of all.

Mike Masnick: 1:17

Yeah, it was great. Uh, hopefully if you're listening to this, that means you will have already listened to, the live version of Control Alt speech, which was a ton of fun as it was last year, though. slightly less fun as I warned, because Ben, you were not there to guide us, and I had to do the guiding and I am less good of a guide.

Ben Whitelaw: 1:37

you are more of an expert. Let's be honest. You, you, you are better at being a asked questions, I would say, Mike. Um, but did you get any heckling? That's my,

Mike Masnick: 1:44

Yeah, so, so we asked for heckling. We did get one, one person, did sort of yell out a heckle, which I don't think you can hear on the recording. I think I responded to it and was just like, yeah, great. You know, or whatever. But it was because we, we were sort of like, we mentioned at the beginning you can heckle, and then at one point I think I called out like, Hey, you know, we are expected more heckling, and if I remember correctly, we closed with like next year. Please come, prepared with some heckles.'cause,'cause you know, I don't know, it's like the, trust and safety audience apparently is less willing to heckle. They're, too kind.

Ben Whitelaw: 2:18

Yeah, they're a polite bunch. They're a

Mike Masnick: 2:20

Yeah. They, they are a really, really polite bunch. Uh.

Ben Whitelaw: 2:22

Yeah, they are. but, you know, trust Con is one of the, is the biggest event for trust and safety professionals. some of our listeners will have attended. and, you know, we were lucky enough to put up on screen at the start of the conference, right? So Control Alt Speeches, logo was on

Mike Masnick: 2:38

center. Yeah. No,

Ben Whitelaw: 2:39

kind of flagged as a, as a must listen

Mike Masnick: 2:41

Yeah, it was great. It was the opening plenary session, Charlotte Wilner, who is, a wonderful person in the world of trust and safety. Everybody in trust and safety knows her. She runs the Trust and Safety Professionals Association Trust and Safety Foundation. And she was just talking about, you know, what has happened over this was the fourth trust con, and was talking about how the, entire profession has changed, over time and put up a slide with sort of evidence of it becoming a more known and accepted profession and, giving examples of where it is showing up. And it was great because. That slide had control, alt speech, front and center as we have a podcast all about the trust and safety world. It also, I think between you and I, Ben, we represented about half of that slide

Ben Whitelaw: 3:25

Oh

Mike Masnick: 3:25

how the trust and safety field is. Becoming a thing because it had, two of my games, the, the moderator Mayhem and Trusted Safety Tycoon were on that slide. And then everything in moderation was on that slide as well. So your newsletter, my games, our podcast. there were, I, I can't remember exactly. I have a, in my photo roll, I have a picture of it, but there were, you know, about, eight or nine, images on the slide. There was like. Cornell Tech has a trust and safety stuff, roost, which is the open source trust and safety stuff that we've talked about, on that slide. But, you and I, apparently it had a fair bit to do with, with trust and safety, uh, being a respected profession out there. And so that was very gratifying

Ben Whitelaw: 4:07

And, and certainly, you know, very deserving, I think of, our attention. you know, as we say every week, it's a really fascinating area. It's an industry that's growing all the time. it's, important to, to more members of the general public than actually understand or realize that. And so, that's really good to see and I'm really glad to be kind of part of, that ecosystem with, the newsletter in the podcast. I think Trust Con and, That moment of you being on stage and doing a live recording is, partly why we're doing this recording today. Right? You know, taking stock as to where we've come and where we're going with the podcast. for folks who don't know, control, Ork speech actually started as an idea, as a conversation. Actually that, emanated from Trust Con. Two years ago, Mike and I had exchanged emails. in the past. We knew of each other's work, miso more than him. Uh, naturally. I,

Mike Masnick: 4:58

I was aware of your work.

Ben Whitelaw: 5:01

um, but you know, we, we hadn't met before and yet we were introduced, by Alice Hunsberger. Who actually writes for everything in moderation now at a drinks at Trust Con. And we had essentially had this same idea for a podcast, which was to do a weekly roundup of the major stories in online speech. And so this is a really kind of, I think, a good time take stock and to think about what we've done so far and where we're going. and we figured rather than just talk about it ourselves, we would explain to listeners how that works and, to kind of reflect on it a bit, not least because. One of the kinda major sources of funding that we've had to date is kind of actually elapsing. It's kind of, we, we've run out of a pot of cash basically, that we had to pilot the podcast. And so again, talking about the, the financial sustainability of the podcast, I think makes a lot of sense with

Mike Masnick: 5:49

Yeah. And yeah, I mean, just to be clear, we, we basically got funding that, got us to a point that was a year and a half's worth of podcasts. And we're about a year and a half in, and we're sort of figuring out, you know, we obviously have, received lots of support and lots of love, but. Figuring how do we continue to make the podcast Sustainable is something that is important to us and we think is important to our regular listeners. And so we want to be really open about how we're thinking about it and where hopefully some of our listeners might be able to help.

Ben Whitelaw: 6:16

Yeah. And many of those listeners are, are new, right? you know, people would've found us over the course of the last 18 months. We did do, a bit of an explanation of how we wanted to sustain the podcast. And I think in episode three, We explained how sponsorship would work and we had a, our first, sponsor in the launch episode and we've had a few sponsors since, but actually we haven't kind of returned to that topic since then because we've just been too busy analyzing the many, many stories each week that, cross our paths. so this again feels like a good time to do so. but let's kind of go back a second, Mike, and just talk about like what we see as the vision for the podcast and like why we decided to do it in the first place. And like maybe let's kind of replay that conversation we had in that bar where you and I had the same idea. Um, because I think, I think that's, it's more important than it was even 18 months ago.

Mike Masnick: 7:03

Yeah. and it's, it's also somewhat evolved, I think in the last 18 months as well, or the last two, two to three years. You know. I mean, my take on it and I'm sort of curious where your, thinking is as well is that, there's a lot happening in the world of, the internet online speech and obviously. the policy side, but also the way the companies are, acting and thinking about these things and, and how do you build an internet service that people actually want to use and that they feel safe using. And it was one of those areas that, I had found in, in my work over the last few decades that was, it touched so many people. I mean, everybody uses the internet and everybody uses these services and so many people, Are very confused and just have no idea about how this works and the idea of trust and safety or even just the concepts of, online speech the fact that there are these intermediary companies in there and that there are attempts to regulate the internet and how these things work and people don't really understand the background. And, you know, we're certainly seeing this. Across, you know, I mean, I spent a lot of time complaining about the media and, policymakers, so we see that. But, but just in the, in the general world, people, they use these products but they don't understand how they get made and how they work and they often assume things that weren't true. And the more that. I thought the more that we could do to, explain that world in a way that, makes sense and, and explains the complexity. You know, I think there is this problem that we live in this society now where. Everything wants to be simplified, right? Everyone, you know, wants the short bites, the quick explanation, the easy understanding of how things work. And yet this is a really, really complex world with, as I say, over and over again, tremendous trade-offs where there is no good answer. and this is a Dave Wilner line that I'm stealing. There's only like, the least worst answers, like, how do you figure out the least worst answers? But, I have this. This hope that we can explain things in a way that allows people to embrace the complexity and allows people to embrace the trade-offs and recognize that it's not, that when something happens on the internet that is bad, that it is necessarily an evil decision by a horrible person. There are evil decisions by horrible people. Like don't wanna

Ben Whitelaw: 9:22

We've talked about a few of them on the

Mike Masnick: 9:24

Yes. Yeah. But like a lot of it is, about the sort of incentives that are out there and the, the nature of things and the nature of humanity and just the structure of these things. And if we can explore that in a way that allows people to actually think through these things and recognize like, okay, there are different trade offs, and maybe I would've done it differently, but this wasn't necessarily because of. Stupidity or, ill intent. But you know, that, that there are really, really difficult choices being made here and that people can think through and, and that actually, I hope, gets people to a point where then maybe people can think of more creative and better ways to deal with things and better ways to make the internet safer and a better place for everybody, that works, better. And, podcasting as a format, I think is such. A good way to actually deal with complexity because, you know, we can have this conversation, we can go back and forth and you can say, but this, but that and, for some reason in this era of like TikTok, short videos, podcasting has become this thing that people are able to listen to long. back and forth conversations in a way that, is really enlightening. it just feels like a really good format to have these discussions. And I feel like if you look at, you know, over the 18 months that we've done this, we've been very successful in, being able to get out there and get these ideas out there in a way that, influences the conversation and has people thinking and has people thinking more deeply about these things.

Ben Whitelaw: 10:46

Yeah, I think you're right. I mean. We are lucky to have kind of built up this, this audience. I actually had no idea how many people would listen to us talking through these issues, to be honest, uh, when we started. but you know, we've had almost 700,000 downloads in 18 months, which, you know, is, as far as podcasts go is, pretty down. Good. You know, like a lot of podcasts don't get a lot of listens.

Mike Masnick: 11:08

Yeah, I mean, I think we, we got a notification from our podcast hosting company saying that we were in the top something percent, I forget, was it top 5% or top 2%? It was, way up there. by most measures in terms of listenership, we are more listened to than, than most podcasts out there.

Ben Whitelaw: 11:27

That's, that's really important, right? It's again, like you say, to bring of certain ideas and a certain type of discussion to a broader audience, and I think that's, you know, you, the way you've explained how you thought about it, I is really interesting because I think I came at it from a slightly different perspective and I think the combination of our two like approaches maybe and, and the, the beauty of tech debt and the beauty of everything in moderation. Has meant we kind of have combined their USPS in a way. My initial thought was like, for the people doing this work week in, week out for the kind of like trust and safety professionals who I got to know, basically after doing some freelance work about four or five years ago, my background is in newsrooms, but I'd ran a comment moderation team. So I'd seen on a very small scale for like this one news website in this very small kind of market where everything was like, relatively well behaved in the grand scheme of things. I'd seen the complexities and the challenges of that. In some ways, you know, I was kind of, operating in, in the same way as people at big tech companies were, but just at a very small scale. And I thought, God, if I'm finding it hard, you know, these folks at big tech companies and, and even the medium sized ones, they must also be really struggling. And I was able to kind of reach out and talk to a few of them for, a piece of work. And lo and behold, they felt very isolated. they struggled to sell in ideas in the companies because, hey, safety is not very sexy, particularly if it runs counter to, growth metrics or, shareholder price. and you know, people were kind of doing the right thing a lot of the time, but like you say. Running up against incentives that meant that they couldn't often do it in the way that they wanted or the way that it was best for them. and I thought, you know, maybe we can provide a companion for people working in those roles to their kind of weekly lives. Maybe we could help them understand that there are other people who. Think a bit like them who are in the media and who are adjacent to the work that they're doing, that they can listen to and almost kind of form a, community with in a way. And one of the things I'd love to do in the future is actually to bring together control or speech listeners from, from all over the world.'cause we know we have such a broad audience. so I think that combination of, you know, maybe my like professional, very niche. approach and your kind of more macro, you know, how do we get these ideas out to a broader public and help them understand more is really what we see in, the, makeup of controlled speech every week. the stories we pick are a mixture of the two. I think the way we talk about them combines, both elements. And I think that's kind of almost really our special source.

Mike Masnick: 14:00

Yeah. and I think those two things go together really well. Right? I mean, to, you know, for explaining these things to, to everybody, you have to sort of understand all of those different stakeholders and, and all of the different approaches and.

Ben Whitelaw: 14:11

Yeah,

Mike Masnick: 14:12

it makes for a really, really good conversation and, you know, lots of very interesting things to talk about and, people seem to appreciate it.

Ben Whitelaw: 14:19

for sure. I mean, I wondered if we wanted just to kinda spend a few minutes talking about how it works. Because we've got a few questions from, from listeners about like, you know, literally how do you pick stories every week? Like what's the process involved? I think it's kind of worth us outlining like how much time we spend on this stuff, because I.

Mike Masnick: 14:37

Yeah.

Ben Whitelaw: 14:38

think it's, probably more work than folks realize. It's certainly more, it's certainly more work than I realized when I

Mike Masnick: 14:44

Yes,

Ben Whitelaw: 14:45

And, and you know, I, I, I've got a lot of time for, folks who, do really highly produce podcasts,'cause you can. I now know just how much effort and energy go into producing something as slick as that. so do you wanna kind of unpack a little bit about like, how we work and like what that process is from early on in the week to when we record and then when we, publish.

Mike Masnick: 15:05

Yeah. and we can just go through this pretty quickly, but, there is a lot of work involved. Um, Ben and I have a, a running spreadsheet, it's set up formatted for this. It's not just an open spreadsheet, but we have a thing where we are. All throughout the week, putting in stories, that we are interested in potentially talking about, uh, with notes and ideas and thoughts and,

Ben Whitelaw: 15:27

I mean, if people get hold of this spreadsheet, we are in trouble. We are in trouble.

Mike Masnick: 15:31

Yeah. I will say when we have guest hosts, we, we give them access to the spreadsheet and I always worry like, what if they go look at, we never removed their access to the spreadsheet, so, so.

Ben Whitelaw: 15:42

No co-host has yet gone rogue.

Mike Masnick: 15:44

Yes. Yeah.

Ben Whitelaw: 15:46

Thankfully,

Mike Masnick: 15:47

but yeah, and, and we're just sort of like throwing in all these stories and, and every week we obviously have way more stories than we have. Time or ability to cover. but we spend a lot of time sort of thinking through and finding stuff and, a lot of the stories are things that I come across while I'm doing regular tech stuff, but then I also usually spend a good amount of time, especially usually the day before we're recording the podcast, doing a sort of targeted search. and in particular. Looking for, you know, we always wanna cover some of the stories that are the major stories, but also looking for the, the less well covered stories. and we've always made sure, and we've been very clear on this, I think that we're, we don't want to be just overwhelmed by US focused stories. We, we look globally, we try to make sure that we're, talking about stuff that's happening in global majority countries as well, as opposed to just the US or Europe and the uk. and that takes effort because those stories often don't appear. as readily and as obviously in the mainstream media. Um, and so we're sort of constantly doing a directed search and, and reading through lots of news, deciding, a lot of stuff we read obviously doesn't make it into the spreadsheet. And then before we record, we go through basically everything that we found over the week, which, can be a lot.

Ben Whitelaw: 16:59

Yeah. Yeah. We spend basically the same amount of time recording

Mike Masnick: 17:03

I, I think we, that's a lie. We, we spend more time, I mean, let's, when we first started, we sort, we sort of pitched it as we're gonna spend this amount of time preparing and this amount of time recording. And you have to admit like we're spending a lot more time on the prep side before we actually start recording.

Ben Whitelaw: 17:22

yeah. And then that's, I suppose that's both, like, we sometimes disagree about what stories to be included, so we kind of debate a little bit like what the merits of a story or like what, what the best mix of a story is.

Mike Masnick: 17:34

I don't know that we disagree with, I, I, I don't remember. I, I don't think we've ever had any sort of like, strong disagreement about stuff. It's just like, which stories do we wanna lead with? And, you know, which of the bigger stories that we, feel are, are more meaty, which are, you know, which are ones we can cover more briefly, which we always fail at,

Ben Whitelaw: 17:50

Yeah, which ones we've covered in recent episodes as well, which we maybe don't want to kind of reiterate. There is a risk, I think, of talking about certain platforms or certain owners of platforms. Uh, maybe we've not always done a good job of that, but, we are trying to kind of spread, I think the, uh, spotlight I think of, of stories and companies and, topics because, uh, whilst we are on news.

Mike Masnick: 18:14

yeah.

Ben Whitelaw: 18:14

it's still important for us to, I think, do that.

Mike Masnick: 18:17

I think it's interesting too in that, when we're talking through the stories, we don't really, we don't, I mean, we don't plan out what we're going to say, but we, we will have like a short discussion about this is kind of what I'm thinking about this. you know, I think there's something interesting to talk about on this angle, which might not be like the major point of a story, but like, oh, what if we just focus in on this aspect of that story? but that's it. You know, when we actually get to the conversation, I will tell you, I'm often amazed, like, you'll ask a question, I'll be like, where did that come from? That was, I had nothing to do with what we discussed beforehand, and now suddenly I have to come up with an answer on something I hadn't really thought about.

Ben Whitelaw: 18:50

I like to keep you on your toes, Mike.

Mike Masnick: 18:53

Um, but, you know, we do put an awful lot of effort into it. And then, after we record, you know, we spend a bunch of time. Talking through, I mean, we'll talk through certain aspects of how the episode went. Obviously one of our favorite parts is coming up with the titles of our episodes. If I'm just telling like, please, as listeners tell us that you like the effort that we put into the titles because we put a lot of effort into clever titles and we hear from some of you that you really appreciate it. But it would be great to hear from more people. Um.

Ben Whitelaw: 19:27

to be, just to kinda make clear, like we will probably spend. Upwards of like, we were spending up to 30 minutes, like thinking about titles, thinking about like what are the kind of key themes coming up with, like someone will have an idea that emanates from a song or from like a TV show, and then we'll like discuss like, did the TV show make it over to the UK or the

Mike Masnick: 19:48

Right.

Ben Whitelaw: 19:49

did, does that kind of reference resonate? And I'll be like, often like, no. Or. I was only three years old at the time.

Mike Masnick: 19:57

Right.

Ben Whitelaw: 19:59

And, and then we kind of are back to the start. And then, we go round in circles and then we, we have this, I think, style for titles as well, which we seem kind of like insistent on keeping we, we've discussed the, like I. Merits of that as well. But I, it's, it's actually a real like a load of fun, but also the toughest 30 minutes of my week. My, my brain, my brain doesn't work as hard as it does in those, in that 30

Mike Masnick: 20:22

And you have not mentioned, I have created an AI tool.

Ben Whitelaw: 20:27

Oh God. Not that AI tool. I.

Mike Masnick: 20:29

this is about three months ago. I created an AI tool that when we finished recording our episodes, I grabbed the autogenerated transcript and. Drop it into this tool, which analyzes what we talked about versus the entire history of control alt speech titles and have, it has it suggest titles of that nature. and Lee, our producer, keeps saying that we should keep score of how many of the titles we use were, given by the AI versus how many were human generated.

Ben Whitelaw: 21:02

Look, it's not even a close fight. Like the

Mike Masnick: 21:04

it is closer than you think.

Ben Whitelaw: 21:06

No, the AI is terrible at titles.

Mike Masnick: 21:09

No, no, no, no. You're wrong. You're wrong. I would say since we started using it, at least 30% of the titles came from the ai,

Ben Whitelaw: 21:17

I don't know. I mean, I, none of the ones that I've suggested have been AI generators, so I, I thought, I

Mike Masnick: 21:23

I have to go back and look, but I could, I could point out which titles were, AI suggested

Ben Whitelaw: 21:28

I thought they were, I thought they were from your brain, Mike, I, now I

Mike Masnick: 21:30

Ah, well, there we go.

Ben Whitelaw: 21:32

ai, but, but safe to say like that, is a, a large component of the week's recording. We actually have thought about like recording that segment and then putting it out out as an extra. And I wonder if listeners would, like to hear that maybe that's, naval gazing at its finest. But at that point we have. A recorded podcast. We have a title that we're probably happy with. Sometimes we'll revise it. We'll be messaging back and forth late into the night, and then it goes to, Lee producer and editor who kind of remarkably turns around and edit in like a matter of hours. Like we, we, we finished recording kind of 7:00 PM UK time on a Thursday, and then by like basically midnight. It's up in people's feeds, like it is one of the fastest kind of turnaround podcasts that, that I know of.

Mike Masnick: 22:21

because I mean, podcast editing takes time and we do a full edit. Uh, Lee, our producer goes through and edits and makes us sound better, which maybe we shouldn't admit. We, we always sound that smart. but there are moments where, we may stumble or make a mistake or, you know. Now I'm doing the

Ben Whitelaw: 22:40

Yeah. It's got into your head.

Mike Masnick: 22:43

Yeah. I got into my head just, you know, there are things that, will cut out ums and likes and stuff like that. And, and just make, the podcast more listenable. know, checking the sounds, evening out, the levels, all of those kinds of things, just making us sound better. And it is a process. And, there are other podcasts out there in the space that have much bigger teams and much, much bigger budgets, and yet are much slower at their turnaround. And, and I think of something like Hard Fork, which is a wonderful podcast. you know, we're, huge fans of Hard Fork, and they cover some of the same ground as us, but we know that they record on Wednesday and they don't release their episodes until Friday. And they have an entire New York Times podcasting staff, which is huge.

Ben Whitelaw: 23:23

Yeah.

Mike Masnick: 23:24

That edit. and we're, it's the three of us here and, we're producing this whole thing and turning around in a matter of hours.

Ben Whitelaw: 23:31

Yeah, it's pretty bootstrapped stuff in, in kind of many ways. but we like it like that. And that's like part of, the secret of controlled speech. I think. you know, tan Gotti, the, there are no girls on the internet. It's another podcast that we've mentioned. they. And I'm not saying that either. Hard fork or there are no girls on the internet have the same size audience as us. Their audiences are much larger. But you know, they have a team of four people plus, Bridget, who we had on the podcast as a co-host recently. So like, yeah, we, we are small and scrappy and really at the starting point of, I think, trying to make controlled speech, a podcast for anybody who's interested in the issues that we cover. whether that's trust and safety professionals or, members of the public who are, thinking about their, safety online, which is I think an increasing number of our listeners are from the feedback we get. so Mike, we've kind of talked a bit about the process. we've talked about our audience, like how many listeners we've got now. Let's talk a bit about sponsorship because sponsorship is something that listeners will have come across. we had had some great sponsorship slots in the last few weeks particularly, and sponsorship is really the way that we have, sought to keep the podcast sustainable. we have this 10 minute slot. that, is our kind of bonus chat or bonus segment that goes at the end of an, an episode and the sponsor pays for us to have a chat with them in advance and we stitch that to the end of the, the week's episode. Just talk a bit about like, why we decided to go down that route in the first place and kind of how it's gone so far.

Mike Masnick: 25:01

Yeah. and so we have this sort of philosophy about this, which, we'd love to be proven as true over time, which is that, a lot of podcasts and a lot of media work on intrusive and annoying. advertising methods, which is, you know, okay, we're gonna interrupt you and we're gonna shove, an advertisement in front of you that you don't really care about and it's kind of annoying and we're selling you mattresses or, some random CRM app or something that is, not relevant To your interests and your general reaction to those is to be annoyed or to wanna skip or to avoid it. and our, thesis behind all of this is that we can do something that is different, that we can provide relevant conversations in a sponsored format that are interesting and valuable to the people who are listening. So that is why we structured it this way, where it is, either you or I been interviewing someone. Who is a sponsor, but who is, who is, has something to say that is interesting to us. We, are very clear that we're not looking for salesy conversations. It's not gonna be you just pitching what it is that, You're offering, but having, having a discussion and because it's longer, it's not a 32nd spot, it's, 10 to 12 minutes of interview. It allows executives from companies to sort of show off what they're thinking and how smart they are and, and what sort of insights they have that are relevant to the people listening to this podcast. And we think that that is a better model for. Absolutely everyone, it's better for our listeners, first of all, because it's interesting to them and it's not, you know, buy this mattress. It's, better for the sponsors because it's not, you're not annoying the users either, but it also allows you, it gives you space to really show off something interesting. Do you have a new report? Do you have something important that you wanna talk about, that you're thinking about this space in a different way? That it would be great to start a discussion on, is it. elements of thought leadership that you've been working on that would be good to get out into the world. this is a way to actually do that in a way that people will listen and, and enjoy the conversation and learn from it.

Ben Whitelaw: 27:07

I think you're right and, part of the reason why we choose that that sponsorship approach is that we know that we're never gonna have the size of audience of like Joe Rogan or call her daddy, or like that,

Mike Masnick: 27:17

I, I still want that size audience.

Ben Whitelaw: 27:21

yeah,

Mike Masnick: 27:21

ourselves short, Ben.

Ben Whitelaw: 27:23

yeah. Look at me accepting defeat already. Um, but, you know, the, the kind of nature of the topic and the type of thing we're wanting to do is grounded in what we think. Trust and safety professionals and, and other people who are in adjacent roles and who think about the internet in this way, what they need. And so if we're, if we're gonna do that, if we're gonna start with the kind of what is it that, folks need every week? And like, then we're, we're not gonna get loads of mattress companies come to us because we're never gonna have hundreds of thousands listeners per episode, at least, for a long time. Add to the fact that, you know. Being, discovered on podcast platforms is a notoriously hard issue. many people will know this. finding podcasts that you like is like a, a real art, you know, it's often via kind of recommendations from people in real life or, you know, you still get folks who, hear about podcast via Substack or, you know, newspapers or like actual critics who've done the hard yards in terms of picking these out. So. Again, like we're, not always gonna be the top of those folks lists, so that's why the sponsorship approach really works for us and we've, we are lucky enough to have had a whole tranche of, of sponsors. Who've supported our work over the last year. I'm gonna shout them out

Mike Masnick: 28:31

Yes, please.

Ben Whitelaw: 28:32

do really appreciate their work. Like we've had Modulate who are our launch partner and who've been, sponsoring episodes in recent weeks as well. We had Task Us, we had Internet Society, we had Block Party Concentrics. Discord. We had Resolver and the Digital Trust and Safety Partnership, as well. And again, like without those sponsors, it becomes really hard for us to kind of carve out the time during the week to do the research and the prep. cause otherwise, you know, essentially we have to make those kinds of calls about where we spend our time. Like tech and everything in moderation are not, giant publishing machines that make money handover fists, like some of the platforms we cover. Um, they are like niche outlets that, are designed to serve a particular purpose with specific audience. And, I guess that's part of the reason why we're doing this episode is because we would love you, our listeners, to support our work in a whatever way you can. that might be through sponsorship, you know, if your organization or institution is interested in reaching. smart, internet savvy trust and safety professionals, people who care about the kind of, future of the internet and, the safety of different groups online, then we are a great place to, sponsor and to have your voice heard. but we also have to think about kind of other means of, keeping the podcast sustainable, right, Mike? Because, I would say, uh, the long term. with the loss of this recent funder, who we mentioned at the top of every episode, it does become much harder to sustain the podcast in the long term. So we are actively thinking about what we can do.

Mike Masnick: 30:03

Yeah, and we're, you know, we're exploring all sorts of different ideas, know, while trying to be careful in that we don't wanna do something that, negatively impacts the podcast and the relationship that we have with the community of people who, who listen to it. and so that's sort of what we're, we're trying to figure out. And if there are alternative things that we can do, obviously lots of podcasts have Patreon type subscriptions with bonus episodes and things like that. you know, there are different things that we can explore. and, we're also talking to, to other potential. funders as well, and hoping that some of them might step up and, fund the podcast as, we've had in the past. and so we're in this process where we're, we're searching

Ben Whitelaw: 30:45

Yeah.

Mike Masnick: 30:45

is what it is. we love doing the podcast. you know, one of the things that I heard from people at Trust Con was, how much they can tell That you and I just enjoy doing this, that, the conversations that we have every week are, we have a, a really good rapport and, and it's fun and I look forward to it every week. it's one of the main highlights of my week. We wanna be able to keep doing it. And so we're in the process of figuring out how we're going to make that possible. and sponsorship is certainly a big part of it, but we're open to other ideas and we're thinking through some of these different ideas and sort of figuring out what we could do that would make sense that wouldn't, take away from, what makes the podcast so great.

Ben Whitelaw: 31:24

Yeah. Yeah. And likewise, like it's, it's a big part of my week. I really, you know, get so much from talking to you, my kind of like. Having my ideas challenged and trying to figure out how to kind of, you know, win you over in some of my, some of my, my views and often, you know, having to eat my words or, or row back on, on a thought. and again, hopefully listeners under, you know, understand and appreciate that process. I think. The other thing is that we want to get more voices onto the podcast as well. You know, we, had some really great co-hosts, like some of the best kind of smartest folks in, internet policy and academia and, people who work in platforms who've been able to share their thoughts and their insights about that week's news, but also how they got to their positions and, and how they think about some of the challenges that we talk about. And we'd love to get more people. Not only on as co-host, but doing deeper, more rich interviews with them because, there's so few avenues really for, people working in this space to talk in a way that is challenging. But not gonna be something that their comms team are, are gonna say that they can't do. You know, um, I think we, we often ask questions of our co-host and of our, people we, we interview that is a little bit uncomfortable, but that's because we, we want to get the most out of them

Mike Masnick: 32:43

Yeah, I mean a lot of it is, you know, the people that we have on the podcast are obviously real experts and. giving them a chance to share that expertise again, like it just goes back to so much of what we're trying to do is spread knowledge and understanding and deeper understanding, not surface level understanding. And, getting experts on the podcast to, give their views is, one way that, we're able to do that. and just, being able to. Get different voices and different perspectives, because this is one of the, you know, the nature of this being complicated and complex world is, is that there are many different perspectives and sharing those and, allowing everybody to think through these different things is, the best way, I think to spread that knowledge and to get people to have more a, a, a, deeper level of empathy and understanding about, all of this and, and how, how the internet is kept safe.

Ben Whitelaw: 33:31

Yeah, I mean, it's funny that we have essentially created a podcast with the sole lame of making. People admit that there is no easy answers. Like, or, or you know, that you, you might think that creating a podcast where you give people answers is a, more lucrative, better approach. But actually we've done the opposite. We, we, we, we've set up a whole podcast that says. Actually, there are no answers. Don't, don't listen to what we say. We there is no fix. But that's, that's the nature of it, I think. and, and we have these big plans. We wanted to share some of this with our listeners, as we go into a bit of a break and as we take a bit of time off. And so hopefully we've, done that today and we've been able to share a little bit about how the podcast started, how it's going, and also yeah, how we're hoping to, to fund it and to grow it in the future because, we love it and we know that listeners love it and, so it's important for us to give it the best chance of continuing.

Mike Masnick: 34:26

Yeah. And so, we should say, if you are listening to this and you are in a position to sponsor what we're doing, or you know others, and you can point them to, on the website control alt speech, dot com, we have a link with more information on how to sponsor. you can. Email us at podcast@controlaltspeech.com. I think that's the right email. I'm doing that from memory. and you know, let us know. And you know, one of the other things I'll mention just in the fact that we are a small and scrappy. Team and we're in this process. we're sort of figuring out what, and how to do this is that we can also be creative and we wanna be creative. And so if you have some creative idea that, we're not smart enough to think of, about, you know, a different kind of sponsorship or something like that, let us know. And, and we're able to think these things through. the focus for us is always gonna be that we want something that is truly. good for, all the stakeholders here, the listeners, the sponsors, and for us as a podcast to make it all make sense and align the interests, I think is actually, in some ways it's, It's crazy that more of the world isn't that way. That how much of the world of, sponsorship is really about being intrusive and annoying. And I think there are better ways to do it that actually benefits everyone. And I'd love, you know, separately from, explaining complexity to the world, but to show the world that we can make. A podcast that has sponsors that, people actually enjoy listening to those conversations. and I think we've done that. you know, with the conversations we've had and going back and listening to them, we get great feedback about sponsor episodes that, people say, oh my gosh, I learned so much from that. and that's, that's exciting. I think that is in its own way, is kind of revolutionary and not something you hear about on the internet very often.

Ben Whitelaw: 36:09

Yeah, indeed. So, yeah, Mike's summed it up very well. If you have any ideas, get in touch with us, podcast@controlatspeech.com. go to our website to find out more about how you can sponsor. We hope you've enjoyed today's episode. We've got others a bit like this coming up over the course of the next month. and you can find us on the internet, to ask us questions that we'll talk about in a future episode as well. Thanks for listening. Take care everyone.

Announcer: 36:35

Thanks for listening to Ctrl-Alt-Speech. Subscribe now to get our weekly episodes as soon as they're released. If your company or organization is interested in sponsoring the podcast, contact us by visiting ctrlaltspeech.com. That's CT RL alt speech.com.