Ben Whitelaw: 0:00

So Mike, like most people, it's more likely that WhatsApp will be prized from my cold dead hands than I will have the, gumption and motivation to transfer to another me messaging app. like many people who listen to the podcast, I'm sure they are very reliant on WhatsApp. I'm hoping there are other apps that they use. I use Signal to, uh, actually to message you. Um, but you know, it's the kind of dominant messaging platform in many countries. However, if the kind of European sovereignty push is successful, an app called Ovid, which is apparently a very good WhatsApp equivalent Would be the dominant messaging platform. and I went to download it today. I had a little look. It looks good. I dunno who's on it, so I'm not gonna bother actually using it. But, uh, on the kind of one of the onboarding screens, it said, have we met before?

Mike Masnick: 0:50

Oh

Ben Whitelaw: 0:51

and obviously we know each other. we do a podcast together. So instead, I want you to talk about a potentially awkward introduction you've had in the past

Mike Masnick: 1:01

Oh boy. That's fun. Uh, so I'll get, I'll give you one from a couple weeks ago, and I'm gonna say this nicely because I believe the person involved is probably listening to this. And so, I mean this in the best sense and not in any way

Ben Whitelaw: 1:16

Please don't alienate

Mike Masnick: 1:17

No, no, this is not alienating. I found this charming. and so I don't mean this in, in a negative light whatsoever, but a couple weeks ago, I had the honor of, moderating a panel at the eus offices in San Francisco, on the DMA, not the DSA on the DMA. It was really fun panel actually. I thought it was really interesting discussion. and this is the second time I've done that. I did it first in way back in 2022 before this podcast existed. and I was talking to the person who organized it. Very nice person. I, again, I'm saying this in the nicest possible way'cause I believe they may be listening. Uh, but we were having a discussion about how I had done it a few years earlier, and she suggested that that was before I became famous. Not that I am particularly famous, but before I was particularly well-known and I was a little confused because. I have been out in the world for a bit of time and people know me, but the implication was, as I figured out in the discussion, was that that was before we had started this podcast Control alt speech, which was the thing that made me famous. I found that to be really charming and that's wonderful.

Ben Whitelaw: 2:32

that's so good. You know, that's also true. Come on. Let's be honest. You know, if it wasn't for me,

Mike Masnick: 2:37

that's right. That's right.

Ben Whitelaw: 2:40

okay. I, can, I think I can maybe top that. I was in an event last week, which is why I wasn't able to record controlled speech and it was at a hotel. It was a kind of one-on-one discussion with some, litigation lawyers, at major platforms. It was a great event, a really good discussion. But when I showed up to, orientate myself in the fancy hotel where it was, the woman who was managing it asked me who I was and I said, I'm Ben. I'm, presuming that she'd know who I was, she looked at me very, very kind of starkly and said, are you here from the hotel? I said, no, I'm actually taking part in this event. And she's like, oh, you are that Ben. So,

Mike Masnick: 3:26

You're that

Ben Whitelaw: 3:27

so that was, that was a good start. Um, so yeah, a word of warning for, for anybody if, you're going to an event with us,

Mike Masnick: 3:35

Yes, yes.

Ben Whitelaw: 3:36

might not always, might always start. Well, hello and welcome to Control Alt Speech, your weekly roundup of the major stories about online speech, content moderation, and internet regulation. It's February the fifth, 2026, and this week we're talking about why Gem Jordan hates everyone, why France hates everyone, and why new sites hate comments as I well know. My name is Ben Whitelaw. I'm the founder and editor of Everything in Moderation. I'm here with Mike Masnick, the longstanding. Te I've, I've kind of run outta ways of describe you. I was gonna call you a tech to linchpin, but that sounds kind of ominous.

Mike Masnick: 4:23

It does. It does. I go away. Everything falls apart.

Ben Whitelaw: 4:29

but yeah, you are all things tech to and how are you this week?

Mike Masnick: 4:32

Uh, I'm, I am good. I am good. It's been, it's, everything is always crazy and everything is always very busy. but, um, as I mentioned to you before we started recording, I spent yesterday packaging up er, commemorative challenge coins that have all been sent out. It was a fun little, uh, exercise and actually doing the, packing and the shipping, myself and, and with a colleague. And, yeah, that was, it was fun.

Ben Whitelaw: 4:59

what's the, um, what's the exchange rate for the tech dirt commemorative coins? Do they, do they have, do they have a GBP

Mike Masnick: 5:06

I really

Ben Whitelaw: 5:07

equivalent?

Mike Masnick: 5:08

have no idea. I think there was something where when we were shipping them for the international backers where, you know, there was like a question of, if you're shipping coins, do they have a. monetary value as a coin. Like are they legal tender? I'd be like, no, no, no. These are, these are not legal tender in any any sense.

Ben Whitelaw: 5:30

sounds like a good, exercise to try and pay for your groceries with a tech duck commemorative

Mike Masnick: 5:34

Yeah. Don't

Ben Whitelaw: 5:34

See what happens.

Mike Masnick: 5:35

not do that.

Ben Whitelaw: 5:37

maybe when everything goes to pot, you know, finally, and we, we, assume a state of anarchy, people will actually, they'll be worth something

Mike Masnick: 5:45

that's right. You know, you have different, Forms of money to take, you know, show up in all different situations.

Ben Whitelaw: 5:51

start early. we have also been busy this week kind of refining and launching the control alt speech 2026 Bingo card, which is very exciting. thank you to all of our listeners who sent in suggestions and who came up with creative ideas. We're just in the process of adding the, the final few bingo cards. it's a thing of beauty Mike, that you've created here. Um, and it's the perfect, perfect accompaniment to listening to the podcast each week.

Mike Masnick: 6:17

Yes. So if you want to play control alt speech bingo, you can go to control alt speech.com/bingo. It's very difficult to remember. we will also be putting a link on the page, as we're recording this. The link is not on the page, but I assume it will be by the time you listen to this. So, you can go look on the, the main controlled speech page or you can just go to slash bingo. and there is a card and it is interactive and you can use it how you want. it should generate a different card when you go, or you can ask it to generate a different card and it'll populate all the squares and then you can. Print a copy of it if you want a piece of paper that you have on your desk each week as you listen to us intently as soon as it comes out.'cause I know that's what all of you do. or if you wanna do it digitally, you can click on the, different squares and it will highlight them as you go. And if it works properly, which it does in my limited testing, if you get a bingo, which is a line in any direction, you'll get confetti that will rain down on the screen. So,

Ben Whitelaw: 7:24

Oh, very nice.

Mike Masnick: 7:27

Yes. Yeah. so check that out. This is, part of my, uh, vibe coding experiments, but it works pretty nicely, I think.

Ben Whitelaw: 7:36

Brilliant. I'm looking forward to giving that a go. yeah, I think I can try it, right? Even if I've partaken in the episode,

Mike Masnick: 7:43

But we, if people are listening and they get bingo, we wanna hear from you.

Ben Whitelaw: 7:47

yeah, Send in your, your photos of your printed Bingo card with your big kind of bingo stamp. send us the screen grabs of you doing it, dig digitally on whatever device you listen

Mike Masnick: 7:59

And it should, it should work on both mobile and desktop. So I I put lots of thought into this.

Ben Whitelaw: 8:06

No expense spare from our, from our chief developer and designer,

Mike Masnick: 8:11

right.

Ben Whitelaw: 8:12

Mike Masnick. Um, big thanks to Lee, our producer, who has, got this up and live on the website as well. it's a really cool thing we didn't get a sponsor, but there is still the opportunity to sponsor the Bingo card should you fall in love with it, as I'm sure many of you will do as you play it. Bingo. Card aside, we've also got exciting plans for 2026, Mike. We are going to be applying, as we always do for a slot at the Major Trust and Safety Conference, trust Con, which is taking place in July in San Francisco. it's actually how we met. It's the, control speech, origin story. and then we've been back, the last two years. You were there running the ship, last year. but we've, been at Trus Con pretty much every year since, yeah, 2023. And we're gonna be hopefully doing a live edition of the podcast. Gem. We can't be sure that we're gonna be accepted. but we, we live in

Mike Masnick: 9:02

process every year and, and we expect them to not give us any special treatment, but to review the application, just like they review everybody's application.

Ben Whitelaw: 9:11

Exactly. and, and what we are looking from from listeners for is suggestions to appear on that special live edition of Controlled Speech. each year we bring on a couple of panelists from industry, from academia, from civil society. We, we kind of spread it around and we're looking for people who, you, our listeners would love to see on stage at this big event who you think are kind of interesting and worthy of taking part. and, perhaps people that we aren't in touch with and who we don't know particularly well, introduce us,

Mike Masnick: 9:41

we, between the two of us, obviously we have pretty deep Rolodex of, folks in and around this field, but there's still lots of people that we don't know, and we're absolutely positive that some of them would be great, people to, participate in the live episode at Trust Con. So if you know of anybody that you think we should know that you think would make a great guest, presenter on the episode, definitely reach out and let us know.

Ben Whitelaw: 10:05

Yeah. And if that's you as well, if you listen to the podcast and you're gonna be attending Trust Con or you're gonna be in San Francisco around that time and you're interested in taking part, drop us a line, podcast@controlorspeech.com. Cool. So let's get going. Mike, we have a fair bit to get through, as I alluded to in our intro today. Let's start, you know, I, I think there's two ways You can probably start a podcast. You can start,

Mike Masnick: 10:27

That's very ominous to, to be honest with you.

Ben Whitelaw: 10:30

you can start, you know, with something, Sad and you can get better. Um, you can, you can start, you know, low and try to reach a crescendo. we are gonna start unfortunately with, with Jim Jordan. we're gonna start with at the kind of lowest,

Mike Masnick: 10:46

I was gonna say, we're gonna start low and we're gonna see if we can go lower.

Ben Whitelaw: 10:49

Yeah, exactly. he has got another one of his reports out. it's essentially fodder for blue checks on Twitter to have a go at anybody who, dislikes the way that big tech platforms are run. and you wanted to talk a bit about some of the, the frothing that, uh, has been going on about the report and also the reaction to

Mike Masnick: 11:11

Yeah, I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff and some of this is really just like, you know how there are musicians who have like a big hit early on and then they just keep releasing the same song, you know, in a slightly different, minor changes because they can't, really have success anywhere else. That, that's Jim Jordan to me. So, he has spent all this time building up these claims of, European censorship of tech companies. and you know, of course during the Biden administration it was apparently, Biden administration, censorship of tech companies. he has a lot of trouble finding any real evidence of that, you know, on either side of the Atlantic. And so he just sort of makes these broad claims that it is happening and, expects that. most of the people who are following him and who believe in him won't actually look at the details and show that it debunks almost every point that he makes. and it's worked for him. You know, look, if you find a thing that works for you, like yeah, sure, double down. And he has, he has really doubled down. And so, Obviously when it, when it was the Biden administration, it was easy to attack them and claim that they were engaged in censorship of, big tech and blah, blah, blah. now that it's his team in the White House, he can't blame them anymore, even though, this White House is way, way, way more aggressive in pressuring tech companies, in all sorts of ways that we have discussed. and certainly in suppressing speech, in all sorts of ways. He will never mention any of that because he's very much a team player and he is very supportive of Trump. so now real evil, evil is the eu, those awful Europeans. and so there've been a, a couple of different, or a few different efforts by him starting last week. there had been an earlier story of the DSA fine, that the EU issued on X, which immediately the US government started saying, oh, this is censorship. And as multiple people who actually looked at what the fine was about, said it really had nothing to do with content moderation decisions or censorship or anything of that nature. It was about how the changes to the verification program, the Blue Check program, was potentially misleading and therefore sort of a, you know, misleading advertising kind of thing. and how that they didn't, obey certain rules under the DSA around researcher access to information or whatever. And so the big announcement last week was that Jim Jordan's committee had gotten access to the eus, dunno if it's classified or whatever, but their report as to exactly why they find X and he, as he does, or as his staff is known to do, takes it and presents it in the worst possible way, you know, and takes things totally outta context or just makes statements about it that are not an accurate reflection of what's in the report. So it goes on and on about how, oh, the blue check thing is, uh, pretext and it was really about censorship. so They use one example, which, highlights the absurdity in some sense, but not in the way that I think Jim Jordan wants it to, which is like, in the report they point to the fact that there's an account named Donald Duck that has a blue check and they're just like, that's in the, the EU commission's report. And who would honestly believe that Donald Duck is a real person? And so it's like set up in this whole, this whole thing is designed to, you know, they're sort of ridiculing it, but like there's a reason why the EU Commission did that, which was like showing that the thing that for years had meant you are a verified person who you say you are suddenly switched into this thing where like Donald Duck could be, you know, someone claiming to be Donald Duck could be verified. and so. It's, all sorts of nonsense, which was, released last week as sort of a prelude to the fact that this week there was a hearing on, EU censorship from the DSA. And then the House Judiciary Committee also released this other report on, exposing the European Commission's decade long campaign to censor American speech. And again, I have been a longtime critic of the D-S-A-I-I, think that there are real concerns about, how it can be used in a problematic way, but what I hate about this is that all of the nuance and discussion of like, how can we actually improve the DSA, how can we make it, work in a more reasonable way? How can we, sort of clean up the rough edges that it does have gets subsumed by this idea that it's just pure censorship. And the only purpose of it is censorship. And the parts of the DSA that I think are actually reasonable and, cabined in a way that I, I think are probably mostly appropriate get thrown in as if like, oh, they're just for the purpose of censorship. and, it's frustrating to me because like, there are parts of the DSA that I think should be changed and fixed, and I do do have concerns about them and, and how they could be used. And you can't have that discussion right now because, either if you're criticizing the DSA now, it seems like you're on the side of like the Jim Jordans of the world but I don't want to say like the DSA is great either. Like all nuance is, is out the window entirely on this discussion.

Ben Whitelaw: 16:32

Yeah. Yeah. I mean this, and we, we've got a number of stories today that, I think, speak to that point. The report is, is funny in loads of ways. You know, as you say, the length of it, the tone of it. There's a, graphic very early on, which is also hilarious, which is, looks like it's been made by chat GBT of, the decade long European censorship timeline. It's, it's funny because of it, the way it looks, but also because the number of the different kind of pieces of evidence for that censorship were examples of voluntary codes of conduct and codes of practice that none of these companies had to sign up to.

Mike Masnick: 17:07

Yeah.

Ben Whitelaw: 17:09

so as you say, you kind of willfully you know, misuses information to kind of bend, his argument in the way that I guess we've, talked about on the podcast that length. the whole thing has been kind of, almost like a piece of theater as you point out, Mike, the Twitter thread that was launched last week, which contained. you know, the subpoenaed EU report. then we have on Tuesday, this kind fuller report we have the hearing is that all part of an effort to kinda win an argument or, to get people to, buy into this idea of the kind of eus censorship complex?

Mike Masnick: 17:41

Yeah, I mean, I think it would be reading too much into anything that Jim Jordan does to think that there's like some longer term strategy involved, but I do think that they're very, very focused on, you know, he's been beating this drum for, you know, the better part of a decade about censorship and claiming to be the free speech supporter. And of course he can't look at anything that, his team is doing, which is mass censorship in the United States. and so he's gotta build up. An enemy. and you know, a lot of the Republican party right now is really focused on turning Europe into this vast censorship machine. And we saw that a little bit, and this will come up again and, later in this discussion too, I think, with the investigations into generating, bathing suit, images of, different people where as soon as an investigation started, you had the State Department in the US come out and say like, oh, this is just another censorship regime. And it's just like, there are a nuance to these discussions and they're not having it. It's just every opportunity, anything that Europe does to try to, look at. Any sort of tech company regulation or investigation is immediately being thrown into the censorship pile, and that's frustrating to me as someone who spent years worrying about the Europe, you know, European approach to regulation leading to actual censorship of free speech. Because again, you just have zero levels of nuance and which things are actually problematic and which things are not. No matter what they do. they just get labeled as this is, an attempt to censor. And, even if you point out like, no, this has nothing to do with content moderation or speech or anything. They're like, no, but They're targeting them because of their political views. They don't like Elon Musk because of his political views. And that might be true, but that's not, there's no evidence that the investigations, the investigations do seem legitimately focused on real questions of do these things violate the law. And so I'm frustrated by how these conversations now, because of the politically charged nature of them, have lost all sense of nuance. And you can't have the discussion of what is the appropriate level of, how do you regulate things that are legitimately violating the law versus things that are actually about trying to suppress certain speech.

Ben Whitelaw: 20:02

Yeah. are you familiar with the phrase play the man

Mike Masnick: 20:05

Yeah,

Ben Whitelaw: 20:06

not the ball, or play the ball, not the man. Um, it, it feels like so much of this discussion is about like, playing the man. It's about attacking, the people or the institutions rather than figuring out what it is that's being discussed and how that can be kind of, addressed. I think you see the kind of Musk fan, boys and girls coming out in force, trotting out Jim Jordan's views from the report and this idea that Musk is being censored by Europeans because poor Europeans get no opportunity to say what they think. They're constantly being stymied at every single opportunity and. that's in, you know, because there is such a, a fandom of Musk and everything he does, and we've lost the ability to kinda do that. I think the, the bans before Christmas of the Europeans as well was the same thing, which we're not addressing the bull in all of these conversations.

Mike Masnick: 20:58

Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is just like, this is the nature of culture wars, right? I mean, a culture war is you take things and you just, turn it into a spectacle no matter what the details or nuance are. You just, you're trying to rile up your team in some way or another. And so there is an awful lot of that. and it's, you know, it's tough because, it's like, for years there were all of these discussions about. Content moderation issues were unfairly, I think the CEOs of these companies were being blamed as being like evil monsters who had like, crazy agendas that were showing up in their, content moderation and trust and safety efforts, which was never really accurate. I mean, for the most part. And there are reasonable criticisms of how bad or how much, how many resources the different companies would put into trust and safety. or like, different approaches to trust and safety or, or, policy questions that you could discuss these things. But there weren't efforts by the CEOs to just like. Be terrible, right? For like political reasons. and yet all the discussions were around that. and, you know, I spent the better part of a decade basically saying like, no, like no one is making content moderation decisions based on ideological reasons. That wasn't a thing. None of the companies were doing that before. And now you have Elon Musk who does do that and is doing that. And all the things I said weren't happening before are actually happening. But instead of there being like the discussion about like, okay, now that that is actually happening, what does that mean? Instead, like, everyone's treating like, oh wait, he's like the free speech hero, which he's not, he's directly not, you have all these people, it's like you can't have an accurate discussion about any of this because it's all, it all becomes culture war, and it all becomes this side versus that side. And there's no effort to think through, like, how do you actually handle. regulating these companies, if you're regulating them or enabling better moderation practices or trust and safety because you can't have that discussion because no matter what you say, I mean, even in, in these reports, in both of the reports that the, judiciary committee released, like, again, they just keep playing the same hits where they like accuse Stanford, and the internet observatory of being the mastermind behind, like some vast censorship regime, which, you know, the Supreme Court was very clear, like didn't happen, it didn't exist. It's a made up thing. It's a fiction. And yet the MAGA world in particular has completely bought into it. And because of that, because they keep repeating it, I hear people. Who are not, MAGA folks repeated as if, oh yeah, well obviously Stanford went too far in trying to censor the internet. It's like, that didn't happen. It didn't happen. And like,

Ben Whitelaw: 23:38

Yeah.

Mike Masnick: 23:39

you know, it's all misinformation, right? We're in this world where it's complete misinformation and people take it and run with it and they believe it.'cause nobody wants to spend the time to like, look at the actual details of 160 page report. That is all like misrepresenting things, taking things outta context and misrepresenting it. And, and it just becomes, you know, it's all nonsense all the time. And so, this concluded with a hearing yesterday that, the house judiciary committee had, and at one point, you know, there was a European who, you know, was brought there by the committee to, reinforce the claims, was talking about, oh, the awful censorship that is happening in, in, in the eu.

Ben Whitelaw: 24:16

I don't wanna stop your flow, but the idea of a European, like a kind of a token European was offered at the altar of the house Judiciary Committee is such a funny

Mike Masnick: 24:25

Yeah. But he was, he was there to side with them, and, and claimed that it is illegal in, in Europe to quote the Bible, and that you'll be arrested for quoting the Bible in Europe. And it's like, at some point people could, like, should look around, be like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, you know, I mean, someone said that to me and said, and I joke, I was like, does, did anyone inform the pope? I mean, the Pope is in Europe. I think he, he can quote the Bible, like, how,

Ben Whitelaw: 24:52

but he's an American now, so

Mike Masnick: 24:54

yeah, that's right.

Ben Whitelaw: 24:54

thinks.

Mike Masnick: 24:55

But like, how can anyone take this stuff seriously? And yet they do, because it's all tribal. And so it's really, really frustrating to me the way that you can't have a serious discussion on this stuff because it's all become political in some sense. And like, years ago, decades ago. Because I'm old, I had made this argument about like tech policy issues that, the good tech policy issues to discuss were ones that didn't have a partisan tint to it. So, if you looked at it, it hadn't been adopted. Were like, oh, Democrats say this and Republicans say this in the us. But as soon as an issue did get that, all rational discussion left the room. So the example that I would talk about was net neutrality. Which when the early discussions around net neutrality came about, there was pretty much bipartisan agreement that like, oh, this is probably pretty good for the internet. And if you take polls, it's like 80 to 85% of people think that net neutrality is a good thing. But somewhere in the, like mid 2000 s, Republicans decided that net neutrality was bad. And so suddenly it became this total partisan issue. And then you could no longer have a reasonable discussion about, where and how does net neutrality work in a way that is reasonable, and where does it go too far? Because it all just became like your team versus my team. And now we're seeing that with other stuff as well. And that really bothers me.

Ben Whitelaw: 26:13

Yeah. I mean we've talked about how content moderation and, Decisions about what goes up and what comes down is, is a political thing now. you know, it's increasingly political. tech regulation obviously has a political element to it. some parties coming into power will favor regulation versus others. things like social media bans that have cross party political support go faster. is it that there isn't a kind of greater, focus from people who have, let's say, the right ideas about the internet, ideas that maybe, you and I agree with not saying that we're always right, but why,

Mike Masnick: 26:48

always right. Whatcha talking about Ben?

Ben Whitelaw: 26:52

w why isn't there a kind of greater

Mike Masnick: 26:54

Yeah.

Ben Whitelaw: 26:54

emphasis on, bringing those ideas into the political

Mike Masnick: 26:57

Well, I honestly think, I mean, there's a few different things and, and I don't think all this is consciously thought about, but you have these very powerful entities of media. and most of them are, have centralized control in some sense. And therefore it becomes really important to control that centralized point of control. And I'm gonna say manipulation, even though I don't necessarily mean manipulation necessarily in a bad way, though it can be used in a bad way. But when you have centralized points of control that influence the world, they become targets of whoever's in power because whoever's close to those centralized points of control, you hope that you can turn the knob in your direction. Maybe a little bit, maybe a lot. And that is what we're seeing is this race to control those centralized points of power. And that is true, across the wider political spectrum, however you wanna define the political spectrum. None of the major parties or, political powers are really particularly good about this. None of them really want a system. You know, what is a good system is one that I think is decentralized, where you can't have greater political control. And to some extent you can understand why, like, as certain folks, so Elon Musk or whatever, it takes control over some entity. There is a sense then like from people who oppose him that, oh well we need to get control over our own media ecosystem. And I think all of that is bad. I mean, I think ideally we would, we have a, a system where it is much more. Decentralized and, distributed, where can't have any particular power having control over it, but that the individuals at the ends of the network, the users of the network really have the control over what they see. But so I think all of this is, in some sense, whether they're thinking about it this way or not, is a fight for control over the spigot of, information control. And if we control it and we can turn the dial in our direction, that's better for us long term. And all the facts around it and everything else doesn't really matter. I mean, there is another, we didn't discuss this story beforehand, but there was another story I wrote about this week about Gavin Newsom, my governor here in California announcing that he was investigating TikTok. for supposedly shadow banning content. Like he saw a tweet from some random Twitter user who had like a couple thousand followers or whatever, claiming that, oh, you can't mention Epstein on TikTok anymore, ever since the, switchover to the US entity that controls it. And he's announced like, we're doing an investigation. And it's like, you can't, that's, that's a First Amendment violation.

Ben Whitelaw: 29:35

Hmm.

Mike Masnick: 29:35

everybody ignored it because at this point nobody cares anymore. But it's like, that's just as bad just from the democratic side to have a governor say, we're going to investigate a social media company for its content moderation choices. Like TikTok can legally, if they want, decide you know, no more liberal speech, like it all has to be MAGA pro maga. I mean, I think it would be bad for business. I think it would be obnoxious. I think it would be morally problematic. But it's not a legal problem. and to have him come out and say, so it's like you have these examples on both sides stepping up and saying like, oh yeah. Everything that you do has to be to benefit our side. And so that's why people who are saying like, no, there should be better systems or, you know, like, people in power want more power

Ben Whitelaw: 30:22

Yeah.

Mike Masnick: 30:22

I can argue that you know, the Republicans in the far right are, way worse on this stuff. and care much less about, what's actually good for the world. But, the other side is, is certainly not blameless in this.

Ben Whitelaw: 30:34

No, no. And, and your point about decentralization was some, something you touched on last week in the podcast, when I was away and you mentioned in the context of tiktoks, the popularity of up scrolled, you know, this kind of alternative app, which, I noticed a few days ago, has since passed two and a half million users up from 150,000 at the start of January. So, people have some ability to, kind of move to other platforms, but as we know, it's very difficult. and even then, those, points of control can be taken over by a musk or, or whoever has an

Mike Masnick: 31:06

And, and I don't, I don't know if you saw this story either, but like people reported early this week or late last week, I forget it may have come out over the weekend, that up scrolled had a real Nazi problem with extreme pro-Nazi content, really flooding it. which is, you know, again, it's like running the, content moderation, learning curve, which, you know, I think UPS Scroll was definitely doing, and I had sort of called that out, whereas it felt like the guy who's running it from the interviews he had given seemed very naive about these things. And the fact that the platform over the weekend seemed to be completely overrun with, explicitly pro-Nazi content sort of showed you this is not somebody who is prepared to like, run a platform with, a large group of users.

Ben Whitelaw: 31:51

yeah. I think that's a, a really interesting point. I mean, you talked there about the, battle that's, I guess going on between the US and the EU and the, and the way that the EU is being framed as a kind of censorship, Entity. We saw actually on the same day that this judiciary committee report was published, some pretty interesting stuff happening on this side of the pond as well. Um, so listeners will probably have, heard this story about French prosecutors, raiding the offices of X in Paris, as part of a increasingly wider investigation into the company's, practices. the investigation started as a kind of look at the algorithms on the platform, the way that they were, sharing information across the platform. And that's now spread in the light of the grok story that we've talked about on the podcast to an investigation around non-consensual intimate imagery and also the proliferation of CSA as well. So this is a, a French investigation that has got kind of increasingly, um, wider. the reports that, we've read this week, makes it sound pretty, uh, dramatic. The whole raid. There was people from the Paris Public Prosecutor, there was people from the National Cyber, organization in France. There was actually some people from Interpol as well. although, the reports I read suggested that was just one person. And in my head that's like a kind of like lucky intern who's been sent out to, go and raid Elon's office. Would you keep yourself busy? but you know, this, obviously led to a massive backlash from Musk and from people aligned with Musk. He. sent a number of messages out on X about how this was a, political attack. Linda Yao, the former CEO, also chimed in, saying that this was, not right. and then Pura of, you know, he, he has faced,

Mike Masnick: 33:35

Who's been arrested?

Ben Whitelaw: 33:36

AYA.

Mike Masnick: 33:37

Yes.

Ben Whitelaw: 33:37

Yeah. He's, he's actually got the, uh, he's gone the full hog, let's, let's say. he also, commented that France is not a free country, which is kind of, I think interesting and, but essentially ironic based upon where he's come from and what he's been accused of doing, but. essentially on the same day that you have this report, you have, Europe, fighting back, holding its ground, whatever you wanna call it, continuing its investigation into the practices of, platforms. and it comes in the week where we also got an update from Ocom about its investigation into, x slash Twitter. we also got, An announcement about an investigation by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office, the ICO into XI around its, data, practices particularly, around the grok scandal. so the processing of personalized information that led to the creation of all this imagery that we, we discussed on the podcast a few weeks ago. so you have a kind of patchwork mike of, entities and, regulators who are going after a combination of x the social media platform and X ai, which is the company that houses grok. And then you have the kind of,

Mike Masnick: 34:43

Which got bought in theory

Ben Whitelaw: 34:45

God ball.

Mike Masnick: 34:46

this week by SpaceX. But that's a whole other issue we're gonna have, you know, NCII in space so.

Ben Whitelaw: 34:54

Did no joke about that. we haven't got enough time as it is. so, so there's a lot going on. If you just think about, know, Elon Musk's companies and the European and UK regulators, other questions of Malaysia and, Singapore going after Musk have kind of become a bit quieter. But it, it all underpins this idea of, Europe being the only entity, the only state block that can go after these platforms. The only, that's one that's big enough, the only one that has the guts to do it. what do you think about the, the rating.

Mike Masnick: 35:24

I, I don't know. Right. I mean, there, there's so much confusion that is coming out about this, right? So, if it was legitimately an investigation into violating laws around CSAM, then it's a totally. Understandable situation. If it was for other reasons, it becomes a little bit more questionable. And you're hearing both stories. And again, like all of this falls into that, stew that we've been talking about of like culture, war, political fighting. So immediately Musk and, the Republicans in the US were like, oh, this is a political attack and it's an attack on speech. And, I mean, there was a funny, it was amusing exchange between Elon Musk, you know, went on X and said this is a political attack. And the French response, which is the, sort of official Twitter account of French government, I guess, put out this thing and said, investigating child sexual abuse material isn't controversial. Turning it into political theater is manipulation. And it says, this is pretty funny. It said maybe that logic flies on some island, but it doesn't fly in France. I'll, I'll leave it as an exercise to the listener as to what they're referencing regarding an island.

Ben Whitelaw: 36:38

I know that the Brits don't historically get on with the French, but I'm hoping they're not referring to us.

Mike Masnick: 36:44

Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't think it's the, the British Isles that are a concern here. but even that is like, it's all just become part of a, a show, right? This is all just like, wrestling, you know? It's entertainment, it's kayfabe, it's, trying to get people, riled up. Where there are legitimate questions like, was the raid appropriate? I don't know. there's not enough information. Some of the information suggests maybe it was appropriate. Some of it suggests that maybe it was political, but you can't have that discussion anymore because everybody is so ridiculous. And so it's like, what do you even do with this situation where you can't have a nuanced look at like, is the company legitimately violating any laws? And it might be, and in that case, a raid would be more appropriate, but we don't know. And so the fact that everybody then immediately backs into their corners and people are cheering on France for doing this. I'm not sure if they should be cheered on, raiding a company seems like a pretty extreme thing unless you have real evidence suggesting that something very major has happened. I'm not sure it's appropriate. But then Elon immediately saying, this is political. And Jim Jordan coming out and saying it's about censorship. I don't think there's any evidence to really support that either. And so all of this just becomes, everyone's doing it for social media hits and that's not good. It's just,

Ben Whitelaw: 38:03

it's all, it's all kind of meat for the, social media minter, isn't it? It's, it's all connected to, whose narrative can, perpetuate fastest and, go deepest and it's a fair point. You know, we, we don't know for sure what the implications are of a raid like that. I wouldn't be surprised if it was coordinated that somebody knew the report was coming out or that somebody knew that the raid was gonna happen and somebody coincided one with the other.

Mike Masnick: 38:29

I have no idea. and I think this is going to, boomerang back in really bad ways. in that, because the current US government and Elon Musk, it turned every one of these things into this complete charade, you know, where they're just like mocking it as ridiculous. That's going to lead to massive backlash. And I think really problematic laws are going to come into, place because now the argument is like, oh, they're trying to get away with being able to create CSA and so therefore, the regulators are going to have to crack down an extreme manner and go too far. And that leads us to another story, which is like. the Spanish Prime Minister mentioned, you know, the, the focus of the, there's a story in the New York Times that really focuses on, doing a, a ban under 16 ban on social media, which is, taking the Australian model and what's being debated in the UK and all this stuff that we've discussed. But I actually thought much more interesting buried in that, in that same speech where he talked about the under 16 ban, he talked about teaming up with other countries in Europe, in order to put in place, much stricter laws around online speech and like that should be a concern for everyone. But that's blow back for Elon Musk basically being a complete jerk about this stuff. And anytime anyone does anything, it just becomes more and more extreme and, there's no room for the nuanced discussion of you have to do this in a way that isn't regulating speech and that isn't causing all these other problems, but nobody cares anymore.'cause now it's just we have to punish Elon Musk and we'll do it any way that we can. And that's going to impact everybody else who has an internet platform that isn't x and isn't run by, uh, the richest man in the world who seems to be sociopathic.

Ben Whitelaw: 40:09

Yeah. and, and interesting as well that Spain in coming out and, announcing its plans for a social media ban also said that they were forming a, an alliance of, of five other European countries.

Mike Masnick: 40:20

That they don't name.

Ben Whitelaw: 40:22

They don't name secret European countries. what are called the coalition of the digitally willing,

Mike Masnick: 40:27

I love that.

Ben Whitelaw: 40:28

it's so funny.

Mike Masnick: 40:29

we're the, the, the podcast of, the digitally willing.

Ben Whitelaw: 40:33

yeah, we should rebrand. and, and the kind of aim of that is to coordinate a kind of faster, enforcement of social media rules. again, that's, that's an interesting dynamic when you think about, the French model of going after some of the big platforms like Telegram, like X, you've got the kind of EU model as well. You've got potentially another group of European countries going their own way. You know, I wonder what impact that will have in terms of not only the European response as a whole. But also then how the, us pushes back against that, is that gonna be the same across the board? You know, the polls have been slightly more receptive to the US way of doing things and have, not, moved forward with a DSC, a digital services coordinator, which is part of the DSA. and they've, said more friendly things about Donald Trump in that process. So it's a kind of slightly worrying time, I think, for the eu because there are all these

Mike Masnick: 41:25

Yeah. And,

Ben Whitelaw: 41:26

different approaches

Mike Masnick: 41:28

the DSA and the DMA, were supposed to solve that, right? I mean, we're supposed to create a unified approach and, we're sort of, I think it looks like Europe may be losing that. And, that'll be interesting if, depending on, on how that plays out. And, uh, you know, obviously Poland basically saying like, we're not gonna follow the, the, the law that everybody else in Europe has or the EU has agreed to follow is, is kind of, kind of crazy right now.

Ben Whitelaw: 41:52

Yeah. But yeah, that, sums up I think the content moderation, culture war moment that we're in, which, will continue to bubble under the surface. And, and I appreciate your framing there. couple of other stories, Mike, that we, we wanted to touch on. you mentioned TikTok and that story of, potential, so-called Republican censorship of certain words on TikTok since the takeover. you saw a really interesting piece of analysis, about that and whether it's potentially a bit overblown.

Mike Masnick: 42:18

Yeah. and you know, we had mentioned this last week on the, podcast where, it didn't seem like there was real evidence that, there was like political motivation behind it. TikTok had said that they had a data center go down, and some people were like, oh yeah, but they're making that up. And there were all these different questions, but there was a, piece that was posted on LinkedIn, by Sol Messing who's a, professor at NYU, saying that they were researching this very issue and basically following different keywords and how often they're appearing on TikTok over time. And so they followed, what happened at that, that time and said that, mentions of. Politically, salient words and terms definitely did drop, including Epstein and Trump and, the people who had been shot in Minneapolis, Renee Good, and Alex Preddy. but so did almost everything else that they were tracking. So, words like recipe and Oscar and a variety of other things all fell as well, which is, as I said, consistent with the idea that there was some technical problem that took down a bunch of things on the site and it was not a politically motivated, decision to like, oh, we're, gonna stop anything that's critical of Trump or talking about the Epstein files or anything of that nature. It looks like it really was a glitch, but it's really interesting to see that, this research kind of pops up, showing some evidence that it really was just, Hey, the systems go down. That does happen.

Ben Whitelaw: 43:39

Yeah. Interesting. and there's a few other pieces of, research that have started to come out, not necessarily about this incident, but about, the kind of nature of, I guess the infrastructure that's being moved over to the new company, which I think adds to this. So, yeah. Good. Addition to, the conversation that you and Constantinos had last week, counterintuitive to maybe some listeners who thought, that TikTok were banning some, some, of those words, which we don't really know.

Mike Masnick: 44:01

I got yelled at about that. I mean, somebody was, mad, you know, when I posted about last week's podcast and I mentioned that somebody on Blue Sky was very mad. They're like, you know, how can you, how can you just accept what TikTok was saying was true? And it's just like, I've seen enough stuff things break. Like you, you can't assume everything is a conspiracy theory. I know that this is the time that we live in and I understand the desire to be skeptical of stuff, but let's wait for some actual evidence.

Ben Whitelaw: 44:25

Yeah. I think my issue, just with that point is we seem to give platforms grace when it comes to malfunctions and technical errors in ways that, ways that was always given me the heebie gbs. Like, yes, I think like if there's malfeasance, if you've kind of intentionally built a system. That ends up outputting something that is hateful or harmful, then yeah, that's really where the re the regulation should be. But we do, we do give a pass to people who, to incidents where it's like, oh, it's a technical error. you know, we're just putting things back up. I feel like there should be ramifications for that.

Mike Masnick: 45:00

yeah, perhaps, but there is a, a really good point in this, LinkedIn post, saying that they refer to the suspect's dividend saying false accusations of censorship can create a suspect's dividend. Where if a company gets blamed regardless, the cost of actually doing the unethical thing goes down. And so it's like, look, they're gonna blame us for being bad anyway. So, yeah, sure, let's, do politically motivated moderation. They're gonna accuse us of it anyway. And that's, that's bad too.

Ben Whitelaw: 45:28

True. but if you admit that something has gone wrong in your own systems, then not an accusation that is. Culpability,

Mike Masnick: 45:36

Okay. Fair enough.

Ben Whitelaw: 45:37

so, one for another day. I wanna wrap up today's, episode Mike with a story that I'm very, very proud about. and I'll explain why. I have always, hoped in many ways that I, I would appear on tech debt. And I, for a long time before we started this podcast, we had a, a conversation about whether I could write or should write some pieces about quantum moderation. We never got round to it anyway, I was delighted when this week I saw that, a piece that I'd written about news, comments, comments, on news websites got picked up by one of your writers, Carl Bode and written about. so I finally made it on detector

Mike Masnick: 46:14

and not, not via me. feel bad about this now.

Ben Whitelaw: 46:19

No, I think that would look odd.

Mike Masnick: 46:21

Okay.

Ben Whitelaw: 46:21

would look odd. I don't wanna be kind of, given that much of a hand up. But Carl's done a really great writeup of a, piece that I wrote for new public, a great think tank that thinks about and, does some great research into responsible online stewarding and the creation of, thriving digital spaces. I wrote about how some news websites are going back to having comments on their website. They are adopting a more community first approach. They are reinstating the ability to get involved underneath the line. In ways that I know that people do on sector, to great effect. And, some of the organizations, like the Washington Post and why are actually some big news organizations who are, investing in this. So I decided to write about it on new public. Carl thought it was interesting'cause he's covered this topic for a long time. And, uh, yeah, I think a, great writeup of, a less good that I wrote.

Mike Masnick: 47:12

No, I mean, I thought, I thought it was really good. I thought your take on it was really interesting, and then seeing Carl sort of Carl's approach to it was also really good. And it's just, you know, this idea that I think is really important, I've argued for a very long time that a lot of people in the news business, in the journalism space are confused about what business they're really in, in that they think they're in the business of delivering news. And my argument has always been that they're in the business of building community around the news. And so historically that had been sort of local communities that was sort of, your newspaper tied together, the local community. But I think as the internet has grown up, a lot of, journalism organizations have really diminished their ability to build community and to support community. And comments are not the be all, end all of community building, but the fact that they rejected them or outsourced them to Facebook or. Took them down entirely, I think really harmed their ability to, build community around the newspaper. And now a lot of those organizations are suffering because of it, because they don't have a community, they don't have people who will support them and they don't have, you know, they were chasing, drive-by clicks and, ad dollars and not building up loyalty. And, one thing that we've certainly found with Tech Dirt is, is how much the comments build a loyal audience. And yes, they can be messy and yes, they can be annoying at times. But they build loyalty and they, add value. And I've argued for a very long time. For me, I see the comments on tech Turt. I joke about this, but as, batting practice, which is a baseball reference, and I know you're not a baseball guy, but you understand the concept where it's like, I gotta just keep practicing every argument when I've done, going to Washington DC and, debating with, politicians or, political actors and lobbyists and whatever, every argument that has ever come up, in a debate or something is something that I've seen in the tech comments before and I've gone back and forth on and know every angle and know where they're going. so I am prepared for anything because of the discussions in the comments as, as rough and tumble as they may be. and I find them super, super valuable and I just could not believe how many news organizations were like, we don't want anything to do with this. the riff RAF is a problem.

Ben Whitelaw: 49:22

Yeah. and ironically actually, I was looking through the comments on the tech

Mike Masnick: 49:25

Oh yeah. How bad were they? I don't know if I read those.

Ben Whitelaw: 49:29

not, not, as bad as I, I thought, to be honest. Um, they were fairly, full of praise is probably too much, but they were, they were nice. And a couple of people said, this post actually made me take the leap and sign up as a commenter on tech.

Mike Masnick: 49:42

Yeah.

Ben Whitelaw: 49:43

I've been lurking for a bunch of time, but actually, you know, I can see why, it's good to be involved in these discussions and, and we found in the places I've worked before. The people who commented more often, often read more, they were more engaged. They were more likely to subscribe and continue subscribing to, whatever, outlook I worked for. And so, yeah, there is this benefit, but it's slow, arduous work and it's obviously not always straightforward to create that kind of environment where people can have interesting discussion. So testament to you at Tech Dirt for doing that, for investing in software that does that. And yeah, to every news organization who's getting back on their horse. I think it's worth it.

Mike Masnick: 50:19

Yeah. it is effort, but, but I think it's, valuable and definitely worth it.

Ben Whitelaw: 50:22

Yeah. that brings us to, the close today, Mike. we, covered a, fair range of topics. I'd say, you know, European and US beef all the way to news comments on articles. we've run the full gamut. Thanks everyone for listening to today's podcast and all of the podcasts. If you enjoyed today's episode.

Mike Masnick: 50:38

check out the bingo card. Let's,

Ben Whitelaw: 50:40

out the bingo card, see how you fared, like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. It very much helps us get discovered and, and reach new people, and we will speak to you all next week. Thanks very much. Take care. See you soon.

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