Ben Whitelaw 0:08

Hello, and welcome to Ctrl Alt Speech, the podcast where we make sense of the major debates shaping online speech, platform power, content moderation, and the future of the internet. It's June 25th, 2026, and this week we've got a special episode of Ctrl Alt Speech, the sparkling, brand new, no expense spared Ctrl Alt Speech reading list.

Mike Masnick 0:28

Woo!

Ben Whitelaw 0:29

Hey. this is an, an exclusive episode for Patreon supporters. so this is a great chance to become a supporter of Ctrl Alt Speech, if you haven't already. But we've also got a preview on the free feeds if you are tuning in, and haven't signed up yet. Ctrl Alt Speech is the tiny personal reading group of Mike Masnick, founder and editor of Techdirt, and me, Ben Whitelaw, founder and editor of Everything in Moderation. Mike, we do this every week. It's basically a reading group, right?

Mike Masnick 0:55

Sure, a, a kind of, a kind of reading group. I think this will be a little bit more longer form. Uh, and not in terms of listening. This, this episode should be shorter. If you're listening on the free feed, you're just getting the preview version, but, even the full version I think will be a little bit shorter than our, regular episodes. But we are talking about longer form content to read

Ben Whitelaw 1:16

Yeah. And also, you know, the thing about this reading group is that there's one of us is the annoying reading group person. It-- Of whi- of which there is always one in every reading group. I, I've been in a couple, but if you ask anybody who's been in a reading group, there is always somebody who is incredibly annoying, probably they become overly prepared and want to speak at length. so yeah, one of us is that person. I don't know who.

Mike Masnick 1:39

We- we- we'll find out, won't we?

Ben Whitelaw 1:42

Yeah, exactly. so this episode is a response to various folks who have come to us wanting to understand in a bit more depth internet regulation, online speech, and trust and safety. the trust and safety industry is having, many people come into it for lots of reasons, that we can go into. so we're seeing an influx, Micah, of people who are new to the space, who haven't been following it anywhere near as long as you have, and even partly as long as I have. And so today we're kind of sharing books that we think are essential to read to get an understanding of the space, what's been happening over the last 20-plus years on the internet, and where it's also going. And so we've picked three books each today that we think are, good places to start. These are the books we return most to, that we think about a lot. we could have picked a whole bunch more. It, uh, w- was an incredibly hard task, right?

Mike Masnick 2:34

Yeah. there are so many books. As, as I was putting together sort of my list, I s- I thought it would be obvious, and then I was like, "Oh, wait, but also, but also." And so I have a very long list, but we're not doing all of that. we're narrowing it down to just three

Ben Whitelaw 2:49

And if you, if you have ideas, listeners, for books that we should be reading or, or if we should do a future episode of, a reading list episode in which we talk more about books that are worth reading, get in touch with us, podcast@contraltalkspeech.com, or leave a comment under our Patreon post of this very episode, and we'll get back to you and talk more about it. We're not Mike, including kind of academic papers or presentations or, you know, resources. This is purely the kind of, very few books that we think are worth touching on, or that we could actually kind of spend time on. There are others and many others that are worth, reading and, taking time to read. before we get into things, Mike, big shout-out to our Ctrl Alt Speech Patreon backers. We've got the Supporters tier who pay $10 a month to get extended episodes, and also our Insiders who not only get those extended episodes but also get to suggest stories that we cover on the podcast, and maybe receive the odd message from us, none of which are explicit, uh, which is, which is actually quite rare on the internet. so if that's your bag, listeners, Go to patreon.com/ctrlaltspeech or go to the show notes and you can find out more. okay. Without further ado, Mike, I think it's worth us getting started. you're gonna kick us off with a book that, actually I haven't read. Um, there's a few of the books that you suggested which I haven't got around to reading, and actually one that came out 15 years ago. so it's, it's one from the annals of history

Mike Masnick 4:14

Yeah. This is, this is an, a slightly older book, but it's, it is one, as you said, that I keep going back to and I think is, one that I-- is really important, especially for anyone who's doing anything related to child safety on the internet, and it, it is danah boyd's book, "It's Complicated." it's tough to say that 'cause it, it's comp-- the, the name of the book is "It's Complicated." and it's a wonderful book, and, I'm sure a lot of people listening to this already know of danah's work and, research and, writing on various subjects related to the internet and internet communities and, and it's all worthwhile. But "It's Complicated" is the book that I go back to quite frequently, and for a few specific reasons, mainly that she spent so much time really understanding how children were using the internet in ways that were incredibly eye-opening to me, and I sort of thought I understood some of this stuff, but I, I didn't until I, I read this. And there are a lot of books out there, and I had a few others that I included on the, the maybe list that I would talk about that talk about, children on the internet and communities and, the way kids use the internet or the way kids should use the internet. There are a number of different books about that. and almost all of them, I think, they come at it from an adult's perspective, which makes sense because it's an adult writing it. but many of them, there's a little, sense of judgment in the way that they're written, right? You know, it is an adult looking at kids' spaces, and whether they mean to or not, there's some element of like, "This is the right thing to do. This is the wrong thing to do." And what always impressed me and was eye-opening to me about "It's Complicated" was that danah really is incredibly empathetic and was able to, talk to kids and young people and really understand in an incredibly deep and personal way how they use the internet for good and for bad. And as the title suggests, you know, the reality is complicated, that there isn't a, a single answer. But, the things that people assume and the stereotypes and the, things that people rush to about how kids and the internet interact, I think are really challenged by this book, and, you know, not in a good way or a bad way or whatever. it just really presents like this is what kids do. This is the way kids think about things. That is really powerful to me.

Ben Whitelaw 6:44

And what was it about 15 years ago that made this book timely? Many of our listeners will know the very recent, worries about children on the internet, but do you have a... Like, what was the kind of backstory as to why she took the focus on child safety back then?

Mike Masnick 6:59

I mean, I think it was, you know, it was certainly an understudied space. It was the, obviously still the early days of social media as, as we think of it today. there were still, probably a lot more focus on, like, personal websites and things like that, but you had MySpace and early Facebook and things like that. but it wasn't as big an industry, and there hadn't been as much thought, and there was a lot of assumptions that were being made about, the kids these days and what they were doing online. But there hadn't been a really thorough or really useful study of what the kids themselves were really thinking about it and what they were experiencing. And, you know, what's interesting to me in going back and, and looking at it, and I've, you know, I've read the book a few times, and I, go back to it for different things at different points in time. but what's interesting to me, too, is you can look at a book and say, "Oh, this is, now out of date," right? The internet has changed, and it's very different. but I don't think it is, and, and I think that's actually one of the things that this book has really stood the test of time. Yeah, the platforms that kids are using today have, perhaps changed, and there are a whole bunch of other things happening that make some of the stuff, you know, a little bit different. But, the underlying ways that kids interact and build community and, want to socialize and use the internet for socialization, really there's an underlying truth there that I still think many of the books that are coming out today miss that Dana got right all those years ago. And so I still think it's an incredibly valuable book for anyone who's interested in this space.

Ben Whitelaw 8:33

obviously going by the title, it's kind of clear her thesis is that there's no silver bullet. it's not gonna be, easy to, fix this problem, which even at that stage was very nascent. But does she make any kind of recommendations or predictions that we've seen either come true or not come true?

Mike Masnick 8:49

I think, I think she might even push back on your framing of, problem, right? Like, is it, is it a problem, right? and I think there is, like, this instinct of, lots of people to jump to the, like, well, something is wrong and something needs to be fixed. And I don't think that's her thesis. I think her thesis is that, kids want to communicate with other people, and they have different ways in which they do that, and there's a whole bunch of different trade-offs and challenges in how they communicate. That has always been true, and it's intermediated by technology in interesting ways. But understanding the kids' point of view and how they think about these things is really important. And yeah, you know, as different generations come up, there are some different challenges, but I still think that the core underlying thesis in the book of how kids view communicating with others absolutely remains true and, and is fitting

Ben Whitelaw 9:42

Interesting, yeah. definitely one that I will have to, to dig into. s- so one of the books that I'm quite keen to discuss today, Mike, is one that's not quite, as old as that one that came out in 2019, a book by Sarah T. Roberts, which is called Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media. And so this is, a book that I came across in the very early stages of when I started writing Everything in Moderation. I think I came across Sarah's work because she consulted on the documentary The Cleaners. I don't know if you remember that.

Mike Masnick 10:12

I, I almost said, like, when we were talking about doing this book list, if we were going to add movies, I would've added "The Cleaners," but

Ben Whitelaw 10:18

I agree. and so she, consulted on that, and that's a very good documentary by two German directors looking at the world of, a-outsourced content moderation and what she called and coined commercial content moderation. Sarah is a, a professor and author. She was really kind of very early on in, understanding and trying to shine a light on the way that platforms used labor from people in countries in often the Global South to essentially kind of moderate content online and, and allow users the experience that we know that they have, today. You know, People do not even today, I think, understand that their feeds and their messages and their, various surfaces within these social platforms are some fashion along the way, augmented by work done by this invisible class of workers. and so the book kind of really shone a light on the outsourcing industry, what we often know as BPOs, business processing outsourcers. And there are very large companies who are very, very profitable, who put bums in seats and have contracts with large platforms, who, some will argue kind of exploit those people, others will say provide a very important service. and it's a story that we have returned to over the last two years throughout "Control Alt Speech," Mike, in various guises. You know, Kenyan moderators facing PTSD, Ghan-Ghanaian moderators who are being, kind of exploited, you know, contract negotiations between groups, the growth of the industry to parts of Europe and Asia as well. It's, it's one that has really grown, as a storyline, but one that when I think about the new articles that come out every, every week and every month, always think back to Sarah's work. and I think it still has relevance because of the way that AI is, kind of reliant on human work still and human labor. data labeling is, the new content moderation in many ways, and you have people who are, categorizing information, who are categorizing images, categorizing data in some form that will end up being used to train large language models, for some of the biggest co-companies in the world. and so this idea of kind of invisible labor allowing us to have the experiences we do online is one that I think perpetuates even today and, and one that I think is very relevant and, and very undercovered,

Mike Masnick 12:34

Yeah. I, I think it's, it is really eye-opening. And I was almost gonna say, you know, you sort of got past my question already o- of like, is that changing with the, world of AI, where now AI is handling a lot more direct content moderation? But you're right that many of those people have now shifted to jobs sort of training the AI or doing things like that. Be interesting to see how that changes over time. but right now, I think we're seeing a lot of the same patterns and which is why that book is so useful because the underlying question of the working conditions i- still a, a really, big factor in all of this.

Ben Whitelaw 13:12

Yeah. in many ways it's kind of scary the way that people are treated in order for us to have the digital experience we have. And I remember back when I, read it in 2019, 2020, I didn't have a, a strong idea of, what was happening under the hood. And, and I was working, within the media, working with platforms, and had a fairly good understanding how the dynamics of, those platforms worked, and yet it was completely new to me. So again, it's, uh, it's a probably not a book that gets very widely read, but I, really wish it, got, more readers. so would encourage Control Alt Speech listeners to take a look. So that's my first, first read. Mike, do you-- Your second one is, one that speaks to a, you know, a longstanding interest of yours. we couldn't have a series of book recommendations without talking about Section 230. talk us through why you picked, this book by Jeff.

Announcer 14:00

This special bonus episode of Ctrl Alt Speech is available in full to our Patreon subscribers. Join us today by visiting patreon.com/ctrlaltspeech. That's C-T-R-L Alt Speech. If your organization is interested in sponsoring the podcast, contact us via our website at ctrlaltspeech.com. Thanks for listening