Ctrl-Alt-Speech: An Appeal A Day Keeps The Censor Away
from the ctrl-alt-speech dept
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.
Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed.
In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:
- States sue TikTok over app’s effects on kids’ mental health (CNBC)
- Risks vs. Harms: Youth & Social Media (danah boyd)
- Instagram and Threads moderation is out of control (The Verge)
- TikTok lays off hundreds in Malaysia in move toward AI moderation (Asia Nikkei)
- Meta ‘Supreme Court’ expands with European center to handle TikTok, YouTube cases (Washingon Post)
- The DSA article you didn’t know about, but should (T&S Insider)
- Streaming platform Kick bans Jack Doherty after he crashed his car on a livestream (Polygon)
- Truth Social Users Are Losing Ridiculous Sums of Money to Scams (Gizmodo)
- Hacked ‘AI Girlfriend’ Data Shows Prompts Describing Child Sexual Abuse (404 Media)
This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.
Filed Under: ai, artificial intelligence, child safety, content moderation, dsa, scams
Companies: facebook, instagram, kick, meta, tiktok, truth social
Comments on “Ctrl-Alt-Speech: An Appeal A Day Keeps The Censor Away”
We Have Flags!
I live in a weird town. 100 miles east of the liberal enclave of Seattle is Wenatchee, WA. Some of the cheapest electricity in the country (2.8cents per kWh), largest employer is the county is the county power district which manages the hydroelectric dams and has a huge union. Even with all that, we’re heavily conservative here.
That same power district dug fiber to our homes and anyone can open a company to handle billing which means I have 7 companies for internet that I can pay $59/mo for 1Gig up and down that never goes down.
We are heavily christian, have a large coalition of white nationalists including a lot of the local police force. AND, all cross walks on roads with a speed limit over 30mph has cross walk flags. Pick it up, hold it out, wait for traffic to stop, start walking. Place in holder on other side. Repeat.
Weird town. Love the pod! Also, I listen when I’m working out, not doing laundry. Cheers!
I read the article from Boyd. I have issues with it because I think that writers on this subject need to discuss how they think that people who harm others on social media need to be held to account. Especially when the subject is brought up in their articles that accountability for harms is important.
I also think that there really do need to be regulations put on designs of apps like TikTok and more. Things like infinite scroll and autoplay that just serve post after post or video after video to keep people engaged, we need to look at those the same way that we look at scummy game design around microtransactions in the games industry. Social media companies exploit impulse control issues and addictive behavior the same way that scummy game companies like EA do.
Re:
Regarding Media Literacy: One of my issues is that so many of the people who need to take classes on Media Literacy to help them recognize the risks and such to be better prepared for participating online, those people are grown adults who will never set foot into a classroom again. Media literacy just has to be one facet of it.
I’m with Ben in that, like, I want to know what happens and what the plans that people are coming up with are, and how they’re helping people.
I also am wary of the talk about solving things as individuals and people using their individual agency to help mitigate and navigate risks. I think that it steers away from how there are inherent risks borne out of how profit-hungry corporations run these platforms and make decisions that put money first, that individual agency can’t really tackle. Especially when the corporations use similar tricks of the trade for their social media platforms that scummy game companies use to get people to buy their microtransactions. I still very much think that regulation for certain aspects of social media platform design is necessary, just like we need to regulate greedy game business models that prey on addiction and short-circuit regular decision-making behavior.