0:00

Mike, it's not a website that I go to very often,

0:02

okay? But the public access

0:04

to court electronic records site

0:07

better known as Pacer.

0:08

better known as Pacer to its fans. I know is

0:10

one that you go to a lot. and we'll talk about

0:12

why shortly. but when you go to the website,

0:15

it prompts you at the top of the page by

0:17

saying, what can we help you accomplish? So

0:20

today I ask you, what can we help you

0:22

accomplish?

0:23

Well, in an ideal world, you

0:25

would find me nine better justices

0:28

for the Supreme Court who actually understand

0:30

the Constitution?

0:33

Oh God. Okay. That's that's,

0:35

that's a foretelling if ever I heard one,

0:37

yes. what about you? What can we help you accomplish

0:39

today, Ben?

0:40

well, my new year's resolution, Mike was to

0:42

be much more Zen and to be much

0:45

more, you know, calm

0:47

and to, you know, meditate from

0:49

time to time and to really kind of, just

0:51

take things slowly and

0:53

this week has not helped

0:56

at all. And so it's

0:59

testing my resolve. And to be honest, I don't think you can help

1:01

me at all. I'm beyond help. Let's

1:03

get started. Hello

1:13

and welcome to control alt speech. Your

1:15

weekly roundup of the major stories about online

1:17

speech, content moderation, and internet

1:20

regulation. It's January the 10th, 2025.

1:23

And this week's episode is brought to you with financial support

1:25

from the future of online trust and safety fund. This

1:28

week, we're talking about Meta's big policy announcement,

1:31

TikTok's oral arguments in the Supreme court.

1:33

And much, much more. My name is

1:35

Ben Whitelaw. I'm the founder and editor of

1:37

everything in moderation. And I'm

1:39

back with Mike Masnick founder

1:42

of Tector and it's 2025. Mike,

1:45

congratulations for making it this far. Happy

1:48

new year.

1:49

yes.

1:49

Is it too late to say that?

1:50

No, no, no. It is, not too late to say Happy

1:53

New Year. Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year to all of our

1:55

listeners. Welcome back. We

1:57

are, I guess, glad to

1:59

be back. It's

2:02

like, there's a lot to talk about

2:04

and, uh, not all of it is,

2:07

uh, good news. So happy New Year. but

2:09

yeah, it's, it is a new year and it's

2:11

going to be one heck of a year, Ben.

2:14

I'm going to, don't make me look up glad in the dictionary.

2:16

I'm not, I'm not sure glad to be here is

2:19

the thing, but no, it's lovely to be back. It's lovely

2:21

to be talking to the listeners. Again, we had

2:23

a nice break over Christmas. people continue

2:25

to listen to old episodes of the podcast, which

2:27

is great. so we, we saw a lot of listeners,

2:30

tuning in between the, Christmas dinner

2:32

and new year celebrations.

2:33

And I was going just say, you know, we

2:35

always say to, rate review subscribe,

2:38

but I'm going to add one other thing to

2:40

that, which is tell other people about the

2:42

podcast. This is, this is one of the things

2:44

that I think, you know, word of mouth goes a really long

2:46

way in helping to

2:48

spread podcasts and, let's get beyond

2:50

just the rate reviewing and subscribe requests.

2:52

And if you like the podcast, please tell

2:54

other people about it. We, we really appreciate it. We

2:57

know that is how a lot of people find out about

2:59

it. And, uh, it always helps.

3:01

Yeah, I was in a, uh, I was having a chat with a tech lawyer

3:03

in London earlier today. And she said

3:05

that she recommends the podcast to all of her team,

3:07

Mike. Um, and so whenever

3:10

new starters come into the firm, she

3:12

recommends control or speech. So, if other

3:14

people can do the same, we'll be much happier for

3:16

it. So yeah, great to be back. And,

3:18

uh, yeah, really excited about the start

3:20

of this year. As well as the podcast returning,

3:23

you know, we've got lots of stuff on ourselves.

3:25

Everything moderation and tech are

3:27

big years ahead of them. And we'll

3:29

talk a bit about that over the coming weeks. I

3:31

will flag that EIM is doing its

3:33

first in person meetup.

3:36

Do you have plans on the 30th

3:38

of January, Mike?

3:41

I will have to check my calendar, but think

3:43

I will be half a world away from you in London,

3:45

unfortunately.

3:46

The QE might be, might be a lot,

3:49

but, um, you are invited to the

3:51

tech policy event that I'm hosting with,

3:53

Mark Scott from digital politics and

3:56

Georgia Yakovu from the excellent newsletter,

3:58

Horrific Terrific. That's going to be

4:00

a kind of very informal look ahead to what's happening

4:02

this year in the tech policy online

4:05

speech space. We'll be doing a bit of a Q

4:07

and a lots of interesting folks have already signed

4:09

up. hopefully people from, who

4:11

are listening to the and are near London or

4:13

in the UK can come and join us even

4:16

if you can't,

4:19

check. I probably will not be able to

4:21

grab a quick flight to London, unfortunately.

4:24

well, don't, you know, just think about it. You

4:26

don't have to commit now. we should know right

4:29

at this stage that there are, some very

4:31

Interesting and impactful oral

4:33

arguments happening at Supreme Court right now around

4:35

the TikTok ban and you are getting kind

4:37

of messages live on

4:39

your screen, Mike, right from people who

4:41

are tuning in. this is being recorded

4:44

as it all happens.

4:45

Yeah. Yeah. And so, so we're not

4:47

going to go too deep into that, but yeah, I,

4:50

there is a, uh, a sort of, uh,

4:52

group chat, of, some, first amendment lawyers

4:54

I know who have been, uh, listening

4:57

and sending a bunch of messages about it. And

4:59

so I think it's just concluding kind

5:01

of as we're recording this, uh, so

5:03

obviously we're not going to go too deep on it. Just

5:06

from the impression that I've gotten from

5:08

the little bits of the oral arguments that I've heard

5:10

or what I've read this morning, I don't think

5:12

it's gone particularly well for

5:14

the TikTok side of things. I

5:17

do get a sense that

5:19

The, as I alluded to

5:21

in the opening, that the justices

5:24

seem a bit confused. Um,

5:26

and I will note that, literally

5:28

the day after Christmas we filed

5:31

a, brief in the case, and

5:33

we were trying to argue specifically

5:36

for the Supreme Court to understand the First Amendment.

5:38

And I don't think they got

5:40

the message. Uh, there were obviously lots of

5:42

other things Briefs from other amici,

5:44

as they are called, many of whom

5:46

arguing the same thing that, or not the same

5:48

thing. We, we had a slightly different argument, but

5:51

many are arguing along these same lines about the importance

5:53

of the first amendment. And it does not appear that the message

5:55

got through, to very many

5:57

of the justices. Uh, it's

5:59

always a little difficult to sort of read the tea

6:01

leaves from the justices oral

6:04

arguments. And they

6:06

basically did what they often do, which is

6:08

push back on, everyone who was speaking.

6:10

Cause there was the. Tick tock. There was a representative,

6:13

the lawyer for the users who spoke and then for

6:16

the U. S. Government. and they did push back

6:18

on the U. S. Government. the solicitor

6:20

general in ways that suggest like maybe

6:22

they are skeptical of some of her arguments

6:24

and, but the real focus seemed

6:26

to be on, there's always been this,

6:28

conflict between the data privacy

6:31

concerns and the speech concerns

6:33

and the people pushing for the law have

6:35

always done a really good job of conflating

6:37

them so that if you start complaining about, well,

6:40

the data privacy stuff, you say something like, well,

6:42

why don't you pass an actual data privacy law? Then

6:44

they will immediately jump to, but the, Chinese

6:46

propaganda issue. And then you're like, but that's a free

6:48

speech issue. And then they'll say, but the

6:51

national security concerns about the data privacy. So

6:53

there's like this weird dance where they're always kind of

6:55

switched back and forth. And one of the hopes

6:57

was that, at least at the Supreme court,

6:59

that these nine justices would

7:02

be able to separate out those two issues

7:04

and the early impressions from the

7:06

oral arguments was that they were having a really difficult

7:08

time and they were falling for that trick

7:10

where. If you push on.

7:13

one side, the data privacy or

7:15

the speech, they jumped to the other.

7:17

and that's, to me, is really problematic

7:19

because it's like, okay, these are two separate issues and you can

7:21

separate them out and look at each of them independently

7:24

and then have arguments about each of them. But

7:26

the, trick where you talk about

7:28

one and when you begin to realize like the argument

7:30

is falling apart, you immediately jump to the other.

7:33

Feels like a really dangerous dodge

7:35

and it feels like it was working on the

7:37

Supreme Court. And so that, that's a big concern

7:40

for me.

7:40

Interesting. And so you were going to go deeper

7:43

on this next week because. this

7:45

is all coming to a head pretty quickly. Just remind us of

7:47

the timings of this, Mike.

7:48

Yeah. So the ban is supposed to go into

7:51

effect on the 19th, which is

7:54

I guess it's Sunday. the following week.

7:56

and so, the Supreme court effectively

7:58

needs to rule in some way or

8:01

not before that there is the slight

8:03

possibility, which was raised during the oral

8:05

arguments that they could, abide

8:07

by what Donald Trump asked

8:09

them to do, which is a whole nother issue, uh,

8:12

which was to just sort of, yeah. Put the

8:14

whole thing on hold until he was in charge,

8:16

which is one more day, after

8:19

the deadline. and so that is a possible,

8:21

resolution, but the more likely thing is that

8:24

sometime next week, probably

8:26

just as we sit down to record just

8:28

to mess with us,

8:29

It's always the way, isn't it?

8:31

the Supreme Court may come out with its ruling

8:33

on this, in terms of, you know, what

8:35

happens. And If they rule

8:37

that law is valid, which now seems like

8:40

a Decent possibility. Tick

8:42

Tock could effectively be turned off. Uh, there's,

8:44

there are all sorts of questions about what does that

8:46

actually look like, because the real

8:49

legal mechanisms for how that works is actually

8:51

much more complicated. And it actually depends on like,

8:54

Apple and, Google no

8:56

longer allowing you to download new versions

8:58

of it, but people who still have the app might still

9:00

have it. And there's a question of whether or not other

9:02

ISPs have to block it in the interim,

9:04

which is. not entirely clear, and I've heard

9:07

arguments going both ways on that. so,

9:09

you know, during the oral arguments, TikTok's

9:12

lawyer effectively said, like, they would turn it

9:14

off, that's the way this goes, but

9:16

that's not clear that they actually have to turn it off,

9:18

and he wasn't totally committing to it. So,

9:22

You know, not entirely clear, but

9:24

TikTok could go away in, 10

9:26

days from now or nine days from

9:28

now. And so we don't, know

9:30

for sure. There's

9:32

a lot of, a lot up in the air right now. And,

9:34

and, you know, my biggest concern about

9:37

this, and this is what, why we filed

9:39

an amicus brief. In the case is that

9:41

the ruling, because it's so sort of,

9:44

mixing these issues of the speech and the data

9:46

protection China and propaganda,

9:49

that the actual first amendment concerns

9:51

get lost in that. And the ruling that comes out of

9:53

this really, really undermine

9:56

the first amendment in very, very significant

9:58

ways, no matter what you think of TikTok

10:01

and ByteDance and its connection to China.

10:04

And the oral arguments this morning did not

10:06

give me any reason to feel Better

10:08

about that. We'll see what the final ruling is,

10:10

but I'm deeply concerned about

10:13

the larger impact of the ruling, not

10:15

specifically the impact on this one particular

10:17

app.

10:18

Yeah. Okay. That's a helpful summary

10:20

based upon what is a very live story.

10:23

you mentioned the U S government setting

10:25

a kind of dangerous precedent, Mike, that is a very

10:27

helpful segue into

10:30

our first story, which is something that everyone

10:32

listening to this podcast will no doubt have heard a little bit

10:34

about this week, which is the.

10:37

meta announcement, Mark Zuckerberg's

10:39

famous now famous five minute video.

10:41

did they say something?

10:42

They, I don't know if you heard. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

10:45

Yeah. He's, he's got a new watch. Did you

10:47

Oh, oh, oh,

10:49

I hope it's an expensive watch.

10:51

yeah. I can see you've got your watch

10:53

on there. That's I'm guessing that's not 900,

10:56

000 worth.

10:56

No, no, this, this, this was a free

10:58

watch to be honest. It

11:01

was definitely not 900,

11:04

Well, Mark Zuckerberg wore his

11:06

special watch for his big announcement

11:08

this week, the kind of summary

11:10

was the headline was more speech, fewer

11:12

mistakes. And he

11:15

set out new vision. Mike,

11:17

as you would have seen for Facebook, going back

11:19

to what he described as its kind of core principles

11:22

of free expression and speech, and

11:24

he laid out a kind of five point plan

11:26

for how he planned to do that. so for people

11:29

who maybe were hiding under a rock and didn't

11:31

necessarily hear the announcement I'm

11:33

going to quickly kind of run through those

11:35

five points six points if you include

11:38

what I think is one of the most insane aspects of it. And,

11:40

and rather than doing an order Mike I'm going to suggest. I

11:43

do it on a, a sliding scale of insanity,

11:46

if you'll, if you'll allow me to do that,

11:48

Yes, please, please.

11:50

for all intents and purposes, and it was an announcement

11:52

that, you know, rile people up for

11:54

lots of reasons, got an awful amount of news

11:56

coverage. And I don't necessarily think we

11:58

should take it all seriously. so I'm going to kind of do

12:00

it in order of what I think is the kind of least insane

12:03

to the most insane. And then I want to get your thoughts on

12:05

this listeners, if you're listening to this

12:07

and you have thoughts on the order, get

12:09

in touch with us, um, podcast at.

12:11

Control. speech. com as well. We want to hear

12:13

from you. We'll share back some of your thoughts next

12:15

week. So in order, Mike, okay.

12:18

The five things, six things were

12:20

replacing fact checkers, simplifying

12:22

policies, reducing mistakes,

12:25

bringing back civic content, moving

12:27

trust and safety. to Texas, working

12:30

with Donald Trump to push back against governments.

12:33

Okay. They're the six things that he did in

12:35

order. My order is

12:37

thus, okay. The first

12:39

one was bringing back civic content.

12:42

And this is the idea that people all of a sudden

12:44

want politics on the platform.

12:47

they made 2021

12:49

that actually politics wasn't for them, civic content,

12:52

as they kind of termed it. actually was causing division

12:54

and users were feeling stressed by it. All

12:57

of a sudden, surprisingly,

12:59

this is being brought

13:00

no, no stress at all anymore about politics.

13:03

Yeah, they, they, like me have solved their

13:05

meditation and, and, you know, state

13:08

of mind issues and they're bringing

13:10

back civic content. this is probably the

13:12

least insane, still a bit insane, but at least insane

13:15

because, news and politics content

13:17

is important for people to navigate their lives.

13:19

And that was the big criticism back in 2021. you

13:22

know, so there's a, case of bringing this back, there's

13:24

clearly a political element to this and,

13:26

you know, as we'll see when we marry it with other

13:29

parts of the announcement, actually,

13:31

it's going to Having particular political

13:33

outlets and political speech on the platform

13:35

is good for a certain president elect.

13:39

So that's why it's, it's

13:41

insane, but the least insane.

13:43

Okay. Stick with me.

13:44

Okay.

13:46

number two is replacing fact checkers.

13:48

and, bringing in a community note system

13:51

to help fill the gap. Now, fact checking

13:53

is, debated widely for its

13:55

efficacy. people criticize it.

13:57

People have said that, it's slow that it doesn't necessarily

14:00

the job that you think, like it to,

14:02

and since it was brought in and kind of 2016

14:04

post the last Trump. Presidency,

14:07

it has received a lot of flack. I personally

14:10

think that, you don't necessarily know the effects

14:12

of fact checking until it's gone.

14:15

And, I'm interested to see how this will pan

14:17

out, but actually, you know, the

14:19

insane part of this for me is that you can get a system

14:21

like community notes to come in and do

14:23

as good a job because there's a whole raft

14:26

of issues with, with X slash Twitter's community

14:28

notes product, again, it's It's

14:30

very slow, there are some research that says

14:32

it is effective in part, but it's not the

14:34

kind of panacea that I think Zuckerberg is painting out

14:36

to be. So that's why it's my number

14:38

two on the insanity spectrum. number

14:40

three is reducing mistakes.

14:43

Okay. So this is Zuckerberg's saying

14:45

that he was going to, essentially catch less bad

14:47

stuff. That's literally how he put it. and

14:49

by changing the filters. and

14:52

what it was, the AI systems and the

14:54

automated systems we're going to catch. And

14:56

it's going to focus particularly on the most egregious stuff

14:58

now. So less of the kind of lower level

15:00

harms that perhaps it did in the past. And,

15:04

you know, suppression of speech via these automated systems

15:06

has been something that has been in the news a lot.

15:08

It affects, particularly underrepresented groups.

15:10

It was a huge report put out, by

15:12

BSR a few years ago. About

15:14

the Palestine Israel conflict where,

15:17

automated suppression of speech was a huge issue. Meta

15:19

has been criticized for this significantly and

15:22

in and of itself, isn't really an issue. However,

15:25

when you combine this with the policy

15:27

changes that we'll talk about in a second and

15:29

the civic content changes as well, I think

15:31

this is, this is going to be A really

15:33

serious issue. So that's why it's number

15:35

three. Number four, Mike is,

15:38

moving moderators to Texas

15:40

or specifically, if you, if you really tune

15:42

into what he says, moving trust and safety

15:44

and moderation out of California,

15:46

doesn't say where I'm moving content

15:48

reviewers to Texas, aside

15:50

from the fact that there has been lots of content moderation

15:53

done in Texas for a long time, and we know

15:55

that because there was a class action brought by

15:57

moderators in Texas against Meta. this

15:59

is just a giant signaling move. And,

16:02

I don't know if you saw the, the law fair,

16:04

webinar with Kate Klonick, Daphne

16:07

Keller and others, but they made the point that this

16:09

is just the kind of giant, anti California

16:12

hand waving message, like anti

16:14

the coastal areas. sorry, sorry to

16:16

cause offense. Um, and

16:19

so again, kind of insane in its own right,

16:21

just like a complete, signaling move number

16:24

five. And I'm getting into the kind of serious,

16:27

insane territory. Now this is, we're talking

16:29

batshit levels, was this point around

16:31

working with Trump to push back on

16:33

governments going after us companies

16:36

and quote, censoring more. Lots

16:38

of people have quoted him accusing

16:40

the EU of institutionalizing

16:43

censorship. I can't even say it without laughing

16:46

and the, quote secret courts

16:48

in Latin America, which are a clear reference

16:50

to, the issues in Brazil

16:52

that Elon Musk has faced and,

16:54

you know, again, insane,

16:56

you know, whose idea was it to, set

16:58

up a, a system in which he's siding

17:01

with the U. S. government in order to bring about more

17:03

free speech doesn't make any sense.

17:05

And we can talk more about that. And then lastly,

17:08

but you know, clearly most egregiously

17:10

is the simplifying policies element

17:13

of this whole announcement. on the face of

17:15

it, you know, simplifying policies, not a bad

17:17

thing, but he calls out, immigration

17:19

and gender. he flags

17:22

the fact that transgenderism is something that he's

17:24

kind of looking to address. The language

17:26

is very, very coded and very, very

17:28

specific. And since then, we've seen

17:30

some of those policies start to be announced

17:32

and leaked to the press.

17:35

And some of the examples.

17:37

Now in the policies are abhorrent,

17:40

you know, they are calling out, trans

17:43

people are now allowed to be deemed,

17:45

unreal, you know, the, the worst kind of dehumanizing

17:48

language you can come up with, you can

17:50

now say on the platform, according

17:52

to these leaked documents. And so, What

17:54

I've tried to do there, Mike, is give a summary of all

17:56

of those mini announcements and the order

17:59

in which I think they're the most maddening.

18:01

Yeah,

18:06

this is, I mean, this is the problem with

18:08

all sorts of things these days, which

18:10

is that, there is a lot of complexity and nuance

18:13

in here and so much of. just

18:15

the levels of bullshit that exist

18:17

are really wrapped around some kernel

18:19

of accuracy or truth so

18:22

that, like, if you attack it, people will say, yeah,

18:24

but there's a real problem here and, yet,

18:26

it's presented in a way that is so misleading

18:28

and so twisted. so, I

18:31

think that's true here. And I, so I think you're, you're.

18:33

Order is more or less

18:36

reasonable, but all of this

18:38

is, under the backdrop of

18:40

so much of this is done for completely

18:42

nonsense reasons. and is all designed

18:45

to do that. So, like for years

18:47

I've called out their suppression

18:50

of civic content or political

18:52

content. and so the reversal

18:54

of that, sure, you can say like, yeah,

18:56

that makes sense. They never should have done that in the first

18:59

place. That was always a mistake, but

19:01

you look at like, you don't even have to go

19:03

that deep. Just look at the dates of

19:05

when they started this policy. And when they ended

19:07

it, they started it right after Biden

19:10

won. They ended it. Right

19:12

after Trump won again. Right.

19:14

So it's like, so obviously

19:17

political. and, you know, the thing that

19:19

really gets me, this comes

19:21

after the backdrop of, earlier

19:24

In the summer of 2024, you

19:27

know, Zuckerberg sent this like groveling

19:29

message, which we talked about to Jim Jordan.

19:31

And then there was this New York times

19:34

article with the headline, uh,

19:36

Mark Zuckerberg is done with politics.

19:39

And it's like. what all of this makes clear is

19:41

like, no, of course he's not done with politics.

19:43

He's done with democratic

19:45

politics, but he's happy to suck

19:47

up to Republican politics. so

19:50

when you look at it in the backdrop that

19:52

way, it reminds me of like, There,

19:54

this is not exactly the same thing,

19:56

but like, in the copyright fights,

19:59

going back in like the earlier part of the two

20:01

thousands, there's, a wonderful,

20:04

congressional representative Zoe Lofgren

20:06

from California. She's not my representative,

20:08

but nearby. Um, and she was always very

20:11

good on copyright issues. And based

20:13

on the way seniority worked at one point in

20:15

the, two thousands, she was

20:17

lined up to head the,

20:20

IP, subcommittee for

20:22

the judiciary committee, but because

20:24

she's actually good on copyright issues or

20:26

in agreement with me. So I will, I will, you

20:28

know, subjectively say that she's good

20:30

on it. They killed that subcommittee,

20:33

as soon as she was up to head it. And

20:35

then as soon as the

20:37

next person was up to head it. They brought

20:40

it back. And, this strikes

20:42

me as the same thing. It's like, you look at the timing

20:44

of when you kill a program or when

20:46

you start the program. And if it is

20:48

clearly designed to like stop a certain thing

20:50

from happening, there's this, bad reason

20:52

behind it. So even though I think the policy

20:54

was dumb, Changing that, for

20:57

this reason still insane. So

20:59

even if that's your least insane, same thing with the fact

21:01

checkers, I've, you know, from the beginning,

21:03

I've always said like I think fact checking

21:05

as a concept is important, but

21:07

the setup of the way that, social

21:09

media companies have done fact checking, I think has been

21:12

pretty much. ineffective for

21:14

a variety of reasons. And we don't need to go

21:17

into the deeper reasons for why it exists.

21:19

I don't think it's bad that it exists. I

21:21

just don't think it's all that effective. And

21:24

it sort of created this weird vector where

21:26

everyone got so focused on the fact checking

21:28

that they focus on it, the attention

21:30

driven to it and the hatred towards it. Generated

21:33

a lot more heat than was useful

21:36

for anyone. And so, you

21:38

know, so I, again, like, I don't think it's that big

21:40

of a deal that they're like moving away

21:42

from the fact checking program other than as

21:44

a signal. And so again, against the backdrop

21:47

of everything else that it did, and this

21:49

is the one that seems to have gotten people the most worked up.

21:51

And I saw somebody, I've actually now have seen

21:53

it twice where people have referred to it as an

21:55

existential threat to truth and

21:57

it's like, no, it's not an existential

21:59

threat to truth. Threat to truth. if you don't have a fact checker,

22:01

like other people exist who can fact check

22:04

it. just because you don't have this sort of official

22:06

fact check. so I don't think it's that

22:08

big of a deal, but it is also, I

22:10

also feel like the fact checking one in particular

22:13

was sort of used as a bit of misdirection

22:16

because Meta and Zuckerberg

22:18

knew that everyone was going to focus on that.

22:20

So let's throw that out there. Everyone's going to get mad

22:22

about that. And then we're going to do, as you noted,

22:25

like a whole bunch of Much more crazy

22:27

shit in the background that is

22:29

way worse and way more concerning

22:31

in the long run. And so, yeah,

22:34

a signal, but like as an

22:36

effective tool, I don't think the fact checking has,

22:38

been all that big of a deal, then

22:41

we move on to where it starts to get really,

22:43

really crazy. Right. And so the

22:45

mistakes thing, we've discussed this

22:47

just recently, like, you know, on the podcast, we've had

22:49

these examples of the really stupid the, any

22:52

mention of Hitler, even to say like Hitler's bad

22:54

was getting blocked or the, the whole

22:56

like Cracker Jack, story that came up

22:58

where just saying Cracker Jack or Cracker

23:01

was getting banned. And, My one take

23:03

on this, which nobody else has really picked up

23:06

on, but, for all the talk of how

23:08

great the AI is and

23:10

that is automation system is

23:12

like, this seems to be an admission that

23:15

no, we're not that good at this. Meta

23:17

has always had problems with content moderation at scale,

23:20

even though they're the biggest and they've had the most experience

23:22

with it. They've always made silly

23:24

mistakes like this all the time. So there

23:27

is this element of like, if this was just

23:29

a recognition, like, yeah, our automated

23:31

systems are bad and we're not

23:33

really good at this. Again, that would

23:35

be interesting. And that would be an interesting

23:37

admission, but against the backdrop of everything else,

23:39

it is still crazy. And so it is still

23:41

this kind of like, yeah, good

23:44

for them to admit that, but they didn't admit it in a way

23:46

thoughtful or was transparent

23:48

or was useful to the world.

23:50

It was done in a way to say, we're

23:53

going to allow a lot more, really horrible

23:55

shit on the platform.

23:56

Yeah.

23:57

so, that's where we start to get into the really

23:59

crazy stuff. the moderators to Texas

24:01

thing. just even the way that

24:03

Zuckerberg phrased it was basically

24:06

like, we're moving people away from California

24:08

to Texas to stop bias,

24:11

which in what world

24:13

do you think that people in Texas are less biased

24:15

or like, you know, there's not this sense that

24:17

like people in Texas are neutral

24:19

Well, yeah,

24:20

biased, like, what the, like, no,

24:23

no one believes that. And

24:24

listening. I was listening to this law fair webinar

24:27

and people in Austin apparently are like,

24:29

are not like your kind of, you know, typical,

24:32

Republican, you know, like

24:35

Austin is famously not

24:37

like that, yeah.

24:38

Right. So it's like, it's completely arbitrary,

24:41

distinction between California and Texas. And

24:43

clearly it doesn't mean anything, but that's

24:45

the level that he was working at.

24:47

Yeah, I mean, it's funny

24:49

because, another thing that, Zuckerberg

24:51

wrote on threads response to some people

24:53

talking about this, he was like, Oh, I forget

24:55

exactly the way he phrased the first part of it, but

24:57

it was something to the effect of, we, we honestly think

24:59

that this will make the platform better and that will make

25:01

more people use us. Yes. Some

25:04

people might leave the platform,

25:06

due to virtue signaling, but

25:09

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. and. Like I

25:11

responded to Zuckerberg directly on threats.

25:13

I don't know if he saw, he saw it, but I was like, look,

25:15

this is a fucking tell. Like you're, you're, you're

25:17

admitting, like just using the phrase virtue

25:20

signaling, first of all, almost everyone,

25:22

I won't say everyone, but almost everyone who uses

25:24

that phrase is using it to be an asshole. and

25:27

take a step back, everything

25:29

that this announcement did and everything

25:32

that Metta has done this week. has

25:34

been signaling. I wouldn't call it virtue

25:36

signaling. It's perhaps the opposite

25:38

of that, but to use

25:40

that to sort of dismiss the

25:42

people who might be concerned about

25:44

these changes is just an

25:47

absolute insult on top of all of the other

25:49

things that, he's doing

25:51

Yeah. And be put in danger by them as well. Cause

25:53

you know, this is going to have serious, you

25:55

know, particularly the policy, the simplification of policies,

25:58

which is to call it simplification

26:00

is like. It's mad because it's

26:02

not just a simplification. It's like a degradation

26:04

of, it's a, it's a kind of dismantling

26:06

of policy that has been created

26:09

over years.

26:10

it's not. And so there

26:12

is an argument. You can make an argument that

26:14

like, yes, Meta's policies

26:17

probably are way too complex. There's this

26:19

really fantastic. If people haven't listened

26:21

to it, it goes back a few years till they did

26:23

an updated version. Radiolab, the podcast

26:25

Radiolab did this amazing one where they sort

26:28

of embedded a little bit. I think Kate Connick is in

26:30

it lot, Embedded with

26:32

the Meta, I think at the time,

26:34

Facebook. Moderation policy

26:36

team. And they walk through in such

26:38

a good way. I mean, just the

26:40

challenges and the nuances and like,

26:42

Oh, we created this rule, but now we have this

26:44

exception and then, Oh, but there's that

26:46

exception. And they talk about the rule book

26:48

and how they have to sort of keep adding in clauses.

26:51

Like, yes, this, but not in this case,

26:53

but if this, and you just have

26:55

to keep writing the rules in different

26:58

and more involved in complex ways.

27:00

And they, talk about this process, how the rule book

27:02

just grows and grows and grows because

27:04

you have these exceptions and edge cases and

27:07

all this stuff. And it's fascinating just as a,

27:09

to think through these issues because people on the outside never

27:11

think about it. think through how many of these things involve

27:13

edge cases and stuff. But you can see how

27:15

over time that collects a debt

27:17

of like just complexity and problems

27:19

that lead to other kinds of problems in terms

27:21

of actually how you enforce the rules. And

27:23

so there is this element again, where you can take

27:26

this back into a serious realm and say like, yes,

27:28

I am sure that the rule book. at meta

27:31

is way too complex and could benefit

27:34

from some simplicity other than the fact

27:36

that there are reasons why all of those exceptions

27:38

come into play and there are all these issues

27:40

involved but the reality is

27:42

because we're starting to see so first there's the public

27:45

policies that are available for people

27:47

to see that some people called out wired

27:49

was the first one to call out some of the changes in there

27:52

and now what we've seen is What

27:54

I believe are very angry people within meta

27:56

releasing the internal version of the rule

27:58

book and sending those to various reporters who

28:00

are all rushing to publish them. So we're seeing all sorts

28:02

of stuff. What's happening inside. What

28:04

is happening is not what I would call

28:07

a simplification of the rules.

28:09

What is really happening is very

28:11

clear exceptions written for

28:14

specific culture war issues

28:17

that. The MAGA world

28:19

believes is really important for them to be

28:21

able to say things that

28:23

are insulting and harmful and

28:26

targeting specifically marginalized

28:28

people. and what Meta

28:30

is doing is not a simplification of the rules, which

28:33

would be an interesting project to talk about,

28:35

but rather a, we are writing in

28:37

exceptions for the people who are mad

28:39

at us.

28:41

And, and, in the first, in that kind of like analysis

28:43

we've done there, Mike, we've tried to engage in, relatively

28:46

good faith with what was said. cause this is a, you know,

28:48

online speech podcast after all, you've got to engage in what

28:50

the platform is doing, but I think you're right. You

28:52

know, there's a lot of this, which is, not worthy

28:55

of being engaged with in good faith and like represents

28:57

the wider, company values,

29:00

I think. and we, we don't want to go into those too much,

29:02

but we should talk a bit about them because I think

29:04

that's, that's really what you're, saying there is

29:06

that these changes, the way that

29:09

Zuckerberg did a five minute video

29:11

that sat on the top of a blog post that was

29:14

authored by Joel Kaplan, the new

29:17

head of global policy

29:18

new Nick Clegg.

29:20

The new Nick Clegg, God rest his soul.

29:22

I thought this podcast was going to be

29:24

about Nick Clegg last week when he resigned,

29:26

little did I know what was going to happen in

29:28

the subsequent days. Anyway. Yeah.

29:31

So, the video with the, blog post

29:33

and obviously Kaplan's connections to the Republican

29:35

party, We have to really talk

29:37

about it as a wider, Not

29:40

just about speech kind of announcement.

29:42

Don't we is You can't really do

29:44

it in any other way

29:45

Yeah, the context, as

29:47

with everything and almost everything that we talk

29:49

about, and I try and do the context matters.

29:51

The context always matters. And it's

29:54

very easy to sort of simplify a bunch of these things

29:56

down, but the larger context

29:58

really matters. And it's not just The switch

30:00

from Nick Clegg to Joel Kaplan, but

30:02

also the new appointments to the board of meta,

30:04

which also came out last week, including Dana white,

30:07

who's the head of UFC and is a close

30:09

personal friend of Donald Trump has been

30:11

really engaged in policy issues

30:13

for the sort of mega movement there's

30:15

like this clear declaration that we're now

30:18

going mega And obviously like the moving

30:20

people to Texas stuff, like all of

30:22

this nonsense. But the reality is, again,

30:24

when you look at the changes for

30:27

all the talk of Oh,

30:29

the rules are biased against conservatives,

30:32

which has never really been true you

30:34

know, there's all sorts of research on this and we've

30:36

talked about it and, and all this kind of

30:38

evidence and stuff, all that talk, what

30:40

they've done now is bias. The rules

30:42

specifically in favor of MAGA.

30:45

Culture war talking points. The changes

30:47

to the rules are not simplifying. They're

30:49

not clarifying. They are, we are

30:51

creating explicit exemptions

30:54

for the kind of awful

30:56

speech that you want to use to target.

30:59

Certain communities and that

31:01

needs to be called out and it needs to be

31:03

really clear because for

31:05

all the talk of like, Oh, all of this has been

31:07

working. The refs is kind of like the framing

31:10

that comes up a lot. all of the complaints

31:12

about the way that, different platforms moderated

31:14

and saying like, Oh, you're, biased against

31:16

conservatives, which has never actually been

31:18

true now, what they're doing is

31:20

they are biasing. The way their moderation

31:23

policies work explicitly,

31:25

like the language is so clear, don't

31:27

even want to repeat it because they have this,

31:29

horrifying language of this is what is allowed

31:31

now. And it is clear,

31:34

biased, bigoted speech towards

31:36

certain marginalized communities. That

31:39

will lead to harm and will lead to

31:41

problems. And a lot of this

31:43

is legal speech and there are arguments for, you know, meta

31:46

can do what it wants, but the

31:48

signaling here,

31:49

Yeah.

31:50

for all of, of, Zuckerberg sort of talk

31:53

of virtue signaling, he is

31:55

signaling with this loud and clear

31:57

saying, we want MAGA

31:59

community to be here and to

32:01

use our platforms to spread

32:03

their hatred.

32:04

Yeah. I'm a fan of saying that moderation

32:07

is political and politics is moderation.

32:09

And, and this is the kind of week that has, I think, summarized

32:12

that better than any other. do you think Mike,

32:14

the virtue signaling as

32:16

Zuckerberg would call it is going to play out?

32:18

Do you think people aren't going to kind of vote with their feet

32:20

and stop? Using the platforms

32:22

or do you think the network effects are so big what

32:25

ramifications is there likely to be?

32:27

Well, I mean, who knows, right? And this is,

32:29

this is the big unknown, right? There is

32:31

the argument that like, this is the playbook

32:33

that Elon Musk tried. And

32:36

it may have been successful in other ways, in

32:38

terms of like electing

32:40

a U. S. president and being close to

32:43

him, it has not been successful

32:45

for the platform. X in particular,

32:47

it has lost users. It has lost a ton of advertising.

32:50

It has been very unsuccessful as a business

32:53

strategy for that. in

32:55

that, in that realm. And in fact, like

32:57

it felt like Zuckerberg recognized

32:59

that because after all, he launched threads

33:02

as like a sanely

33:04

run competitor. To

33:07

Twitter slash X. And so

33:09

there was a moment where he recognized that what

33:11

Elon was doing was driving away users. And

33:13

yet now he's kind of doing the same thing.

33:16

And so it will be interesting.

33:19

Somebody pointed out, which I thought was interesting

33:21

and I forget who, and I apologize if you are

33:24

a listener and I am ignoring your contribution

33:26

to this. Um, there's been so much this

33:28

week that I don't remember exactly who

33:30

said what, that, um, For all

33:32

of this new policy and big

33:34

changes to the system, it was all

33:37

done through, Mark Zuckerberg's post

33:39

and the blog post and the Joel Kaplan

33:41

announce, but there was no notification

33:43

for users. If you logged

33:45

into Facebook or Instagram, there was

33:47

no pop up saying our policies have changed.

33:50

so true. Yeah.

33:51

And so that's kind of interesting

33:54

and a little bit problematic. And so you do wonder,

33:56

like for people who don't follow all this stuff,

33:59

how many of them even realize this is going to ha

34:01

this is happening, but, I think in

34:03

the longer run, if this does lead to

34:05

what it seems likely to lead to, which is a lot

34:07

more, just. angry,

34:09

hateful, garbage

34:11

kinds of speech, I feel like,

34:13

people will start to look for alternatives.

34:16

And so it strikes me as was the

34:18

case of Elon taking over Twitter as

34:20

an opportunity for third parties to

34:22

come in and sort of try and take that audience.

34:25

Yeah, and we'll talk a bit about a piece

34:27

that renee diresta has written

34:30

about some of that But it's a reminder I think

34:32

for all of us particularly for me about how

34:34

companies such as meta are really, Just vessels

34:37

they claim to have values

34:39

that they hold, but actually

34:42

they can be filled up with whatever values,

34:44

are around at that time. And for a while that was,

34:47

certainly more democratically inclined values.

34:50

That was one, you know, that cared about. Speech

34:52

and, emphasize fact checking and now

34:54

that is a very different set of values. And I think

34:56

that, and trust and safety is a way that those values

34:58

are manifested. You know, Alice wrote

35:00

a really interesting piece about this for EIM

35:03

a few months back, which I'll link to in the show notes. if

35:05

your values change, then naturally your

35:07

trust and safety and your content moderation

35:09

and your speech, policies are going to change with

35:11

it. And I think that's what we're seeing here.

35:13

Yeah, I do want to raise one issue, which that

35:16

just reminded me of it's a little bit different, which is there

35:18

is this framing and all this, which really frustrates

35:21

me. Also, I mean, a lot of this is obviously frustrating

35:23

me, but like a lot of the framing

35:25

of this was Zuckerberg

35:28

and Joel Kaplan saying, like, this is bringing

35:30

Facebook Meta back

35:32

to who, Being about free speech.

35:35

And that is absolute nonsense on

35:37

multiple levels. One, as we said, like the

35:39

policies are not really about free speech.

35:41

They're specifically exceptions

35:44

to allow for, really problematic

35:46

speech. But the, the bigger

35:48

thing is that like. Facebook was

35:50

never a free speech platform,

35:53

from its earliest days, it had pretty

35:55

heavy moderation and,

35:57

pretty specific rules that they didn't allow

36:00

certain kinds of behavior in certain kinds of speech.

36:02

They never allowed anonymous accounts. They

36:04

always wanted you to use real names. They've

36:06

always had like the no nudity policy.

36:09

They have always been pretty restrictive

36:12

from the beginning. And this idea

36:14

that, Facebook was ever.

36:16

involved in the free speech project

36:19

strikes me as complete nonsense.

36:21

And why, why was that Mike just kind of

36:24

journey, journey back through history? Like what was the reason

36:26

why that happened in the first place? Do you remember?

36:28

I mean, I think it was just sort of like, Zuckerberg

36:30

wasn't in this for free speech. It was never

36:32

about that. I mean, he was trying to build a business

36:35

and, to him, there was no underlying

36:37

like moral imperative to try and help speech.

36:39

I don't think that was true. I think the Twitter people,

36:41

the original Twitter people did believe in

36:43

this kind of like, Ethos of free

36:46

speech and using the internet to enable

36:48

more speech, but Zuckerberg never

36:50

seemed to express that, kind of view.

36:52

He was trying to build the biggest business that he could.

36:55

And as we've discussed, like one of the

36:57

ways that you build a big business is By,

36:59

having a platform that is safe for brands,

37:02

for example, and, and others. And

37:04

so that was really the focus of what

37:06

he was doing. So this idea that they're suddenly like,

37:09

we're going back to our roots as a free speech

37:11

platform is definitely,

37:13

uh, uh, historical revision

37:15

of reality.

37:17

Yeah. Okay. Historical revision of reality

37:19

feels like a neat way to summarize,

37:22

that thanks Mike and there

37:24

are other stories that happened this week that

37:26

there aren't quite as many, there is as big

37:29

as the meta announcement, but we'll, we'll do,

37:31

a bit of a review of those other ones. And. The

37:33

next one also looks at CEOs of

37:35

social media platforms, Mike, that are working in

37:37

cahoots with Republican government officials. So,

37:40

I'll hand over to you for this because you,

37:42

for some reason, were, looking at government

37:45

documents on New Year's Eve. explain

37:49

that for us. First of all,

37:50

Yeah, I was writing an amicus brief on Christmas

37:52

and on New Year's Eve, I was looking at congressional

37:55

documents. My life is so exciting,

37:57

Ben.

37:59

we're grateful for it.

38:00

yeah, you know, honestly, I think this is kind of a continuation

38:03

of the same story in some way, which is that on

38:05

New Year's Eve, Representative Jerry Nadler,

38:08

who's the ranking member of the House Judiciary

38:10

Committee that is the top Democrat on the Judiciary

38:12

Committee, released a report which was, Basically

38:15

the Democrats on the judiciary committee

38:17

releasing this report called the delusion

38:19

of collusion, the Republican

38:21

effort to weaponize antitrust and undermine

38:24

free speech. And it's a really great

38:26

report that for no

38:28

good reason was released on December

38:30

31st to guarantee

38:33

that it would get the least attention possible. There's

38:35

been no news coverage of

38:37

this document, as far as I can tell. Other than

38:40

a tech turd post that I published this morning,

38:43

right before we started recording,

38:44

Go and read it. Go and read it.

38:46

uh, and it is

38:48

a systematic and thoughtful breakdown

38:50

specifically of how

38:53

Jim Jordan, who runs the

38:55

judiciary committee,

38:56

Good friend of the podcast.

38:58

yes, has weaponized

39:00

the government specifically to help.

39:02

Elon Musk to go after

39:04

advertisers who pulled their advertising from,

39:07

Twitter X. And this is a story that

39:09

I've been telling for a long time, and

39:11

I felt like I was the only one. I

39:14

was sort of screaming into the wind, and we've obviously

39:16

discussed it here about, you know, everything that happened specifically

39:18

with Garm, which is the, You know,

39:20

nonprofit, small nonprofit that was trying

39:23

to work with platforms and advertisers

39:25

to figure out how to keep brands

39:27

safe, if they were going to advertise on these

39:30

platforms. which also,

39:32

you know, Twitter slash

39:34

X had excitedly rejoined

39:36

a week before Jim Jordan came out with this report,

39:39

calling it like an antitrust violation

39:41

because they were organizing a boycott.

39:43

of Twitter, which was never

39:46

actually true in any real sense.

39:48

And finally, the Democrats come up with this report,

39:51

basically calling bullshit on everything that

39:53

Jim Jordan said, which since turned into

39:55

a lawsuit that Elon Musk filed against

39:58

Garm and a bunch of advertisers, and

40:00

which led to Garm being shut down by

40:02

the World Federation of Advertisers, but

40:04

here's this report. From the Democrats,

40:06

which got no attention, which calls out

40:09

all of this, that there were legitimate reasons.

40:11

There were legitimate brand safety concerns

40:13

that Elon Musk did a whole bunch of things

40:15

that were really bad for brands on Twitter.

40:18

None of this is surprising to you or I, or anyone

40:20

listening to this. I'm sure that there were perfectly

40:23

legitimate reasons that Garm was

40:25

just there trying to sort of help everyone, but

40:27

had no real impact. Oversight, you know,

40:29

over where people put advertising

40:31

had no control over that. Advertisers

40:33

were making all of their own independent decisions.

40:36

There was no collusion. There was no

40:38

coordination effort. There was no, official

40:40

boycott or anything. There were just a bunch

40:42

of. Advertisers who realized that

40:44

like having your ads next to Nazi content

40:47

is probably not good for your business.

40:50

Probably. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg seems to be betting

40:52

otherwise, but you know, and

40:54

so there was a reason why they did this.

40:57

And then calling out Jim Jordan specifically

40:59

for cherry picking quotes for quoting things

41:01

out of context for making arguments that were clearly

41:03

untrue and not there in order to

41:06

suppress the speech of these advertisers

41:08

of garm of others and

41:10

basically trying to force them

41:13

to do. in the service of helping Elon Musk,

41:15

the wealthiest man in the world, and a big

41:18

funder of Republican causes to

41:20

be able to go after advertisers who choose not to

41:22

advertise on the platform.

41:23

yeah. And there's this great line in it as well the

41:25

report, which is definitely one to go and read about how he's

41:28

Jim Jordan's interim report was like

41:30

a, design for an audience of one

41:32

AKA Elon Musk.

41:34

And there's something like you say about the similarities

41:37

between the first story and Meta's announcement and this

41:39

one, which is that, you you have Republicans

41:41

and CEOs essentially kind of writing love

41:44

letters to each other by

41:46

the form of blog posts and reports

41:48

and letters. And as kind of what I felt when I

41:50

was looking at Zuckerberg video, and he was

41:52

kind of awkwardly explaining his, you

41:55

know, what he was going to do. I was like, this is cringe

41:57

worthy. Like, why don't you just, why don't you just. FaceTime

42:00

Donald Trump and tell him yourself, um,

42:02

you know, keep it, keep it private. And

42:04

I think, you know, this report lays out a similar

42:06

thing, which is that you had Jordan and Musk

42:08

essentially working together on this and, to

42:11

the ends that we saw in the, in the election.

42:13

Yeah, and there's a lot in there. It's, it's

42:15

a 53 page report, I think, and

42:18

it's worth reading. And again, it got no attention because

42:20

the Democrats are totally incompetent at how they

42:22

promote this kind of stuff.

42:23

Right. Right. Yeah. And so, uh, we're

42:26

doing the best to bring it at some readership,

42:28

Mike. we're, we'll go on now to other

42:30

stories. That we've noted and we'll

42:32

stick in the realms of kind of government regulation

42:35

to begin with and just note, as

42:37

part of our kind of quick story roundup that, that actually

42:39

Elon Musk has, been in the news, but just not

42:41

quite so much as, his counterpart

42:43

over at Meta. So you might've seen over

42:46

Christmas between, filing your

42:48

amicus brief and, you know, checking

42:50

the, government website for, for new reports

42:53

that Elon Musk was tweeting furiously about

42:55

a lot of things, including. And

42:57

particularly about the AFD, far

42:59

right party in Germany and giving his support

43:02

for it, that according to Bloomberg

43:04

has triggered a new

43:06

surge of activity around

43:08

the European commission's investigation

43:11

of X Twitter, which is almost,

43:14

I think over 12 months ago was announced and is still

43:16

running in the background. Bloomberg announced

43:18

this week that. Henna Verkanen,

43:21

who is your friend Thierry Breton's replacement,

43:24

in the European Commission is kind of heading

43:26

up a lot of the DSA work and

43:28

Justice Chief Michael McGrath have

43:31

sent a letter to European election

43:33

officials saying that they were moving forward energetically

43:36

on the investigation. I thought energetically

43:39

was a weird word to use, Mike. I know it's a

43:41

small point, but would you, would

43:43

you have used a different word than that?

43:45

don't know. I don't know. I

43:48

mean, it's, they're trying, this

43:50

is all signaling in some way or another,

43:52

I guess this is the point of the podcast and

43:54

so they're signaling they're going to do something. I didn't,

43:56

I would note that this came out a day

43:59

after Le Monde in

44:01

France had a, An article which sort

44:03

of claimed that the

44:05

Europeans were actually backing off of their

44:07

investigations and that

44:09

the, EU commission president,

44:11

uh, Ursula von der Leyen was

44:14

putting on hold all of these investigations

44:16

and refusing to start new ones. It was very

44:18

weakly sourced and, done in a way

44:20

that really appeared like someone

44:23

was trying to. to shake things

44:25

up, maybe to get a response like we are energetically

44:27

pursuing this. Uh, so I,

44:30

I do wonder if that the Bloomberg

44:32

piece is sort of a response to

44:34

the Lamond piece.

44:36

yeah,

44:36

And so that there's something going

44:38

on behind the scenes where some people are saying like,

44:40

maybe we should hold off. and the argument

44:42

that was made in the Lamond piece was that certain European

44:45

leaders are more supportive of

44:47

Musk. And so you have like, Victor

44:49

Orban, obviously, and George Maloney

44:52

in Italy, who sort of Musk supporters,

44:54

so maybe they're sort of pushing back on these investigations.

44:57

And then you have another wing of, EU folks

44:59

who are obviously keen, eager,

45:01

and I guess, energy,

45:03

just think about, uh, going

45:06

after these platforms. And so,

45:08

I think this is a statement that the EU is like,

45:10

look, okay, the U S project

45:12

is in trouble right now. Uh,

45:14

and we are going to continue with our regulations,

45:17

which does raise one point, which we have

45:19

left out so far about the meta story,

45:21

which is kind of important, which

45:23

is that they very quickly clarified meta

45:25

did that. These new policy

45:28

changes do not apply to the EU. Do

45:30

not worry in the EU. We're not doing

45:32

any of this.

45:34

well, yeah, to join the dots a little bit,

45:36

the part of the announcement around

45:39

working with Donald Trump and the US government

45:42

felt to me like a fear

45:44

of regulation, particularly in the

45:46

EU. And you're right, you know, there was a clear explanation

45:49

of how this was us only, it

45:51

might be rolled out. Elsewhere in the future,

45:53

but I got the sense that it was a slight

45:55

fear of the kind of, you know, EU

45:58

regulatory regime. Did you get that sense as

46:00

well?

46:00

I, I, it didn't strike me as fear so

46:02

much as like opportunistic.

46:04

Right. I mean, so this recognition that, Donald

46:06

Trump is very much the bull in China shop

46:08

kind of politician who just

46:10

sort of screams about what he wants. Right. I mean, we're,

46:13

you know, we're here about to take over Canada

46:15

and Greenland and all that. Uh,

46:18

and so, I think it was kind of

46:20

like, Oh, here's an opportunity to

46:22

do what was politically. Impossible

46:24

before, like before the Biden administration

46:27

was never going to go argue, about

46:29

the excesses of the DSA. And I, I'm

46:31

obviously I've been a critic of elements of the DSA.

46:34

And I wish that the U S government was actually more

46:36

vocal in sort of criticizing some aspects of

46:38

the DSA and somehow it's problematic. And

46:40

I see, I think that Zuckerberg

46:43

sees this as an opportunity where it's like, he knows that

46:45

Donald Trump's not going to care about that. So

46:47

here's a chance for him to like, maybe go

46:50

out and say like, Oh, the DSA is this horrible

46:52

thing. And like, if you don't change the DSA, like

46:54

we're going to cut off all trade to Europe. I don't know what he's

46:56

going to do. Right. I mean, it's like, you know,

46:59

it's either like, fix the DSA or we're

47:01

going to invade, Iceland. I

47:03

don't know. Like none of this matters

47:05

anymore. Like nothing makes sense. So I think

47:07

it's just an opportunity for him to try and

47:09

get Trump to push back on the DSA.

47:11

Yeah. Okay. And I mean, the

47:13

idea of speech as a form of trade is something that

47:15

I'd love to dig back into because I think that's, that's

47:17

a

47:18

There's, there's, there's a big history there

47:20

that, yeah, yeah. That's, that's, we're not

47:22

going to do that in the last few minutes of this podcast.

47:25

Okay, cool. But you know, Elon Musk is.

47:27

also in the news for other reasons, you read

47:29

a tech post about, some

47:31

contradictory behavior that he exhibited this

47:33

week,

47:34

Yeah,

47:35

unlike him.

47:36

yeah, it's like, how do we do this story so quickly,

47:38

but like, so there's been this story for a long

47:40

time that there's this guy, Adrian Dittman, who

47:42

people believe is an Elon

47:44

Musk alt account, and he's shown

47:47

up in spaces, there was like a Twitter

47:49

x spaces with Elon Musk, they

47:51

sound identical. This Adrian Dittman

47:53

person sounds exactly like Musk. He's

47:55

been a huge Musk fan. He's always supporting

47:57

him. He talks about what a great father he is. at

48:00

one point I think he talks about like how much

48:02

sex Elon Musk. I mean, it was like ridiculously

48:05

fawning, fan behavior, but

48:07

because his voice sounds just like Musk,

48:09

everyone's like, this is clearly just Musk and,

48:12

and like you know, there've been all these attempts to sort

48:14

of prove it, and a lot of people are totally convinced of it.

48:16

And the spectator came out with this article is basically

48:18

like, no, there is this real dude named Adrian

48:21

Dittman who has this weird global

48:23

history that kind of explains

48:25

why he would have a similar accent and kind of

48:27

explains why he would be like hugely supportive

48:30

of Elon Musk. And it's a real guy.

48:32

And there was joking about

48:34

it because like Elon and Adrian

48:36

have both sort of always assuming they're different

48:38

people have always played coy. about

48:41

this question of whether or not they're the same person. I think

48:43

they both sort of get off on the fact that

48:45

a lot of people think they're the same

48:47

Yeah. It's a funny thing, isn't it?

48:48

yeah. And so, then when the

48:50

spectator article came out, even Elon posted

48:53

like, all right, it's time to admit it. Like I

48:55

am Adrian Dittman, even though the article sort of proves

48:57

that he's not, But then, Twitter

49:00

slash X banned the article,

49:02

banned the authors of the article, banned

49:05

the authors of a study that was used as the

49:07

basis of the article,

49:08

Yeah,

49:10

and, did all that. And it reminded

49:12

me, because I'm the only one who remembers history,

49:14

that Elon Musk was furious

49:18

That Twitter banned the New York

49:20

post for posting the story about

49:22

the Hunter Biden laptop and block

49:24

that link for 24 hours before they admitted

49:26

that was probably a mistake and went back on it. And

49:28

in fact, Elon Musk has said

49:30

the, the former people at Twitter probably

49:32

deserve to go to jail for blocking the New York

49:34

post story and saying that the free

49:36

speech platform should never block news

49:38

stories, and yet here is blocking

49:41

a story from the spectator.

49:42

that was 2024, Mike. This is 2025.

49:45

You forgot. The

49:48

in 2020, in 2024, he did

49:50

the same thing with the revelation of the JD

49:52

Vance dossier by Ken

49:54

you're right. Yeah.

49:56

There's, there's just this level of hypocrisy

49:58

here that I think is worth calling out, even though nobody

50:00

else seems to care about it, that

50:03

He's doing exactly the same thing worse

50:05

in a more extreme manner. The reasoning

50:07

for it is they're claiming that it violated the doxing

50:09

policy, which is nonsense. It is not

50:11

doxing to say like this person who calls himself

50:14

Adrian Dittman is actually Adrian Dittman. That

50:16

is not doxing. That is like, this

50:18

guy is who he says he

50:20

Identification.

50:21

Yeah. Um, but I

50:24

thought it was worth calling out because again, like,

50:26

I feel like no, I'm not saying nobody, I'm

50:28

being a little, you know, hyperbolic here, but like,

50:30

most people were not calling out the hypocrisy there,

50:33

and I thought it was worth mentioning.

50:34

Yeah. Okay. that is worth mentioning. And I think, you

50:36

know, maybe something that the, European

50:39

commission are interested in as they do their investigation,

50:41

who knows, um, the

50:43

only other story, Mike, our flag, just before we

50:45

round up today is a really great piece by

50:47

Rene DiResta, like I said, which is

50:50

published on the online magazine NOMA. And

50:52

it's titled The Great Decentralization

50:55

René has written lots of great kind of essays like this

50:57

in the past, but it's a really nice

50:59

look at the really the history

51:01

of the march from one size fits

51:03

all platforms to decentralize.

51:07

And, and federated spaces. And,

51:10

she kind of rounds up really nicely. were

51:12

the drivers that kind of led us from

51:14

there from the big platforms like

51:16

Facebook and Twitter to

51:18

the, you know, mastodons and the blue

51:20

skies that we're seeing, disclosure.

51:23

Mike, Mike is on the board of blue

51:25

sky, um, just to do that quickly.

51:27

Um, so, so yeah, it's a really nice

51:30

look through, the history books

51:32

as to how that happened. she makes some really

51:34

great references to kind of working

51:36

the refs and referees generally, which I think you mentioned

51:38

as well, when we're talking about Facebook, is

51:40

a really helpful lens,

51:42

I think, through which to see everything that's happening right

51:45

now. And it reminded me actually of

51:47

a, of a Michael Lewis podcast against

51:49

the rules, which talks about referees, which again,

51:51

lots of great stuff. I don't know if you've listened to it. Um,

51:54

big fan of that. And, and, also the potential

51:56

downsides of, of this, you know, of moving

51:59

to smaller, potentially less moderated

52:01

spaces in some cases and what that could

52:03

mean for, polarization for

52:05

society as a whole. And we don't

52:07

know the full extent of that, but Renee summarizes

52:10

it nicely.

52:10

Yeah, it's a really good piece for especially

52:13

if you haven't been paying as much attention to sort

52:15

of the alternative spaces and kind of how

52:17

we got here why they've been successful.

52:20

And I think it also does a really good job,

52:23

frankly, of raising the question

52:25

of trade offs in terms of how, trust

52:27

and safety is handled, both on the centralized

52:29

platforms and the decentralized

52:31

platforms and how there are pros

52:34

and cons to these approaches. I mean, I think

52:36

most of the rest of our podcast today

52:38

has been about some of the cons of

52:40

centralized moderation, when they get

52:42

into the hands of. people who have, different

52:45

viewpoints on things. So that will be

52:47

my diplomatic version of it. Um,

52:49

but there are also real challenges with the

52:51

decentralized systems. And

52:53

a lot of people sort of view them as like, oh, it's just

52:55

the same thing, but, you know, it's

52:58

just a new version, someone trying to do different,

53:00

but the underlying frameworks

53:02

and the whole like protocol concept of

53:04

a decentralized system creates

53:06

different affordances. Some of which

53:08

I, I personally think are really, really beneficial

53:10

and that's why I've been a huge fan of them. That's why I ended

53:13

up on the board of Blue Sky. but some of them

53:15

also have like different challenges and I

53:17

think that the piece that Renee wrote

53:19

really lays them out very clearly and does a

53:21

great job of it. and so I think

53:23

it's just a useful piece for everyone to kind of understand

53:26

this moment that we're in and what

53:28

may be possible and what may be

53:30

the challenges of, trust

53:32

and safety on these more decentralized platforms

53:34

going forward.

53:35

Indeed, really nice kind of weekend

53:38

read, I'd say, to have with your coffee or,

53:40

you know, whatever your drink of choice is this

53:42

weekend. that takes us to the end of our

53:44

episode this week, Mike. we spent a lot

53:46

of time talking about Meta. We touched on TikTok.

53:48

We touched on decentralization at the end

53:50

there. I hope our listeners feel like we

53:53

covered the full gamut of stories that

53:56

have emerged this week. you look tired.

53:58

Ha ha ha ha

53:59

You look like you need a rest and it's only, it's only

54:01

January the 10th. So

54:03

gosh.

54:04

buckle up. Um, it's going to be a wild year,

54:06

I think, but, thanks everyone for listening

54:09

and appreciate you tuning in. If

54:11

you have any feedback about today's episode, drop us

54:13

a line podcast that control all speech.

54:15

com. We'd love to hear from you. give

54:17

us your thoughts on the kind of. Additional

54:20

analysis around meta. Was it worthwhile?

54:22

Would you like us to do that again? we respond

54:24

to all of the emails that get sent in and

54:27

that rounds us up for this week. Thanks very much for listening. Take

54:29

care. I'll see you soon.

54:33

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54:36

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