Ctrl-Alt-Speech

Why Can't We De-Friend

• Mike Masnick & Ben Whitelaw • Season 1 • Episode 55

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In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at podcast@ctrlaltspeech.com and sponsorship enquiries to sponsorship@ctrlaltspeech.com. Thanks for listening.

Ben Whitelaw:

So Mike UK politicians love to create social networks.

Mike Masnick:

Do they

Ben Whitelaw:

They do. They do. You, you might remember Matt Hancock, uh, he was a former health politician. Yeah. He created an app with his own name on it, hilariously. But, and there's a reason why we're gonna talk about, conservative politicians in the UK creating social networks. But the original, the OG was a woman called Louise mention. you remember her?

Mike Masnick:

absolutely remember her.

Ben Whitelaw:

Did you have an account on mention?

Mike Masnick:

no, I, I, I did not, and in fact, I had forgotten that she had created her own social media network. I do remember she was a, very vocal presence on Twitter for many years. Uh, often in, uh, I was trying to think of the diplomatic term, but I'm gonna forgo that and just say in very stupid ways.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, she, she liked Twitter, but she thought there was an opportunity to create a more topic focused social media platform. And she created mention, and it, got some kind of investment funding and it was tipped to be a, a Twitter competitor. sadly, that is no longer the case. It's, it died of death in 2013. But we're gonna take, its, call to action today and we're gonna gonna ask you, Mike, to talk on topic.

Mike Masnick:

Well, that is tricky as anyone who has listened to this podcast knows I'm not very good at sticking. On topic. but I did wanna mention that, you know, I was out last week and I wanted to say that I thought last week's episode, was excellent and was very interesting on topic was maybe a little bit different than our usual episodes. But as an overview of all sorts of regulatory, internet, speech, and regulatory issues in India, I thought it was absolutely fascinating and a really, really valuable, contribution to these discussions about stuff. So, on the off chance, if you did not listen to last week's episode, I'm going to recommend that you also go back and listen to that because it was a very useful on topic discussion about internet speech.

Ben Whitelaw:

Indeed Pratik was fantastic and we've had some really great feedback from folks. if I was to talk on topic this week, Mike, it would be my usual house renovation. It, I've had more work done. I dunno if it's ever gonna end. but I'm gonna put that to one side. We're gonna get into today's stories. Hello and welcome to Control Alt Speech, your weekly roundup of the major stories about online speech, content moderation, and internet regulation. It's April the 17th, 2025, and this week's episode is brought to you with the financial support from the future of online trust and safety fund. This week we're talking about the effect of meta's, antitrust case, state porn laws, and why everyone is creating a social network apart from us. Mike Masnick, you're back from Holiday. Welcome. How, how are you doing?

Mike Masnick:

I'm, catching up on everything. It's.

Ben Whitelaw:

of taking a break.

Mike Masnick:

Yeah, it's, it is difficult to actually go away and I, did stay partially connected while I was away, but, um, yeah, I'm, I'm feeling like, I mean, world is so crazy right now that it is impossible to catch up even if you are around and paying attention. And so to try and take some time off and, not do that, uh, you know, it's been a little bit of a challenge catching up this week, but it is all good and there's lots of stuff to talk about.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, you, you look good for it. You've got a, we were talking before we started. You've got a bit of color, you've got a

Mike Masnick:

I don't believe you.

Ben Whitelaw:

I, I, I mean the list, the listeners won't, I wanna paint them a picture. Okay. So the listeners, you know, Mike is normally, I would say like a, a normal shade of, color, but he is looking, I

Mike Masnick:

am pal. I'm pal.

Ben Whitelaw:

yeah. Palish palish. But now you are, you know, in this, in the range of Donald Trump to Elon Musk.

Mike Masnick:

No,

Ben Whitelaw:

You are, I would say you're kind of somewhere in the between. You're like Marco Rubio.

Mike Masnick:

I, I don't think that's true. I will know. I mean, I was out in the sun, quite a bit and I was, decently far south of here where it was very sunny. I did put on a ridiculous amount of sunscreen, however, uh, which I do think protected me. So I do not think I turned any, particular shade of color. I think I still remain my very pale self.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, you're not Robert. You're not Robert F. Kennedy.

Mike Masnick:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Whitelaw:

You know, the, the leathery, leathery skinned. Um, yeah. Well, lovely to have you back and thanks again to Pratik Var Gray for stepping in last week and giving us all of his, information and, and understanding about the Indian regulatory system. have had a couple of, podcast reviews since you're away. Mike, you remember before you left the holiday, we asked folks to rate and review the podcast, leave a literary reference, and we've had a couple, but one of them has gone a bit over our heads, hasn't it?

Mike Masnick:

we are not as, up on literary references as perhaps we thought

Ben Whitelaw:

No, no. And I mean, somebody has very kindly given us five stars. That really, really helps us, spread the good message about the podcast. So thank you for the listeners for doing that. there's a, a line in there that might be a literary

Mike Masnick:

it, it sounds like it must be a literary

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, I mean, it's either that or somebody's having a very bleak time listening to our podcast, the line,

Mike Masnick:

and but still gave us five stars.

Ben Whitelaw:

but still gave us five stars, perhaps outta pity. Um, the line is, I scream for, I do not know, meaning eludes me sanity slips. Now, I instantly thought like kind of Kafka, but we, I couldn't find anything.

Mike Masnick:

Yeah.

Ben Whitelaw:

it sounds kind of poetic. I wonder if there's, a romantic poet out there, perhaps that this listener is borrowing from. we can't find the source.

Mike Masnick:

I, I mean, I scream for, I do not know, is a reference to an internet meme, not to a sort of deep literary reference. it is an internet meme. I'm not gonna get into it because it's a fairly complex internet meme, but the rest of it, meaning eludes me sanity slips, I'm not as sure if that is a direct literary reference or if someone is having a, an issue in our reviews. We, we appreciate it because it made us think. But, it's an interesting one.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, so again, our, I'd love for listeners to get in touch and help us out. Send us an email, drop us a message on, on all your favorite, well moderated platforms. where is this quote from? I scream for, I do not know. Meaning alludes me sanity slips. We'd love some help. And, and if you can't help us work out the answer, please leave your own literary themed review on, on any major platform

Mike Masnick:

And try and stump us.

Ben Whitelaw:

Try more than likely you'll stump us, C-T-R-L-A-L-T speech.com. We'd love to hear from you. Great. we've got a bunch of really interesting stories, Mike, this week. we've spent double the time we usually do talking through what we're gonna cover today, so let's get right to it. we're gonna start with a story that many listeners have been following that there's been the subjects of a lot of news coverage this week, Meta's antitrust case. and this is a story where people might think, well, there's not a kind of direct link between online speech, internet regulation and this antitrust case, but I think any story that looks at a company's size and its ability to kind of do what it wants on the web has implications for speech. So talk us through your understanding of the events this week and, where you see it going.

Mike Masnick:

Yeah, and obviously this is a big case and, and I, I think there's a direct connection between internet speech, which is that, you know, there is this element of this case, which has to do with, Facebook's purchase of Instagram before they were renamed meta. And the question of whether or not that was anti-competitive and obviously potential remedies if that was found to be anti-competitive, even going back over a decade is the idea of potentially breaking up those companies. and there are a bunch of stories that are coming out About this, case and sort of the impact and so we're not gonna be able to cover all of it. we're certainly not planning on being a, a regular, reporting coverage of all the ins and outs. But there were a couple of elements that came out this week that we thought were worth, uh. Commenting on, in including, interestingly, and we didn't, discuss this beforehand, so I'm just bringing this one on you, Ben. you know, there was a discussion that apparently at one point Zuckerberg had considered spinning off Instagram himself. that came out in the case that he had had these internal discussions, like basically saying, well, the government is gonna push us to do this no matter what. Why don't we just get ahead of it and spin it out ourselves? which is sort of an interesting revelation. but there were some other interesting revelations as well that I thought were worth covering. The, the first, and I won't spend that much time on this'cause I actually think the second one is a little bit more interesting. The first one was a Wall Street Journal, revelation that didn't come out. in the case, a lot of the other stories are sort of things that were revealed as the trial went underway. this, the Wall Street Journal reported was that Zuckerberg tried desperately to settle the case before it actually went to trial. And we know, because we've talked about it and everybody listened to this, has been paying attention to the news, about how Zuckerberg in the last, let's say six to eight months, has tried to become much more friendly with the sort of MAGA Trump universe, um, doing a bunch of things, saying a bunch of things, changing policies, settling a ridiculous case, paying Trump directly$25 million, supporting the inauguration, all of

Ben Whitelaw:

that, that, that didn't get enough coverage. I think that that kind of just like, I know it was a story, but this kind of got lost in the,

Mike Masnick:

Well, there's a lot going on, Ben,

Ben Whitelaw:

yeah.

Mike Masnick:

but, so there was this element of like, okay, now he's in the tent. And even, Donald Trump sort of talked about him being in the tent, and all these things. And, and so, the FTC had started this investigation and we had talked about this, uh, maybe a month or two ago, I don't even remember now, where it's like, who is the FTC investigating now? Because, you know, all of the big platforms have sort of come in on, into the tent and have been friendly to the Trump administration. And so it appears that Zuckerberg had sort of hoped that because of all that he would be able to go to Now commissioner of the FDC, Andrew Ferguson and say like, Hey, come on, like, let's cut a deal and let's get this, over with. And that's not unheard of that, companies facing a trial will try and cut a settlement before it starts. but the Wall Street Journal has some of the, fairly interesting details of the negotiations, including the fact that, Zuckerberg had offered a$450 million settlement, which, was way below the FTC sort of came back and demanded 30 billion. That's, you know, there's, there's a 60 x difference there. Uh, you know, it was pretty, pretty big deal. And apparently they went back and forth a little bit and Zuckerberg moved up to 1 billion. He offered to settle it for 1 billion, which is, and I mean, it's a lot of money, but you know, for a company of meta size, probably not, that big.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. yeah, I think it's per quarter, like a significant number of billion dollars are made from advertising. So this is a, this is kind of chu change.

Mike Masnick:

Yeah. I, I, yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's quite chump change. I do think it hurts, but it doesn't hurt that much. It's a scratch.

Ben Whitelaw:

Okay.

Mike Masnick:

Uh, that's what I would put it as, you know, and so there were some back and forth and I imagine that the back and forth is still going on behind the scenes and that they're still, like, they could still settle it in the middle of a trial that has happened before. but there's a lot of, you know, the effort. Zuckerberg went and visited with Trump a bunch of times. He brought in a bunch of, sort of Republican folks and, people who, who know people in the Trump universe to really try and convince them and had all these discussions and it didn't work. And so. That's interesting. And the question is, what does that mean? Does that mean that, Ferguson and Trump don't believe that Zuckerberg is fully in the tent yet? They wanna extract a bigger, bigger thing from them. They think their case is strong. there's a bunch of different things that it could be. And then on the flip side, like what is Zuckerberg's and Meta's position? And there is an argument that the reason they're effectively low balling the FTC and offering sort of a lower number for the settlement is that they actually feel that they have a pretty strong case.

Ben Whitelaw:

Mm.

Mike Masnick:

And I'm not sure they're wrong. I mean, I, you know, this case when it was originally filed, and this is one of the cases that was originally filed by the, the last Trump administration, right before they, left office, it was sort of December of 2020. and it was thrown out originally because it was incredibly weak, like ridiculously weak and poorly done. And it was clearly a rush job trying to get it out the door. my understanding was they tried to actually get it out before the election because Trump decided that going after big tech was gonna be how he would win the 2020 election. They got, you know, one case out on Google and then the, meta case Facebook case came out after the election, and it got thrown out. And then the Lena Kahn, FTC refiled it and filed an amended version, which was definitely stronger, and, and more competent. but now it's the, the, Trump, Ferguson, FTC that's actually doing the trial of the case. So my guess is that Zuckerberg and the ME legal team feel like they're maybe not in a bad legal position and that they could actually win this case. And a lot of it hinges on, we're not, we don't need to get into all the specifics, but some of it at least hinges on the idea of do they have real competition for. social media. And part of the problem is that the FTC tried to define the market in a way that excludes TikTok as a competitor to, meta and Meta's position, which I think is true, is that like TikTok is a real competitor and spraying up, you know, effectively out of nowhere and, took significant market share from meta products, both Facebook and Instagram. And so there is this question of how much control do they have over the market? So I do think it, it will be interesting, the fact that they were trying to settle it ties into his sort of connections to the, the MAGA world and the concessions that he made. The fact that that didn't work, I think is, interesting and worth noting, you know, he did all these things. He changed his content moderation policies. He, celebrated Trump and went to the inauguration and gave, you know, all this money and all these kinds of things. And that wasn't enough to get him out of the case. I think that's notable.

Ben Whitelaw:

Mm.

Mike Masnick:

So I think that's, you know, sort of the framing of the case and kind of where we are. The one

Ben Whitelaw:

we, just before we go onto the, the kind of story that we both particularly like that I think the, defining of the FCC of Facebook and Instagram as competitors to only Snapchat and me, we, I think is worth dwelling on. Briefly,

Mike Masnick:

Okay.

Ben Whitelaw:

what have you ever heard of me? We

Mike Masnick:

I, I have actually, but, but yeah, it's one of those,

Ben Whitelaw:

it up, but it's, it is essentially kind of, slightly created just to kind of emphasize your point, a slightly of artificial segmentation within the social media platforms to give the impression that Facebook and Instagram are a much larger portion of that pie. Is that right?

Mike Masnick:

Yeah. The, I mean, the thing with any antitrust case. It's always like the, definition of the market is everything,

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah.

Mike Masnick:

is where all the fight is. Because for there to be antitrust violation, you have to have a dominant position within a market. And then how you define that market is everything, right? And so you can define a market so narrowly that you are the one and only provider. Like if you, include certain features that nobody else has, then you're the only provider of that and therefore you have monopoly. But that's, you know, that is silly. Or you could define it so broadly as like any type of media that anyone consumes. television is a competitor to Facebook, uh, magazines, newspapers, any other website. You know, there are ways to define these things, so broadly as to be ridiculous as well. And so where you draw those lines is the single most important part of this case. And there are, consultants who make. Ridiculous amounts of money because all they do is argue exactly that. Like, how do you draw these, lines? And, it's not an easy thing. It, it is in some ways similar to the impossibility of content moderation, right? Where you're drawing lines in terms of like, is this acceptable? Does this violate rules or not? In this case, you're drawing lines in terms of what is the market? where are the competitors? How do you define what market share anyone has? I think it's hard to accept any market definition for Instagram and Facebook. That doesn't include TikTok. It's hard to justify that and that, somehow wraps in something like Snapchat and me, we, but not TikTok feels off and feels problematic and feels like people trying to, work the system.

Ben Whitelaw:

I mean, in some ways the issues that Facebook has become such a bare moth now, right. And so it's like, it's, it's about 12 different products in one. And, you know, it's a marketplace, it's a social app, it's, you know, it's kind of everything. It's like the everything app that Elon Musk wanted to create.

Mike Masnick:

Yeah. The, the, the crazy thing is like, you know, one of the things that as I was reading through all this stuff is like the sort of realization, I mean I've had this for a while, but sort of like crystallizing it a little bit is like how little Facebook, I mean less true of Instagram, but Facebook itself is less and less a social platform now, right? It's, it is that everything app, but like the social pieces have sort of fallen by the wayside and it's less and less a social app and it's all these other things instead. and I don't know how much we've really grappled with that aspect of it. And then to, you know, this case is, is really focused on the social part where you're like, I mean maybe this is, my own biases. Like I completely stopped using Facebook. I certainly stopped using it as a social app. Like every once in a while I will go there, literally, once every six months and I'll see like one or two things that it's like, oh, my cousin is doing this, or whatever, but I'm not keeping up on the social aspects. Instead, like, the only thing that I'll log into Facebook for, there's a, few groups which I sort of regret having to use Facebook for, but the people who are running these, groups that I wanna stay in touch with are using Facebook groups, for it. which is such a horrible interface. That's an an aside, but it's like the really social aspect of it it feels like it's fallen by the wayside.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, I'd agree a bit. I I wondered the extent to which the, the number of products that's created within the Facebook app is in part a result of being so dominant and being so large. There's very few companies who can kind of ape the feature set of Snap or of, Instagram in the way that it has. And it has reacted, there's a whole history of it reacting very quickly to that. Right. And so it's an interesting kind of line that the FTC has taken. And, and yeah, to your point, I don't think we'll be, can't see being very successful. but, interesting. Nonetheless, you wanted to talk about the, some of the secondary stories that have come out as a result of the Zuckerberg testimony.

Mike Masnick:

Yeah. There was one in particular that I thought was just really fascinating and just I think would be kind of interesting to folks who, who listened to, controlled speech, which is that, apparently in 2022, Zuckerberg proposed a crazy idea to boost usage of Facebook because Facebook usage has been declining. Notably,

Ben Whitelaw:

because you, people like yourself are

Mike Masnick:

yes.

Ben Whitelaw:

disappearing.

Mike Masnick:

I, I'm the problem

Ben Whitelaw:

You are. You are the one

Mike Masnick:

and, uh, is targeting me specifically. And, and, and so he came up with this idea, which he, he himself described as a potentially crazy idea that they should delete everyone's friends list on Facebook and, and basically make everybody start again.

Ben Whitelaw:

clever, really clever.

Mike Masnick:

yeah, and like, I, I, like, I, I'm not sure how to react to this. I keep sort of going back and forth on it because there's this element of like, I don't know, there's an element that feels like, Zuckerberg got high and, and was just like, dude, what if we just delete everybody's social graph and start all over again? Like, oh man. And then you have like all these other folks at Facebook who are like, all right, let's take a step back here. Like, chill out. Um,

Ben Whitelaw:

I mean this is, Zuckerberg during Covid Mate, so I imagine him actually just like weeping silently, like kind of more like maybe we should get rid of everyone. Just like act. I like the idea of him. This is kind of pre MMA pre gold chain. You

Mike Masnick:

okay.

Ben Whitelaw:

I've got a really thick neck, so I just, I like the idea of him like kind of crouching in the corner, being like, what? Like last resort.

Mike Masnick:

I, I don't know. I mean, there, and then there's the element of like, if I wanted to look at this in good faith, and it's like I can almost see the logic behind it. I can't because it's stupid, right? But like, I, I sort of see like there's this weird through line where it's like we're trying to, part of the issue with Facebook and, people like me abandoning Facebook and certainly like kids not wanting to use Facebook, is the fact that it's old and it's built up all this layers and layers of cruft and, and nonsense. And like you described the, the 12 different products and like, it's, that's made it sort of complex and there's all these legacy issues and getting rid of legacy issues is so difficult for a company that's been around for a while, that has, you know, people rely on it for different things and everybody views it as a different kind of product. And so like there is this element of what if we just shook everything up and like. give us a fresh start and that allows for us to do something. And one way to do that is like, okay, delete everybody's social graph and start again. And it's like, there are elements like I'll, you know, in those rare every six months when I log into Facebook, I'll look at it and say like, wait, how am I connected to this person again? Like, why did I ever agree to to agree this person? It's like somebody I connected to in 2013. you know, and, and every once in a while, like I will discover random things where it's like somebody, for whatever reason I connected to in 20 12, 20 13, because you know, they were fighting copyright sopa stuff with me. And now they're like a huge Trump supporter. And I'm like, do I wanna be connected to this person in the first place?

Ben Whitelaw:

right.

Mike Masnick:

You know, there are all of these sort of odd questions. And so I can sort of see this like, whoa, what if we have a restart button? A refresh? And one way to force that is to just remove the, the social crap. And. as a thought experiment. It's fascinating.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. Well, it, it's not only just a thought experiment. It's like, this was something that almost happened. This is, this isn't mentioned in the Verge piece that you're referencing, but a guy called Louis Barkley created a, a chrome extension that he called unfollow Everything 2.0, which basically allowed Facebook users to automatically unfollow everyone. Pages, groups, friends. you'd have an absolute field day, Mike. Um, but he, he, he'd essentially get rid of your newsfeed and he was doing it, I think, so that he, he didn't want to be served ads.

Mike Masnick:

yeah. Well, so, so one, qualification on that. He did unfollow everything. Unfollow everything. Two is a separate thing that, that we did talk about.'cause that was the Ethan Zuckerman, created that based on, Barclay's code and with permission from Barclay,

Ben Whitelaw:

Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. So there's, there was two versions of it. his, his kind of, the genesis of the idea was to give people the control that you've expressed that you want right in, in, creating an experience for yourself that feels relevant and, doesn't have people that are 10 years from the past, you know, spouting MAGA memes at you. And so he tried to, he releases Chrome extension, but he was taken to court for this. He was given a lifetime ban from Meta, the Chrome extension had to be taken down because Facebook realized that it compromised their kind of whole business model, basically. and so the irony that a year or 18 months later, Zuckerberg was like, Hey, I've got this radical idea that I don't think anybody's thought about to get to unfollow everyone and make people start again is. The most funny thing I've heard in a

Mike Masnick:

Yeah. Yes, yes. the timeline of those two stories is absolutely incredible. And, and the, Barclay thing, you know, what was amazing about was really what he was doing was because the idea behind unfollow everything was that you could still see the accounts of people that you wanted. You could still connect to people, but not follow them, which is an important distinction that I think a lot of people missed with unfollow everything was, you, you would still connect to people, but they wouldn't show up in your feed. So your feed would be blank. And then you could still go in and manually look at, you know, I'm connected to Ben, therefore I wanna see what Ben is up to. I can, manually choose to do that. And it's, it's an empowering from the user. Standpoint, which is why I, I thought it was important, which is why I also thought like the, Ethan Zuckerman creating, unfollow everything too, and then suing Meta and trying to say like, we should have the power to do this was an important case. but yes, the fact that Barclay did that in 2021, and I don't think meta actually ever sued him, but I think they did send him a cease and desist letter

Ben Whitelaw:

Right.

Mike Masnick:

and basically threatened him under the CFAA and said this violates the law to give people a tool that allows them to unfollow everything. And then, yes, the next year, that was 2021. In 2022, Zuckerberg is like, you know, after they've threatened and banned this guy, let's just do that for everyone is just so crazy, right? Like. I mean, it's mind boggling that they thought one guy offering this tool that no one was gonna use you. I mean, you know, if a hundred people use that tool, I would be amazed.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

Mike Masnick:

and they banned him for life and threatened to sue him and destroy his life.

Ben Whitelaw:

Talk about anti-competitive,

Mike Masnick:

And then Zuckerberg shows up with the, you know, l night, idea of like, let's just do that for everybody. Like, no choice, let's just wipe out the entire social graph for everyone. And like, maybe that'll juice usage. I mean, I, it's stunning. Those two stories combined. Yeah.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. And it is gonna be very interesting to see this case unfold. You know, it is gonna be two months in the making. There's gonna be Cheryl Sandberg, appeared yesterday and, and was questioned for a few hours. Where do you think it's gonna end up, Mike, in those two months if you had to

Mike Masnick:

It's, it's who knows? I mean, antitrust is such, I mean, as I said, I still think there's a chance that they'll settle. you know, he's clearly working towards it and that could certainly happen. and no matter unless they settle, not gonna be an answer for a long time.'cause no matter how the case comes out in court, there will be appeals and it'll go on for years. and so without a settlement, this case doesn't end. I doubt it would end in 20 26, 20 27, maybe 2028. This case could go on for a very, very long time, uh, unless they reach a settlement. So, at, at this point, it's tough to sort of predict anything. As I said, I think of the various antitrust cases against social media or against big tech. This is one of the weakest. but you know, these days you never know. You, you really never know where, which way it'll go.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. Okay. we've gone deep on that one. I think we won't touch the case for, too often in, controlled speech, but great

Mike Masnick:

It. Yeah. It'll, it depends if, I mean, if something, something unique comes out in the trial, we find out something interesting, you know, we may cover it, but we're, we're not, you know, we're not planning on being like, live from the courthouse.

Ben Whitelaw:

as fun as, as that would be. Um, cool. So let's, let's go into another story that. Both caught our eyes this week. it's a story that concerns kind of age gating laws and the porn laws that we touched on a number of times in control of speech, of which there are many in the US now. kind of age gating. Porn is a big part of the online regulation. Debate is something that there are, various kind of sides of the argument on, you want to kind of protect children from the exposure to porn, but also some of the means by which you do so are very ineffective or, are privacy busting in some ways. And so these laws are kind of fascinating. strand of, of what we cover in controlled speech. Each week a new study has looked at one particular law and has followed it from the kind of pre, inception to, three months after the fact. And some academics in the US have looked at the Louisiana 4, 4 0 porn law. In the state of Louisiana. And it's a really interesting example of what happens, inadvertently when you introduce some of these laws and, how you need to think about not just, the kind of upsides, but also maybe the inadvertent effects of them. So these academics basically looked Mike at the Google traffic, to the largest porn site in Louisiana porn hub three months after the law went into effect and it looked at the largest noncompliant porn site, which is called X videos. and they tried to ascertain whether people who were previously going to PornHub, but were now hitting a kind of age gate wall, a band. You know, actually PornHub stopped using its services in Louisiana as a result of this law. So whether those people were therefore going elsewhere, I. And what it found was that Pornhub's traffic went down by 51% in those three months, and X videos gained 41% of traffic. And so the study basically shows kind of impact of these laws and what happens maybe when they, actually the compliance element that the platforms that are compliant, they're not always the ones that you should be looking at. You should be looking at the ones that are, uh, not compliant as well. the Atlantic have done a really good podcast with one of the researchers, a guy called, Zeev Sanderson, who's exec director at the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics. And he talks really thoughtfully about the study, how they tried to answer this question of what are the unattended consequences of laws like this? And I just think it's a really great, live case study basically of, what happens when you introduce laws like this. Mike, we, you've talked about porn laws, we've talked about'em on the podcast. You actually know Ziv as well, I believe from, from work elsewhere.

Mike Masnick:

Yeah, no, I've known Zeev for a while. I've talked to him for a while. I think he does really, really good work. I think the entire Center for Social Media and politics, at NYU does amazing research. they sort of continually push out, tremendous research and every time I talk to Zeev, you know, I usually I'll run into him in an event here or there. He'll, fill me in. I'm like, oh, we're gonna have this amazing new report come out in, in a few months. And it's always like very creative ways of looking at these things and really trying to understand stuff and, and really enlightening. Providing enlightening data and data points on questions that, or, or assumptions that people make. and, and actually being able to go in there and, and get that data. And I did wanna clarify a, a little bit on it, which is that because of the position that, they're in, in terms of which access to what data they have, they don't actually have access to the actual traffic data, for PornHub or X videos. And so they were using Google Trends data, which has limits because it is, searches, right? And, and Ziv says, part of the thinking is that these days, especially in like Chrome, which is, most people use Chrome or Chrome based browser, a lot of people never type in the actual URL. They type in, PornHub and it shows up as the first results in search. And so they don't use it for searching. They use it as a sort of, way to get to where they know they want to go anyways. So they think it's a good proxy for it, and they're probably not wrong. But the other element of it is that they're using Google Trends, which doesn't give you an absolute amount, but gives you a relative amount. So they can say that, PornHub searches in Google Trends in Louisiana, dropped 50%, but they don't know what that actually means technically in terms of like, where did it really start? Where did it end? And even how does that compare to like X videos going up 40%? it's not like, oh, we know that all of the traffic from PornHub moved to X videos. All that said, just caveats. We just want to be really specific. And I, and I'm saying that in part because I know Zeev and I know Zeev is very, very careful about these things and, and his colleagues as well at at NYU are always very careful about people misrepresenting anything in, in their, not mis, but like trying to read more into what their studies say than what they actually are. So I just want, just wanna make that clear. But there is really interesting things here, and these are things that, like PornHub themselves made clear when talking about these laws, which is like, the only company that's actually complying with any of these laws, right? And there are other companies out there that have adult content online, most of them with no connection to the US whatsoever. And therefore they feel that they don't need to comply at all. But also because of that, so I should be clear here too, like PornHub and its parent company have a history where they were not good actors in all sorts of ways. and did many bad things. And there are plenty of stories out there, but in the last few years, it appears that they are trying to be good actors. They pushed off all sorts of content that they couldn't confirm the details of who was in the performances. They were, very, very careful about, I think they ended up cutting like over 50% of the content that they had at one point to try and establish, you know, some standards, making sure that, people were not being trafficked, and or not being coerced into, into videos on the thing, on, on their site. whereas the other sites like X videos have not done that. Right? And so the sort of end result of this. The sort of suggestion from this study is that, what these policies have done is not necessarily limit access to adult content. And even Ziv says in the interview that he did with The Atlantic, where it's like, and almost certainly didn't limit kids access because kids know how to get around all of these things because there's a part of the study of people searching for VPNs also. but it is this sort of like, there are consequences to these laws. And the idea that you just, if you just ban something that makes it go away has always been false. and this just gives some evidence to back that up with the particular case study of the law in Louisiana. And I should, I should note really quickly the Louisiana law is interesting too, and Zeev mentions this in the, podcast, the Louisiana law is one of the only ones that, PornHub basically said they were okay with, they were not happy with it, and they called out the problems with it, but they still allowed it to go into effect. And they have to use this, age verification system that is approved by Louisiana, where in most other states that have passed similar laws, they don't have the specific technological requirements. They just kind of say like, Hey, do it. And in those states, PornHub has blocked IP addresses from those states entirely so that in approximately half of the country, PornHub is technically blocked. Again, people will use VPNs and other systems to get around it. And IP blocking is, is only of limited effectiveness. But it is interesting that they stayed in Louisiana and agreed to sort of act under this law. And then we have this kind of data on the impact and the consequences of it, which is that if the goal was to. Stop people and especially stop kids from accessing adult content. It doesn't appear to have been effective. if anything, it probably pushed them to sites that are worse, that have fewer controls. That are more dangerous in multiple ways.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, you can totally imagine a, politician or somebody who is advocating for the, for this legislation to see the 51% number, right, the, the de decrease in the demand for PornHub content and to trumpet that as a success of the law without necessarily realizing that there are all these other kind of secondary effects that happen. it naturally raises questions about the effectiveness. And as we've discussed, I was drawn to one point the Ziv May and his kind of co-authors mate about the likely net overall reduction in people going to porn sites, porn. And, he, he mentioned this at a few, a few points in the paper. It doesn't go into kind of necessarily how much that is, but there's a sense of that's it's produced enough friction, there's probably some reduction. What do you make about that as like a justification for these laws if, if it's down at all? you, you, always say, people will say, that's actually, that's enough right now.

Mike Masnick:

Yeah. I mean it's, you know, you put some friction into any system and it's gonna limit the speed which things happen. So, yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's some, net downward trend, but again, like at what cost and at what value. Right. And, and so like the whole thing with anything that is sort of limiting of speech in some sense or another, is that it has to be very, specifically targeted towards a specific problem. And like, again, we don't know if, that downward trend is, is it, I. kids, is it youth or is it adults who just can't be bothered to figure out how this works? Where in, in that case, with adults, it's perfectly legal activity. and again, like even if it's down, but then let's say some segment of the population is moving on to a site that is less regulated and more problematic, is that a win? I don't think so.

Ben Whitelaw:

Mm.

Mike Masnick:

and so I think the argument that that's a win in any way is, very shortsighted and not really looking at the context of all of this.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. it's the wider effect that I think Ziv and his team have really tapped into here, which is fascinating. great. Well, we've got our other stories we wanted to touch on, Mike, and we're, we're rapidly making our way through today's episode. we talked a bit about FTC, the FTC case and how meta is kind of defining speech for, a massive number of people. I think that's pretty relevant to our next story, which is a meta focused story and has a really, really tough example of what happens when, you don't have the tools at your disposal as a user to, block and to, shape your online experience. Talk us through that.

Mike Masnick:

Yeah, this is a really interesting piece, by Yeah. Rosenberg at the Atlantic and the, the title should capture everyone's attention, which is how social media sites can fight hate without censorship. and it's an interesting proposal in that first of all, the first half of it uses an example of really a horrific scenario where there is a. brigade of a, you know, perfectly innocent piece of content. It's, the Maca Beats a, a Jewish acapella group, that posted, a short recording. And the responses and the comments on it are just filled with the most vile of anti-Semitic hate.

Ben Whitelaw:

Hmm.

Mike Masnick:

just tons of it, like clearly, a organized and planned out campaign to attack this particular thing. And it, just a stunning amount of it, which is, you know, horrifying, but something that we all know happens at times. And the point Rosenberg raises is that, especially in this era now, that, Zuckerberg is like, we're hands off you know,

Ben Whitelaw:

Do it yourself.

Mike Masnick:

more freedom. user control, which, again, like conceptually, I'm, super in support of the idea of putting more power in the hands of the user. But when you're the victim of a targeted attack like this and just this massive brigade, it's impossible. And just asking someone to sit there and go through thousands of the most vile content and trying to like report each and every one is absolutely impossible. So what he suggests is like that the site should implement what is generally referred to as the mega block. And this actually comes from, there was a tool, that someone had built for Twitter, the old Twitter called Mega block, which was, it was, you know, a third party tool, but you could go in and. put in, I'd used it a couple times. I think you could put in an account and automatically block everybody who followed that account or like a piece of content you know, a single tweet and automatically block every single person who'd liked that, right? And

Ben Whitelaw:

remember that. Yeah.

Mike Masnick:

this way to just completely wipe out an entire population of terrible people. And it is a kind of nuclear option. And yes, there's probably some extraneous thing, but it as a user facing tool, it was a really powerful one. And so Berg's idea here, which I think is really interesting and really compelling is like, that should be enabled as part of the service where Instagram could do that. And so on this particular thing, one the Macabees folks could go in and basically nuke. Everyone who is connected to this campaign, because it is this sort of organized campaign. It's the same people over and over again doing this stuff, with just a few clicks. Instead of having to click through thousands of these pieces of content with just a few clicks, I can say everyone who liked this horrific thing just completely block them and have them disappear from the comments. It's like, oh, that's pretty powerful. But more importantly, if those tools are available, it creates the, in some interesting incentives, including fewer incentives for this kind of briad activity. Because people will realize very quickly that it's not, it's not as effective as it is because they know that anyone connected to it will get blocked completely, and everyone they follow and everyone else who likes it, and everyone is just like that, spread and that power, putting that in the hands of the user, you know, there are ways that it could be abused certainly, but as a user facing tool, I think it's really, really powerful.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. It's, it's kind of upstream benefits to having a tool like that that people know exist. Right. You know, it's the kind of, atomic bomb, uh, effect. You don't do it because you have the potential to, to hit the button, but, you know, I, I like the idea, but realistically meta isn't gonna do something like this. Right. You know, it got rid of carat tan, you know, some of the best tools that it's created. it's shuttered down, it's.

Mike Masnick:

Right. I mean, you never know, but it, it probably won't. But like, if Zuckerberg is serious about empowering the users, and I don't think he is, but if he really were, this is the kind of tool that would be good to create. And, you know, there are sort of some parallels to this that I think are worth thinking of. And like, the one that comes to mind in particular is like the idea of de Federation within Mastodon activity Pub World is sort of like that. in an activity pub, you have all these separate servers that, federate and connect, but there is the ability to derate. So like if there is a bad actor on, Ben's. Mastodon or whatever. And me on Mike's Mastodon, I can tell you Ben, like, get that guy off of there.'cause he keeps harassing my users. And if you won't do it, eventually I will cut off your entire server and then everybody there it is. The, you know, similar to a mega block and it has created this really interesting incentive structure. Some good, some bad. there is the good stuff is that you know, when Gab this alternative, horrible vial

Ben Whitelaw:

I was gonna say. Yeah,

Mike Masnick:

jumped on you know, started using activity pub, everyone derated from them and it was fine. They were off in their own little corner and they couldn't infect the rest of the world. But it also leads to like, you know, some things where people are like, well I have to be really careful to tiptoe around because it is kind of a nuclear option. But it's, it's an interesting one and I think there's a sort of a similarity here, but for a single platform I.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. I think it's, it's a really interesting, idea. I kind of feel that actually the mega block is almost like too late. I, I'm, I'm in, you know, it's like, by that point you kind of, you wanna have tools like Block Party, I think that are kind of slightly preemptive, but I do get the point, you know, people can't, people can't

Mike Masnick:

Well, I do, I do think there are similarities to Block Party as well, which is sort of, again, a sort of user empowering tool. which, sort of had some features that were kind of mega block, like, and so, yes, I mean, so look, if, if Zuckerberg doesn't wanna enable it himself, like at least allow third parties to enable services like this for users, I think that would be a compelling, step in the right direction.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, well talking of tools for users, Mike, a really interesting tool that's been released this week for Blue Sky is one that really

Mike Masnick:

ding, ding, ding.

Ben Whitelaw:

hit the bell.

Mike Masnick:

Yeah. Um, I am on the, the board of Blue Sky. I had no idea about this particular project until you told it to me just now, and I absolutely love this, but, please go explain. I.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. So this is a really cool tool, built by a woman called Faye Johnson, who's a kind of experienced trust and safety professional going back kind of 15 years. Built Products Done Policy at a bunch of different platforms. She's now a fellow at the Burman Klein, institute. She has created Clear Sky, which is a kind of overlay onto Blue Sky and means that you get a, a series of kind of very subtle tools that help you, craft a post that isn't gonna be toxic or, create issues, be harmful, essentially. Clear Sky is, it's kind of its own site. You log in with your, Blue Sky login essentially looks, it's a blue sky clone for what it's worth. But when you hit Post you get this very, cute little weather. Icon Mike. You get a either a sunny, bright sunshine, icon if your post has been, which has been kinda reviewed by AI in, in the course of posting, doesn't have any harmful words in it. And if you, told somebody to fuck off, then it will have a stormy cloud. and basically the idea is it's using kind of, behavioral theory and, nudge theory to say, actually you don't want to be posting this because it's, based upon how we, predict other users to respond to this, it's gonna be harmful. There's gonna be negative consequences. There's also a little button that allows you to, post, to hit an AI kind of generative AI button. And that will help. Edit your post to be less toxic and less harmful. And I gave this a go, Mike and I, I I, my football team is in a, par state at the moment where, and, and so I was, I did a kind of fake post about my, team leads United and then used the tool to kind of tidy up and it, and it really does an interesting, clear up of it. It's, it's a great little very subtle tool, that I think people will find interesting. We'll post a link to the show notes. People can have a go.

Mike Masnick:

I, absolutely, as I said, I had not seen this, you showed it to me right before we started recording, and I love this idea, right? this is the power of third party tools. This is the power of allowing people to build on what you've done. And, are a few different things that, I think about it, like, just the fact that it, I love the, the weather, framing of it. the way it displays, it's beautiful. It shows like stormy, it gets stormy. you start, cursing people out and things like that, you know, it, you know, this certainly I'm sure was inspired by Twitter, experimented with this kind of thing at one point where, it would give you a little heads up warning if it detected that what you said could be deemed as like, angry or offensive and would give these little nudges, like, are you sure you wanna post that? And, you know, that led to a bunch of silly things because I think the, classifier system that they used at the time was. It not great. and so people would mostly post like choking versions of, you know, like screenshots of like the Twitter suggesting to them that they, you know, post something, more friendly or pro-social or whatever. but like as a concept, I believe there were some studies done that Twitter found that it actually did work. That those nudges cause people to go back and, and rewrite what they were originally thinking of posting. And, those little kinds of nudges can be really valuable things. And the fact that here, Faye created this separate app that's built on blue sky that allows her to create the same thing, you know, with modern AI systems and classifiers is actually pretty cool. I'm sure that. Some people on Blue Sky who are just anti AI entirely will freak out about this. But, I think this is a really good use of AI to, sometimes it's nice to have that voice in the back of the head, back of your head saying like, maybe you shouldn't post this. And like, maybe this could come off in, in a poor way. And, and you're gonna get yelled at for it. and so I think this is really cool, even if it's just like a proof of concept kind of thing. I, I love it. I, it's such a, such a cool idea.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, it's really nice. And, you know, this is the kind of outcome of a six month fellowship, so, plenty more, iterations and, work to be done in it. But it's a great idea. I would love to know how she's planning to get it into the right people's hands. I think that's, that's gonna be the thing. I don't think you and I necessarily the target market for it.

Mike Masnick:

You don't know. I, I am so offensive.

Ben Whitelaw:

I was gonna say at least in, not until my team loses, in which case I get, I'm liable to, to say things that I, I will regret. But, it's a, it's a great little tool. Definitely recommend going to a look at that. we'll round off today, Mike, with, a couple of stories, for some. New social media sites, it feels like we are the only people not creating

Mike Masnick:

well, we could change that, you know, control alt speech, the social network.

Ben Whitelaw:

with a, with a, a broad and rigorous set of

Mike Masnick:

Yes, yes. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Ben Whitelaw:

Well, the two examples that have come up in the news this week almost certainly won't have, uh, very, very good moderation tools. we heard that OpenAI is building a social network. That's not particularly surprising in lots of ways, but Sam Walman came out and said, why not Let's build some, build a, a social network. we're only trying to kind of create artificial general intelligence as well. What's, what's a, a social network. But the really funny one that is, is Liz trusts.

Mike Masnick:

You're a friend.

Ben Whitelaw:

my, my, my good friend, my, I don't know her very well, listeners. Uh, we don't hang out. but the former Prime Minister for a, literally about six weeks, several years ago, she's launching an uncensored social network to counter mainstream media as reported by the Guardian. I, I laughed a lot at this one.

Mike Masnick:

Yeah. Uh.

Ben Whitelaw:

this is, what is it with politicians thinking they can, create social networks.

Mike Masnick:

I, I, I don't know. I mean, the argument I guess is it worked for Donald Trump, right? for a disgraced former, nation leader, who lost their position and then wanted to come back. it worked for him. So maybe it'll work for Liz Truss and maybe her site will last longer than a head of lettuce. I mean, we'll, we will, we will find out, I guess. But I mean, all the framing of it is, all it's the uncensored social network and she's talking about how like, oh, all the social, I mean, it's the same story that everybody says, we went through this period where everybody in the us, like all the conservatives, there was Gab we talked about was supposed to be the uncensored social network, and then there was, what was it? Getter was the uncensored social network and then True social, like everyone shows up Oh, and Parler, right? Like.

Ben Whitelaw:

Rumble. Yep.

Mike Masnick:

You know, well, rumble still exists at least, but like, a bunch of these just like pop up and say like, oh, we're gonna be the uncensored, which just means like, we have a different view of how trust and safety will work, because all of them, they're lying, right? All of them do trust and safety in some form or another. They all do moderation because they have to, but you know, they all sort of discover it once they start. And my favorite one was Parler when it launched and said, we're the uncensored. We don't do anything. And then people started posting stuff and then the CEO came out and was like, new rules, no more posting pictures of the toilet bowl full, full of shit. It's like, uh, like where are these coming from? I mean, it is like, you know, people just start mocking you and then, you get all mad and you're like, well this can't be allowed. And therefore, you know, everyone sort of discovers trust and safety their own special way. and so, you know, I think this is sort of just a garbage. Thing, I doubt it's gonna get much of much takeup but who knows? You never know what what'll actually happen. as for the open AI one, you know, let's see what that actually turns into. I sort of feel like they're basically gonna just sort of graft on social features to open ai, which we're already seeing like X and grok. Now that X and XAX AI have technically merged, whatever that means. You know, the connection between X and grok I think is something that maybe open AI is a little bit jealous about. And the fact that Grok gets to train on all the content from X, you know, maybe open AI is hoping like if we can generate more content that we can use as training data that could be useful. And then just adding in social features can be useful. But you know, it's interesting to, close out on this story, when we started with the story of Facebook and the market for it and whether or not there was real competition, and yet we're closing out on two new entrants into the field.

Ben Whitelaw:

Mm,

Mike Masnick:

don't quite know what they're defined at, but the, the fact is that lots of people feel that they can enter this market right now, I think is notable on its own.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. You've got truth social in the US and we've got trust social.

Mike Masnick:

Oh man. Oh gosh. I can you imagine if, if if she actually,

Ben Whitelaw:

up a control alt speech accounts and trust. Social.

Mike Masnick:

yeah, if she can, if she calls it that and there were a trademark dispute, that would be so much fun.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get the popcorn ready. Um, great. Thanks Mike. we've covered all of today's stories. We've, we've at least done our best to do, fair, fair account of this week's tech policy and content moderation news. Thanks very much, uh, for joining me today and appreciate all your, your analysis. I just wanna give a shout out to the outlets that produce today's stories. The Verge, the Atlantic, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal. We wouldn't be able to, do what we do without building on top of their, excellent reporting. We'll be back next week.

Mike Masnick:

and just to note, in case you never look at, at our show notes, we always include links to all of the stories that we rely on for what we talk about each week. And I actually do think it's really important. We do rely on these, journalism sites very heavily. And so, you know, make sure you actually read the stories and, and, go check out the show notes.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, indeed. we'll be back next week. thanks very much for joining us today. Rate and review us wherever your podcast, and we'll speak to you soon.

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