Ctrl-Alt-Speech: A Midterm Night’s Dream

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.

Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on Patreon.

In this week’s episode, Mike and Ben cover:

• Lula’s Win Signals Fight to Regulate Social Media Will Escalate in Brazil (TechPolicy.Press)
• Meta Employees Denounce Interference in Brazilian Elections (Panamerican Dispatch)
• Google’s AI Chatbot Refuses to Answer Question of Who Won 2020 Presidential Election (Mediaite)
• AI-driven disinformation running rampant on social media before US midterms, experts warn (The Guardian)
• Never Mind The Deepfakes, Chatbots Have To Deal With Election Lies Being Free, While Truth Is Paywalled (Techdirt)
• French Government Calls Emergency Meetings With Platforms Over Protests (Wired)
• Farewell, France (Quad9)

And in the extended episode for Patreon supporters, they cover:

• Ofcom’s Fix For An Online Safety Act That Isn’t Working: More Online Safety Act (Techdirt)
• How age checks at age 16 can work to underpin UK’s social media ban (Ofcom)

Our fun links this week include Krillion (much harder than it looks) and Dial Flipper for discovering new podcasts.

Follow us on Instagram, YouTube, and Bluesky for video clips from the episode!

If you’re already a Patreon supporter, you can get the extended episode on Patreon.