The Human Element in the Room

In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by First Amendment lawyer Ari Cohn. Together they discuss:

• Pennsylvania sues AI chatbot as state lawmakers wrestle with stricter regulations (Pennsylvania Capital-Star)
• Children are drawing moustaches on their faces to fool online age checks - and it's working (Euronews)
• The Online Safety Act: Are children safer online? (Internet Matters)
• Utah first state to hold websites liable for users who mask their location with VPNs — law goes into effect, designed to prevent bypassing age checks (Tom’s Hardware)
• Three Justifications—and the AI Accelerant—of India’s Digital Censorship Infrastructure (Tech Policy Press)
• Did School Cellphone Bans Work? New Study Finds Mixed Results.(NY Times)

Support the podcast by joining our Patreon, with special founder membership available until May 28th.

Follow us on Instagram, YouTube, and Bluesky.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is the podcast where we make sense of the major debates shaping online speech, platform power, content moderation and the future of the internet. It’s co-hosted by Mike Masnick (Techdirt) and Ben Whitelaw (Everything in Moderation).