France cracks down, Denmark backs down and more platforms banned Down Under
Hello and welcome to Everything in Moderation's Week in Review, your need-to-know news and analysis about platform policy, content moderation and internet regulation. It's written by me, Ben Whitelaw and supported by members like you.
While there’s plenty of debate about how best to protect younger users online, one thing is clear: governments aren’t waiting for consensus before acting — as this week’s Policy section shows.
The UK’s Southport Inquiry — in response to last year’s July riots — got interesting this week as X/Twitter’s head of global government affairs gave evidence. I spent three hours watching so EiM readers and Ctrl-Alt-Speech listeners don't have to. Listen, rate and leave a review on Apple or Spotify.
Hello and welcome to new EiM subscribers from Coimisiún na Meán, Internet Matters, Harvard Unversity, ISOC, Amnesty International, Tinder, Gamer Safer and elsewhere. Drop me a line about how you found out about the newsletter — a subscriber recently told me they discovered EiM while sharing a taxi with a fellow conference attendee. The wonder of word of mouth.
Here’s the big stories from the last seven days — BW
Safety used to mean reacting fast. Now, it means seeing what’s coming.
Our fifth feature in the “20 Years in Online Safety” series marks one of the biggest turning points in Resolver’s journey—when we helped our partners move from reactive moderation to proactive intelligence.
Renal and Irina reflect on how predictive safety technologies and human expertise now work hand in hand to identify risks before they escalate, turning firefighting into foresight.
It’s not just a change in tools—it’s a change in mindset. From analyzing what happened to anticipating what might.
Proactive protection is no longer optional. It’s essential.
Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
Denmark — which holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union until the end of the year — last week walked back plans for “chat control”, the controversial proposal to mandate CSAM detection in private messaging apps. Following sustained pressure from privacy advocates and tech companies warning of encryption risks, it now supports a voluntary approach; however, a ‘review clause to “assess the necessity and feasibility of including detection obligations in the future” leaves the door ajar for chat control mark II. Euractiv has the story.
Google and Meta’s claim that the Biden administration pressured its employees to suppress COVID-19 and election content (EiM #312) has received a swift pushback from Democrats, who have sent a letter to YouTube CEO regarding the past testimonies of 20 employees. Guess what? None of the employees said under oath they were pressured to remove content. But maybe they were lying? Or maybe this has something to do with it.
Reddit and Kick have become the latest platforms that will be banned for Australian teens come December 10 when under 16 social media ban comes into force (EiM #273). The big question is: will Spotify be added to the list now that some kids are using old NPR episodes to chat to one another?