Indian apologies, beware the ‘takedown extortionists’ and Schneider on becoming CEO
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 paid members like you.
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Here's the big stories from the past week — BW
The next trust breaking points do not look like the last ones.
AI is changing the shape of trust and safety risk. The next challenges won’t always start with a single piece of content or a clear policy violation. They will more likely originate from autonomous agents acting across systems, synthetic identities passing verification checks, physical AI creating real-world consequences, or coordinated manipulation moving faster than human oversight can respond.
PwC’s Trust and Safety Outlook 2026 explores seven themes shaping this shift, and why leaders need to rethink how trust is designed, governed, measured, and operated before pressure points become failures.
Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
The Indian government received an apology from Meta executives this week after the company briefly took down a video by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after what it called an “error in its AI-powered automated content filtering system”. Chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan (aka the new Nick Clegg) was in New Delhi to explain the takedown and promise that “new protocols” had been established to prevent similar events happening again. Separately, police in the southern city of Hyderabad brought a case against the head of Meta’s India business for “abusive” videos of Modi.
Strained relations: India has pushed its luck with platforms in the past (EiM #110) and has had a strained relationship with Meta over the years. This particular episode has been building since May, when two million students were forced to retake an exam after the papers leaked. That led to a week-long ban of Telegram (EiM #346), followed by a flood of online dissatisfaction towards Modi and his ministers, the resignation of the education minister and large protests in New Delhi on 20th July. With the government under so much pressure, Meta — for all its failures — is a familiar, and easy, target.
Ben Whitelaw
A breaking story overnight: a New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay another $567m for being a “public nuisance” and failing to warn the public about the dangers of using its platforms. On top of the earlier fine (EiM #330), it makes the total damage to Meta almost $1 billion. The company has said it will appeal, although the amount is 1/60th of the revenue it made in Q2 this year.