A new era of AI safety reports, changes at the Oversight Board and an angry Jim Jordan
Hello and welcome to Everything in Moderation's Week in Review, your in-depth guide to the policies, products, platforms and people shaping the future of online speech and the internet. It's written by me, Ben Whitelaw and supported by members like you.
I send this from the airport tarmac as I prepare to fly back to London following a hectic week away for my day job. If I’ve missed any major stories, I hope you’ll give me a pass this week.
Mike will be helming today’s Ctrl-Alt-Speech podcast in my absence and will be joined by a brilliant guest host. Subscribe to be notified of the episode when it drops later today.
And with that, here are (some of?) the big speech stories from the past week — BW
Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
The European Commission has opened an investigation into Meta under the Digital Services Act for infringements related to what it calls “deceptive advertising and political content on its services”. It is also concerned about what it calls the “non-availability of an effective third-party real-time civic discourse and election-monitoring tool” ahead of the upcoming EU elections, which comes less than six weeks after introducing guidelines for election security (EiM #241).
Wider view: I’m a little surprised that it’s taken the EU long to open an investigation against the owner of Facebook and Instagram, especially because Crowdtangle’s closure has been touted as far back as 2022. However, in doing so, it becomes the fourth investigation that the Commission has open against one of the Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) after X/Twitter, AliExpress and TikTok.
Yet another harrowing story about a teenager who took his life as a result of sextortion was published this week, this time in The Guardian. 16-year-old Murray Dowey’s death is part of a spike in sextortion cases that Mike and I spoke about in a recent episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech and which has no straightforward remedies. Thorn has a good guide on how to avoid sextortion but if you’re working on platform interventions, I’d love to hear from you.