Moderation hits the big screen, NYT covers teen chatbots and AI startup raises $12m
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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Firstly, welcome to a typically eclectic set of free EiM subscribers, including folks from StackOverflow, AI Together, the Home Office, Peleton, Medium, Duco and elsewhere. You’ve joined for must-read news and analysis; this week, you also get film recommendations.
Today's edition comes at the end of a chaotic week in the Whitelaw household so I may have missed a story or two. Hit reply with anything worth revisiting to or that should be shared with EiM subscribers next week— ben@everythinginmoderation.co.
I did, however, manage to chat with Fadza Madzingira, a T&S director at Twitch, for this week's Ctrl-Alt-Speech. Come for Fadzai's sharp analysis, stay for her brilliant laugh. And, with that, here's your Week in Review — BW
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Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
Meta has discussed reducing or ending funding for the Oversight Board when its current commitment expires in 2028, according to Platformer, prompting questions about the future of one of the industry’s boldest accountability experiments.
Where next?: This latest news caps a rocky few years for the Board: it had to make significant cuts in 2024 (EiM #246) and was not given a head’s up about Meta’s content moderation overhaul last January before it were announced publicly (EiM #283). Saying that, its recent five-year impact report suggested that the Board members knew its original model may not be fit for the future.
Ofcom this week brought into force one of the Online Safety Act’s more operationally challenging duties: the requirement for user-to-user services to report UK-linked child sexual exploitation and abuse content (CSEA) via a newly established reporting portal. It’s not dissimilar to the National Center for Missing Children’s CyberTipline regime in the US, in that platforms that become aware of apparent CSEA/CSAM must report it, but the UK process routes to the National Crime Agency for investigation.
Important headaches: This is good step towards making CSEA reporting a formalised part of platform operations rather than something that it voluntary or market dependent. Sensibly, there’s no requirement for platforms to report content that is already shared with NCMEC. Nonetheless, I am lighting a candle for the compliance managers mapping out these workflows and ensuring everything is working as it should.