Online safety fallout, AI safety series raise and speaking to strangers
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.
This is edition #300 of EiM. Three hundred. What started as a side project in 2018 has, somewhat improbably, made it this far. Thanks to everyone who has read, shared, supported, and followed my takes on the obscure-but-crucial internet rules, policies and products that shape how we all communicate online.
To mark the milestone, I’m hosting a very informal EiM drinks in September in London. If you’ve ever shared an interesting link, sponsored a newsletter, or forwarded an edition of EiM to a colleague, you’re invited. EiM members will get first dibs. More details soon.
Taking of milestones, Mike and I reflect on what’s next for the podcast in the latest episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech. Want to know how the sausage is made? We'll be answering listeners questions next week.
Thanks for reading — BW
Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
The last two weeks have seen the Online Safety Act come under fire from all sides following the deadline for child safety provisions — aka the great UK age check reckoning (EiM #299). Think tanks, opposition MPs, Jim Jordan and even Marc Andressen weighed in, forcing Ofcom to put out a panicky three-sentence statement (see last paragraph here).
While I’m concerned about the unintended consequences of age verification tech, I was shocked by the tone of coverage, which would've been more surprising to UK citizens who haven’t been following its slow progress through the British political system:
- An op-ed in Newsweek calls it a “thinly veiled effort to normalize censorship in the U.K. and expand surveillance of British citizens and guests within their borders.” Gulp.
- In The Guardian, Taylor Lorenz said that the regulation will lead to young people being “fed a steady diet of sanitised, government‑approved narratives until the age of 18.”
- The New Yorker uses the hack of dating app Tea to warn “what’s at risk when we attach our real-life identities to our online activities” — despite the uploading of user IDs not being in response to any regulation.
All this tells me that age verification is fast becoming a UK wedge issue — not unlike Brexit, immigration or trans rights — in the wider battle over digital rights and state control of the internet. And it's not just Brits feeling the heat. The US Supreme Court is weighing in.