Watermarked words, OpenAI's very ethical exit another Reddit revolt?

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.

I watched this week's solar eclipse with neighbours and in awe, only to come back online to find recycled footage and dodgy Photoshops among the many glorious, real photos of this amazing natural phenomenon. It's a reminder that everything is an information-quality event nowadays. The residents of Ceuta (See: Policies and this week's Ctrl-Alt-Speech) know that all too well.

Welcome to new free subscribers from Yoti, Vestiaire Collective, Ofcom, Stanford University, Christchurch Call, Google, Thorn and elsewhere plus the readers who have upgraded to paid membership in recent weeks. EiM only works because enough of you think independent, specialist coverage worth supporting.

I’m away on holiday next week so there’ll be no regular Week in Review. To be frank, I’m not a big fan of — or very good at — taking weeks off, and it’s notoriously hard for independent media to do so, as explained here. But it's necessary and important so thanks for bearing with me while I go splash around in the sea with my family.

Here's all you need to know from the last seven days — BW

in partnership with Safer by Thorn, a purpose-built CSAM and CSE solution.

New feature! Context Labels add more information to suspected CSAM.

As part of Thorn’s continued commitment to helping trust and safety teams detect and disrupt child sexual abuse material (CSAM), we're happy to announce that Safer now includes Context Labels, a new feature that provides additional signals for suspected CSAM.

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These labels can integrate into your existing moderation workflows to help your team filter, sort, and prioritize flagged content, whether you're using Safer directly or incorporating results into your own internal review tools.

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Policies

New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation

Former EU commissioner Thierry Breton — yes, he of that Musk handshake — called for an investigation into the role of online disinformation in the deadly Ceuta border crossings last month. In an interview with Italian outlet La Stampa and picked up elsewhere, he called the tragedy the “first large-scale hybrid algorithmic attack against an external border of the Union” and said researchers must be given access to the content that led to the crisis to understand who was responsible. EU officials continue to examine possible foreign manipulation of the crisis and meanwhile Meta and TikTok have agreed to increase monitoring and fact-checking

The “censorship industrial complex” — and other variations of the same idea — has defined the field of internet safety over the last decade and has directly affected subscribers and friends of EiM. But what does it mean? And who’s behind it as an idea? MIT Technology and Type Investigations analysed 100,000+ social posts to expose the centrality of both Mike Benz and Covid-19 in popularising an idea which has little little grounding but refuses to go away. Read with a Friday beverage of your choice.

Also in this section...

• A California judge just called your feed a mirror, not free speech (The Next Web)
• US court rules Meta, other tech firms must face thousands of lawsuits over social media addiction (Reuters)

How to build internal culture on a T&S team

T&S Insider’s practical, step-by-step guide to building a T&S team that takes accountability, surfaces problems early and doesn’t shy away from asking leadership hard questions.

Everything in Moderation*Alice Hunsberger