Why Meta settled, Alice in vendor-land and Bill Gates on these "turbulent times"
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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The Meta settlement is the big story of the week (see: Platforms) but it’s not the only US legal case worth your attention. Hit reply with your comments and queries; thanks for reading — BW
Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
A fascinating and divisive ruling coming out of the US where a federal judge has ruled that the First Amendment protects someone's right to privately possess AI-generated child sexual abuse material in their own home, provided it doesn’t depict a real child. The decision emerged from the prosecution of a Wisconsin man charged in 2024 with using an AI image generator to produce explicit images of children. The Washington Post and others have the story.
Legal experts quoted in the WashPo story are split on how much this actually changes anything: Stanford's Riana Pfefferkorn notes it doesn't protect producing, downloading or transporting such material, only pure private possession, while Boston College's Daniel Lyons thinks there's a real chance the Supreme Court takes up the case given the volume of synthetic material now overwhelming NCMEC's reporting pipeline. One to watch carefully.
Also in this section...
- Dutch regulator fines Uber $966 million for automating driver suspensions (Reuters)
- The Hidden Trade-Offs of Fighting Child Abuse Online (CACM)
- Parents and politicians love social media bans for kids. Experts worry they’re a shot in the dark (Politico)