Duty of Careful What You Wish For

Become a Ctrl-Alt-Speech supporter (patreon.com/CtrlAltSpeech) to get extended episodes of the podcast plus the chance to submit stories for us to cover.
In this week's episode, Mike and Ben cover:
• Australians will be able to switch off social media algorithms under planned legislation (bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn9wyvxn95vo) (BBC News)
• Australia’s social media ban has an enforcement problem. These new laws aim to fix it (theconversation.com/australias-social-media-ba…) (The Conversation)
• The Netherlands forced Meta to let users ditch algorithmic feeds. Here’s what happened (theconversation.com/the-netherlands-forced-met…) (The Conversation)
• What We Know About Prosocial Feed-Ranking Algorithms (prosocialdesign.org/blog/what-we-know-about-pr…) (Prosocial Design Network)
• Anthropic researcher quits over AI labs ‘gambling with our lives’ (ft.com/content/20c07191-8da6-440f-b04b-8ea0ebd…) (Financial Times)
• AI Agents Are Not Going “Rogue,” But Recent Developments Lead Increasingly-Concerned Researchers To Call For AI Slow Down (techdirt.com/2026/09/09/ai-agents-are-not-goin…) (Techdirt)
• “We will not be silenced”: Imran Ahmed responds to court ruling (counterhate.com/blog/we-will-not-be-silenced-i…) (Center for Countering Digital Hate)
And in the extended episode for Patreon supporters (patreon.com/CtrlAltSpeech), they cover:
• USA: Terrorism designation has global consequences for open internet and free expression (article19.org/resources/usa-terrorism-designat…) (Article 19)
• Rubio Uses Terrorism Law To Ban Secure Email Service (reason.com/2026/08/27/rubio-uses-terrorism-law…) (Reason)
Our fun links this week include the multi-view website browser (canvas-browser.com) and the internet roadtrip (neal.fun/internet-roadtrip).
If you’re already a Patreon supporter, you canget the extended episode on Patreon (patreon.com/collection/2176497?view=condensed).
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Ctrl-Alt-Speech is the podcast where we make sense of the major debates shaping online speech, platform power, content moderation and the future of the internet. It’s co-hosted by Mike Masnick (Techdirt (techdirt.com)) and Ben Whitelaw (Everything in Moderation (everythinginmoderation.co)).