No Child Left Online

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:
• What is in the EU's planned KIDS Act? (reuters.com/legal/litigation/what-is-eus-plann…) (Reuters)
• Proposal for EU KIDS Act - 'EU Keeping Internet Digital Spaces Accountable and Trustworthy' (digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/propo…) (EU Commission)
• France makes new attempt to ban social media for children under age 15 (lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/09/14/france…) (Le Monde)
• Reading scores plummet as ‘digital distraction’ harms students (ft.com/content/0b38ab3f-c12a-44e2-8b42-f2d7e5c…) (FT)
• We are setting up a generation to fail at school (ft.com/content/724f8ecb-1e2b-4c7f-bbb6-14239ab…) (FT)
• TikTok rejects Meta ads pushing rivals to join child safety settlement (searchengineland.com/tiktok-rejects-meta-ads-p…) (Search Engine Land)
• Inside ‘Project Lily’: The Humans Reading Your ChatGPT Chats (404media.co/inside-project-lily-the-humans-rea…) (404 Media)
And in the extended episode for Patreon supporters (patreon.com/CtrlAltSpeech), they cover:
• We Must Pace the Frontier (darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-frontier) (Dario Amodei)
• OpenAI Wants to Know if an AI Industry Slowdown Would Even Be Legal (wired.com/story/openai-wants-to-know-if-an-ai-…) (Wired)
• Trump goes scorched earth on AI warnings, raging about data center opposition and regulation (cnbc.com/2026/09/14/trump-ai-data-centers-anth…) (CNBC)
• The AI policy window is open. We need to act. (openai.com/index/ai-policy-window) (OpenAI)
Our fun links this week include a “Welcome to the Internet (linkedin.com/posts/bfleming_welcome-to-the-int…)” presentation for a 13-year-old and God’s Eye View (github.com/bilawalsidhu/gods-eye-view), a slightly terrifying bit of open source software to explore the world.
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)).