The UK Wants Us To Ask Your Age Before You Listen

In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:
• a16z-Backed AI Site Civitai Is Mostly Porn, Despite Claiming Otherwise (404media.co/a16z-backed-ai-site-civitai-is-mos…) (404 Media)
• Hugging Face Is Hosting 5,000 Nonconsensual AI Models of Real People (404media.co/hugging-face-is-hosting-5-000-nonc…) (404 Media)
• Ofcom head says age checks are ‘really big moment’ for children’s online safety (theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/13/ofcom-a…) (The Guardian)
• New online safety rules not 'the end of the conversation', says minister (bbc.com/news/live/cy4nwqkj7jxt) (BBC)
• Commission’s guidelines for online child safety target platforms of all sizes (euractiv.com/section/tech/news/commissions-gui…) (Euractiv)
• I met the sextortion scammers destroying young lives for £1 a day (thetimes.com/life-style/celebrity/article/jord…) (The Times)
• “Why me?” On shame, self-blame, and feeling so. damn. Stupid. (blockpartyapp.com/blog/why-me-on-shame-self-bl…) (Blockparty)
• If It Breaks Wikipedia, It’s Probably Bad Policy (internet.exchangepoint.tech/if-it-breaks-wikip…) (InternetExchange)
This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund and by our sponsor, the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership. In our bonus chat Mike talks with DTSP Executive Director David Sullivan to talk about their new Safe Framework Specification (dtspartnership.org/the-safe-framework-specific…), which is an official ISO standard (available for free download) which will help everyone better understand best practices and concepts around online trust & safety work.
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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)).