This Episode is Broadly Safe to Listen To

In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:
• My year with a flip phone (ft.com/content/4728491f-9ea8-4efe-bbcd-fd81774…) (Financial Times)
• Claude’s Constitution (anthropic.com/constitution) (Anthropic)
• From the CEO: What’s coming to YouTube in 2026 (blog.youtube/inside-youtube/the-future-of-yout…) (Youtube)
• BBC to show programmes on YouTube in landmark deal (ft.com/content/cdcfbec7-1472-4161-a29f-7142633…) (Financial Times)
• Rand Paul: I’ve changed my mind — Google and YouTube can’t be trusted to do the right thing and must be reined in (nypost.com/2026/01/19/opinion/rand-paul-ive-ch…) (NY Post)
• Rand Paul Only Wants Google To Be The Arbiter Of Truth When The Videos Are About Him (techdirt.com/2026/01/21/rand-paul-only-wants-g…) (Techdirt)
• Roskomnadzor Denies Reports That It’s Throttling Telegram Over Content Moderation Disputes (themoscowtimes.com/2026/01/16/roskomnadzor-den…) (Moscow Times)
• Europeans set to launch an alternative to X. It’s called W (cybernews.com/tech/europe-social-media-w) (Cybernews)
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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)).