Watermark My Words

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:
• Claude will apply invisible watermarks to AI text and images (theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/977823…) (The Verge)
• Claude-inspired copypasting (copypaster) (LinkedIn)
• Anthropic investors bet on $2tn valuation in record IPO (ft.com/content/840ac156-af1c-4a82-b260-ae79107…) (Financial Times)
• The Future is for Everyone (meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone) (Meta)
• OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves start-up less than a year after joining (ft.com/content/e49dfb75-f841-4466-a577-f7aaff8…) (Financial Times)
• US court rules Meta, other tech firms must face thousands of lawsuits over social media addiction (reuters.com/world/us-appeals-court-allows-thou…) (Reuters)
• Ninth Circuit Rewrites Section 230 To Remove The Part That Actually Mattered (techdirt.com/2026/08/12/ninth-circuit-rewrites…) (Techdirt)
• Otherwise Obectionable podcast (podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/otherwise-object…) (Techdirt)
And in the extended episode for Patreon supporters (patreon.com/CtrlAltSpeech), they cover:
• Breton calls for EU disinformation inquiry over Ceuta (euractiv.com/news/breton-calls-for-eu-disinfor…) (Euractiv)
• Meta and TikTok agree to fact-check content on Spain border crossings after deadly rush (reuters.com/world/china/meta-tiktok-agree-fact…) (Reuters)
• Social media rumours spark biggest migration crisis between Morocco and Spain in years (euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/04/social-media…) (Euronews)
• Thierry Breton: “Ceuta? La minaccia viene dall’algoritmo che guida gli arrivi” (lastampa.it/esteri/2026/08/10/news/thierry_bre…) (La Stampa)
Our fun links this week are this typing website for tiny fingers (tinyfingers.net) and a museum for your favourite memes (meme-museum.at) — and the thinking behind it (through-the-wire.leaflet.pub/3msqhjrydys2l).
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)).