Regulators unveil new rules, Anthropic's 'bottom-up' safety tool and Bluesky ban reckoning
Hello and welcome to Everything in Moderation's Week in Review, your need-to-know news and analysis about platform policy, content moderation and internet regulation. It's written by me, Ben Whitelaw and supported by members like you.
2024 was EiM’s sixth year but the first that I’d dedicated any meaningful time to honing its output and growing its audience. I’ve done that by working with some brilliant people (shout out to Mike, Leigh and Alice), partnering with stellar organisations and meeting countless people, both online and on the road.
It’s been tough at times but every conversation, email reply, story tip or newsletter share has made it worthwhile. So thank you to you all — including new subscribers from Trustpilot, Epic Games, CSR India, Pinterest, Marketplace Risk, Musabi Labs, OnlyFans, Coimisiún na Meán and elsewhere.
Next year marks an important year for EiM and I plan to write a longer post about what you can expect and, importantly, how you can get involved — as a member, co-host, contributor or simply a cheerleader of EiM and its work. If you haven’t already taken part in the EiM Audience Survey, please do before Monday 23rd December.
For now, happy holidays and — for 46th and last time this year — here’s your must-read moderation stories this week — BW
Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
Britain’s online safety regime is finally up and running following the issuing of the first code of practice by regulator Ofcom on Monday as part of the Online Safety Act. It means that online services with UK users or capable of being accessed by people in the UK will have to comply with a set of measures by 16th March 2025 or face fines up to £18 million or 10% of global turnover. It’s a major milestone for the regulator, which has staffed up heavily but pretty much kept to its timeline despite political pressure from successive governments.
Desired effect? Technology secretary Peter Kyle writes in the Guardian that “tech firms will be forced to proactively take down illegal content that plagues our internet”. However, the codes are already having an inadvertent effect in some lesser frequented corners of the internet. I’ll be delving into this with Mike in the final episode of 2024 of Ctrl-Alt-Speech later today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.