The Musk moderation moment, India's own council and why we don't trust AI decisions

Hello and welcome to Everything in Moderation, your globally-minded content moderation and online safety round-up. It's written by me, Ben Whitelaw.

Due to unforeseen personal circumstances, there wasn't a newsletter in your inbox last Friday, which perhaps was just as well since it coincided with that takeover and would have been out of date upon arrival. I've read wall-to-wall Musk this week to bring you the bits that matter most.

The brief hiatus means there are a host of new subscribers to welcome: folks from Grindr, Unitary, the University of Berkeley, Discord, the Mozilla Foundation and a bunch of the team at Hinge, hello to you all. Get in touch and let me know what you think of today's edition (that goes for everyone).

Here's everything in moderation this week - BW

Policies

New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation

The Indian government has gone ahead with its plans to create a government panel to hear content moderation complaints in an unprecedented move that has significant ramifications for users and platforms. The Grievance Appellate Committee — an amendment of its controversial IT Law (EiM #103) — will hear appeals from Indian citizens unhappy with any platform decision. The panel is not large — just a chairperson and two full-time members, according to Reuters —  and they have 30 days to reply so it's very hard to imagine how they will deal with the tidal wave of complaints in Twitter's third largest market. Scroll.in has more about how it will function.