Adi Robertson

I’ll lay my cards on the table: I disagree with tech policy luminary Tim Wu’s support for a lot of the child safety bills being proposed in the US right now. But his Atlantic story on their failure underscores just how bad Congress has been at passing any regulation (or even empowering tech oversight agencies to function) amid a bunch of grandstanding about “Big Tech”:

At midnight ET tonight, the US Copyright Office will close its extended public comment period for how copyright should play with AI. And while I’m not seeing the absolute circus that we got with 22 million (mostly fake) net neutrality comments, it’s received a respectable number so far! I’m looking forward to digging into them.

The resolution doesn’t offer many specifics, but it’s the latest sign that AI-generated images of child sexual abuse are becoming a priority for platforms and law enforcement — even if it’s still framed as an “emerging” problem.

Pichai will be one of the first witnesses Google calls for its antitrust defense, which started officially today. He’ll help make the case that Google’s search success is due to its own innovation and missteps by competitors, not big deals with companies like Apple (which it allegedly paid $18 billion in 2021).

The open source intelligence site has been fact-checking information about the Israel-Hamas war during a seismic shift in social media practices, and it outlines some of the most common tells of a false report, alongside a useful reminder for watching disturbing videos:

In a recommendation adopted today, it asks countries to quickly designate an authority for a network of Digital Services Coordinators under the EU-wide Digital Services Act, despite having several months left until the official February 2024 (Right now, the recommendation says under 10 percent of members have done so.) The network will help coordinate takedowns of illegal content on social media platforms, an effort the EU says it’s kicking into high gear following Hamas’ attack on Israel earlier this month.

Hamas is banned from most social media as a designated terrorist organization, but as The Washington Post lays out, it’s used a popular Telegram account to “strengthen supporters’ resolve, stir up anti-Israel rage in neighboring countries, defend its militants’ brutality and induce sympathy to the plight of Gaza.” As The New York Times wrote yesterday, it’s also recently hijacked hostages’ social media accounts to spread terror and propaganda — in ways that are particularly hard to safeguard against.

I worked my way through Trust & Safety Tycoon, and I was right: the brony call came back to haunt me. I encourage you to beat my score.