Live at TrustCon 2025

Our second annual live at TrustCon recording of Ctrl-Alt-Speech! Ben was unable to make the trip halfway around the world, but Mike was joined by trust & safety influencer Alice Hunsberger from Musubi and Ashken Kazaryan, a Senior Legal Fellow at the Future of Free Speech at Vanderbilt University. They cover:

• As millions adopt Grok to fact-check, misinformation abounds (Al Jazeera)
• Analysis Of Grok’s Epstein Comments Show How This AI Chatbot Is Learning (Forbes)
• People With Body Dysmorphia Are Spiraling Out After Asking AI to Rate Their Looks (Rolling Stone)
• Can A Chatbot Be Your Therapist? Casper’s Neil Parikh Launches A New $93 Million-Backed Startup To Try (Forbes)
• A Realist Perspective on Trust & Safety (Tech Policy Press)

This week’s sponsor is Modulate. In our bonus chat Mike Masnick talks with Modulate founder and CEO Mike Pappas, live at TrustCon, about the kinds of voice scams they’re seeing, with a focus on scams using social engineering techniques to pressure people to do things they probably shouldn’t do.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at [email protected] and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected]. Thanks for listening.