Ctrl-Alt-Speech, the weekly podcast on online speech and platform governance hosted by Techdirt’s Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation’s Ben Whitelaw, released episode 110 on July 10, 2026.
The 36-minute episode, titled “Sell Me Lies, Sell Me Sweet Meta Lies,” centers on Meta and the familiar platform-governance cocktail: advertising quality, teen safety, artificial intelligence policy, and legal accountability. That is a lot of institutional mess for one company, which is usually how Meta weeks work.
Masnick and Whitelaw frame the show around four reported stories. The Media Leader interview with Meta covers ad fraud, teen safety, smart glasses security and the company’s view that AI will not replace agencies. The BBC report discussed in the episode says Instagram ran ads in India promoting child sexual abuse material. Wired reports that Meta allows other users to use Instagram photos in AI-generated images unless account holders opt out. Bloomberg profiles Kaley, who sued Meta and Google at 17, won, and later spoke publicly about the case.
The show describes itself as a guide to debates over online speech, platform power, content moderation and the future of the internet. That remit is broad enough to swallow most tech policy fights, but this episode’s public agenda is narrower: Meta’s systems for selling ads, moderating harms, and turning user content into AI inputs.
Stories covered in the public episode
- The Media Leader interview with Meta on ad fraud, teen safety and AI’s role in advertising agencies.
- BBC reporting that Instagram ran ads promoting child sexual abuse material in India.
- Wired reporting on Meta’s opt-out system for using Instagram photos in AI images.
- Bloomberg feature on Kaley, who sued Meta and Google as a teenager and won.
Subscribers who support the show on Patreon get an extended version. That add-on shifts from Meta to the AI policy and infrastructure pileup: Reuters reporting that Beijing is considering limits on overseas access to top Chinese AI models, PCMag on Anthropic’s Fable 5 returning after security concerns with the US government, and The Wall Street Journal on AI companies offering free computing power to startups.
The extended episode also includes Reid Hoffman’s LinkedIn post about token grants for AI builders and Financial Times reporting that OpenAI proposed giving the Trump administration a 5% stake.
The episode’s lighter links are Roost, described as a “slow-cial” messaging app, and PlotLines, a tool for mapping classic novels. Ctrl-Alt-Speech is available through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, YouTube, RSS and other podcast apps.
This story draws on original reporting from Techdirt.
