Ctrl-Alt-Speech has published a sponsored Spotlight episode centered on PwC’s recently released Trust & Safety Outlook report, with host Ben Whitelaw interviewing PwC’s Dan Hays at TrustCon.
The episode, dated July 22, 2026, runs 39 minutes and 20 seconds and is listed as Season 1, Episode 112. Techdirt says the conversation was produced in conjunction with sponsor PwC, which is also promoting the report discussed in the episode. That disclosure is doing real work here: the guest works for the company behind the report, so listeners should treat the framing as sponsored analysis rather than independent research dropped from the sky.
According to Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Whitelaw and Hays discuss how artificial intelligence is both creating new abuse risks and changing the tools companies use to deal with them. That is the current trust and safety squeeze in miniature: the same systems that can generate spam, synthetic media or other platform headaches are also being sold as the fix for moderation queues, enforcement triage and detection work.
The episode also covers autonomous agents, a term the show ties to governance, accountability and the future shape of the internet. The listing does not spell out the report’s conclusions, but the mechanism is plain enough: if software can take actions on behalf of users or organizations, platforms need policies for who gets blamed, who gets blocked and who gets an appeal when those agents break rules. Hand-waving at “AI” will not answer that.
Ctrl-Alt-Speech says the discussion turns to how platforms should respond as regulation splinters across jurisdictions. That is a familiar operational problem for trust and safety teams: a platform rule may be global, but legal duties often are not. The show frames that as part of a broader shift in which trust and safety is becoming a more strategic function inside companies rather than a back-office cleanup crew.
The episode description says Whitelaw and Hays also talk about how automation could affect practitioners and vendors, along with emerging risks they see as underappreciated. No specific examples of those risks are named in the listing.
Ctrl-Alt-Speech describes itself as a weekly podcast about online speech, platform power, content moderation and the future of the internet. It is co-hosted by Mike Masnick of Techdirt and Ben Whitelaw of Everything in Moderation. The show is available through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, YouTube and its RSS feed.
This story draws on original reporting from Techdirt.