Digital Oligarchs Gunning for Europe (DOGE)

In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:Elon’s Twitter Destruction Playbook Hits The US Government, And It’s Even More Dangerous (Techdirt)US presses Brussels for answers over EU social media law (Politico)Inside the Elon Musk-Jim Jordan ‘mind meld’ shaking up Capitol Hill (Politico)Musk adds Shell, Nestlé, Lego to X advertiser ‘boycott’ lawsuit (The Hill)Musk Shows Us What Actual Government Censorship On Social Media Looks Like (Techdirt)In wake of Meta moderation shift, advertisers have accepted new status quo: brand safety is a myth (Digiday)Meta sees no ‘noticeable impact’ in advertiser demand since content policy shift (Marketing Week)Amazon Raises Its Ad Spending on Elon Musk’s X, in Major Reversal (Wall Street Journal)Senator Hawley Proposes Jail Time for People Who Download DeepSeek (404 Media)Apple Blasts EU Laws After First Porn App Comes to iPhones (Bloomberg)This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.Ctrl-Alt-Speech is the podcast where we make sense of the major debates shaping online speech, platform power, content moderation and the future of the internet. It’s co-hosted by Mike Masnick (Techdirt) and Ben Whitelaw (Everything in Moderation).