Think Globally, Stack Locally

In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by Konstantinos Komaitis (https://www.komaitis.org/) , Senior Resident Fellow for Global and Democratic Governance at the Digital Forensics Research Lab (DFRLab) at the Atlantic Council. Together, they discuss: • Who Owns TikTok in the U.S. Now? (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/business/media/tiktok-investors-oracle-mgx-silver-lake-bytedance.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share) (NY Times) • TikTok is investigating why some users can't write 'Epstein' in messages (https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/nx-s1-5689104/tiktok-epstein-direct-messages) (NPR) • TikTok users freak out over app’s ‘immigration status’ collection — here’s what it means (https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/23/tiktok-users-freak-out-over-apps-immigration-status-collection-heres-what-it-means/) (TechCrunch) • TikTok Is Now Collecting Even More Data About Its Users. Here Are the 3 Biggest Changes (https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-new-privacy-policy/) (Wired) • Social network UpScrolled sees surge in downloads following TikTok’s US takeover (https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/social-network-upscrolled-sees-surge-in-downloads-following-tiktoks-us-takeover/) (TechCrunch) • Europe votes to tackle deep dependence on US tech in sovereignty drive (https://www.computerworld.com/article/4121422/europe-votes-to-tackle-deep-dependence-on-us-tech-in-sovereignty-drive.html) (Computerworld) • Meta hides followers and following lists for users based in Iran (https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601188600) (Iran International) • Iran’s internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only (https://restofworld.org/2026/iran-blackout-tiered-internet/) (Rest of World) • The ‘Social Media Addiction’ Narrative May Be More Harmful Than Social Media Itself (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/01/29/the-social-media-addiction-narrative-may-be-more-harmful-than-social-media-itself/) (Techdirt) • Payment processors were against CSAM until Grok started making it (https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/867874/stripe-visa-mastercard-amex-csam-grok) (The Verge)  Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt (https://www.techdirt.com/) and Everything in Moderation (https://www.everythinginmoderation.co/) . Send us your feedback at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) and sponsorship enquiries to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) . Thanks for listening.