I live in Paris now, and a few other minor updates that explain my absence

For instance, the creation of a small human

An eight month absence, explained

A little over a year ago, I started this newsletter, and I was incredibly excited about it. I have lots of observations and ideas that I am frequently interested in writing about, but don’t have time to grow into full academic articles, essays, or even opinion pieces for popular publication — and a newsletter seemed like a great way to get those out into the world quickly.

But three major things happened that waylaid my grand plans for The Klonickles:

1. I like an editor, and I am a perfectionist. And so it was harder than I thought it would be for me to double and triple check to make sure my facts were right, leave the citations I felt like I needed to do things “correctly” and then no matter how many times I’d look it over beforehand, I’d hit publish and find a mistake or typo. So writing became a huge time suck and instead of less stress in getting ideas out, I felt like it created more.

2. My brain was hijacked by a small parasite growing inside me. Shortly after starting The Klonickles, I found out I was going to be making a more literal, physical Klonickle. This was fantastic news, but being pregnant destroyed my energy. I am a very productive person generally speaking, but I suddenly found myself having to sleep 14 hours a day PLUS a 2-3 hour nap. And when I was awake, doing anything — from cooking food to reading email — felt like I was walking through mud. It was supremely frustrating for me. And it made writing anything, even text messages, feel like a huge lift for 9+ months.

3. I started to have a physical stalker. I don’t actually want to talk about this in more detail, but this development at a time while I was also pregnant, made the very open and free life I had previously enjoyed (I did 700+ daily video shows with

   Benjamin Wittes
   after all), dramatically less appealing.

The combination of these factors made me not only incapable of writing a newsletter on a more regular basis, it made me crave privacy — intellectually and personally. So I withdrew from a number of the more public places I’d been writing or cavorting or sharing ideas with online and hunkered down.

But now I’m back, and more excited than ever to start using this space

In the 8 months since my last post on Substack, time has worked its magic.

That time-off was great for me, and in the meantime a number of things happened that have allowed me to return to writing this newsletter on a regular basis:

1. I was granted a Fulbright Schuman Innovation Award to study the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act enforcement in Europe. To do this research I partnered as a visiting professor with Sciences Po Law School in Paris and University of Amsterdam’s DSA Observatory.

2. We decided the only way to make the timing work was to go to Europe before I gave birth, so my partner, Nena, and I moved to Paris in early September (at ~36 weeks!)

   

3. I became un-pregnant.

   

   

4. Everyone is doing absolutely fabulously and my brain came back online.

Some agenda items and changes

Because of the aforementioned desire to be more private, I won’t be posting cute life updates anymore for paid or unpaid subscribers. This is a huge bummer for me. One of the reasons I love the internet and platforms is their ability to create community, to find odd and quirky personalities, to get out ideas and also some laughs.

But for now this just isn’t a great idea. I’ll post where I was or what I did, but not what I’m doing or where I’m going to be. It’s not my natural way, but plenty of other people seem to do it, and get by just fine.

And I have plenty of ideas I want to write about that have been bubbling up over the last year! Here’s a brief list of some of them that I’ll be covering in the coming weeks:

• Kill the Cookie Banners

  • A lesson in the horrible terrible no good very bad regulation that created global cookie banners and why it should go away

• The Difference a GeoFence Makes

  • What living online looks like in France versus the United States and why it’s worse in 1000 small ways

• Size Matters and Why Big Platforms Can Be Better

  • Lessons from the attempts for using antitrust against the platforms and what the DSA and DMA will mean for speech platform quality and safety

• The Professionalization of Trust & Safety

  • A Write-Up of the Governing Online Speech Conference I developed and hosted at Yale Law School in June 2023 that focused on the history of trust & safety and private platforms and its rapid professionalization

• The Five Regulatory Approaches to Online Governance

  • A framing essay from a talk I gave at McGill over a year ago

• AI Lessons from Social Media Trust & Safety

  • Spoiler alert: the social responsibility of this will shift less than you think

• Thoughts from the Netchoice oral arguments in late February

• Known Unknowns in Election Integrity

  • A written summary of a recent In Lieu of Fun reunion

    Benjamin Wittes
    and I did in Miami for the Knight Foundation with
    Katie Harbath
    and Renée DiResta.

• And a lot more. . .

So if you’re still out there please don’t leave. And if you haven’t subscribed yet please do.

Mash this Subscribe Button and if you can afford to get a paid subscription please do. I believe information should be free, so I will never paywall anything, but you’ll be helping me write more and fundraise less if you purchase a subscription.

And if you think someone might like this who doesn’t know about it yet, please refer them to sign up!

Thanks for your patience, understanding, and most of all, reading.

KK