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JD Vance thinks praising Hitler and talking about putting political enemies into death chambers is harmless kids being kids," but criticizing Charlie Kirk is somehow deserving of state-supported punishment. It sure looks like he's got quite the double standard. Yesterday, Vance defended Young Republican leaders who were caught in leaked chat logs making racist, antisemitic, [...]

Back in May we noted howTrump illegally declared he was unilaterally destroying the $2.75 billion Digital Equity Act, lying repeatedly that the law was racist" and unconstitutional." The law, passed as part of the infrastructure bill, was slated to bring millions in new broadband grants and digital literacy tools, education, and training to Americans (of [...]

It's story time! I came home from the grocery store over this past weekend very proud. I rushed to tell my wife about how I was complimented in the check out line by the very nice woman behind me. She mentioned that she was impressed by how I Tetris-ed" my groceries on the conveyor belt, [...]

This will obviously work out well for Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt. After all, he's lobbing this criticism in the direction of a presidential administration known for its tolerance of dissent and its refusal to use its considerable power against critics and political opponents. Stitt is standing alone, facing a Republican party that only represents itself [...]

When a school district sues social media companies claiming they can't educate kids because Instagram filters exist, that district is announcing to the world that it has fundamentally failed at its core mission. That's exactly what New York City just did with its latest lawsuit against Meta, TikTok, and other platforms. The message is unmistakable: [...]

Flock Safety, the police technology company most notable for their extensive network ofautomated license plate readersspread throughout the United States, is rolling out a new and troubling product that may create headaches for the cities that adopt it: detection of human distress" via audio. As part of their suite of technologies, Flock has been pushingRaven, [...]

You may recall a year or so ago, when Mark Zuckerberg whined to Jim Jordan about how the Biden administration repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain... content." Or maybe you remember when he went on Joe Rogan and whined some more about Biden pressure on moderation, even though he admitted there that [...]

Instantly become a color expert with the Nix Mini 3 Color Sensor. This portable device puts all paint fan decks in your pocket, offering access to over 200,000 brand-name paint colors and essential color codes like RGB, HEX, and CMYK. Perfect for designers, contractors, and homeowners. The Mini 3 features Bluetooth connectivity, Debris and splash [...]

Almost every time people protest the government, the government decides to get on the wrong side of the law. This is something every administration is guilty of, but under Trump, attacking protesters and journalists has become the rule, rather than the exception. Plenty of litigation has arisen from the protests greeting Trump's uber-aggressive pursuit of [...]

For many many years, experts have warned about massivelongstanding flawsin Signaling System 7 (SS7, or Common Channel Signaling System 7), a series of protocols used by cellular networks hackers can exploit totrack user location, dodge encryption, and even record private conversations. Governments and various bad actorsroutinely exploit the flaw to covertlyspy on wireless users around [...]

Walled Culture first wrote about Piracy Shield, Italy's automated system for tackling alleged copyright infringement in the streaming sector,two years ago. Since then, we have written aboutthe serious problemsthat soon emerged. But instead of fixing those issues, the government body that runs the scheme, Italy's AGCOM (the Italian Authority for Communications Guarantees), hasextended it. The [...]

The Republican Party is no longer a legitimate political organization. It has transformed into a corrupt, immoral, and criminal enterprise that serves the interests of one man's power while systematically destroying the constitutional principles this nation was founded upon. What we're witnessing isn't political competition but organized crime wrapped in patriotic rhetoric. When the President [...]

Support us on Patreon Techdirt recently passed its 28th anniversary as an independent online media outlet. Once, it looked like such outlets might take over, but then most were scooped up by traditional media or grew into more traditional companies themselves. But now we're seeing a new generation emerge, especially via newsletters on platforms like [...]

When 47 out of 65 federal judges tell The New York Times that the Supreme Court is mishandling its emergency docket and creating a judicial crisis," you might think a Supreme Court Justice would show some humility about the criticism. Instead, Justice Amy Coney Barrett decided to go on Fox News Sunday to dismiss the [...]

It's a meme so famous it has its own Wikipedia page. And like plenty of memes with this sort of pedigree, its origins are humble: just another article by The Onion (or rather its Clickhole offshoot). You know the face and you know the words: Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great [...]

Networks are all around us and you are using one right now to access this course. The Internet is extremely important in modern life today and this reliance is only predicted to continue with the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the next few years. The Cisco CCNA 200-301 Exam Course will teach [...]

Elon Musk's promises on government spending cuts have followed a predictable trajectory: slash $2 trillion, then $1 trillion, then a mere $150 billion. Now we have the final accounting from the Congressional Budget Office: DOGE didn't just fail to cut spending-it presided over spending increases that exceeded even pre-DOGE projections. The CBO's fiscal year 2025 [...]

Six former Surgeons General have gotten together to publicly pen an opinion piece in the Washington Post about the dangers of RFK Jr. The post is fairly long and, frankly, reads as though all six of them are part of a Techdirt fan club for posts about Kennedy. As the post cycles through what Kennedy [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a reply to someone pushing back on calling the Trump administration fascist: In second place, it's That Anonymous Coward with a comment on Tim Cushing's post about incorrect assumptions in his earlier post on the Iowa school superintendent arrested by [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, Reps. Gabbard and Gosar brought out the ridiculous House companion to one of the Senate's anti-Section 230 bills, while Donald Trump got on board the repeal 230" bandwagon even though it was copyright that kept getting his content removed. A federal judge made a ridiculous free speech ruling [...]

My cancer is back. This is disappointing but not unexpected; of the 2/3 of people who survive their first bout with ovarian cancer, 80% usually have it recur at some point. For me it was sooner than expected, and disheartening because, even if I beat it back this time, it will likely come back again [...]

Hello from the free state of Illinois! We just talked about Donald Trump's incurrsion into Chicago and the surrounding area, in which he first sent in a bunch of masked ICE agents to terrorize citizens and immigrants alike, at one point raiding an apartment building with agents repelling from blackhawk helicopters like the reincarnated form [...]

In July, a California federal court handed down what should have been considered an obvious decision: of course it violates constitutional rights to consider skin color, spoken language, accent," or place of employment sufficient to support a stop, much less arrest and detainment. In August, the appeals court affirmed that ruling following the government's absolutely [...]

Just when you think corporate content moderation can't get any more absurd, Apple has managed to redefine protected class" in a way that would make Orwell proud. According to internal correspondence obtained by Migrant Insider, Apple has removed the DeICER app-which allowed users to log sightings of ICE enforcement activity-by invoking guidelines normally reserved for [...]

Microsoft Project 2024 Professional is the ultimate project management tool, designed to help professionals plan, execute, and complete projects with precision and efficiency. With its robust features and user-friendly interface, this software is perfect for project managers, team leaders, and executives who need a reliable solution to manage their projects from start to finish. It's [...]

America isn't the land of the free. We abandoned that title when we returned Donald Trump to office - the same person who refused to engage in the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 and, immediately upon his return to power, pardoned almost everyone who engaged in an attempted insurrection on his behalf. The so-called [...]

When FCC boss Brendan Carr isn't failing embarrassingly to censor comedians who make the President sad, he's taking a hatchet to corporate oversight and consumer protection. From weakening robocall enforcement to killing net neutrality, it's part of Carr's Delete, Delete, Delete" performance that is attempting to dress up corruption and regulatory capture as streamlined government [...]

Here is a brief timeline of events that got us here. Chicago has had a decline in violent crime and murders over the course of the last several years, with 2025 on pace to mark it as the safest year yet in the city. Despite that plain fact, Donald Trump has banged on about how [...]

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderations Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice - or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week's roundup of the latest news in online [...]

This is who we are now. We are the country that makes people who aren't white leave the country because they're not white. And this is according to this administration's own press release, which celebrates the fact that we're now the inverse of the words engraved at the Statue of Liberty's base, which read: Give [...]

A San Francisco supervisor hasproposedthat police and other city agencies should have no financial consequences for breaking a landmark surveillance oversight law. In 2019, organizations from across the city worked together to help passthat law, which required law enforcement to get the approval of democratically elected officials before they bought and used new spying technologies.Bit [...]

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It's not enough to go after the worst of the worst." It was never a sustainable effort, what with migrants committing fewer crimes than natural citizens. The attempt to rid the country of as many non-white people as possible under Trump always had to go bigger. It has become ICE raiding swap meets and Home [...]

Right wing activism organizations posing as consumer rights groups are trying to make it illegal for the federal government to try and help poor, rural Americans afford broadband," is a sentence I just had to write. Quick background: the $8 billion FCC Universal Service Fund (USF) applies a small surcharge on traditional phone lines to [...]

I'm sure all of you beautiful people thought we were collectively done with former Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters. After he resigned abruptly in late September, nearly in mid-screed mandating that public schools hold a moment of silence for slain conservative operative Charlie Kirk and mandating a chapter of Turning Point USA at all public high [...]

We've long explored how powerful regional broadband monopolies have dominated America, resulting in spotty access, high prices, slow speeds, and terrible customer service. We've also long discussed how the U.S. government has done little to actually fix the problem, ranging from outright coddling monopolies (Trump) to performative fixes (the Biden FCC) that don't take aim [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. Elon Musk's SpaceX has taken money directly from Chinese investors, according to previously sealed testimony, raising new questions about foreign ownership interests in one of the United States' most important military contractors. The recent testimony, coming from a SpaceX insider during a court case, marks the [...]

So let me get this straight. The same administration that claims fentanyl is such a dire threat that it justifies sweeping tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China is simultaneously pulling federal agents off drug interdiction duties to chase undocumented landscapers in Pennsylvania. The same political movement that built its base partly on QAnon fantasies about [...]

The Complete Big Data and Power BI Bundle has 5 courses to help you learn how to effectively sort, analyze, and visualize all of your data. Courses cover Power BI, Power Query, Excel, and Access. It's on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all [...]

A brief-ish history of events leading up to this point: Kilmar Abrego Garcia was one of hundreds of migrants rounded up by ICE, denied of their due process rights, and dumped into an infamous torture prison in El Salvador, a country overseen by a man who claims he's the world's coolest dictator." Abrego Garcia, however, [...]

Just so you know: it's not normal for your country's voice communications networks to be completely hijacked by scammers and marketers, rendering it almost unusable. That's literally not something people in most serious countries have to deal with. Yet we've largely normalized the fact that Americans are so inundated with unwanted scams and bullshit that [...]

The rush to blame video games for all the world's ills is, of course, nothing new. While some of the more novel examples of this blame-game include current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson's claim that video games are the reason the Medicaid is abused (yes, seriously), this nonsense is more commonly trotted out whenever [...]

A lot has happened since last week when my post about Des Moines (IA) school superintendent Ian Roberts being arrested by ICE first hit the front page here at Techdirt. A lot of new information has come to light, almost all of it obtained by Des Moines Register journalists, which indicates the arrested man may [...]

Support us on Patreon We've written a lot about how AI can empower users when employed the right way, but how this is difficult when a few giant tech firms control the technology. One company that is trying to move in a different direction is DuckDuckGo with its Duck.ai offering. This week, DuckDuckGo founder and [...]

Once again, we're reminded why age verification systems are fundamentally broken when it comes to privacy and security. Discord has disclosed that one of its third-party customer service providers was breached, exposing user data, including government-issued photo IDs, from users who had appealed age determinations. Data potentially accessed by the hack includes things like names, [...]

It would be something of an understatement to say that Alphabet, Google's holding company, is big and successful. Some Wall Street analysts are even predicting it could become the world's most valuable corporation. Of course, even for business giants, enough is never enough. They always want more: more money, more power. As part of that [...]

Achieve picture perfection with Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025. You can create with stylish effects and templates, and be creative on the go. With the magic of AI and automation behind the scenes, it's never been easier to fix flaws, fine-tune specific areas, and add motion to quickly bring your vision to life. Get a 3-year [...]

It seems like years ago, but the Trump administration got itself sued earlier this very year by the state of California for commandeering California's National Guard to shut down anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. Trump justified this by declaring the city to be under siege, even though (1) most violence was being committed by law [...]

It's super curious how the folks most vocal about being cancelled or having their Conservative viewpoints silenced" now own or control most major U.S. media companies. Almost as if their claims of being silenced have always been a bullshit ploy to dominate the discourse on the back of something other than the quality of their [...]