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Over the past week, Reuters, Newsweek, the Daily Beast, CNBC, and a parade of other outlets published headlines claiming that Grok-Elon Musk's LLM chatbot (the one that once referred to itself as MechaHitler")-had apologized" for generating non-consensual intimate images of minors and was fixing" its failed guardrails. Grok did no such thing. Grok cannot apologize. [...]

MagStack is the perfect on-the-go wireless charging station that also transforms into a floating stand for smartphone FaceTime or video playback while charging. This 3-in-1 foldable design featuring 3 wireless charging spots, enables charging for up to 3 devices simultaneously, including iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, AirPods with Wireless Charging Case, other Qi-compatible Android phones, [...]

Whether the Trump administration likes it or not, the right to a fair trial still exists. And even the person the government is now subjecting to what looks a whole lot like a vindictive prosecution is still a beneficiary of this right. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador's infamous CECOT earlier this year [...]

We've noted repeatedly how right wing billionaire Larry Ellison hired an unqualified troll named Bari Weiss to run CBS Newsfor a very obvious set of reasons: to coddle wealth and power (particularly Trump and Netanyahu), validate and amplify right wing grievance and engagement bullshit, divide and distract the electorate, and undermine real journalism. Even if [...]

The Trump administration's war on vaccines continues, it seems. We've already written extensively about all the bullshit RFK Jr. is pulling when it comes to public health around vaccines. From his dismantling the CDC's ACIP committee and rebuilding it full of anti-vaxxer allies, pulling public funding for research on new and better RNA vaccines, to [...]

One of the most common refrains we hear from age verification proponents is that online ID checks are nothing new. After all, you show your ID at bars and liquor stores all the time, right? And it's true that many places age-restrict access in-person to various goods and services, such as tobacco, alcohol, firearms, lottery [...]

I've criticized Chuck Schumer plenty over the years, generally for being bad on tech policy, but also for not understanding the moment we're living through. Yes, he's the leader of a minority party with zero power, but that doesn't mean he's powerless. Yet he acts as if he is. And if he can't figure that [...]

Donald Trump and his authoritarian friends have successfully destroyed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the closest this country has gotten to having a useful and effective publicly-funded media. The CPB this week voted to officially shut down, just months after Republicans passed a massive billionaire tax cut plan that stripped the organization of more [...]

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Given the recent Supreme Court ruling that (surprisingly!) said Trump did not have the executive power to commandeer National Guard troops to aid and abet law enforcement/deportation efforts in Illinois, this ruling [PDF] from the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court was, perhaps, inevitable. If it's illegal to do it in Illinois, it's equally illegal in California [...]

American right wing propaganda companies are beginning to fight among themselves as a shrinking number of dodgy media companies vie for domination of the Trump-coddled U.S. propaganda market. Newsmax, a right wing propaganda organization pretending to be a cable news company, is upset at the fact that Nexstar Media Group and TEGNA, two right wing [...]

I've come to really appreciate the term Trump derangement syndrome." I've found it incredibly useful, primarily because whenever I hear someone use the phrase unironically, I am comfortable assessing that the conversation with that person will be unproductive and can be ended. It's a rhetorical device, and not a particularly good one, that is trotted [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. It was a chilly afternoon in January, just a week after President Donald Trump returned to the White House, when I met Yineska, a Venezuelan mother who had been living in the United States for nearly two years. Trump's election, she told me, had put her [...]

New York Governor Kathy Hochul just signed a law that's going to get expensive fast. The state's new social media labeling requirement-S4505, courtesy of state Senator Andrew Gounardes-forces websites to slap unscientific warnings on their services claiming that features like algorithmic feeds and push notifications cause addiction. It's compelled speech based on contested science, which [...]

It's hilarious that a single Salvadoran migrant has made the Trump administration look so pitiful. During one of its first purge efforts, the administration deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia and another 100-plus migrants to El Salvador's infamous CECOT prison. Since then, the administration has done nothing but lose when it comes to Abrego Garcia. He not [...]

By now it's pretty clear that right wing, billionaire, Trump ally Larry Ellison bought CBS to convert what was left of the news division into lazy agitprop that blows smoke up the ass of wealth and power. Leading the charge is CBS News boss Bari Weiss, an unqualified contrarian Substack troll who recently vividly demonstrated [...]

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If you needed proof that Trump's war on drugs" is pure theatrical bullshit designed to justify geopolitical adventurism and the transactional nature of how he views absolutely everything, look no further than the past two months of his foreign policy. Two months ago, Donald Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras who [...]

For the past month, we've been running our fundraising drive to support Techdirt's reporting as we move into this new year - a year we believe is going to need our uncompromising coverage more than ever. Now that drive is coming to a close: today is the last day that you can get your hands [...]

It's that time again! Instead of our usual look at the top comments of the week, it's time to celebrate the most highly voted comments of the year at Techdirt. As usual we'll be looking at the top three winners in the Insightful and Funny categories, as well as some outliers that rose to the [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020-2021, we published a series of posts on Trump's Presidential Commission On Law Enforcement, starting with a look at its tone that everyone but cops are to blame for the terrible state of policing, followed by its repeated calls for anti-encryption legislation, and its conclusion that doing the same [...]

At the beginning of the month, we kicked off a fundraising drive to help sustain the independent, uncompromising coverage that we always try to offer at Techdirt. We also decided to try a new experiment that we hope to turn into an annual tradition: offering up a limited edition commemorative coin for our biggest supporters. [...]

As you hopefully know by now, we are once again hosting our annual game jam celebrating the works that enter the public domain in 2026, a.k.a. today! This year, that means we enter a new decade, as works originally published in 1930 finally exit copyright protection and become free to remix, repurpose, and build on. [...]

Look, I get it. The world is a mess. Important institutions are crumbling. It feels like both the tech and political worlds are collaborating to squeeze all remaining humanity out of all of us. Cynicism is ascendant. Nihilism is the new black. And yet: I remain optimistic. Not the naive, everything-will-work-out-fine kind of optimism. The [...]

I certainly don't expect the wider Techdirt readership to care all that much about NFL football or, more specifically a single local team like the Chicago Bears. So, to that end, here's a hopefully educational preamble to this post that will provide you with the context you need. If you were to make a list [...]

Before she was hired by right wing billionaire Larry Ellison to turn CBS into a right wing propaganda and safe space, Bari Weiss tried her best to create a fake propaganda-fueled college in Austin. If you recall, Weiss (alongside Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale) helped create the University of Austin in 2021 under the pretense they [...]

Over the summer, the Supreme Court's conservative majority upended decades of traditional First Amendment standards to say that Texas could put in place an age verification law if that law was intended to keep kids away from porn. As we argued at the time, the ruling had all sorts of problems, but even leaving those [...]

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America continues to be made great again. Or so says the collective of fascist buffoons currently holding federal positions of power. The Trump administration has made a lot of noise about bringing the rule of law" back to America - something that supposedly went missing during Biden's term. The alleged lawlessness covers everything from rational [...]

For years we had to listen to a bipartisan roster of lawmakers insist that TikTok was one of the greatest national security threats to ever face the nation. In reality, they were mostly just interested in protecting Facebook from a short-form video company it couldn't out innovate. And ultimately, it was about transferring TikTok ownership [...]

This administration is in the midst of failing the American people in so many ways, of course, but if you need one stark example of that failure then you can find it in measles. When I wrote this post way back in March of this year, it was our first Techdirt post done on the [...]

Nothing this administration does is subtle. Nothing about its anti-migrant purge has been anything less than brutish. As if to drive the point home that the bigots were running the shop, Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify the stripping of due process from people whose only crime was usually just a civil [...]

Donald Trump has an enemies list. Not a secret one, either. It's actually been published at the official White House website. But he has plenty of enemies beyond that. And ever since his return to office, he's been engaged in acts of vengeance. Federal agencies have been purged of anyone who isn't a MAGA loyalist. [...]

Last week, I pointed out that part of the reason for running our current fundraiser (donate $100 or more and you'll get our first commemorative challenge coin) is to show that it is possible to have a successful media business model that doesn't involve annoying its community into paying. Apparently that struck a nerve. A [...]

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This administration runs on vengeance. If it's not Donald Trump aiming the DOJ at his personal enemies, it's the DOJ itself taking a shotgun approach to justice (read: filling it full of holes) by filing as many criminal charges against anti-ICE protesters as possible. The charges have been transparently bogus - an obvious attempt by [...]

I've written repeatedly about how Republicanseffectively rewrote the 2021 infrastructure bill(they voted against) to ensure that billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded broadband grants (intended to be spent on affordable, next-generation fiber) was stolen from local communities, and instead given to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos for expensive, congested satellite service. I've also explained in detail [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. For years, Sen. Ron Johnson has been spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation about COVID-19 and the safety of vaccines. He's promoteddisproven treatments for COVID-19and claimed, without evidence, that athletes are dropping dead on the field" after getting the COVID-19 vaccination. Now the Wisconsin politician is endorsing [...]

Walled Culture has written a number of times about thetrue fansapproach - the idea that creators can be supported directly and effectively by the people who love their work. As Walled Culture the book explains (available as a free ebook), one of the earliest and best expositions of the concept came from Kevin Kelly, former [...]

At long last, El Salvador native Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been released from custody. Abrego Garcia was among the hundred-plus migrants rounded up by ICE and shipped to El Salvador's infamous torture prison, CECOT. Months of litigation ensued. The Trump administration was ordered (multiple times) to bring him back from El Salvador, with the court [...]

Last week, Marco Rubio and the State Department revoked visas for five Europeans-including Imran Ahmed, a legal permanent resident in the US married to a US citizen-because they don't like their speech about disinformation. The State Department's justification? This form of speech suppression is necessary to protect free speech. This is merely the latest episode [...]

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The Trump administration, for all intents and purposes, declared war on Chicago back in September. It was inevitable that Chicago and the state of Illinois would eventually be targeted by Trump, what with its Democratic leadership and Trump's faux concerns about gun violence. Less than a month into his second presidential term, the administration sued [...]

Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr was recently hauled before Congress to discuss his numerous, often illegal abuses of FCC authority. The hearing mostly fixated on Carr's failed, clumsy attempt to censor a comedian, and clumsy lie that the FCC now serves exclusively at the whims of our mad, idiot king. Which are certainly important things [...]

As we announced a few weeks ago, it's nearly time for the latest installment in our series of public domain game jams, Gaming Like It's 1930! It's an extra special jam this year as we begin a brand new decade of works entering the public domain, and as always it will begin on New Year's [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, Congress sold out to Hollywood yet again by sneaking the CASE Act and a felony streaming bill into the funding omnibus, with the former introducing absolutely insane damages especially when compared to COVID stimulus money. Meanwhile, we looked at the issues with a new COVID bill that included [...]

We're a few weeks into our end of year crowdfunding campaign-donate $100 or more (check out that $230 option!) and we'll send you our first commemorative challenge coin celebrating 30 years of Section 230. I've already laid out why our coverage matters, why we're not selling out (because we're not like Bari Weiss), and why [...]

It's nearly the end of 2025, andhalf of the USandthe UKnow require you to upload your ID or scan your face to watch sexual content." Ahandful of statesandAustralianow have various requirements to verify your age before you can create a social media account. Age-verification laws may sound straightforward to some: protect young people online by [...]

While each iteration presents a chance to improve, there are some very real reasons why facial recognition tech will do a bit of stagnating. And that reason is the biggest market for this tech: law enforcement agencies. In 2019, the US National Institute for Science and Technology studied 189 different facial recognition algorithms. The results [...]

If your product is even a third as innovative and useful as you claim it is, you shouldn't have to go around trying a little too hard to convince people. The product's usefulness should speak for itself. And you definitely shouldn't be forcing people to use products they've repeatedly told you they don't actually appreciate [...]