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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 [...]

Explore an incredible world of documentaries with a Curiosity Stream Standard Plan. This top-tier streaming service offers unlimited access to thousands of films, series, and shows to satisfy your thirst for knowledge. Discover a vast library of content with Curiosity Stream's standard plan, spanning science, technology, history, nature, and art. Delve into an array of [...]

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 [...]

Last week, Google filed suit against SerpApi, a scraping company that helps businesses pull data from Google search results. The lawsuit claims SerpApi violated DMCA Section 1201 by circumventing Google's technological protection measures" to access search results-and the copyrighted content within them-without permission. There's just one problem with this theory: Google built its entire business [...]

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Yeah, the economy sucks and trade-war tariff agendas are only making things worse. But as Trump promised/threatened during a recent national address from the White House, things are turning around, even if you (MAGA voters especially) are too stupid to see it. It looks like the first growth market to see a significant increase might [...]

We've noted how right wing billionaire Larry Ellison, as part of his attempt to control the entirety of media, had launcheda $108 billion hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers backed by Saudi cash. Larry, as we've seen withCBSand his interestin TikTok, is trying to convert what's left of U.S. media into a giant safe space [...]

One of the little-known but extremely telling episodes in the history of modern copyright, discussed in Walled Culture the book (free digital versionsavailable), concerns theMarrakesh Treaty. A post on the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) site from 2017 hasa good summaryof what the treaty is about, and why it is important: It sets out exceptions and [...]

Here's a fun game the Trump administration keeps playing: destroy a successful government program, wait a few months, then breathlessly announce you've invented" the exact same thing but with obvious corruption mechanisms baked in. Last week, the administration excitedly announced a new Tech Force"-a program to bring tech talent into government for two-year stints to [...]

If you've been around a while, you might remember that Verizon used to be completely obnoxious when it came to forcing you to use their phones and their shitty apps. At one point, Verizon wouldn't even let you use a competing GPS mapping app, locking you to Verizon's substandard VCAST apps. The company also adored [...]

Once again, this administration is demonstrating it has zero interest in serving the public. The administration acts together to serve a single person: Donald Trump. Anything that looks like it might benefit the public more than it benefits Trump is unacceptable. The man at the top considers everything to be zero sum. And that means [...]

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If you're wondering what independent journalism that won't bend to White House pressure looks like, you're looking at it. On Sunday night, CBS News' newly imported editor in chief," Bari Weiss, killed a 60 Minutes story about Trump's illegal deportations to a Salvadoran concentration camp-hours before it was set to air. Why? Because it might [...]

Brendan Carr was dragged before Congress last week for some light questioning about all the terrible, illegal bullshit he's been up to. While the hearing mostly focused on FCC independence and Carr's failed bid to try and censor Jimmy Kimmel, it didn't touch on the other extremist nonsense Carr's been up to, including his assault [...]

I guess I'm a masochist, so here we go. In my recent post about Let It Die: Inferno and the game developer's fairly minimal use of AI and machine learning platforms, I attempted to make the point that wildly stratified opinions on the use or non-use of AI was making actual nuanced conversation quite difficult. [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. On the morning of Thursday, July 31, James B. Milliken was enjoying a round of golf at the remote Sand Hills club in Western Nebraska when his cellphone buzzed. Milliken was still days away from taking the helm of the sprawling University of California system, but [...]

You generally don't see criminal charges filed against judges at any level of the court system. If it does happen, it's used to address egregious and constant criminal activity by sitting judges. The most common path towards discipline relies on the court system itself, which allows courts to punish judges for misbehavior and, in rare [...]

Fourteen years ago, right after the FCC issued its order on net neutrality, Marsha Blackburn flipped out and released a video talking (misleadingly!) about how wonderful Facebook and Twitter were and how they would be destroyed if the big evil government interfered in any way with the internet. As she says there has never been [...]

We've noted repeatedly how right wing billionaire Larry Ellison hired Bari Weiss to run CBS for a very obvious set of reasons: to coddle wealth and power, validate and amplify right wing grievance bullshit, divide and distract the electorate, and undermine real journalism. And she's doing all of those things incredibly well. Weiss' first major [...]

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Imagine having all the power but none of the brains. That's the current administration, the one that behaves like a blind, enraged bull set loose in its own china shop. We can always get more china," says the administration, shortly before realizing it really can't, thanks to tariff efforts that ensure China won't be buying [...]

I've written a lot about the AOL->AT&T->Time Warner->Discovery mergers simply because I think they perfectly encapsulate thepointless, destructive incompetence at the heart of modern media consolidation, and the cannibalistic nature of Wall Street's obsession with illusory quarterly growth propped up by smoke, mirrors, and complex accounting. Ever since the original AOL Time Warner merger back [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment about Trump announcing all the things he's going to spend his tariff tax revenue on: Behold, the Party of Fiscal Responsibility Corruptibility! In second place, it's Thad with a comment about what's going on with AI: Also, the problem isn't [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, USA Today published its latest bogus oped against Section 230 that misrepresented the law, a district court rejected CDT's challenge of Trump's ridiculous executive order about 230, and Trump appointed an unqualified 230-hater to a top DOJ role. Lindsay Graham threatened to repeal 230 if it wasn't reformed, [...]

With national public health being run by RFK Jr., or run into the ground if you prefer, it's been left to individual states to figure out where and how to fill in the gaps. Some states, such as Florida, have fully embraced Kennedy's anti-scientific posture and are moving as quickly as possible to dismantle public [...]

The state of streaming is... bad. It's very bad. The first step in wanting to watch anything is a web search: Where can I stream X?" Then you have to scroll past an AI summary with no answers, and then scroll past the sponsored links. After that, you find out that the thing you want [...]

We've noted how Larry Ellison, as part of his attempt to control the entirety of media, had launched a $108 billion hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers. Larry, as we've seen with CBS and his interest in TikTok, is trying to convert what's left of U.S. media into a giant safe space for affluent right [...]

Not this shit again. A bipartisan group of the most anti-internet Senators around have released their latest version of a plan to sunset Section 230." We went over this last year when they floated the same idea: they have no actual plan for how to make sure the open internet can continue. Instead, their plan" [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. Rose Natabo needs to leave one of her starving sons behind. At dawn, she squeezes her firstborn goodbye, then wraps her youngest, Santo, to her back, his legs akimbo at her waist. Taking the hand of her middle child, James, she hurries away toward help, her [...]

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If there's anything the GOP/MAGA party can't stand, it's people who won't fall in line. It openly courts fascism while still pretending its ultimate concern is the protection of (certain) civil liberties. It cheers on politically motivated prosecutions while still making mouth noises about activist judges." It's a land of contrasts, to be sure. But [...]

There were rumblings about this for a while, but it looks like the Trump TikTok deal is done, and it's somehow the worst of all possible outcomes, amazingly making all of the biggest criticisms about TikTok significantly worse. Quite an accomplishment. The Chinese government has signed off on the deal, which involves offloading a large [...]

As RFK Jr. continues to dismantle public health in this country policy brick by policy brick, there have fortunately been some consistent sources of sanity for the public to turn to. One of those sources has been the American Academy of Pediatrics, an important organization that provides guidance and dispenses funds to healthcare professionals and [...]

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 the last Ctrl-Alt-Speech of the year, Mike and Ben [...]

We filed our own comment with the USPTO regarding their attempt to weaken the important inter partes review (IPR) process that has been hugely helpful in getting rid of bad patents. Over at EFF, Joe Mullin wrote up an analysis of some of the comments to the USPTO, which we're running here as well. A [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. On July 18, a mild, overcast night in Nairobi, Kenya, a team of President Donald Trump's top foreign aid advisers ducked into a meeting room at the Tribe Hotel, their luxury accommodations in the city's diplomatic quarter, for a private dinner. The visitors from Washington included [...]