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In Mike's thorough post yesterday on the topic of the Trump administration's naked contempt for judicial oversight, the main theme and takeaway from it was a simple one: this authoritarian regime would much rather waste everyone's time trying to play procedural and semantic games with the courts than actually participate in honest deliberations with them. [...]

Like clockwork, lawmakers are once again rallying around the idea of eliminating Section 230. That Republicans are leading this charge is hardly surprising-repealing Section 230 is explicitly laid out in the Project 2025 playbook. But what's surprising, and increasingly reckless, is the willingness of Democratic lawmakers to join forces with Republicans in dismantling one of [...]

Support us on Patreon In the digital age, attention is a resource - but if we can have a little slice of yours, we've got a great conversation about that very subject for you to listen to. This week, Mike is joined by journalist Chris Hayes to discuss his new book, The Siren's Call: How [...]

There comes a moment in every collapsing democracy when absurdity and menace fuse into something uniquely destabilizing-a phenomenon I'm tempted to call malignant farce." We've reached that moment. The President of the United States, after invoking a 1798 wartime law to mass-deport migrants to a third country,now claimshe didn't do it. Other people handled it," [...]

Be the deep state" you want to see in the world. That's the new FBI under conspiracy theorist/Trump acolyte Kash Patel's leadership." Instead of being the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it will become the Federal Bureau of Investigating People Trump Doesn't Like. I wouldn't be too surprised to hear journalists are getting their phone records [...]

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Look, I know you've probably already seen yesterday's absolutely stunning story from Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic. The one where Trump administration officials somehow managed to add a journalist to their Signal group chat while planning out their bombing of the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The one that reads like a plot point rejected from [...]

Last October,Trump sued CBSclaiming (falsely) that a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris had been deceitfully edited" to her benefit (they simply shortened some of her answers for brevity, as news outlets often do). AsMike explored, the lawsuit was utterly baseless, and tramples the First Amendment, editorial discretion, and common sense. CBS/Paramount is looking for [...]

Historically, stories we've covered here about the collision between the beer brewing industry and trademarks have largely been born of the creative nature of the craft beer industry specifically. Far different from the bland trade dress and naming conventions of the macro-brewing industry, the craft industry blended its beer-making with colorfully named brews and artistic [...]

The acceleration of institutional breakdown in America has reached a point where we must confront a sobering reality: the constitutional system, as designed, may no longer possess the internal mechanisms to save itself. When judges face impeachment threats for ruling against the administration, when court orders are openly defied, and when Fox News hostsdeclarethat a [...]

Speaking as someone who has covered a whole lot of extremely weird legislating in service of that notoriously under-protected class of citizens (you know: cops), I have to say this is one the most batshit insane things I have ever seen offered up for a vote at any level of government. Even taking into account [...]

In a moment of clarity after initially moving forward a deeply flawed piece of legislation, the French National Assembly has done the right thing: it rejected a dangerous proposal that would have gutted end-to-end encryption in the name of fighting drug trafficking. Despite heavy pressure from the Interior Ministry,lawmakers voted Thursday night(article in French) to [...]

Trump seems very interested in speed-running the martial law curve. His previous term in office saw him suggesting the military should help quell anti-police violence protests around the nation, as well as participating in his undeclared war on immigration by aiding in the policing of our southern border. With Trump taking office for a second [...]

Linux and UNIX operating systems have become increasingly popular in commercial computing environments. Due to their rapid growth in today's businesses, Linux/UNIX administrators have also become very much in demand. This Linux/UNIX Training Bundle has 2 courses to help you learn the knowledge and skills to install, configure, and support a Linux/UNIX server, and more. [...]

I think lots of people know the kind of person who thinks they're more clever than they really are. The kind of person who thinks that they can outwit the system by playing stupid games. The kind of person who thinks that this kind of beating the system is because they're smart. This kind of [...]

Now that subscriber growth has slowed, streaming TV giants have taken the predictable turn of making their services shittier and more expensive to deliver Wall Street (impossibly) unlimited quarterly revenue growth. That means higher prices,annoying new surcharges, greater restrictions, more layoffs, more cut corners, worse customer service, more limited catalogs, lower quality engagement-bait content, and [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Bloof with a response to the latest accusation that Bluesky is a liberal echo chamber: Sorry republicans, you don't get to use the N-word and still get invited to parties, that's not how life works. You made the marketplace of ideas' a thing to [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020... oh, right. The COVID-19 pandemic dominated our coverage, as it sparked a huge variety of news: patent lawsuits to block testing that morphed into claims of royalty-free licenses that turned out to be bogus, ISPs dropping usage caps and entertainment giants embracing faster home video release windows, YouTube [...]

The only silver lining in just how stupid this supposed anti-DEI purge of government records has become is that it appears the stupids doing the stupid are now finally starting to realize just how stupid it has become. Stemming from one of Trump's many executive orders, one which instructed the government to essentially purge its [...]

At the exact moment when Donald Trump and his MAGA allies are actively dismantling democratic institutions and working to silence critics, a group of Democratic Senators have decided to collaborate with Trump's supporters to make it easier to censor speech online. As reported in The Information (paywalled), several Democratic Senators are teaming up with some [...]

This didn't work last time. But neither did a lot of things the first Trump administration tried. This time, though, the federal government is at war with itself, attacked from all sides by the rabid DOGE in its midst. Given that novel development, the chances of information damaging to the Trump administration being leaked to [...]

It is nearly impossible to keep up with all the litigation challenging all the terrible, if not also lawless and unconstitutional, things the Trump Administration is doing. But one group of cases is particularly interesting: the cases involving Musk and DOGE. In part because they are the lawless mercenaries Trump has been sending to do [...]

In what may be one of the most shameful displays of institutional cowardice we've seen, law firm Paul Weiss has completely capitulated to Donald Trump's ridiculously unconstitutional executive order targeting the firm. This cave-in comes mere days after another targeted firm, Perkins Coie, successfully obtained a court order blocking an almost identical order. The contrast [...]

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Update: After the NY Times reported this story last night, Donald Trump denied that Musk would be getting the China war plan, and now the NY Times is reporting that, while that was the original plan, it was scrapped because of the public outcry The Wall Street Journal is similarly reporting that the nature of [...]

I think the Biden FCC under the leadership of Jessica Rosenworcel engaged in a lot of regulatory theater that made for good press clippings, but was ultimately hollow. While indisputably better than the corrupt and bizarre authoritarian zealotry we're seeing now under Brendan Carr, the Biden FCC routinely failed to take direct aim at the [...]

Last month a BBC study found that AI" assistants are terrible at providing accurate news synopses. The BBC's study found that modern language learning model assistants introduced factual errors a whopping 51 percent of the time. 19 percent of the responses introduced factually inaccurate statements, numbers and dates," and 13 percent either altered subject quotes [...]

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.

Editor's note: Mike Masnick is on the board of Bluesky, and took no part in editing or reviewing this piece. Here it is: the dumbest take to date on Bluesky v. xTwitter. There's been plenty of stupid offered up before by bitter xTwitter users who are trying to pretend they're not still splashing around in [...]

Let me start this off with a brief confession: while I'm not particularly into conspiracy theories in general, the JFK assassination is an outlier for me. I've been fascinated with JFK since I was a child and I don't believe the official version of the story is the entire story, at a minimum. That throat [...]

A startling government surveillance program that involved government investigators embedded in AT&T offices was accidentally released in response to an FOIA request (seeking documents about something else entirely) more than a decade ago. But, since 2013, there's still plenty that's unknown about the DEA's Hemisphere program. What's known is this: the DEA was able to [...]

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Dear Senator Schumer: There is no question that you are a dedicated public servant. You believe in our democracy. You believe in the norms that maintain it. You believe in its mission of bringing us together to promote the general welfare. There are many, many favorable things that can be said about you, your service, [...]

Just so we're very clear up front: despite a lot of bullshit to the contrary, the Trump administration is completely dismantling whatever's left of U.S. consumer protection and corporate oversight. That's not hyperbole; between recent Supreme Court rulings, Trump executive orders, and the actions of radical agency bosses like Brendan Carr, they're not being at [...]

I guess this is going to become a theme for who knows how long. For reasons I cannot begin to understand, the Trump administration's distaste for any criticism of itself, as well as any politics it does not agree with, is resulting in many in corporate America folding into alignment with those desires. Whether it's [...]

The second episode of Otherwise Objectionable, my new podcast series all about Section 230, is now out: The Dawn of the Internet. This week, I talk to a bunch of folks (including one of the first friends I ever met online) about what the internet was actually like in the early days, before Section 230, [...]

Donald Trump has proudlyshown offhis new spoil of war-the Declaration of Independence. A document, which to me, has so much meaning and importance. Well, I'm quite upset about it. Not because I believe such a document should never leave the National Archives. Historical artifacts can and sometimes should travel for legitimate purposes. But what unsettles [...]

One of the darker threads of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) is how complex copyright enforcement systems can be abused, for example by sendingDigital Millennium Copyright Act(DMCA) takedown requests for material that is perfectly legal. A recent post on the Public Citizen blog offersan extreme example of this blight. Here's the summary [...]

Shooting the messenger is still the preferred tactic for short-sighted entities that have been embarrassed on main by having their own carelessness publicly exposed. Two articles on Databreaches.net (run by Dissent Doe) covered the discovery and eventual consequences of a ransomware attack on HCRG Care Group, a UK-based private healthcare provider. The ransom demanded by [...]

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In an unprecedented move that flatly violates federal law, Donald Trump on Tuesday fired both Democratic commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission - Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. The illegal purge represents a direct assault on the independence of the consumer protection agency. While presidents have always wielded influence over independent agencies through their [...]

It's best to view Elon Musk's DOGE as an attack. While right wing propaganda (and gullible media outlets and politicians) frame DOGE as a cost saving" effort at improving government efficiency," that's just flimsy-ass cover for its real purpose: the dismantling of corporate oversight, environmental guard rails, consumer protection, civil rights, and the social safety [...]

The enshittification of Roku's streaming service, by which the company seeks the exact pinpoint at which it can extract the most amount of money from its customers without fostering a mass exodus of those same customers, continues. While Roku is not alone in the world of streaming services descending into this muck, it has been [...]

California legislators have begun debating a bill (A.B. 412) that would require AI developers to track and disclose every registered copyrighted work used in AI training. At first glance, this might sound like a reasonable step toward transparency. But it's an impossible standard that could crush small AI startups and developers while giving big tech [...]

Support us on Patreon We recently announced the launch of Otherwise Objectionable, a brand new documentary podcast hosted by Mike in partnership with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, covering the history - and the vital importance - of Section 230. This week, we're featuring the entire debut episode right here on the Techdirt Podcast. Check it [...]

When faced with a difficult technology policy challenge, policymakers can respond in one of two ways: with careful analysis of what's technically possible, or by demanding Silicon Valley simply wave a magic wand and make all problems disappear. Romania has chosen... the latter. The backstory here is pretty straightforward: A Russian-supporting candidate leveraged TikTok to [...]

I honestly don't understand this compunction to break things that are already working fine. Axon makes body cameras (and Tasers!), but it simply wasn't enough to equip cops with cameras and cop shops with expensive service contracts. No, the company insisted the way forward was dropping AI into existing tech so robots could start doing [...]

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It took exactly three days for Trump to prove that Judge Beryl Howell's Alice in Wonderland" comparison wasn't just apt, but prescient. After the judge blocked his executive order attempting to destroy Perkins Coie for representing his political opponents, Trump has now issued an almost identical order targeting another major law firm, Paul Weiss. Because [...]

There are more than $42.5 billion in broadband grantsheaded to the statescourtesy of the 2021 infrastructure bill. The GOP voted against the bill, but have repeatedly turned around andtaken credit for its looming benefitsamong our broadly misinformed electorate. And,as we long predicted, they're now redrafting key components of the program to the direct benefit of [...]