Techdirt

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 [...]

The 2025 Adobe Graphic Design Bundle has 3 courses designed to help you learn the essentials of graphic design and how to apply those skills to your projects. Courses cover Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. You'll learn all aspects of the design process. It's on sale for $50. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and [...]

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 [...]

As we discussed last week, Ryan Walters resigned from his position as the state Superintendent of Oklahoma and the mood across the state was sad and sour as a result. Okay, while it's very funny that Oklahoma businesses hosted celebration parties for Walters' resignation while I can't even hazard a guess at who my own [...]

The European Union Council isonce again debatingits controversial message scanning proposal, aka Chat Control," that would lead to the scanning of private conversations of billions of people. Chat Control, which EFFhas strongly opposedsince it wasfirst introducedin 2022, keeps being mildly tweaked and pushed by one Council presidency after another. Chat Control is a dangerous legislative [...]

Stephen Miller justcalleda federal judge's enforcement of constitutional law legal insurrection." Let that sink in. A Deputy White House Chief of Staff-one of the most powerful people in the executive branch-declared that judicial review of presidential power is rebellion against the United States government. A Trump-appointed judge carefully reviewed the facts, applied the relevant statutes, [...]

I have a simple question for Senator Ted Cruz: Who was president in 2018? How about 2020? I ask because Cruz just released a bombshell" report claiming that the Biden administration converted" CISA into the Thought Police." There's just one tiny problem with this narrative: Cruz's own report shows that everything he's mad about started [...]

Transform your future in cybersecurity with 7 courses on nextlevel packet control, secure architecture, and cloudready defenses inside the 2025 Complete Firewall Admin Bundle. Courses cover IT fundamentals, topics to help you prepare for the CompTIA Server+ and CCNA exams, and more. It's on sale for $25. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and [...]

This administration is so comfortable with its power and so self-assured in its actions that it can't even be bothered to engage in basic operational security. This dates all the way back to Trump's first term, when the president casually (and unofficially) declassified information by posting it to Twitter, routinely refused to attend national security [...]

Brendan Carr has received ample attention for his recent failed attempt to ban a comedian and trample the First Amendment, something he's facing several fledgling investigations over. But that disaster class in shitty governance shouldn't overshadow all the other, terrible things Carr has been up to. Like last week, when Carr announced he'd be killing [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment on our post about DOGE's efficiency theater": I voted for this!" -person whose taxes and cost of living and rent are all going up In second place, it's a double-winning anonymous comment that also takes second place over on the [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, a court slowed Trump's roll on the TikTok ban because the DOJ couldn't show any actual national security threat. Meanwhile, the attacks on Section 230 were coming in waves, with a stupid new bill from Joe Manchin and John Cornyn quickly followed by two more anti-Section 230 bills, [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. After a fight with a Black student in a St. Louis suburb left a white student badly injured in March 2024, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey blamed their school district for unsafe conditions, even though the incident occurred after classes and more than a half-mile from [...]

Around 10 PM on Monday, September 30th, 2025, federal agents surrounded an apartment building in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood. ICE, Border Patrol, FBI, ATF-a multi-agency operation targeting suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang. What happened next should be the biggest story in America. Pertissue Fisher came out to the hallway of her apartment [...]

The Hatch Act of 1939 is a beautiful piece of legislation. It disallows all kinds of things, like bribing voters with jobs to vote a certain way, as well as limiting any campaign activity by federal workers. Another thing it does is to prohibit partisan political activity in the course of a staff member's federal [...]

For years now, the MAGA crowd has been absolutely convinced that the Biden administration engaged in the most egregious censorship campaign in American history. They've waved around the Murthy v. Missouri case as proof that Biden officials illegally pressured tech companies to remove content (even as the Supreme Court concluded there wasn't even enough evidence [...]

Learn how to harness the power of Excel with the Ultimate Microsoft Excel Training Bundle. The 6 course cover power queries, macros, pivot tables, data visualization, advanced formulas, and more. The bundle is on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt [...]

ICE just isn't getting the job done. Despite the masked men swarming everywhere to arrest every Mexican-looking person in sight, the agency still can't meet the 3,000 arrests per day quota that White House advisor Stephen Miller has stated is merely the baseline for his expectations. The main reason for this is that we're running [...]

This is, as they say, why we can't have nice things. This week Senator Ron Wyden - one of the few U.S. Senators who takes public and consumer privacy seriously - attempted to pass two bills that would have expanded privacy laws that currently only apply to government employees. S.2850, or Protecting Americans from Doxing [...]

The United States will celebrate the250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the country's founding document, in 2026. Twenty years later, America will celebrate the 250th anniversary ofPresident George Washington's Farewell Address,which was published on Sept. 19, 1796. The two documents are the bookends of the American Revolution. That revolution began with the inspirational language [...]