Techdirt

The people have spoken. And by people," I mean Elon Musk." Trump is now buying into the batshit crazy that is the current Musk/Cybertruck discourse. This, of course, leaves the nominal VP plenty of time to get into long personal arguments with critics on Twitter. But it leaves the head DOGE free to bend Trump's [...]

We've often noted how there are $42.5 billion in broadband grants headed to the states courtesy of the 2021 infrastructure bill. The GOP voted against the bill, but have repeatedly turned around and taken credit for its looming benefits among our broadly misinformed electorate. And, as we predicted, they're now redrafting key components of the [...]

Whenever we talk about an instance of the Streisand Effect, the dot-connecting portion of our readership will often chime in, wondering aloud if the subject of the post was Streisanding on purpose. Whether for attention, to generate buzz, or some other nefarious end, how do we know someone isn't using the effect for gain? I [...]

When Florida's lawyers tried to defend the state's social media age restriction law by claiming it's well known" that platforms harm children, they probably weren't expecting to get schooled on moral panics by a judge citing his own experiences with... Dungeons & Dragons. But that's exactly what happened in a recent hearing challenging Florida's unconstitutional [...]

Support us on Patreon At long last, we've got a fresh new original episode for you! This week, Mike is joined by David Enrich, business investigations editor for the New York Times, to discuss his new book Murder The Truth, all about the abuse of defamation laws to silence journalists and discourage critical reporting of [...]

When a president uses executive power to not just blacklist but effectively destroy a major law firm, solely for representing political opponents, it means he's given up any pretense that he's not an authoritarian hellbent on destroying anyone who opposes him through any means necessary. Donald Trump's executive order targeting Perkins Coie isn't just an [...]

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There are many reasons a person might feel compelled to purchase a Tesla Cybertruck. Most of those reasons are tied to Elon Musk himself. If you like Elon Musk and think he's a pretty cool dude, despite his mawkish behavior, mindless DOGE-based destruction, occasional Nazi salutes, ruining of Twitter, and his desperate courting of white [...]

As somebody who has covered the telecom and media industries professionally for decades, there's simply of no limit of problems in both sectors competent federal regulators could be taking aim at. Broadband price gouging by monopolies, widespread telecom privacy and security failures, or the obvious harm of unchecked media consolidation all come quickly to mind. [...]

None of this will undo this extremely unnecessary killing. But it will at least provide more case law that will hopefully deter cops from shooting first and retiring mid-investigation later. This is one of the most horrific killings by police officers that don't involve Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Responding to a welfare check call, [...]

There's that old saying that every accusation is a confession. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Musk/Trump administration, everything is projection. While claiming to champion free speech and fight government censorship, they've become the most aggressively censorial administration in modern history. After years of performative outrage about campus speech restrictions, they're systematically dismantling [...]

Back before the plan to destroy our democracy got started in earnest, and back before the pandemic that dominated our lives for several years (whether we thought it should or not), was a time when we were having quaint, albeit silly, arguments about confederate monuments and whether they should be removed. My memory is good [...]

Anyone paying attention to the first Trump term (and who wasn't?) saw the latent threat to democracy buried only slightly beneath the bluster and spray-on tan. Here was a man who spent years building a mythology that presented him as the ultimate deal maker, when the reality showed he was just a guy who spent [...]

The Cybersecurity Projects Bundle offers a hands-on program featuring five real-world cybersecurity projects, totaling 35 tasks. Participants start with an introductory video for each project, detailing objectives and requirements, followed by task completion that mirrors real cybersecurity challenges. Support from industry professionals ensures personalized feedback and guidance. Upon completing the program, participants gain practical experience, [...]

Republican Senators are so aware that Elon Musk is literally running the government now that they're getting his personal cell phone number to beg him to reverse his mistakes. This would be concerning enough on its own - but it's especially alarming given that just weeks ago, the DOJ explicitly claimed in court that Musk [...]

State laws attempting to make it cheaper and easier to repair your own tech continue to gain steam. With the recent introduction of a new right to repair" law in Wisconsin, U.S. PIRG notes that all 50 U.S. states have now at least introduced such bills: This is more than a legislative landmark-it's a tipping [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment on our post about Techdirt's focus as of late, in response to another comment asking for recommendations of other good outlets: Wired has been pretty much head of the pack at covering Musk's government takeover. ProPublica might be the best [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, Senator Thom Tillis followed up his awful patent reform push with an awful copyright reform push, while bogus automated copyright claims by CBS were blocking a bunch of Super Tuesday speeches, and Senators officially began their push to undermine encryption and Section 230 with the EARN IT act. [...]

We really need to stop pointing to Artificial Intelligence as some panacea, with all the world's problems one well-constructed AI prompt away from resolution. That's especially true when those same problems have much more simple and accessible answers. The preservation of video games has been a hobbyhorse of mine for some time, one which can [...]

Uber has only been around for 15 years, but its underlying business model of on-demand labor, organized online, has been applied widely around the world in many industries. That's despite concerns that gig workers get a raw deal, since they do the same work as employees, but without the protections and benefits the latter enjoy. [...]

The Supreme Court moves at a glacial pace. Sure, it's got a bit more to do now with the Trump Administration creating new constitutional crises on a daily basis, but for the most part, it's willing to sit back and let cases pile up until the conservative majority can undermine rights by issuing an 82-page [...]

We really should have two major parties committed to upholding the Constitution. But at the moment we seem to have none. Because not only have the Republicans been captured by the corrupt fascism of Trump but, instead of standing against the grotesque assault on our democracy Trump has been perpetrating non-stop since January 20, Democrats [...]

MagStack Foldable 3-in-1 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 portable 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 [...]

The Fifth Circuit's unlikely decision to side with a constitutional right that wasn't the Second Amendment is starting to trickle down to the lower levels of the federal court system. Last August, the Fifth Circuit bucked its own cop-friendly trend by ruling that geofence warrants - warrants that demand massive amounts of geolocation data when [...]

Last year Trumplicans killed a popular program that provided poor people with $30 off of their monthly broadband bill. The FCC's Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) was unsurprisingly very popular, with more than 23 million Americans benefitting at its peak. At the time, the GOP claimed they were simply looking to save money. The real reason, [...]

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 [...]

In our recent discussion about Valve releasing the source code for Team Fortress 2, you should have noticed that that post was headlined as a Part 1." This post is Part 2 and is arguably way more impressive and important for a couple of reasons we'll get into. But as a reminder, the entire reason [...]

The city of Detroit finally revamped the rules for police department use of facial recognition tech last July. We'll have to wait and see whether adding guardrails will result in fewer false arrests, but what may end up being too little definitely arrived too late for a Detroit woman who was falsely arrested by the [...]

Here's a puzzle: When does a Supreme Court justice believe courts can review executive branch decisions? The answer, at least for Justice Alito, appears to be whenever a Democrat is president, but only then." There is plenty of commentary making the rounds regarding yesterday's 5-4 Supreme Court decision confirming that of course a judge can [...]

The hate and stupidity continues. Emboldened by Trump's first presidential term and his subsequent, extremely destructive return to the Oval Office, legislators with an unacknowledged preference for fascism are pushing further and further, comfortable in the uncomfortable fact that the only thing capable of stopping them is their own shame. And since they don't have [...]

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During his address to Congress this week, Donald Trump endorsed the Take It Down Act while openly declaring his plans to abuse it: And I'm going to use that bill for myself too, if you don't mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody." (You might think a former president openly declaring [...]

After some initial waffling, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has finally shredded his Province's $100 million contract with Elon Musk's Starlink satellite broadband service. Like many politicians (and shitty c-tier comedians turned podcasters), Ford was apparently tricked into thinking that the expensive, capacity-constrained broadband service was a sort of magic bullet for rural broadband access. But [...]

One of the more frustrating aspects of any conversation we have around the preservation of video games, something that is simply not being done for the most part today for the vast majority of titles created, is how easy and simple the ultimate fix is. It isn't a secret. It's not an arduous process. It [...]

Last October,Donald 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 tramples the First Amendment and editorial discretion. At the same time, Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr [...]

My project thus far has been to educate you, to help you renormalize history from a common ethical center. To show you what should be abundantly clear: that simple truths, all around us, reveal things that are blatantly obvious. That we are now ruled by liars, cheaters, and men with an unbounded appetite for power. [...]

It is almost difficult to believe this is a real thing that happened with the President of the United States, but here's what actually happened on Tuesday. In the morning, Donald Trump threatened to imprison protesters and defund any university that allows certain protests. Then, that same evening, he stood before Congress and declared - [...]

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I don't know if Trump believes this is what will finally score him a Nobel Peace Prize for him to wave around as proof of his impeccable deal-making skills, but while we wait for the world to get even worse, things are going to get a little less secure here in the United States. Here's [...]

Late last year we wrote about how LA Times billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong confidently announced that he was going to use AI to display artificial intelligence-generated ratings" of news content, while also providing AI-generated lists of alternative political views on that issue" under each article. After he got done firing a lot of longstanding LA [...]

Trademark disputes where it is very clear that the complaining party is actually concerned about something other than customer confusion are always fun. All the more so when the target is a work of fiction, with the supposedly offending content also being fictional. We saw an example of this when a software company sued Warner [...]

Okay, people. You keep asking me, Mike, but what should we do?" I am going to condescend to you now, about what you should do. The only resistance worth a damn is the one where you stop calculating the odds and start living your truth without reservation. What separates the merely clever from the genuinely [...]

Support us on Patreon We're finally getting back into the rhythm of things, and in fact right at this very moment Mike is recording a brand new original episode for next week on the podcast - but this week, we've got a cross-post and a special extra treat. Mike recently once again joined Andy Levy [...]

While political reporters are still doing their view-from-nowhere Democrats say this, Republicans say that" dance, tech and legal journalists have been watching an unfortunately recognizable plan unfold - a playbook we're all too familiar with. We've seen how technology can be wielded to consolidate power, how institutional guardrails can be circumvented through technical and legal [...]

The recent book Character Limit" exposes a perfect case study in destructive arrogance: Twitter was already building more sophisticated versions of everything Musk claimed he wanted. But Musk and his sycophants were so convinced of their own brilliance, and so certain everyone at Twitter was an idiot, they didn't even bother to understand what was [...]

To completely understand computer security, it's vital to step outside the fence and to think outside the box. Computer security is not just about firewalls, Intrusion Prevention Systems, or anti-viruses. It's also about tricking people into doing whatever a hacker wishes. A secure system, network, or infrastructure is also about informed people. The All-in-One Super-Sized [...]

Trump's second term has elevated a bunch of people who have no idea what they're doing to positions of power where every blunder is just considered to be the acceptable outcome for an administration that likes breaking things even more than it likes moving fast. The Department of Government Efficiency still isn't an official government [...]

Like many big companies, Verizon eagerly signed up for Trump 2.0 excited to get tax cuts, rubber stamped merger approvals, attacks on organized labor, and oodles of unaccountable subsidies. But as is often the deal with authoritarian zealots (and force-wielding intergalactic warlords with deep-rooted mommy issues), the deal you think you struck can and will [...]

We talk a lot here about the concept of ownership" of what we spend money on, particularly as it relates to purchases that are digital or have some reliance on internet connectivity. Despite being related, those two categories are actually quite distinct. On the one hand, you have situations where a company may go out [...]

At a time when Section 230 faces unprecedented threats from all sides - with both major political parties gunning for it, albeit for opposite reasons - understanding this crucial internet law has never been more important. That's probably why our Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230" post remains one of [...]