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For decades, telecom giants like Verizon reacted hysterically every single time the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) tried to do anything to protect consumers or hold telecom giants accountable. I spent decades covering it as a telecom policy reporter. Whether privacy rules or popular net neutrality rules, Verizon (and its lobbying proxies at various think tanks) [...]

Walled Culture the book (free digital versionsavailable) concluded with a look at true fans," an alternative way of funding creators that avoids the main problems of the current copyright system. The approach is based on nurturing the connection between artists and their most dedicated fans, allowing the former to generate extra revenue by providing the [...]

I guess it's good to know there are still surprises left for me in this universe. We have talked about the common absurdity in which video games are blamed for all manner of things. It's the moral panic of our time. Video games are blamed for violence, for supposed addictions, for violence, for the eventual [...]

We used to be above this. We used to make fun of the in-fighting occurring in autocratic nations. We used to mock the sycophancy of government officials who spent most of their time jockeying for the position of loyalest loyalist, something that usually came packaged with an inordinate amount of backstabbing. We used to think [...]

At 1:15am early Saturday morning the Supreme Court, in just a few lines of text, did something that was both small and huge: It directed" the government not to remove anyone detained in the Northern District of Texas (or, more specifically, All noncitizens in custody in the Northern District of Texas who were, are, or [...]

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There's a certain predictable pattern when unqualified MAGA political appointees get put in charge of highly technical government operations. First, they demonstrate their complete misunderstanding of the systems they're supposed to oversee. Then, they make a series of increasingly dangerous mistakes. Finally, they try to distract from those mistakes by focusing on culture war issues. [...]

Last year Microsoft announced that it was bringing a new feature to its under-performing Windows 11 OS dubbed Recall." According toMicrosoft's explanation of Recall, the AI" powered technology was supposed to take screenshots of your activity every five seconds, giving you an explorable timeline of your PC's past," that Microsoft's AI-powered assistant,Copilot, can then help [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment about the Trump administration's pivot to claiming that it meant to send Abrego Garcia to El Salvador: Remember, folks: If they'll do it to non-citizens, they'll do it to citizens soon enough. They want you afraid of being [...]

It's time for the second in our series of posts about the winners of this year's public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1929! We've already covered Best Remix winner Accoutrements, and now it's time for a closer look at the winner of the Best Deep Cut category: A Pocketful of Peril! by Perrin Ellis [...]

For most of a half-decade, law enforcement officials and retail execs have been engaged in a mass crime spree" duet. Despite this hysteria being debunked several times by rigorous reporting, cops and shops have been manipulating a non-existent shoplifting crime wave for their own benefit for nearly as long. Every time another smash-and-grab hits TikTok, [...]

As we unfortunately have to keep reiterating, the current measles outbreak in America is not going away. While we have suffered from outbreaks ranging from mild to slightly worse than that since the disease was officially declared eliminated in 2000 due to a concentrated vaccination effort, the current outbreak is putting that elimination status at [...]

On Tuesday, the White House effectively eliminated the Associated Press from the White House press pool, changing the rules to basically bar the wire service entirely. This is even after (or perhaps in response to) a Trump-appointed judge ruling that the White House was clearly violating the First Amendment in excluding the AP from various [...]

It's telling that the Trump Administration thinks it needs access to millions of taxpayer records to locate and capture dangerous" immigrants. Most criminals don't file taxes or hold down regular day jobs. On top of that, this undermines the constant claim made by awful people that immigrants are lazy interlopers who come here to help [...]

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This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear." Those words came not from a liberal jurist or a civil liberties activist, but from Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and [...]

Authoritarians don't much like journalism, education, or informed consensus for what should be obvious reasons. But the far right has long had a particular animosity for publicly-funded broadcasting. In part, because when done right, public broadcasting is free of the kind of perverse financial incentives that results in the kind of feckless, truth-averse, both sides" [...]

For three years now, a select group of states have had a pilot program through the IRS for its Direct File program. For years and years, companies like Intuit had gotten away with all kinds of shady tactics designed to lure people in with the promise of free tax prep filing using online software, only [...]

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.

What's been noted before has been confirmed yet again: there is no widespread concern about the books kids have access to in public libraries. Instead, there's just the concerted, but effective, efforts of a small group of people who feel everyone else's rights end where their morality begins. Something that was just the occasional blip [...]

There's a certain dark irony in watching tech billionaires who built their empires on the democratizing power of technology" now actively working to dismantle democratic institutions. The same figures who once championed connection and openness are now the architects of the most dangerous centralization of power in modern history. This is why I wrote last [...]

The Apple Watch Wireless Charger Keychain is the perfect accessory for Apple Watch users on-the-go. With a built-in 950mAh lithium-ion battery, it can charge all series of Apple Watch. Its portable, pocket-size design makes it easy to carry around while exercising or traveling. With four LED lights indicating the status of the charge, it's easy [...]

At least Florida'sSB 868/HB 743, Social Media Use By Minors" bill isn't beating around the bush when it states that it would require social media platforms to provide a mechanism to decrypt end-to-end encryption when law enforcement obtains a subpoena." Usually these sorts of sweeping mandates are hidden behind smoke and mirrors, but this time [...]

Last month Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr announced his DELETE, DELETE, DELETE" initiative. It's basically a plan to lobotomize FCC corporate oversight and consumer protection at the behest of industry giants, dressed up as very serious, very efficient adult policymaking. Carr's trying to pretend this is a serious democratic process, so he opened a public [...]

Some people just don't know how to take the L" I suppose. We've been following a silly trademark case in Australia between pop singer Katy Perry and fashion designer Katie Perry for some time now. As in previous posts on this topic, I will revert to using first names in attempt to avoid any confusion. [...]

While politicians from both parties race to dismantle Section 230, we're missing a crucial part of the story: how this uniquely American law helped US internet companies succeed globally. In the latest episode of Otherwise Objectionable, I explore with legal scholar Anupam Chander what might seem paradoxical - how a domestic liability shield became America's [...]

Support us on Patreon Many people don't think of reproductive health and reproductive rights as tech issues, but they very much are - moreso than ever in a post-Dobbs America. The internet is vital to communication and spreading information around reproductive health care, while abortion drugs are changing the very nature of what reproductive rights [...]

In what appears to be the latest move in this administration's total incompetence with regards to critical government tech infrastructure, MITRE announced yesterday that funding had run out for the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system, the fundamental framework that basically everyone in cybersecurity relies on to keep computer systems safe. After the entire cybersecurity [...]

Having turned little-known Venezuelan gang Tren de Agagua (TdA) into the new MS-13 with a few viral videos and extremely questionable assertions, the Trump Administration is now injecting the same artifice into its TdA membership determinations. ICE is not only along for the ride, but it's helping drive. Despite guidance warning against using tattoos to [...]

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As the US government trotted out its latest excuses for illegally trafficking Abrego Garcia to a Salvadoran torture camp, the district court overseeing the case has made it clear that she's had enough of the government defying her orders. In hearing followed by an order granting discovery, Judge Paula Xinis has made it clear [...]

The first Trump FCC tried to give Musk nearly a billion dollars to deliver expensive Starlink access to sometraffic medians and airport parking lots. The Biden FCCclawed back those subsidies, (correctly) worrying that the service couldn't deliver consistent speeds, and arguing (also correctly) that if we're going to spend taxpayer money on broadband, affordable fiber [...]

We've well established that theAT&T->Time Warner->Discoveryseries of media mergers were some of the dumbest, most pointless business" exercises ever conceived by the extraction class. The utterly senseless saga burned through hundreds of billions in debt, saw more than50,000+ people lose their jobs, killed off numerous popular brands, createdoceans of animosity among creatives, and resulted in [...]

The first few months of the Trump administration have seen a quick divergence between those who are quick to bend the knee to unconstitutional, authoritarian, censorial demands from Donald Trump, and those with the spine to actually stand up and say fuck that." While it's important to call out and shame those who cave, it's [...]

The Trump administration has just claimed an astounding new power: the ability to deport lawful permanent residents based on their expected beliefs" (including perfectly lawful" expected beliefs). This isn't speculation or hyperbole - it's the explicit thought-police justification Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave in immigration court documents for trying to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a [...]

Away goes more talent. And away goes another obstacle standing in the way of Kristi Noem's DHS and Donald Trump's plans to rid this country of as many immigrants as inhumanely possible. One acting commissioner - one with 38 years experience - has already resigned because of the DHS's desire to use tax records as [...]

With the How to Hack from Beginner to Ethical Hacking Bundle, you'll learn how to diagnose different kinds of cybersecurity attacks and how to defeat them. You'll practice all the skills and techniques in real-time using an ethical hacking lab so you can put your learning to the test. Courses cover basic scripts and beginner [...]

The Trump administration has settled on a terrifying new legal theory: they can declare anyone a terrorist," ship them to an offshore torture camp without due process, and courts can do nothing about it because it's foreign affairs." This isn't speculation - it's the actual argument they're making to justify their accidental" trafficking of Abrego [...]

Back in March Trump illegally fired the Federal Trade Commission's two Democratic Commissioners. With a captured Supreme Court and a 3-2 agency majority, Trumpism could have already done whatever it wanted at the FTC, so firing the two Democratic Commissioners was just scorched Earth; like applying napalm on the site of a nuclear strike. Real [...]

It's just three months since the Chinese company DeepSeek released its R1 reasoning model. In that time, its global impact has been dramatic: An article in Fortune magazine described how DeepSeek had erased Silicon Valley's AI lead and wiped $1 trillion from U.S. markets." It also immediately raised serious privacy issues in the EU. The [...]

Warning bells should have been going off in your head long before RFK Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic for several decades, was confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. We're in the first few months of Trump's second term, but already there are several health issues stemming from Kennedy's efforts. There [...]

Here's a law no one has ever needed, being offered up by a legislator no one needs. Authored by TexasRep. David Lowe(R- North Richland Hills), the bill-HB 3958-would give the Texas Attorney General the ability to seek hefty penalties for museums that are deemed to promote obscene material. The bill defines obscene material" based on [...]

In a stunning White House appearance that should alarm anyone who cares about constitutional rights, democracy, the rule of law or anything of the sort, Donald Trump and Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele openly defied a Supreme Court order while discussing plans to expand El Salvador's notorious detention system to imprison US citizens without due process. [...]

In an unforced error that will only burnish ICE's reputation for being a brawn operation that's talked itself into believing it's a brains operation, ICE briefly let the American public know it was no longer willing to let illegal ideas to enter (or even exit) the United States. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's job is to [...]

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For a brief moment last week, Donald Trump acknowledged what everyone already knew - that the US government could bring Abrego Garcia home from the El Salvador torture facility known as CECOT, where he was wrongly sent in what the administration claims was an administrative error." But within days, Trump's administration was back to mocking [...]

In recent years the Garmin line of smartwatches had an advantage over an increasingly crowded smart watch field. Unlike Google/FitBit, they were avoiding hiding a lot of features behind annoying subscription paywalls. Looking to goose quarterly earnings and give investors that impossible, sweet, perpetual growth they crave, Fitbit has been increasingly putting more and more [...]

It's been a while but we've got a double-winner this week from Thad, with a comment that took both first place for insightful and second place for funny, in response to the 9-0 Supreme Court ruling about Abrego Garcia: Wow, I never realized that Thomas, Alito, and all three of Trump's appointees were Marxists. In [...]

Today, we're kicking off our series of posts about the winners of this year's public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1929! We'll be going through all six winners in no particular order, starting today with the winner in the Best Remix category: Accoutrements by Nora Katz. Nora Katz is one of our returning winners [...]

Many of you may be familiar with the brilliant writer A.R. Moxon, writer of the excellent The Reframe" newsletter. Last year, he moved The Reframe from Substack to Ghost, and has now written about that experience. It's an interesting read that we thought many here might enjoy as well, and Moxon was kind enough to [...]