Techdirt

The troubling signs for Google's video game streaming platform Stadia continue. While I have to admit that I had really high hopes for Stadia, nothing about this has been smooth from launch to its current state of, well, who the hell knows what is going to happen to it. From a poor initial reception to questions about failed promises on performance, the conversation about Stadia quickly focused on the platform not offering much in the way of an actual game catalogue to play. Less than a year later, Google made this problem even worse by disbanding its own in-house game developers, leading to more fallout when Stadia could suddenly not support its own internally developed game.And, as I mentioned above, the issues continue. Stadia's product head, John Justice, has left Google entirely.

Summary: An app that allowed users to moderate content residing on their own phones was given the boot by Google after it was determined to be in violation of Play Store rules.The self-explanatory "Remove China Apps" app was developed by Indian engineers residing in Jaipur, India in collaboration with One Touch App Labs. The app was created in response to growing backlash against China during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, after early reports showed visitors to a seafood market in Wuhan, China had contributed to the spread of the virus.India's proximity to China intensified this backlash. How removing apps developed in China was supposed to stop the spread of the virus is best left to the possibly literally-fevered imaginations of the app developers and the millions of Indian users who downloaded the app.However questionable the motivation for the development and deployment of the app, it did allow Android users to easily identify apps developed by Chinese developers and remove them from their phones. However, this secondhand act of personal content moderation was soon hampered by Google, which dumped the app from its Play store, citing violations of its policies. Specifically, Google pointed to its "deceptive behavior" policy. App developers are forbidden from uploading apps that "encourage or incentivize users to remove or disable third-party apps."Decisions to be made by Google:

I always thought it would be a great honor to be referenced in the hallowed pages of WIRED magazine. Like Mike, I've been reading it since its beginning, as a then student studying information technology and watching the Internet take hold in the world.This week it finally happened, and ugh... My work was referenced in support of a terrible take on Section 230, which not only argued that Section 230 should be repealed (something that I spend a great deal of personal and professional energy trying to push back against) but masqueraded as a factual explanation of how there was no possible reasonable defense of the law and that therefore all its defenders (including me) are, essentially, pulling a fast one on the public by insisting it is important to hold onto. After all, as the title says, "Everything you've heard about Section 230 is wrong," including, it would seem, everything we've been saying about it all along.Such an assertion is, of course, ridiculous. But this isn't the first bad Section 230 take and unfortunately is unlikely to be the last, so if that were all it was it might be much easier to simply let it fade into history. But that wasn't all it was, because the piece didn't just make that general statement; it used my own work to do it, and in the most disingenuous way.Ordinarily, of course, my work can speak for itself. The problem was, the author of this piece didn't let it speak for itself. Instead he stripped it of its context, plucking out only bits of the overall argument, citing ideas so incompletely, so orphaned from the overall message in which they were delivered, as to effectively mischaracterize my position. And then he used that mischaracterization of what I had argued as ammunition to underpin his anti-230 argument.Nor did the author let me speak for my work either, which could have corrected his apparent misapprehensions, if not about Section 230's merit at large, then at least the bigger picture I was getting at in the particular brief he had honed in on. But despite speaking with several of the law's detractors, he spoke to only one of its defenders, even though he obviously considered several of us expert enough to misleadingly reference our work in support of his dubious argument.It reads as a hit piece, not just against the law itself but its supporters, and one that he was apparently so determined to make that speaking with us, and affording us the chance to explain our views and what informs them, was not something he could chance. After all, we might have convinced him of the statute's merit, or at least given him some actual factual fodder to include in his supposedly factual accounting of the law, and that was obviously not the piece he wanted to write.And so it turns out that my first mention in WIRED is a misrepresentation of my advocacy. Which is rather depressing, personally, but it raises another issue, and one that ties back into the advocacy I do defending the statute and why I do it so fervently.

Three years ago we wrote about African countries that thought taxing blogs and social media was an easy way to raise money -- and to muzzle inconvenient voices. A year later, Techdirt was reporting on a sudden boom in VPN use among Ugandans keen to avoid that country's levy on social media use. As Karl Bode reported, back then the authorities were pressuring ISPs to ban the use of VPNs. A post on the Rest of the World site has a useful update on how things have worked out since then. First, the money:

I remember when Wired was the key magazine for understanding the potential of innovation. I subscribed all the way back in 1993 (not the first issue, but soon afterward, after a friend gave me a copy of their launch issue). Over the years, the magazine has gone through many changes, but I'm surprised at how much its outlook has changed. The latest example is a big cover story by reporter Gilad Edelman, basically arguing that people who support Section 230 are "wrong" and holding the law up as a "false idol." The piece is behind a paywall, because of course it is.I should note that, while I have disagreed with Edelman in the past (specifically regarding his reporting on 230, which I have long felt was not accurately presenting the debate), I think he's a very good reporter and usually quite thorough and careful. That's part of the reason I'm disappointed with this particular piece. Also, I will note that my first read of the article made me think it was worse than I did after subsequent reads. But, in some ways, more careful reads also highlighted the problems. While presented as a news piece with thorough reporting and fact checking, it is clearly narrative driven. It reads as though it were written with a story in mind, and then Edelman went in search of quotes to support that narrative -- even setting up strawmen (including myself and Cathy Gellis) to knock down, while not applying any significant scrutiny to those whose views agree with Edelman's. It's fine (if misleading) as an opinion piece you'd see on a blog somewhere. But as a feature article in Wired that was supposedly fact checked (though I am quoted in it, and no one checked with me to see if the quote was accurately presented), it fails on multiple grounds.The framing of the article is that "everything you've heard about Section 230 is wrong" (that's literally the title), but that's not how the article actually goes. Instead, it comes across as "everyone who supports 230 is wrong." It starts off by talking about "the Big Lie" and the fact that Trumpist cable news -- namely Newsmax, One America, and Fox News -- repeatedly presented blatantly false information regarding voting technology made by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. It notes that the voting companies sued the news channels, and all of them have been much more circumspect since then about repeating those lies. Edelman then contrasts that with the world of social media:

The xFyro Active Noise Cancelling Pro Earbuds utilize active noise canceling not just to block out ambient noise but optimize your listening experience by calibrating it based on a 4-mic system that listens to your surroundings and music. The ANC Pro also features a conversation mode that allows you to selectively amplify conversations and alarms so you can stay alert while you're immersed in your music. It has 7mm graphene-powered drivers, 100-hour battery life, and custom engineered ergonomic fit. It's on sale for $45. Use the code XFYRO5 to get $5 off.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Never underestimate the power of technology to destroy lives. Flawed software used for the last 20 years by the UK postal service resulted in dozens of wrongful criminal convictions which are only just now being overturned.

If there's one thing that the U.S. broadband industry is terrified of, it's price regulation. The idea that the government might eventually cap the rates regional monopolies can charge in the absence of meaningful competition keeps a lot of executives up late at night. But despite a lot of fear mongering by telecom industry folks on this front, the U.S. has never really gotten even close to that reality. Repeatedly, even the most modest of non-price related regulatory telecom oversight efforts (from net neutrality to privacy) are routinely and easily dismantled by powerful lobbyists either before they can take effect or not long after.Recently New York State passed a new law (pdf) demanding that regional broadband providers (Verizon, Charter Spectrum, and Altice) provide low-income consumers $15, 25 Mbps broadband tiers to help them survive COVID. The goal: to try and help struggling Americans afford the high cost of broadband. Under the proposal ISPs are also allowed to offer $20, 200 Mbps tiers, with any price increases capped at two percent per year.Regulators engaging in anything even close to price regulation of regional monopolies is, again, said monopolies' worst nightmare. As a result the broadband industry quickly sued New York, insisting that the state is forbidden from passing such a law thanks in part to the Trump administration's net neutrality repeal. While many folks think that repeal just killed net neutrality rules, that was never true. It also killed much of the FCC's consumer protection authority, including its ability to adequately respond to billing fraud (which happens a lot in residential broadband thanks to misleading surcharges and fees).The repeal even went one step further in claiming that states also aren't allowed to protect consumers from telecom industry shenanigans. The problem: the courts haven't been looking too kindly upon this argument so far. In part because once the FCC abdicated its regulatory authority over telecom, it lost any authority to tell states what they can or can't do. The industry has used similar arguments to try and attack state-level net neutrality rules, and it hasn't gone particularly well for them:

Peloton is, as they say, having a rough week. While the company has been something of a pop culture darling for several years, it also got a nice boost from this lovely COVID-19 pandemic we've all been suffering through for more than a year now. Still, no company gets through its full lifecycle unscathed and this week has been a week I'm certain the Peloton folks would love to forget. We'll get started with the less-Techdirt centric part of this, which is that Peloton recently had to recall two of its treadmills after it turns out those treadmills occasionally enjoy eating people, especially very young children.

Last month we wrote that Rep. Devin Nunes' favorite lawyer, Steven Biss, who has been filing frivolous, vexatious SLAPP suit after frivolous, vexatious SLAPP suit, was finally facing some sanctions. The specific case did not directly involve Nunes, but rather one of his aides, Derek Harvey, who had filed a ridiculous SLAPP suit against CNN. As we wrote last month, the court had easily tossed the original lawsuit and warned Biss not to file an amended complaint unless he had a credible legal theory. Biss did not have a credible legal theory, but he still filed an amended complaint. And thus, the court issued sanctions, saying that Harvey, Biss and other lawyers would be on the hook for CNN's legal fees.The latest filing in the case is the bill coming due. Harvey and Biss need to pay CNN $21,437.50 in legal fees (and an additional $52.26 in costs and expenses). That might not seem like that much in the grand scheme of things (especially for a lawyer who has claimed his client, Devin Nunes, is owed over a billion dollars for defamation, but it is still real money that someone is going to need to pay -- though it remains an open question as to who is actually going to pay it).There's not much to see in the ruling itself, as it basically says that the fees CNN's lawyers outlined are within the standards that the court's local rules say are "presumptively reasonable." The lawyers admit that they're actually asking for less than they normally charge in order to keep them "reasonable" in the Court's eyes, and the Court basically says "sounds good."It does often seem that lawyers who file tons of frivolous and vexatious lawsuits are able to get away with it for a while, with courts giving them many, many chances and being extremely reluctant to issue sanctions. And, even when sanctions are issued, they tend to be relatively low. However, with such repeat offenders, we've often seen that courts across the country take notice, and once one court has sanctioned this kind of behavior, it can open the floodgates. We'll see what happens in other Biss lawsuits.

For years -- years! -- Techdirt has been a place that has argued that offering a product or service for free, where that made sense, could actually be a fantastic business model. While there are lots of examples of that sort of thing these days, you have to understand that this concept was met with derision and scorn by all kinds of industry folks big and small. Some said anyone offering something for free had no clue how to run a business. Others even more absurdly claimed that there was literally no way to compete with "free."Well, the video game industry has long claimed to have a "free" problem when it comes to piracy. The problem with combining those claims with claims that you can't compete with that sort of thing is that the success stories are there and you don't exactly have to look hard for them. Back in 2018, we talked about Fortnite, a free game that makes its money in all other sorts of ways. And by "its money" I mean that it was making $300 million per month. But then there were claims that all of this was some flash in a pan rather than anything sustainable. The problem with that is that, thanks to the trial just kicking off between Apple and Epic, internal Epic documents indicate that Fortnite made the company $9 billion over the course of two years.

Late last year, we wrote about how bizarre it was that Senator Thom Tillis was trying to force through a felony streaming bill by attaching it to an end-of-the-year appropriations bill. There were so so many problems with this both in terms of what the bill would do, and in the procedural way it was done. First, Tillis got it attached to the "must pass" appropriations bill before he'd even introduced it. That meant that there was no debate and no direct votes on his bill.You can kinda maybe (but not really?) see where that might make sense for uncontroversial bills, but the felony streaming bill... was not that. Long time readers of Techdirt will know that Hollywood has been pushing for a felony streaming bill for over a decade, and it was originally set to be attached to the infamous SOPA/PIPA bill until the internet rose up and made it clear that it would not accept Congress passing such a dangerous bill. Given that, you'd think that any one who had an honest reason for pushing such a bill would open it up to debate, rather than hide it away in a giant bill. That should give you one giant hint as to why Tillis pushed it the way that he did.Second, there have been multiple reports about just how much Hollywood has invested in Senator Tillis. And we've heard from multiple people now that Tillis bristles at the idea that he's somehow owned and operated by Hollywood lobbyists. Of course, it would help if he didn't repeat their talking points at every turn, and turn around and introduce massive copyright reform that was basically an early Christmas gift for Hollywood.But if Tillis wants to claim that he's not just doing Hollywood's billing, you'd think he would not have allowed this to happen. His chief staffer working on these copyright bills, Brad Watts, teamed up with Fox's chief DC lobbyist, Gail Slater, to write an article patting each other on the back for getting the felony streaming bill passed.I've spoken to multiple DC policy folks both inside and outside of Congress and literally none can think of any other example when a Congressional staffer and a top corporate lobbyist teamed up to write an op-ed together. It's literally unprecedented. More than one person I spoke to expressed complete bewilderment that this op-ed even came to be. "How did no one in Tillis' office not realize that this was a bad idea?" was the quote a staffer in another Senate office told me. "It's shocking."But even worse than this out-and-out admission that Tillis does what Hollywood asks him to do, is the content of this article, which is not just revisionist history, but actually celebrates the sneaky way in which Watts (and apparently Slater!) helped sneak this bill through.

This week New York Attorney General Leticia James unveiled a new report (also see accompanying statement) proving what most people already knew: the broadband industry was behind the use of fake and dead people to generate bogus support for the FCC's controversial 2017 repeal of net neutrality.The short version: the AG found the broadband industry used a non-profit lobbying organization, Broadband For America, to pay three different marketing firms about $4.2 million to generate artificial support for a plan that was opposed by a bipartisan majority of Americans. That artificial support included flooding the FCC comment system with millions of comments from fake and even dead people supporting the effective lobotomization of the FCC.According to the NY AG, the firms lured consumers in with promises of sweepstakes prizes and gift cards in exchange for providing their personal information, which was then used without their consent to flood the FCC with fake support for its unpopular proposal:

Across 30 hours of instructor-led content, the Complete Ethical Hacking Course will teach you 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. You'll experience real-time hacking examples while learning how to protect yourself against them. It's on sale for $15.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

What's the career penalty for spending four straight years lying repeatedly about the illusory benefits of mindless telecom deregulation? None, apparently.Surprising nobody, former FCC boss Ajit Pai and his giant goofy coffee mug are headed to private investment firm Searchlight Capital Partners, which invests in the telecom and other sectors. He's also been rewarded with a new gig at the American Enterprise Institute, where he'll be given a platform to spend another twenty years falsely claiming that lobotomizing U.S. telecom regulators, turning a blind eye to the perils of telecom monopolization, and generally ignoring consumer welfare results in telecom investment Utopia:

It's hardly news that Vladimir Putin is cracking down on supporters of Alexey Navalny, or on the journalists who are brave enough to report on the wave of protests in support of the imprisoned opposition leader. But there are some interesting wrinkles to how this is happening. For example, in a move that will not surprise Techdirt readers, Moscow's massive facial recognition camera network -- supposedly set up to enforce quarantine restrictions, and to catch criminals -- has been re-purposed, as Bloomberg reports:

Earlier this week we wrote about the absolutely ridiculous coalition of folks who were lobbying against the US supporting a TRIPS intellectual property waiver to support fighting COVID. As we noted, it was totally expected that Big Pharma would object to it, but the surprising thing was seeing Hollywood and the legacy entertainment industry -- an industry that needs COVID to go away to get back to normal -- coming out strongly against the waiver as well. They claimed they had to do so since the waiver would apply to copyright as well, but that's nonsense. The waiver (1) explicitly excluded entertainment products and (2) is expressly limited to "prevention, containment or treatment of COVID-19."On top of that, the waiver process was built into the TRIPS agreement, and if a full on global pandemic that has already killed over 3 million people (and counting) isn't the time to use the waiver, then the waiver is effectively meaningless.Thankfully, the US has now announced that it will be supporting a waiver. USTR Katherine Tai made the announcement:

Summary: There is an inherent tension in handling content moderation of world leaders -- especially more controversial ones. If those leaders break the rules on social media, some reasonably call for the content, or the accounts, to be removed for violating policies. Others, however, point out that it is important for the public to be aware of what world leaders are saying, rather than removing and hiding the speech.Twitter has had a public interest exception for tweets from world leaders since at least 2019. Under that policy, Twitter may choose to leave up some content from a world leader that the company admits violates its rules, under the belief that it is more important that the world know what that leader has said. Since 2019, Twitter announced that when it found such content, it would label it clearly -- publicly noting that it violated the company’s policies, but was being kept up due to the public interest.The policy was put to the test in October 2020, following the murder of a teacher in a Paris suburb, after the teacher had shown students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad while discussing the controversy over such drawings. A week later, three people were stabbed in Nice, in southern France. French President Emmanuel Macron described both attacks as “Islamist terrorist attacks."Soon after the latter attack, former prime minister of Malaysia Mahathir Bin Mohamad posted a Twitter thread discussing both attacks. While the thread touched on a variety of points, urged people not to scapegoat entire religions, and said he did not approve of the killings, the twelfth tweet raised many concerns by stating: "Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past."Twitter posted its public interest notice on this particular tweet, noting that it violated Twitter’s rules about glorifying violence, but Twitter felt that it “may be in the public’s interest for the tweet to remain accessible.”Many disagreed with this decision, including French officials. France’s digital minister, Cédric O, claimed that if Twitter did not remove the tweet, it would make the company an “accomplice to a formal call for murder.”Decisions to be made by Twitter:

One of the nice things about being a telecom giant in a country with limited competition, feckless politicians and hog-tied regulators is there isn't much in the way of accountability. As a major broadband provider like Charter or Comcast, you're allowed to monopolize the telecom market, jack up prices, elbow out competitors, then lobby state and federal government to ensure nobody does anything about it. Hell, thanks to a timid press that can't call a spade a spade, half the time nobody can even be bothered to point out that you're a monopoly in the first place.In US telecom, regional monopolies like Charter and Comcast continue to dominate market share as residential telcos effectively retreat from network expansion in any areas that aren't profitable enough, quickly enough for Wall Street's liking. Unfortunately for them, they still have to deal with rising competition on the video end of their businesses.But as the pay TV sector gets more competitive thanks to streaming, these telecom monopolies can simply extract their pound of flesh from captive broadband customers. Charter Communications, (which operates under the brand name Spectrum), lost another 156,000 residential pay TV subscribers in the first quarter, a notable uptick from the 70,000 pay TV subscribers lost during the same quarter a year ago. The reasons aren't mysterious: users are fleeing endless price hikes and some of the worst customer service in America for the cheaper, more flexible, more consumer friendly TV offerings of streaming operators.Cable companies' broadband customers would be doing the same thing but they can't because there are no other options to flee to. This is then interpreted by cable executives as something caused by their own innate business genius:

There's been plenty of talk lately about the "Techlash" which has become a popular term among the media and politicians. However, what if the general public feels quite differently? Vox, which is not exactly known for carrying water for the tech industry, has released a new poll that shows that the public is overwhelmingly optimistic about technology, and thinks that technology has been a force for good in the world. This applies across the board for Democrats, Republicans, and independents.

Today is Facebook Oversight Board Hysteria Day, because today is the day that the Facebook Oversight Board has rendered its decision about Facebook's suspension of Donald Trump. And it has met the moment with an appropriately dull decision, dripping in pedantic reasonableness, that is largely consistent with our Copia Institute recommendation.If you remember, we were hesitant about submitting a comment at all. And the reaction to the Board's decision bears out why. People keep reacting as though it is some big, monumental, important decision, when, in actual fact, it isn't at all. In the big scheme of things, it's still just a private company being advised by its private advisory board on how to run its business, nothing more. As it is, Trump himself is still on the Internet – it's not like Facebook actually had the power to silence him. We need to be worried about when there actually is power to silence people, and undue concern about Facebook's moderation practices only distracts us from them. Or, worse, leads people to try to create actual law that will end up having the effect of giving others the legal power to suppress expressive freedom.So our pride here is necessarily muted, because ultimately this decision just isn't that big a deal. Still, as a purely internal advisory decision, one intended to help the company act more consistently in the interests of its potential user base, it does seem to be a good one given how it hews to our key points.First, we made the observation that then-President Trump's use of his Facebook account threatened real, imminent harm. We did, however, emphasize the point that it was generally better to try not to delete speech (or speakers). Nevertheless, sometimes it might need to be done, and in those cases it should be done "with reluctance and only limited, specific, identifiable, and objective criteria to justify the exception." There might not ultimately be a single correct decision, we wrote, for whether speech should be left up or taken down. "[I]n the end the best decision may have little to do with the actual choice that results but rather the process used to get there."And this sort of reasoning is basically at the heart of the Board's decision: Trump's posts were serious enough to justify a sanction, including a suspension, but imposing the indefinite suspension appeared to be unacceptably arbitrary. Per the Board, Facebook needs to make these sorts of decisions consistently and transparently from here on out.

Would you love to learn coding and computer programming but it sounds super complicated? Do you hear the words HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or see long strings of code and your brain freezes over? International Open Academy has cut through the jargon to bring you a refreshingly easy-to-use HTML, CSS, JavaScript for beginners course. This course will help you improve your coding ability by being able to create codes, save time and money building your own website, and create an app or game for your business or fun. It's on sale for $20.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Australian mining billionaire and former politician Clive Palmer has been hit with a $1.5-million judgement over unauthorized use of the song "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister. The suit was brought by Universal Music after, as part of a 2019 political campaign, Palmer made videos using a modified version of the song with the lyrics "Australia ain’t gonna cop it, no Australia’s not gonna cop it, Aussies not gonna cop it any more". Setting aside the rather questionable scansion, it's a pretty obvious modification of the famous song, giving it at least a chance of qualifying for the fair dealing exception for parody and satire that exists under Australian copyright law. But in a ruling today the court has rejected that argument entirely:

So we've noted for a long time how efforts to monopolize repair have resulted in a growing, bipartisan interest in right to repair legislation in more than a dozen states. Whether it's Sony and Microsoft's efforts to monopolize game console repair, Apple's tendency to monopolize phone repair (and bully independent repair shops), or John Deere making its tractors a costly nightmare to fix, a sustained backlash has been growing against draconian DRM, rampant abuse of copyright, and other behaviors that make repairing products you own as annoying and expensive as possible.Granted this anger has extended into the medical arena, where the problem isn't just a costly hassle, it's a matter of life and death. This was particularly true during COVID, given many hardware manufacturers made getting access to repair manuals and parts cumbersome and expensive, if not impossible. As such, several states (including Texas) have been pushing both right to repair legislation that generally protects consumers, as well as legislation that takes aim at device manufacturers that make it an expensive headache for hospitals to repair their own equipment in a timely fashion.Granted as more and more states push such legislation, more and more companies have taken to pushing misleading claims about what this legislation does. Whether it's Apple's attempt to claim that such legislation will turn states into "meccas for hackers" (which sounds kind of cool, honestly), or the auto industry's false claim that such laws will help sexual predators, there's been no shortage of sleazy efforts to undermine such laws using specious reasoning and unethical claims. And given that legislative efforts keep getting blocked, it has proven pretty effective.Enter the Wall Street Journal, which this week joined the fun with a nonsensical editorial claiming that medical device right to repair legislation being pushed in Texas is somehow harmful to human health. The piece basically just consists of several paragraphs of author Tom Giovanetti lauding the miraculous innovation of copyright, while claiming the bipartisan right to repair movement is some kind of "leftist" plot. Why would the activist and reform groups operating on a shoestring budget do this? They hate innovation, apparently:

In a few hours, the Oversight Board will announce its decision regarding Facebook's decision to ban Donald Trump from its platform. As we noted back when Trump was removed from Twitter and Facebook, Trump does not lack in ways to be heard. Indeed, we suggested that he could very, very easily set up his own website with tweet-like statements, and it was likely that those would be shared widely.And... as we wait for the Oversight Board ruling, it looks like Trump has done exactly that. He's launched a new blog site that has short Tweet-style posts, and includes simple sharing buttons so people can post the text to both Twitter and Facebook:It's not hard to see how that... looks quite like his Twitter feed. For what it's worth, a friend notes that while you can "like" Trump's new missives, you cannot unlike them once you've done so (this is a metaphor for something, I'm sure).The messages on the site go back to March 24, even though the site was just launched today, so it makes you wonder if this is the infamous rumored result of Trump writing down "insults and observations" that he would have said on Twitter if he still had an account.In a video he currently has posted to the top of the site, announcing the site, Trump says that it will be "a beacon of freedom" and "a place to speak freely and safely" (whatever that means). It's unclear if they just mean for Trump himself, or if this is the rumored first pass of his own social network.Either way, if he doesn't let anyone else post to the site, under his own definition of censorship, wouldn't that mean that he's censoring everyone but himself? Or, if he does allow others to post, it will be absolutely fascinating to see what content moderation policies he ends up putting in place. The existing terms of service on the site makes it clear that he wants to be able to moderate everything:

An attorney in Virginia found out what happens when you make cops angry. According to Cathy Reynolds' lawsuit, the Roanoke PD targeted her for some extra attention after she successfully defended her stepson from murder charges.Prosecutors really wanted Darreonta Reynolds for murder, but security camera footage from the convenience store where the shooting took place appeared to show Reynolds shooting Jean De Dieu Nkurunziza in self-defense when Nkurunziza came after him with a gun. The jury agreed with the defense's case, acquitting Reynolds after ninety minutes of deliberation.This apparently angered someone somewhere in the Roanoke Police Department because this is what happened next. From the lawsuit [PDF]:

The past several years have done a lot to expose the failings of the "marketplace of ideas", as disinformation and harassment campaigns have shown an ability to spread and flourish despite ample amounts of counterspeech. This triumph of mob behavior, especially on Twitter, has challenged a lot of people's preconceptions about how free speech functions, and one person who has been exploring these issues is FIRE's Sarah McLaughlin, especially in two topical articles on her Substack. She joins us on this week's episode to discuss Twitter, free speech, and the challenge mob behavior presents to online discourse.Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via Apple Podcasts, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Tomorrow, the Oversight Board is set to reveal its opinion on whether Facebook made the right decision in banning former President Trump. And that will get tons of attention. But the Board came out with an interesting decision last week regarding a content takedown in India, that got almost no attention at all.Just last week, we wrote about an ongoing issue in India, where the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has failed in almost every way possible in dealing with the COVID pandemic, but has decided the best thing to focus on right now is silencing critics on Twitter. That backdrop is pretty important considering that the very next day, the Oversight Board scolded Facebook for taking down content criticizing Modi's government.That takedown was somewhat different and the context was very different. Also, it should be noted that as soon as the Oversight Board agreed to take the case, Facebook admitted it had made a mistake and reinstated the content. However, this case demonstrates something important that often gets lost in all of the evidence free hand-wringing about "anti-conservative bias" from people who wrongly insist that Facebook and Twitter only moderate the accounts of their friends. The truth is that content all across the board gets moderated -- and often the impact is strongest on the least powerful groups. But, of course, part of their lack of power is that they're unable to rush onto Fox News and whine about how they're being "censored."The details here are worth understanding, not because there was some difficult decision to make. Indeed, as noted already, Facebook realized it made a mistake almost immediately after the Oversight Board decided to look into this, and when asked why the content was taken down, basically admitted that it had no idea and that it was a complete and total mistake. Here was the content, as described by the Oversight Board ruling:

Let's be clear about something. The U.S. doesn't really do "accountability" particularly well. It's a major reason why we often repeat the same mistakes over and over again without learning much from history or experience. That's been made particularly clear by a U.S. press that continues to not only platform the insurrectionists who spread election fraud lies leading to the violent events of January 6, but treats these lies as valid and meaningful opinions. That, understandably, has led to concerns that it's going to happen again. But worse.Case in point is the Washington Post, which this week decided, for whatever reason, to give Senator Josh Hawley oodles of free publicity for his latest book. Washington Post Live hosted Hawley as part of a chat, providing him ample free marketing for his book complaining about the "tyranny of big tech" (tyrannically sold by Amazon, and heavily marketed by Hawley on Twitter). Not only that, the Post couldn't be bothered to craft an accurate bio for Hawley, instead using the one provided by his publicist that paints Hawley in an aggressively inauthentic light:Not too surprisingly, the Post marketing doesn't really bother to inform readers that Hawley's anti-monopolist credentials are largely nonexistent. Like most of the GOP, it's literally impossible to find an instance where Hawley, for example, so much as criticized a telecom monopoly. And, like most of the press, it's rare you'll find outlets like the Washington Post pointing out that a primary platform of the GOP for forty fucking years has been to encourage monopolization, whether we're talking about telecom, airlines, banking, or countless other marginally competitive and largely broken U.S. business sectors.The GOP isn't engaged in histrionics over "big tech" because it genuinely cares about monopolization or unchecked corporate power. Decades of policy history make it abundantly clear that's not remotely true.The GOP is angry at big tech because a handful of social media companies belatedly started policing disinformation and race-baiting, cornerstones of party power and recruitment in the face of an aging, sagging, and shifting electorate. There are plenty of very valid criticisms of "big tech," but the U.S. press seems incapable of acknowledging that many of the GOP's concerns on this front aren't entirely in good faith.NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen has long lamented the U.S. media's obsession with the "view from nowhere," and how this undermines accountability while letting bad actors off the hook. Rosen wasn't particularly impressed with the Post offering free book marketing to a guy who just got done spending months filling the American public's heads with dangerous fluff and nonsense, and shows absolutely nothing that could be mistaken as contrition in the wake of January 6:

What do you get when you cross a whiteboard and a notebook? Wipebook’s technology transforms conventional paper into reusable and erasable surfaces. It has 10 double sided pages or 20 surfaces: 10 graph and 10 ruled. It's the perfect tool for thinkers, doers, and problem solvers. Use the Mini Wipebook to work things out, save to the cloud, and wipe old sketches completely clean. The Wipebook Scan App saves your work and uploads it to your favorite cloud services like Google Drive, Evernote, Dropbox, and OneDrive. This 2-pack is on sale for $52.95.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

We were quite perplexed in late 2019 when Salesforce.com founder and CEO Marc Benioff (never one to shy away from expressing his opinions on anything at all) announced that Section 230 should be abolished. It seemed like an extremely poorly thought-out statement from a CEO who was wholly unfamiliar with the issues, but who has sort of relished tweaking the noses of the big consumer internet companies over the past few years (after spending the first decade or so of Software.com's existence tweaking the noses of enterprise software companies). As we wrote at the time, Benioff didn't seem to understand 230 at all, and seemed just angry at Facebook.Of course, this is coming back to bite him hard. Just a few months later, lawyer Annie McAdams, who seems to have made it her life's mission to file blatantly silly attacks on Section 230 in court, sued Salesforce.com (and not for the first time!), claiming that because Backpage.com had used Salesforce as its CRM system, Salesforce was somehow magically liable for any sex trafficking that happened on the platform. In the complaint, McAdams cited Benioff's comments:

We've noted repeatedly how fifth-generation wireless (5G) was painfully over-hyped. To spike lagging smartphone and network hardware sales, carriers, equipment makers, and the lawmakers paid to love them spent years insisting that 5G would change the world, ushering forth amazing new cancer cures and the revolutionary smart cities of tomorrow. But while 5G is an important evolutionary step toward faster, more resilient networks, it's more of an evolution than a revolution, particularly here in the US, and most of the loftier claims have proven to be a bit hollow.Several studies have now shown how US 5G is significantly slower than overseas networks, thanks in part to our failure to push more high speed, high-range middleband spectrum to market. And within the United States, many 5G networks have shown to actually be slower than 4G. Throughout this, Verizon has particularly hyped its millimeter wave "ultrawideband" (mmWave) flavor of 5G, which offers ultra-fast speeds, but struggles a bit with range and things like building wall penetration.But a new OpenSignal report indicates that despite years of hype, Verizon's ultra-fast 5G variant is only actually available to consumers with 5G-capable phones around 0.8% of the time:To be clear, the speeds seen on Verizon's ultrawideband 5G network have reached 692.9 Mbps, an incredible benchmark for wireless service. But those kinds of speeds are only really useful if they're consistently available, and they simply... aren't:

Way back in 2016, we discussed how Blizzard was very busy shutting down fan-made and hosted World of Warcraft servers, pretending like intellectual property forced it to do so. At the time, these fan servers were hosting WoW's vanilla experience, mimicking what the game looked like upon first release, rather than then current iteration of the ever-evolving MMORPG. While Blizzard has since come out with a vanilla experience product of its own, at the time, these fan servers were filling a market desire for a product that didn't exist. Rather than figuring out a way to work with these fans, Blizzard just shut them down.And now it's all happening again with Riot, makers of League of Legends, an online game that similarly is ever-evolving. Fans of the game once more created a fan server that hosted the older, vanilla version of the game for those who wanted to play it that way. What makes this situation different, however, is that Riot only sent its C&D notice to the developers after the developers posted online an exchange they had with a Riot representative which took on a very 1920's wise guy tone.

The Fifth Circuit is the worst place to bring a civil rights lawsuit against law enforcement officers. But that may slowly be changing, thanks in part to the Supreme Court, which has played its own part in making qualified immunity an almost insurmountable obstacle in civil cases. Over the past few months, the Supreme Court has reversed and remanded two cases handled by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling that the lower court's extension of qualified immunity was the incorrect conclusion.This case [PDF] may reflect the Supreme Court's qualified immunity attitude adjustment. Or it just may be that there's no excusing what happened here: a man suffering a mental health crisis being helped to death by San Antonio (TX) police officers.Jesse Aguirre was reported to dispatchers by drivers on a heavily traveled eight-lane highway. Drivers noted Aguirre seemed to be "mentally disturbed" and possibly in danger of being injured or killed since he was walking on the thin media strip dividing the eight lanes of traffic. Officers arrived at the scene and things just kept getting worse for Aguirre. Fortunately, it was all documented by the dashcam on an officer's vehicle.Here's the first "offer" of "help" Aguirre received from a police officer:

A new poll from Morning Consult indicates that only around 14% of Americans think that communities should not be allowed to build and operate their own, local broadband networks:That of course operates in pretty stark contrast to the 18 states that have passed obnoxious laws, usually written by incumbent broadband providers, that hamstring such efforts or ban them entirely. That total used to be 19 (Arkansas eliminated many of their restrictions earlier this year), and will soon be 17 (given Washington State just passed a law eliminating its restrictions as well).The survey found that Democrats and urban residents are more likely that rural and Republican residents to support such options. But that too runs a bit in contrast with reality, given that the majority of community built broadband networks exist in more conservative leaning cities. Like a lot of tech subjects (net neutrality comes to mind), entrenched business interests have successfully framed community broadband as a "partisan issue," which is a great way to stall consensus on a subject you oppose for purely selfish, successful reasons.Industries, and the captured regulators and lawmakers who love them, adore demonizing such efforts as "socialism run amok" or automatic taxpayer boondoggles. But that's again not based on reason. Such efforts are an organic, grass roots reaction to market failure and monopolization. The efforts aren't pursued because their fun, they're pursued because Americans have, over thirty years, grown increasingly frustrated at the high cost, slow speeds, and terrible customer service that's the direct result of regional monopolization.Christopher Mitchell, one of the country's top experts on the subject, tells me that COVID has really highlighted how stupid and unnecessarily punitive such restrictions are. But overall, it has proven harder and harder for regional monopolies to buy laws restricting community broadband:

Rep. Lauren Boebert is one of the new crew of elected Republicans who claims to be "pro-Constitution" and "pro-freedom" but when you get down into the details, it seems that the only part of the Constitution that matters to her is the 2nd Amendment. The website for her campaign proudly states that she's "Standing for Freedom" and is "Pro-Freedom, Pro-Guns, Pro-Constitution."You do have to wonder if she skipped over the 1st Amendment in her rush to defend the 2nd, however. This morning, her press secretary Jake Settle (who came to her office after working on Mike Pence's communications team) sent quite a fascinating threat email to the operator of a Lauren Boebert parody site, TheLaurenBoebert.com.The operator of that site, comedy writer Toby Morton, tweeted an image of the letter this morning:

A couple years we wrote about What3Words, and noted that it was a clever system that created an easy way to allow people to better share exact locations in an easily communicated manner (every bit of the globe can be described with just 3 words -- so something like best.tech.blog is a tiny plot near Hanover, Ontario). While part of this just feels like fun, a key part of the company's marketing message is that the system is useful in emergency situations where someone needs to communicate a very exact location quickly and easily.However, as we noted in our article, as neat and clever as the idea is, it's very, very proprietary, and that could lead to serious concerns for anyone using it. In our article, we wrote about a bunch of reasons why What3Words and its closed nature could lead to problems -- including the fact that the earth is not static and things move around all the time, such that these 3 word identifiers may not actually remain accurate. But there were other problems as well.And, apparently one of those problems is that they're censorial legal bullies. Zach Whittaker has the unfortunate story of how What3Words unleashed its legal threat monkeys on a security researcher named Aaron Toponce. Toponce had been working with some other security researchers who had been highlighting some potentially dangerous flaws in the What3Words system beyond those we had mentioned a few years back. The key problem was that some very similar 3 word combos were very close to one another, such that someone relying on them in an emergency could risk sending people to the wrong location.The company insists that this is rare, but the research (mainly done by researcher Andrew Tierney) indicates otherwise. He seemed to find a fairly large number of similar 3 word combos near each other. You can really see this when Tierney maps out some closely related word combos:

In the CompTIA Security Infrastructure Expert Bundle, you'll get comprehensive preparation to sit four crucial CompTIA exams: Security+, CySA+, CASP, and PenTest+. You'll learn how to implement cryptographic techniques, how to provide operational, information, application and infrastructure level security, how to analyze vulnerabilities, 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 Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Throughout the COVID pandemic, it's been truly shameful to watch how patent maximalists have tried to insist that we just need more patents to deal with COVID -- even though the incredible breakthroughs that brought such quick development of vaccines were not due to patents, but rather the free and open flow of information from a bunch of researchers and scientists who didn't care about whether or not information was locked up for profit, but did care about saving millions of lives.And now that we've got vaccines, we're dealing with significant problems in rolling them out around the world -- and patents are often in the way, holding that rollout back. And we actually have a way of dealing with that: what's known as a TRIPS waiver. TRIPS is the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which set up a variety of standards among member nations and the WTO regarding intellectual property. I have many problems with TRIPS (and the WTO), but TRIPS does include a process to grant waivers on intellectual property rights. This was in response to (very legitimate!) concerns by less well off nations that rich nations would use the patent system to block access to important life saving medicines.So, to ease such concerns, the TRIPS agreement includes a process by which the WTO can grant a compulsory licensing regime that will allow others to make patented drugs, and thus increase availability. A key point of this so-called waiver is that it allows for better allocations of certain drugs during medical emergencies. Given that, issuing such a waiver right now seems like a no-brainer. But... it has not been.India and South Africa put forth a a fairly straightforward waiver request for dealing with COVID-19. The key part of the request is that intellectual property requirements under TRIPS solely in relation to the "prevention, containment or treatment of COVID-19" should be waived during the course of the pandemic. It seems pretty straightforward. Even reliable patent maximalist sites like IP Watchdog are now publishing articles saying that the TRIPS waiver "is a necessary first step towards facilitating increased, rapid production of vaccines" and noting that it won't undermine the value of innovation in any way.We've already noted that Big Pharma is lobbying against it -- which is to be expected. However, what is perhaps less expected is the fact that Hollywood is vehemently lobbying against it as well. Why? Well, they claim that because the waiver is not limited to just patents, it will be used to wipe away copyright as well.This is... misleading at best. It is true that the waiver would cover copyrights, but only in an extremely limited fashion. As the part I quoted above notes, it only applies to intellectual property protections that are blocking the prevention, containment, and treatment of COVID-19. And, that can include a very limited set of copyrights. For example, there still remain shortages of ventilators in many parts of the world, and early on in the pandemic, people were working on 3D printing replacement parts to help deal with this extreme shortage. However, with some companies issuing threats over these 3D printed parts, there are legitimate concerns that copyright could be used to shut down such operations. Another area where a copyright waiver is likely to help is in allowing researchers easier access to important scientific journals and research that may help them develop more and better solutions.As if to make Hollywood calm down, South Africa and India included an explicit statement in the waiver request to say that the waiver cannot be used for entertainment products: "The waiver in paragraph 1 shall not apply to the protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms (Sound Recordings) and Broadcasting Organizations under Article 14 of the TRIPS Agreement." That's literally the 2nd paragraph in a four paragraph waiver request. Already, it's kind of insulting that officials crafting this waiver request in an attempt to save lives had to waste time making sure that Hollywood wouldn't get angry at them.And even then it didn't work.

For decades now, cable TV consumers have been subjected to idiotic cable TV "retransmission feuds" that black out content consumers pay for as broadcasters and cable operators bicker over rates. And while streaming TV was supposed to remedy many of the dumber aspects of the traditional cable TV model, that's not really happening. The names and gatekeepers are simply shifting.Case in point: last year, bickering between AT&T and Roku over ad data sharing and contract details prevented AT&T's HBO Max from appearing on Roku devices. Later on last year, Sinclair-owned CBS stations were pulled from Hulu completely because the two sides couldn't put on their big boy pants and agree to a new contract without taking it out on paying subscribers.This week, it's Roku and Google (YouTube TV) in a standoff that resulted in the YouTube TV app being pulled from the Roku channel store. YouTube TV (not to be confused with vanilla YouTube) is Google's live TV streaming alternative to traditional cable. Users who already have it installed can still use it, but those who just bought the service and want to install it can't do so as of today. Fortunately this isn't a full ban either, since there's still a workaround that involves casting content from your phone, tablet, or PC to the Roku in a way that's a little more cumbersome but doesn't require the YouTubeTV app.Why the hassle in the first place? Roku, in a statement earlier this week, claimed Google was abusing its "monopoly position" (which really doesn't make sense when talking about live streaming TV, where they're a relatively niche player) to do all sorts of dastardly things:

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is CSMcDonald, who raised a specific issue with Marco Rubio's comparison of speech he doesn't like to pollution:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2016, the DOJ dropped one of its big cases over iPhone encryption after the defendant suddenly remembered his passcode, while documents revealed that the FBI hid surveillance techniques from federal prosecutors in case they one day became defense lawyers. The FBI was also planning to ignore any court orders telling it to reveal its Tor browser exploit, while another court was joining the crowd saying one of the agency's hacking tools constituted illegal searches. And that wasn't all for the FBI: we also learned that the $1.3-million price tag for unlocking Syed Farook's iPhone just got them the phone unlocked, not the details of the exploit. Meanwhile, Congress was pressing James Clapper to properly admit how many Americans are spied on by the NSA, and the House voted unanimously to require a warrant for email searches — although some rule changes approved by the Supreme Court were moving in the opposite direction.Ten years AgoThis week in 2011, everyone was trying to get a look at the supposedly-finished ACTA text, but negotiators were remaining secretive about it — although Homeland Security was complaining to the USTR that it was a threat to national security, one of its former officials was calling the text "a sweetheart deal for IP owners", and a CRS report (also withheld by the USTR) confirmed that the language was quite questionable. And it was confirmed that, as some suspected, the US was the lone holdout country refusing to release the full text. Meanwhile, Righthaven was smacked down by another judge (while continuing to make crazy demands in other cases), but we noted that even though copyright trolls were failing left and right in court, their shakedowns were still working.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2006, some questions were raised about whether music labels were honest to the DOJ regarding collusion on song download prices, while we also got a closer look at how inconvenient movie studio's new download offerings were, and the RIAA managed to once again sue a family that didn't own a computer. Schools were claiming "bandwidth scarcity" as the latest excuse to ban MySpace, while a prescient judge realized that internet use at work is normal and can't be the grounds for firing someone.

We have been banging the drum for some time now that the way the DMCA has been setup and is put in practice is wide, wide open for fraud and abuse. A huge part of the problem is how content owners police the internet in general, with the overwhelming majority of DMCA notices coming from bots and automated systems. Because of the imperfections of this technology, and our allowance of its use, the end result is that copyright policing on the internet is done with a shotgun rather than a scalpel, leading to all manner of mistakes and collateral damage. But even setting those instances aside, the fact is that DMCAing content on the internet requires so little in the way of verification that there is any true ownership of the content rights in question that bogus DMCA takedowns are the norm, not the exception. And, given how little consequence comes along with issuing a bogus DMCA notice, bad actors are practically encouraged to perform this sort of chicanery.This leads to all sorts of subterfuge from bad actors looking to fool the people or, more likely, the automated systems policing any of this. One story from Plagiarism Today serves as a nice primer on just how intricate and annoying these nefarious actors behave. Writer Victoria Strauss tells the story of having one of her online articles removed over a DMCA claim. Strauss was understandably confused, as she was absolutely the original writer of the piece, and so she went digging into the details.

Summary: Craigslist -- the online marketplace that pretty much still looks the way it looked when it went live all the way back in 1995 -- has the same problems every online marketplace has: spammers and scammers.The battle against people seeking to abuse the system has been ongoing since the site's inception, but in 2008, Craigslist implemented a new control measure that temporarily stymied spammers who had found several ways to beat the systems previously employed by the online market.To mitigate spam and limit the effectiveness of scam operations, Craigslist began requiring a phone number for verification on certain postings. This posed a problem for spammers hoping to engage in mass distribution of their "offerings" since it was unlikely any spammer or scammer would want to have their personal phone tied to their illegitimate (if not actually illegal) operations. When an ad was submitted to Craigslist, the site's automated verification process would call the ad poster to relay a one-time code that would permit the listing to be posted.That wasn't the end of this new weapon against spammers deployed by Craigslist. If successfully-posted ads were subsequently flagged by other users as spam/scams, the phone number associated with the ad placement would be blocked.This led to a pitched battle between Craigslist and scammers/spammers who were interested in exploiting the market's reach. A long discussion on a message board frequented by spammers suggested several workarounds to avoid the countermeasures implemented by Craigslist. (To give you some idea how far back this discussion goes, there are recommendations for utilizing pay phones.)Some suggested using a method favored by drug dealers and other criminal conspirators: burner phones. This was an admittedly-expensive workaround for a business model that requires hundreds of views to attract a few paying victims.Others suggest buying subscriptions to online spam enablers -- ones that provided users with tons of disposable numbers without the expense of buying new phones every time a phone number was rendered unusable.Many of these suggestions were rejected by forum members, which suggests spam is only profitable when costs hover near $0. Some members speculated Craigslist was eliminating even more options by rejecting any numbers linked to VoIP services -- the cheapest option for aspiring scammers. No solution appeared to work for everyone, strongly suggesting the phone verification move by Craiglist at least temporarily put a dent in scammers' efforts.Decisions to be made by Craigslist:

While the Biden administration still hasn't fully staffed the gridlocked FCC, it does appear to be ready to reward a top Comcast lobbyist and key Biden fundraising ally with a cushy new post.According to the Washington Post, the Biden administration appears poised to "probably" give top Comcast lobbyist David Cohen the position of Canadian Ambassador, with a planned announcement likely coming in May:

It's Canada's turn in the carousel of attempts at terrible internet regulation around the world. The ruling Liberal party, which professor and internet law researcher Michael Geist has called the most anti-internet government in Canadian history for its wide variety of planned new internet laws, has been working for months on a bill to amend the Broadcasting Act and greatly broaden its scope, giving the CRTC (Canada's counterpart to the FCC) authority over all kinds of online video and audio.Canada has a long history of requiring broadcasters to support and air Canadian content, setting percentages of airtime that must be dedicated to it. While this is controversial and of questionable efficacy, it is at least coherent with regards to television and radio broadcasting over public airwaves — but Bill C-10 would bring streaming services and many other websites under the same regulatory regime, which also includes even more concerning powers to regulate political speech. Supposedly, this is targeting services like Netflix and Spotify — which already raises some serious questions as to how such regulation would work — while the bill's champion, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, has repeatedly insisted that it will not cover social media and user generated content. The clause excluding such content was already worryingly narrow, and now the government has removed it anyway. And yet Guilbeault continues to insist user generated content has nothing to worry about, even though there are multiple reasons this is clearly untrue — not least of which is a new "exception that proves the rule" amendment setting the contours of UGC regulation, to be considered soon:

Earlier this year, we noted that a wide variety of states (mostly those controlled by angry, ignorant Republicans) were looking to pass blatantly unconstitutional bills that sought to force social media companies to host all speech and not moderate. As we noted in that article, Florida seemed to be leading the way, and now both houses of the Florida legislature have passed the bill that is blatantly unconstitutional, and will only serve to waste a large amount of taxpayer dollars to have this law thrown out in court.The bill, like so many other such state bills, would violate the 1st Amendment by compelling websites to host speech they have no desire to host. It's not even worth going through the bill bit by bit to explain its many different unconstitutional parts, but like so many of these bills, it tries to say that social media websites (of a certain size) will be greatly restricted in any effort to moderate their website to make it safer. There is no way this is even remotely constitutional.But, it gets worse. Seeing as this is Florida, which (obviously) is a place where Disney has some clout -- and Disney has famously powerful lobbyists all over the damn place -- it appears that Disney made sure the Florida legislature gave them a carveout. Florida Senator Ray Rodriques introduced an amendment to the bill, which got included in the final vote. The original bill said that this would apply to any website with 100 million monthly individual users globally. The Rodriques amendment includes this exemption:

The Complete 2021 Microsoft, Windows, and Azure Bundle has 17 courses to help you learn more about various Microsoft products. You'll learn about Windows 10, PowerShell, Exchange, Microsoft Teams, and others. You'll also learn about Azure and will get test prep help to sit various Microsoft Azure certification exams. It's on sale for $70.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Well, look at that. The gossip newsletter Popbitch revealed UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's personal phone number (in a somewhat hilarious way). The latest edition included this up at the top:

Back in 2014, Verizon decided it wanted to get into the media business. So it launched a website dubbed "Sugarstring." It didn't go very well. The website immediately gained attention for the fact that Verizon informed new journalist hires that they couldn't write about surveillance or net neutrality, two subjects Verizon is intimately involved in. The backlash was immediate, employees realized it was a shitshow and headed for the exits, and the whole thing was quickly shut down. But it was a good indication of what was to come.Years later, Verizon moved on to an equally ill-fated effort, the acquisitions of both AOL (bought for $4.4 billion in 2015) and Yahoo (bought for $4.48 billion in 2017). Apparently, the executive brain trust at Verizon thought it would be a great idea to buy two sharply declining 90's media brands and mush them together, hoping this would allow them to magically elbow in on the Google ad revenues they'd coveted for so long. Of course that didn't go particularly well either.There was the huge Yahoo hack, a massive privacy scandal where Verizon was busted modifying wireless data packets to track them around the internet without telling them (whoops!), and then of course the face plant by Go90, Verizon's attempt to rebrand itself as a sexy, Millennial-friendly streaming video service. Despite making a great stink about rebranding its AOL/Yahoo media and ad empire "Oath," by late 2018 Verizon was forced to acknowledge the whole thing was effectively worthless.In 2019, Verizon wound up selling Tumblr to WordPress owner Automattic at a massive loss after a rocky ownership stretch. Last year it offloaded the Huffington Post. And this week, somebody leaked word to the press that Verizon was finally considering selling the whole mess, now creatively dubbed "Verizon Media Group":