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I'm old enough to rememberwhen age verification bills were pitchedas a way to save the kids from porn' and shield them from other vague dangers lurking in the digital world (like...the transgender"). We havelongcautionedabout thedangersoftheselaws, and pointed outwhy they are likely to fail. While they may be well-intentioned, the growing proliferation of age verification schemes [...]

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During the great TikTok moral panic of 2022-2025 we noted repeatedly how it was very weird for the public, press, and lawmakers to singularly hyperventilate about the privacy and propaganda impacts of one specific Chinese-owned app while just completely refusing to do anything about the much broader problems that TikTok (and a thousand other companies) [...]

Elon Musk's companies aren't having the best couple of weeks, it seems. ExTwitter suffered from several outages this week, some lengthy, while Musk claimed that it was the result of a DDoS attack and hinted that Ukraine might be to blame. The story of SpaceX thus far in 2025 has mostly been one filled with [...]

The big deal today is Democrats' threatened capitulation to the GOP on the continuing resolution to keep the government open-but entirely on Trump's terms, no matter who it bankrupts (hello, DC police and fire departments!). But the larger point made here stands, because the cowardice on display in this budget showdown is the cowardice that [...]

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 [...]

Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg, for giving me yet another exhibit in my museum of those who fail to understand the Streisand Effect. Meta is so desperate to silence a former employee's book that it's doing everything possible to ensure maximum publicity for the allegations within it. You might think that a company like Meta would [...]

If there's anything guaranteed to increase the number of leaks emanating from an entity, it's letting people know you're trying to track down leakers. The public sector knows this. The private sector knows this. And yet, the same thing happens again and again: a deterrent appears and everyone treats it like an instigator. Even Trump [...]

Whether you're a science enthusiast, history buff, or technology geek, Curiosity Stream has something for everyone. Unleash the power of on-demand streaming that allows you to choose what you want to watch, when you want to watch it, and where you want to watch it. From the comfort of your living room to the remote [...]

Generally speaking, if a judge says this to you, your client is unlikely to succeed in their case: This may be amusing in Alice in Wonderland' where the Queen of Hearts yells Off with their heads!' at annoying subjects... but this cannot be the reality we are living under." That was Judge Beryl Howell yesterday, [...]

Last month U.S. oligarch Jeff Bezos gutted what was left of the paper's op-ed section, declaring that they'd only publish pieces that supported personal liberties and free markets" (read: kinder to right wing, corporatist ideals). As Mike noted at the time, it was an obvious trampling of editorial discretion by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos that [...]

As tech advances, the law mutates. In some cases (Riley, Carpenter) we get more protections. In other cases, we get fewer protections. This case dates back to 2022. Christopher Poller was a suspect Waterbury, Connecticut police officers were seeking to arrest. While surveilling his residence, officers approached his parked car. Poller wasn't in it at [...]

At a moment when it feels like everyone is racing to reform" Section 230, while fundamentally misunderstanding the law, and often in pursuit of conflicting goals, it's more important than ever that people actually learn about Section 230. To that end, we're excited that the first episode of the new podcast series I'm doing with [...]

It's not like we need any more of this sort of thing. COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) pretty much deters any app maker or social media service from catering to a very underage crowd. Compliance is difficult, if not impossible. But, all the same, it has deterred plenty of the worst developers in the [...]

Let's stipulate something before we dive into this post so that there is no misunderstanding: the rise of the anti-vax movement did not begin with Donald Trump's foray into American politics. It's been around since well before 2016, slowly but surely gaining momentum among a strange combination of West Coast liberal elites and a certain [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]