Techdirt

I've long written about how the U.S. establishment press no longer genuinely serves the public interest. Years of consolidation at the hands of (usually) rich, white, male, Conservative owners has resulted in a lazy U.S. press that reflects the interests of ownership. As a result you get a lot of feckless he said, she said" [...]

Way back in the ancient days of the year 2020, the world went through this pandemic thing called COVID-19. For those of you not old enough to remember such ancient history, it was a fairly significant health issue that caused a few disruptions throughout the world, including in these here United States. Trump was president [...]

There's not a single conservative left in the GOP. The ideals that were formerly considered conservative" - small government, fiscal responsibility, etc. - have been replaced by white Christian nationalism, water-carrying for would-be autocrats, and immense amounts of deficit spending for the sole purpose of making America whiter. That's not the same as making it [...]

We've explained in detail how Larry Ellison is trying to scuttle Netflix's planned merger with Warner Brothers because he wants to buy CNN and HBO, and, as he's doing with CBS (and now TikTok) turn them into a safe space for right wing zealots, autocrats, and oligarchs. He's unsubtly trying to build the kind of [...]

Checks and balances. That's the mantra. That's what makes America great. That's the system we deployed to prevent being just another iteration of the British empire. It was never perfect, but it seemed to get the job done most of the time. The gentleman's agreement underlying this system tended to hold up even when bad [...]

Opusonix is the workflow-first platform built for music producers and engineers who are tired of endless email chains and scattered files. By centralizing feedback, versions, and tasks in one structured workspace, it helps you cut email traffic by up to 90% so you can focus more on creating and less on chasing approvals. From time-coded [...]

For the better part of a decade, conservative politicians-and Texas politicians in particular-have been absolutely apoplectic about the state of free speech on college campuses. You've heard the greatest hits: students are coddled snowflakes who can't handle the real world, trigger warnings are destroying intellectual rigor, safe spaces are turning universities into daycare centers, and [...]

We've noted repeatedly how Trump wants to scuttle Netflix's proposed merger with Warner Brothers because his friend and key donor, billionaire Larry Ellison wants to buy Warner Brothers (and CNN) instead. In fact the two have already purportedly met to discuss which CNN anchors they'd like to fire once Larry (who just bought CBS and [...]

One of the more perplexing questions in all of the coverage I've done on RFK Jr. has been whether or not Kennedy is some misguided true believer or if this is all some grift for power, influence, and/or money. While most people who watch how RFK Jr. has operated on the topic of vaccines, for [...]

The Diary of a Young Girl" isa Dutch language diarywritten by the young Jewish writerAnne Frankwhile she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Although the diary and Anne Frank's death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp are well known, few are aware that the text has [...]

If you've spent any time in my Section 230 myth-debunking guide, you know that most bad takes on the law come from people who haven't read it. But lately I keep running into a different kind of bad take-one that often comes from people who have read the law, understand the basics passably well, and [...]

Eight million ways to die. According toAdWeek, the price for a 30-second commercial during Super Bowl LX has soared to $8 million, after NBC opened in the summer by offering spots for $7 million. AsAdWeeknotes, due to demand, the company has already reached its cap for the number of spots that were available for advertisers [...]

The 2026 Ultimate Project Managers Training Bundle will help you learn how to efficiently manage small- and large-scale complex projects. With 9 courses focused on Asana, Jira, Agile, Microsoft Project, and more, you'll be introduced to various ways to organize and manage teams, and to various tools that will aid productivity while keeping projects and [...]

Debates on how the media should be covering what Donald Trump says have been going on for over a decade now. A few months ago, we wrote about the regularity with which the mainstream media sanewashes" his more ridiculous statements, taking the incoherent ramblings of a madman and pretending to translate them into actual policy [...]

You might recall that acentralpillar of the Trump administration during the last election season was that a second Trump term would take aim at big tech," protect the little guy, rein in corporate power, and even continue the legacy of antitrust enforcers like Lina Khan." The press was filled with endless storiescredibly parroting these sorts [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson (who racked up a lot of wins this week) with a comment about the Twitter Files crew staying quiet when there are real attacks on free speech: Free speech absolutists": You're absolutely free to shut up and listen to my speech. Also, your [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2021, we looked at how state laws around community broadband were harming communities during the pandemic, just as one Congressional representative introduced a new such law to do so nationwide. Minneapolis joined the list of cities banning facial recognition tech, while it was revealed that CBP's use of the [...]

The Trump administration's project for erasing the parts of American history they find inconvenient continues unabated. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hit the occasional roadblock. In January, the administration removed portions of an exhibit at the former Philadelphia home of George Washington that made reference to 9 slaves he owned that spent time at [...]

We are calling on technology companies like Meta and Google to stand up for their users by resisting the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) lawless administrative subpoenas for user data. In the past year, DHShas consistently targeted people engaged in First Amendment activity. Among other things, the agency has issued subpoenas to technology companies to [...]

It's all well and good that we have a system of laws and rules in place. For the most part, the bumpers on the bowling lane help keep a lot of stuff on the field of play (to mix metaphors), even if powerful politicians would rather have the rules apply to everyone else but them. [...]

I seem to recall a years-long freakout among MAGA folks about the Biden administration pressuring social media companies to remove content. You may have heard about it. Anyway. In unrelated news FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), has filed suit against Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on behalf of [...]

Trump couldn't accept the fact that he lost the 2020 election. So he stood idly by (if you believe his narrative) or urged on (if you believe your own eyes and ears) his supporters to raid the Capitol building to seize the election from the electorate. If that meant killing his own vice president, so [...]

The Academy of Game Art Bundle teaches you the basics of how to create video game art. You'll learn how to use Inkscape to create logos, 2D backgrounds, pre-defined modules, UI designs, and characters. A course on using DragonBones will teach you how to animate your characters as well. The bundle is on sale for [...]

We've written a few times now about how the GOP's free speech warriors" have been waging an absolutely absurd campaign against NewsGuard, a company whose entire business model is... expressing opinions about the reliability of news sources. You know, speech. The kind of thing that's supposed to be protected by that First Amendment thing the [...]

One recurring theme of this era: folks who actually choose to stand up to this bumbling kakistocracy of hateful failsons usually tend to win if they stick together. Those that prematurely bend the knee in abject cowardice (like say, CBS, countless law firms, or numerous university administrators) will hopefully be remembered for it. It happened [...]

Remember how Donald Trump was going to drain the swamp" as president? The idea, spilling out from his first campaign for president, was that Washington was horribly corrupt, that politicians and unelected government stooges were making money from their positions of power, and that even politician's families were in on the grift. The only reason [...]

The good folks over at Adafruit are raising the alarm about a new New York State 3D printing law that could greatly imperil the public's freedom to tinker and could generally make life way more annoying for the schools, libraries, hospitals, small businesses, hobbyists, and garages that utilize 3D printers. New York's 2026-2027 executive budget [...]

Wikipedia celebrated its25thbirthdaylast month. Given the centrality of Wikipedia to so much activity online, it is hard to remember (or to imagine, for those who are younger) a time without Wikipedia. The latest statistics are impressive: That's testimony to the global nature of Wikipedia. But there's something else, not mentioned there, that is of great [...]

Warning: This article discusses suicide and some research regarding suicidal ideation. If you are having thoughts of suicide, please call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or visit this list of resources for help. Know that people care about you and there are many available to help. When someone dies by [...]

Earlier this month, the FBI decided it was going to help Donald Trump steal back the election he's claimed for half-a-decade was stolen from him. The state whose Secretary of State was asked directly by the outgoing president in January 2021 to find 11,780 votes" was raided by Trump 2.0, who still somehow thinks he [...]

The Complete Big Data and Power BI Bundle has 5 courses to help you learn how to effectively sort, analyze, and visualize all of your data. Courses cover Power BI, Power Query, Excel, and Access. It's on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all [...]

Federal grants that had been approved after a full application and review process were terminated by some random inexperienced DOGE bros based on whether ChatGPT could explain-in under 120 characters-that they were related to DEI." That's what the newly released proposed amended complaint from the Authors Guild against the US government reveals about how DOGE [...]

We've noted how Bari Weiss' tenure at CBS (or what's left of it) isn't really going very well. Hired by Trump-allied billionaire Larry Ellison to turn what's left of CBS into a right wing extraction class-friendly agitprop mill, Weiss has been accosted on all sides for her clumsy mismanagement, ham-fisted enabling of government censorship, uninteresting [...]

Dr. Vinay Prasad is currently the FDA's top vaccine regulator. He's also one of many medical goons hand-picked by RFK Jr. to help lead his decidedly anti-vaxxer movement. In fact, the last time we discussed Prasad, it was over his selective censorship attempts at avoiding public criticism for his anti-vaxxer nonsense. If you show clips [...]

Surveillancetechnologyvendors, federal agencies, and wealthy private donors have long helped provide local law enforcement free" access to surveillance equipment that bypasses local oversight. The result is predictable: serious accountability gaps and data pipelines to other entities, includingImmigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), that expose millions of people to harm. The cost of free" surveillance tools - [...]

I've talked on Techdirt about just a few of my AI-related experiments over the past few years, including how I use it to help me edit pieces, which I still write myself. I still have no intention of letting AI write for me, but as the underlying technology has continued to level up, every so [...]

The ICE surge in Minneapolis, Minnesota was instigated by a far-right click bait artist and encouraged by the president's portrayal of Somali immigrants as garbage" people from a garbage" country. And those were some of the nicer words Trump used to describe the people his agencies would be hunting down first. Several weeks later, a [...]

Yesterday we noted how CBS fecklessly tried to prevent Stephen Colbert from broadcasting an interview with Texas Democratic State Representative James Talarico. Which, as you've probably already seen, resulted in the interview on YouTube getting way more viewers than it would have normally, and Texas voters flocking to Google to figure out who Talarico is: [...]

The Luminar Neo Bundle includes a one time purchase of the software, an introductory course on how to use it, and 6 add-ons. Luminar Neo is an easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative tools. Luminar Neo was built from the ground up to be different [...]

For the last five years, we had to endure an endless, breathless parade of hyperbole regarding the so-called censorship industrial complex." We were told, repeatedly and at high volume, that the Biden administration flagging content for review by social media companies constituted a tyrannical overthrow of the First Amendment. In the Missouri v. Biden (later [...]

Last week, Denver-area engineer Scott Shambaugh wrote about how an AI agent (likely prompted by its operator) started a weird little online campaign against him after he rejected its code inclusion in the popular Python charting library matplotlib. The owner likely didn't appreciate Shambaugh openly questioning whether AI-generated code belongs in open source projects at [...]

The current measles shitstorm in South Carolina has been burning for several months now, dating all the way back to October of 2025. What started with a bunch of counties that were undervaccinated for measles began spiraling out of control at the start of 2026. The federal tracker for measles cases is at best woefully [...]

Recent reporting by Nieman Lab describes how some major news organizations-including The Guardian, The New York Times, and Reddit-are limiting or blocking access to their content in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. As stated in the article, these organizations are blocking access largely out of concern that generative AI companies are using the Wayback Machine [...]

Support us on Patreon Two weeks ago, we ran a bit of an AMA experiment, with a call on Bluesky for fans of Techdirt to ask Mike any questions they might have. We got lots of great responses and now, as promised, Mike is delivering the answers on this week's episode of the podcast! You [...]

If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go." -Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, September 8, 2025 From that one line, which Anil Kalhan dubbed Kavanaugh Stops," we see story after story of just how disconnected from [...]

The right wing extremist takeover of CBS continues to go just about how you thought it might. CBS is under fire yet again, this time for forcing Stephen Colbert's The Late Show" to cancel a scheduled appearance with Texas Democratic State Representative James Talarico because it might upset our full-diapered president. Colbert acknowledged the cancellation [...]

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

We've been covering Australia's monumentally stupid social media ban for kids under 16 since before it went into effect. We noted how dumb the whole premise was, how the rollout was an immediate mess, how a gambling ad agency helped push the whole thing, and how two massive studies involving 125,000 kids found the entire [...]

Here we go again. The Trump FTC has threatened Apple and CEO Tim Cook with a fake investigation claiming that Apple News doesn't do a good enough job coddling right wing, Trump-friendly ideology. The announcement and associated letter pretends that Apple is violating Section 5 of the FTC Act (which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment about MAGA doing things for the children": If conservatives stopped thinking about children so much, the children would be better off and much safer. In second place, it's an anonymous comment inserting a little optimism into the fear that Section [...]