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Remember Nick Sandmann? He was the dude who became something of a Rorschach Test for how much your political beliefs (in any direction) influence your views of a short video, when EVERYONE HAD OPINIONS on his MAGA-hat wearing encounter with a Native American demonstrator, Nathan Phillips. Also, everyone magically became experts in reading body language [...]

Just recently, we covered a case involving a bogus raid of someone's home based on nothing more than a ping from Apple's find my device' feature. The Denver (CO) PD's SWAT team raided the home of 77-year-old Ruby Johnson, destroying her garage door and some ceiling panels (?) in the process. The raid was predicated [...]

It's been a few years since I last did a Let me rewrite that for you" post. This idea was first suggested by the brilliant press critic Dan Froomkin. Basically, when he finds a bit of journalistic malpractice, he rewrites it the way a good journalist would, to show why the original was so wrong. [...]

The FCC has announced that it will vote to restore the net neutrality rules stripped away by the Trump administration during an agency meeting on April 25. A reminder: net neutrality rules prevent giant telecoms from abusing their market power to disadvantage competitors and consumers alike. Either by degrading the performance of a service that [...]

I'm going to kick this post off by stipulating to a couple of facts. First, the primary subject of this post is YouTuber Andrew Callaghan. Callaghan has both something of a checkered past as a YouTuber, having had his most recent channel briefly taken down over claims of spreading COVID-19 misinformation, but in which he's [...]

It appears the New Jersey Department of Health still believes the state's residents are better served by giving law enforcement another way to dodge the Constitution. The Department of Health was sued two years ago by the state's Office of the Public Defender (OPD). That lawsuit targeted the state's peculiar practice of holding on to [...]

We've written a lot about the Murthy case at the Supreme Court, and especially how poor of a job the states did in making their argument. Now, as we await the ruling, there are a lot of questions about what it will look like and how consequential it will be. This week, we're joined by [...]

After several years of litigation across the federal appellate courts, the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous opinion has finallycrafted a testthat lower courts can use to determine whether a government official engaged in state action" such that censoring individuals on the official's social media page-even if also used for personal purposes-would violate the First [...]

Flock Safety - a relatively recent entrant to the surveillance tech arena - is branching out. It's courting cops with cheap ALPR cameras, unproven claims about crime reduction, and a little lawbreaking of its own. But it hasn't abandoned its roots. It first hit the scene with plate readers it pitched to the Fun Police: [...]

MagStack is the perfect on-the-go wireless charging station that also transforms into a phone stand for FaceTime or video playback while charging. This 3-in-1 foldable 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 phones, and [...]

Forget Mars colonies and self-driving cars. Elon Musk's greatest challenge yet? Defeating Twitter's relentless pussy in bio' spam army. And let's just say, it's not going well. It has really been quite incredible to watch Elon rediscover some of the basics of trust & safety best practices (though while consistently messing it up) as ExTwitter [...]

There's an historic $50 billion in broadband subsidies currently heading to the states courtesy of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). There are plenty of potential hiccups on stuff likemappingthat could screw things up, but, any way you slice it, this money should still have an amazing, [...]

Nearly seven years ago, we discussed a copyright dispute between Riot Games and a Chinese game publisher, Moonton. At issue were mobile games published by Moonton, such as Mobile Legends, that sure looked like fairly straight clones of Riot Games titles, chiefly League of Legends. We don't typically cover what look like legit copyright disputes, [...]

On the Neglected Books site, there is a fine meditation onrescuing forgotten writers and their worksfrom oblivion, and why this is important. As its author Brad Bigelow explains: I have been searching for neglected books for over forty years and the one thing I can say with unshakeable confidence is that there are more great [...]

Apparently, the one thing that can unite Democrats and Republicans in 2023 is a shared desire to destroy the internet's legal framework. Hillary Clinton is the latest to jump on the Repeal Section 230' bandwagon. It's truly stunning how Section 230 has switched from being a crowning achievement of US tech policy to something that [...]

No matter who's pitching the system, gunshot detection just doesn't seem to be having any affect on crime rates or clearing investigations. The biggest player in the business - ShotSpotter (now known as SoundThinking) - has seen some major contracts cancelled because it can't live up to the promises it made. Chicago is dumping the [...]

The Complete 2024 CompTIA Certification Training Super Bundle by IDUNOVA has 15 courses to help you prepare for various CompTIA certification exams. Courses cover everything from the fundamentals to cloud essentials to cybersecurity. The bundle is on sale for $59.97. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all [...]

For the last eight years or so, one thing has become quite clear: the media has been effectively unable to deal with Donald Trump and Trumpism. He is unique to our political system. He has no shame, is willing to lie without concern, convince himself that his lies are true, and will stop at nothing [...]

Lobbyists for Charter Communications (Spectrum) have snuck some sneaky language into New York State's latest budget bill in an effort to undermine popular community-owned broadband networks. Part of the budget bill addresses the state's ConnectALL Initiative, which waslaunched in 2022to help direct the billions in broadband funding contained in the 2021 COVID relief and infrastructure [...]

I really cannot believe it's 2024 and there are still video game publishers out there that want to go to war on their own modding communities. I expect this sort of thing from the Nintendos of the world, but those that publish to the PC gaming market really need to stop it with this crap. [...]

Regular readers of Techdirt will know that we've never done any sort of April 1st jokes, even though people often send us ideas for them each year. The simple fact is: nearly all April Fools' jokes are terrible, especially the silly corporate ones. They're just bad. With one exception. Twenty years ago today, Google announced [...]

Facial recognition tech is probably improving as time goes on. Given enough providers, controversy, and individuals who definitely want this tech to stop being so terrible at correctly identifying women and minorities, anything is possible. Rather than wait for the tech to catch up to the promises made by promotional materials, cops are apparently moving [...]

Apparently, everything really is bigger in Texas, including the audacity of federal judges who think they're above the rules. In a stunning display of hypocrisy, the Northern District of Texas has decided that new judicial shopping rules just don't apply to them. Because that would make it harder to win culture war fights. But if [...]

404 Media, the new news outlet formed by excellent journalists kicked to the curb by the successive brunchlord regimes overseeing Vice Media, continues to stake its claim as the best investigative media outlet in the country. Their latest effort digs deep into dubious claims made by up-and-coming surveillance tech company, Flock. Flock made its entry [...]

Microsoft Windows 11 Pro is designed with the modern professional in mind. Whether you are a developer who needs a secure platform, an artist seeking a seamless experience, or an entrepreneur needing to stay connected effortlessly, Windows 11 Pro is your solution. This version is designed for PCs that need a new license for Windows [...]

Elon Musk claims to be a free speech absolutist," but almost every time we look more closely at that claim, we discover that he's one of the most censorial, free speech suppressors around. He just got called out by a judge for filing a SLAPP suit seeking to punish an organization for its speech. And [...]

AT&T is under fire after a hacker last month posted the personal information (names, addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers) of roughly 73 million customers to the open web. Troy Hunt, security researcher and owner ofdata breach notification site Have I Been Pwned, notes the data first appeared a few years ago courtesy of [...]

This week, our first place winner is an anonymous comment invoking a famous quote in response to Missouri suing Media Matters: Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protectes [sic] but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." -Frank Wilhoit In [...]

We're closing in on the end of our series of spotlight posts looking at the winners of the sixth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1928! We've already featured Best Visuals winner Flight from Podunk Station and Best Adaptation winner Mickey Party, Best Remix winner The Burden Of Creation, Best and Deep Cut [...]

Almost exactly two years ago, we discussed a strange story in which video game publisher Bungie sued a bunch of John Does specifically for inputting fraudulent DMCA takedown claims on YouTube videos that contained Bungie content. Those notices purported to be from Bungie in some cases, but even Bungie's own YouTube channel was hit by [...]

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, Amazon Music, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice - or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week's round-up of the latest news in online [...]

One of the commonest arguments from supporters of copyright is that creators need to be rewarded and that copyright is the only realistic way of doing that. The first statement may be true, but the second certainly isn't. As Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) notes, most art was created without copyright, when [...]

We know that a lot of politicians (and media folks) in the US are pushing to ban TikTok. It has seemed notable, of course, that European countries don't seem all that worried about TikTok, which should raise questions about how serious the threat" really is. However, one major country did decide to ban TikTok a [...]

Earlier this week, reporting by Thomas Brewster for Forbes uncovered yet another way law enforcement is expecting companies like Google to perform their investigative work for them. For a few years now, we've covered the use of geofence warrants capable of turning multiple people into criminal suspects, as well as the even more dubious keyword" [...]

Headway is the revolutionary app designed to help you turn personal growth into a habit. With a lifetime subscription, you get unlimited access to a huge number of non-fiction bestsellers, summarized into 15-minute reads. Be it personal development, business strategies, or health insights, Headway has you covered. It's on sale for $60. Note: The Techdirt [...]

Here's how people advocating for internet regulations for bad speech" think things will work: an enlightened group of pure-minded, thoughtful individuals will carefully outlaw dangerous speech that invokes hatred, or encourages bad behavior. Then, that speech will magically and cleanly disappear from the internet, and the internet will be a better place. What could go [...]

Last week you'll recall that after a closed-door intelligence briefing, some members of Congress leaked word to Axios that they were shocked" by various TikTok behaviors. Upon closer inspection, most of the stuff TikTok had been up to wasn't at all different from the behaviors of a wide variety of foreign and domestic telecoms, app [...]

The EU's much-touted Digital Services Act, hailed as the gold standard for whipping those unruly internet platforms into shape, has hit an embarrassing snag. Apparently, the EU forgot to cc a few member states on the Pretty Please Appoint a DSA Regulator' memo. The internet sites under the thumb of the DSA aren't allowed to [...]

The battle The Pokemon Co. decided to wage against its own best fans in the form of DMCA takedowns on video game mods and fan-created content has now escalated into a full-blown war. This has all the hallmarks of Nintendo's anti-emulation war from a few years ago, except this probably makes even less sense than [...]

Last month we noted how Mozilla had launched a new privacy protection tool dubbed Mozilla Monitor Plus. According to Mozilla, the new service scours the web for your personal information at over 190 sites where brokers sell information they've gathered from online sources like social media sites, apps, and browser trackers. We noted that the [...]

How badly did the arguments in the Murthy v. Missouri case go for the states last week? So badly that the FBI has already re-established communications with social media companies that had stopped in light of the earlier rulings in that case. The FBI has resumed some of its efforts to share information with some [...]

Earlier this week, we covered a truly insane and insane bill being pushed by the Tennessee State Senate that vowed to ban something that actually isn't happening and, indeed, has never happened. Stapled to rote effort to ensure the state's Air Pollution Control Board didn't remain understaffed for more than 30 days was some batshit [...]

Listening to your favorite tunes coming out of a mini Gramophone style Bluetooth speaker is fun and this speaker is small enough to have on your desk while you do your work or as a part of the decor in your den while you are enjoying Sunday brunch and lounge around the house! Enjoy Olden [...]

What the fuck is wrong with state lawmakers? It seems that across the country, they cannot help but to introduce the absolute craziest, obviously unconstitutional bullshit, and seem shocked when people suggest the bills are bad. The latest comes from California state Senator Steve Padilla, who recently proposed a ridiculous bill, SB 1228, to end [...]

Earlier this month we noted how despite all of the sound, fury, and hyperventilation surrounding the push to ban TikTok, most Americans don't actually support such a move (you know, the whole representative democracy thing). Support is particularly lacking among young Democrats, a demographic the Biden administration has struggled to connect with in the wake [...]

Nigeria doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to respecting the speech rights of its own citizens, nor the rights of platforms that its citizens use. By way of examples, there was the time that the country suspended Twitter for several months for the crime of taking down a tweet from its president [...]

Back in 2021, the Chicago Office of the Inspector General released a report on the PD's ShotSpotter tech. The acoustic detection system was apparently mostly useless, no matter what ShotSpotter may have commented in response. Residents of Chicago are paying nearly $11 million a year for this system. But it's obvious they're not getting much [...]

You might recall how popular telecom and media consumer advocate Gigi Sohn saw her nomination to the FCC scuttled after a variety of right wing and telecom-tethered lobbying groups ran a successful, year-long public smear campaign. The campaign tried to frame Sohn as an unhinged radical extremist, giving corrupt Republican and Democrat lawmakers the flimsy [...]

These days, everyone hates big tech, and that's often for very good reasons. You shouldn't trust giant centralized companies that have collected a ridiculous amount of data on you. There are few reasonable alternatives, so they can keep you stuck in their silos. They just move more and more rapidly along the enshittification curve, extracting [...]

[W]hether you call this coercion, if that's the label you attach, you call it encouragement, you call it promotion, you call it inducement, whatever it is, if the government is attempting to abridge the speech rights of a third party, that has to be unconstitutional because that falls within the plain text of the First [...]