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Earlier this month we noted how Disney and ESPN had sued Sling TV for the cardinal sin of actually trying to innovate. Sling TV's offense: releasing new, more convenient day, weekend, or week-long shorter term streaming subscriptions that provided an affordable way to watch live television. These mini-subscriptions, starting at around $5, have already proven [...]

Apparently, it's no longer acceptable to speak ill of the dead. Not that it bothers the dead. But it certainly seems to bother a bunch of people who are still alive and who have nothing better to do with their time but snitch on anyone who doesn't treat Charlie Kirk like an American hero who [...]

Trump has officially given up on any semblance of attempting actual governance and moved to pure man-baby-without-a-nap tantrum mode. His latest countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence" memorandum is basically him screaming EVERYONE WHO DOESN'T LIKE ME IS A TERRORIST!" in official government letterhead. The document has zero legal authority and can't actually do [...]

The Learn to Code with React Bundle has 9 courses to help you learn more about React, Redux, and JavaScript. Used by the likes of Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, and Imgur, React is an efficient and flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces. Meanwhile, Redux is a predictable state container that helps you manage the data [...]

For decades, major U.S. wireless providers have collected sensitive customer movement and location data (often down to the meter), then sold it to a long list of random dipshits - usually without bothering to clearly inform customers or get their consent. Five years ago, this resulted in folks likestalkersand peoplepretending to be law enforcementabusing said [...]

While members of Congress waste time grandstanding about censorship" and politicians threaten to jail tech executives for their moderation choices, actual trust & safety teams are quietly doing work that saves lives in active war zones. But you'd never know it from all the political theater. That's why we've partnered with the International Committee of [...]

I have not written at all about Charlie Kirk in the wake of his disgusting murder, so allow me a bit of throat clearing. When I learned of his murder, my reaction was to be both depressed and a bit sick to my stomach. I'm under no illusions about who Kirk was, what he stood [...]

The Supreme Court pulled off another shadow docket masterpiece this week, granting Trump's request to keep FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter fired while simultaneously pretending they haven't already made up their minds about whether presidents can ignore 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent. What makes this particularly brazen is that the Court is allowing Trump to violate [...]

After the Sept. 10, 2025, assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump claimed thatradical leftist groups foment political violencein the U.S., and they should be put in jail." The radical left causes tremendous violence," he said, asserting that they seem to do it in a bigger way" than groups on the right. [...]

The regime that controls the nation and constantly shoves it towards the next constitutional crisis is at it again. And by it," I mean complaining that people aren't nicer to it. Yes, the deliberately antagonistic Trump administration can dish it out, but it definitely can't take it. That has resulted in this latest bit of [...]

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Look, if you want to cut to the chase: the lawyers working for Google and Meta know that the MAGA world is very, very stupid and very, very gullible, and it's very, very easy to tell them something that they know will be interpreted as a victory" while actually signaling something very, very different. You [...]

The Secret Service says it has uncovered what it's calling a network of electronic devices located throughout the New York Tri-state area that were used to conduct multiple telecommunications-related threats directed towards senior U.S. government officials." The news was announced, in part, over at the right wing propaganda website run by an overt white supremacist [...]

If we were to play a Techdirt word association game where you say the first thing that comes to your mind when I say Nintendo," the answer had better be intellectual property bully" for most regular readers here. If not, well, I specifically haven't done my job very well. Nintendo is incredibly protective and litigious [...]

We've repeated over and over again that anyone who believes Donald Trump's claims of supporting free speech is either a brainwashed cultist or the dumbest person alive. And now, in his doddering old age, he's becoming ever more brazen and belligerent in his attacks on speech. He's not even trying to put forth a veneer [...]

Brendan Carr is fairly typical of a far right wing zealot, in that he has absolutely no compulsion about lying, constantly, about everything. The latest case in point: Brendan Carr is trying to pretend he didn't abuse FCC power and break the law to try and censor a comedian critical of our mad, idiot king. [...]

Everything's a purge in this administration. The Defense Department - now absurdly referred to by the administration as the Department of War" - is headed by a guy no one really seems to respect and who has the unfortunate habit of ignoring OPSEC 101 at every opportunity. Pete Hegseth is the victim of self-inflicted wounds [...]

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Since we know that FCC Chair Brendan Carr sometimes reads what we write here at Techdirt, I figured I'd post this one just for him and hopes that he watches it, seeing as we know that, thanks to his own mafioso-like tactics, his good friends at Sinclair Broadcasting (along with Nexstar) refused to show Jimmy [...]

The flood of outrage at the Disney/FCC cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel ultimately forced the company to retreat and put Kimmel back on the air. Disney apparently didn't much like the wave of folks cancelling their Disney+ streaming video subscriptions in response to the government and a major corporation coordinating a frontal assault on the First [...]

The latest generation of AI systems, based on large language models (LLMs), is perceived as the biggest threat in decades to the established copyright order. The scale of that threat can be gauged by the flurry of AI lawsuits that publishers and others have launched against generative AI companies. Sincethe first of these, reported here [...]

Back in April, RFK Jr. committed publicly to firmly knowing the cause of autism by September of this year. In May, Donald Trump himself weighed in with the already baked conclusion that autism doesn't occur naturally" and therefore must have some environmental cause. Both statements were absurd at the time. Autism causes have been studied [...]

Support us on Patreon Last week, we published three separate posts that looked at the FTC's recent settlement with Aylo, the parent company of multiple adult websites including, most famously, Pornhub. Those posts, written by Stanford HAI policy fellow Riana Pfefferkorn, examined the legally complicated but very important issues that arise from the settlement forcing [...]

ICE made the bed and now California law enforcement officers have to lie in it. The flashpoint of ICE backlash occurred in Los Angeles, as Trump's mass deportation desires manifested itself in the form of masked officers chasing day laborers through Home Depot parking lots. As protests ensued, ICE officers continued to operate without face [...]

Trump supporters cycled through increasingly desperate explanations for why the Jimmy Kimmel situation was totally legitimate. First came the absurd low ratings" defense-because sure, networks routinely cancel shows minutes before taping due to sudden ratings revelations and just hours after the chair of the FCC threatens them with we can do this the easy way [...]

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To suggest that Donald Trump simply doesn't care about constitutional rights, political norms, or anyone other than himself is to suggest that he actually understands any of these concepts. That's giving him far too much credit. What Trump does is pure id, completely unaffected by anything someone his age should have learned long before entering [...]

You might recall that back when Brendan Carr was an ordinary FCC Commissioner, he was super worried about government overreach. He was so worried, that he would attack literally any effort previous incarnations of the FCC took to hold giant shitty telecom monopolies accountable (net neutrality, basic pricing transparency, efforts to stop racism in broadband [...]

Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it, as the old saying goes. And those who choose not to teach that history, to continue this to its logical conclusion, are actively attempting to repeat it. It's within that logical framework that I have viewed our many posts on Trump Administration 2.0's attempt [...]

Updating the updating: I started writing this post last Tuesday, but put it on hold when everything happened last Wednesday, and rewrote it this weekend to post today, only now as I was getting ready to post it, seeing that Disney has reinstated Jimmy Kimmel, so... yeah. I'm only making a minor update to deal [...]

It's a story as old as law enforcement itself: when protesters start protesting, it's often the cops who decide it's time for everything to get violent, rather than those engaged in protests. We saw a LOT of this during the protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis, Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin. Whatever [...]

In the shadow of Charlie Kirk's assassination, something remarkable seems to be happening that Trump's movement seems completely unable to see. Trapped within their own epistemic bubble, MAGA appears to have fundamentally misread the political moment, interpreting tragedy as total victory over their opponents. The miscalculation is breathtaking in its scope. The White House seems [...]

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In what may be a first in American legal history, a sitting president just had his lawsuit struck down by a federal judge before the defendants even had a chance to respond. Judge Steven Merryday didn't wait for a motion to dismiss. He didn't wait for the defendants to file an answer. Four days after [...]

So look, I'm not one of these people who thinks AI" has no useful applications. Just this week I had an efficient conversation with a Gemini chatbot when trying to cancel a Google subscription. I used ChatGPT to help me fact check my own work debunking false claims made by a different AI (an aggregation [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Heart of Dawn with a comment about Disney pulling Jimmy Kimmel's show: Conservatives absolutely hate cancel culture" right up to the point they are the ones doing it. Hypocrisy is dead to these people. In second place, it's Thad with a comment about Trump [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, the first phase of the TikTok fight resolved with Oracle getting a lucrative hosting deal instead of buying the company in a deal driven by Trump-world insiders, while a court refused to block Trump's executive order. At the same time, users were fighting to block the less-discussed part [...]

We've talked a lot about Ryan Walters recently, mostly because he keeps forgetting that the United States Constitution applies to him and his state. Between his attempt to inject Christian theocracy into the public school system while enriching Dear Leader Trump or his fight with his own board members in the wake of some mild [...]

It's been a good while since we've had an old-fashioned copyright troll nonsense story around here, and boy do we have a doozy for you today. Regular Techdirt readers know that we've covered Paul Levy's work for years-the man who the Washingtonian once dubbed the web bully's worst enemy" has been taking down copyright trolls [...]

Techdirt has long lamented how in the modern era, you don't really own" what you buy. That game console, smart lock, or smart refrigerator can quickly become less useful (or completely useless) with a firmware update, bankruptcy, or addition of annoying subscription paywall. The problem is particularly bad when it comes to digital rentals. In [...]

It's fascinating how quickly the tune changes when the shoe's on the other foot. For years, we've been treated to endless screaming about how any effort to identify and counter foreign manipulation on social media was censorship" and a violation of Americans' free speech rights. The same crowd that turned researchers into pariahs and shut [...]

The Hypergear 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Dock is meticulously engineered to reduce the cable clutter and streamline your daily routine. Featuring 2 dedicated wireless charging surfaces, you can power up your phone and AirPods easily. In addition, you can charge your Apple Watch with the built-in charger mount. Stylish and compact, the dock is perfect for [...]

This isn't anything that actually needed to be done. The federal government has plenty of options at its disposal if it thinks someone is providing material support for terrorism. It's one of things that keeps the FBI loaded up with anti-terrorism dollars, thanks to its ability to radicalize people just so it can arrest them. [...]

We've mentioned repeatedly how the AT&T->Time Warner->Discovery series of media mergers were some of the most destructive and pointless business efforts ever, resulting in tens of thousands of layoffs, the cancellation of endless popular programs, higher prices for consumers, and a shittier overall product. One of the men at the heart of this dysfunction has [...]

When you're brought before Congress to testify, you're not supposed to lie. I realize that sounds rather obvious to many of you, but I'll remind you that this is the year of our lord, 2025, and such common sensibilities are not quite as common as they used to be. Even if you're not under oath, [...]

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 round-up of the latest news in online [...]

A Canadian tribunal's $72,000 fine against X for refusing to globally remove non-consensual intimate images (NCII) exposes a fundamental tension that courts have been dodging for years: When can one country order worldwide content takedowns, and when should platforms comply regardless of legal compulsion? Unfortunately, almost all the commentary on the case is ignoring those [...]

On Monday, I published a two-part blog post about the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settlement with Aylo, parent company of Pornhub. The FTC's complaint alleged that Aylo violated federal consumer protection law by allowing child sex abuse material (CSAM) and non-consensual pornography (which I'll call NCII) on its various sites, despite claiming it didn't. The [...]

As Mike just got done noting, our major media companies continue to respond to authoritarianism by being pathetic and feckless little shitweasels. First with the ABC and CBS bribery payments to our mad idiot king, and most recently exemplified by ABC's firing of Jimmy Kimmel because he gave Republicans a sad. Who could have imagined [...]

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