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Patent trolls make patents, and argue over them. They don’t have to ever make the thing described in their patents, if it’s even possible to determine what those things are. Instead, they generate legal threats and waste the time and money of companies that do do these things. This month’s Stupid Patent of the Month is a […]

For years now, I’ve talked about the impossibility of doing content moderation well at scale. I know that execs at various tech companies often point to my article on this, and that includes top executives at Meta, who have cited my work on this issue. But it still amazes me when those companies act as […]

Late last year, it was revealed that MSG Entertainment (the owner of several New York entertainment venues, including the titular Madison Square Garden) was using its facial recognition tech to, in essence, blacklist its owner’s enemies. Those targeted included lawyers working for firms currently engaged in litigation against MSG Entertainment. Owner James Dolan, through his […]

The 2023 Metaverse and AR Developer Bundle has 9 courses to help you learn the core skills needed for Augmented Reality development. You’ll learn how to build websites, apps, games and more using A-Frame, and XR Interaction Toolkit. There’s also a course dedicated solely to explaining the Metaverse. This bundle is on sale for $29. […]

Have you noticed that everything that Elon Musk insisted was “bad” about the old Twitter (often incorrectly) are things… he’s now doing himself, but in even more ridiculous ways? He insisted that Twitter was run by people who were promoting ideological political views. Yet… it was Elon Musk (not old Twitter management) who publicly insisted […]

After years of saying password sharing wasn’t really a big deal and was akin to free advertising, Netflix recently announced it would be cracking down on password sharing. It started with a new trial in the global south where users were nagged until they paid an additional fee if they shared their password with users outside of […]

We’ve written a few stories lately about DoNotPay, the “robot lawyer” service whose gimmick of an automated AI-driven tool that would help users deal with challenges like getting out of parking tickets or cancelling subscription services that are difficult to get out of sounds like a really enticing idea. But there have long been questions […]

I just want to share some back-of-the-envelope math. I’m increasingly convinced that Twitter (or at least the network neighborhoods that comprise my Twitter experience) is becoming a ghost town. Here’s why: A couple months ago, I spoke with Nancy Scola for her story about why DC-types can’t seem to quit Twitter. One of my comments […]

There have been a bunch of stories about how one of Elon’s big “cost saving” techniques was to stop paying for basically anything, including rent. To cut costs, Twitter has not paid rent for its San Francisco headquarters or any of its global offices for weeks, three people close to the company said. Twitter has […]

If it can conceivably be considered a “third party record,” the government is going to seek warrantless access to it. The Third Party Doctrine — ushered into existence by the Supreme Court in 1979 — says there’s no expectation of privacy in information shared with third parties. That case dealt with phone records. People may […]

ByteBoi is an open-source retro game console that you can assemble and code yourself. It can be coded in Make Code Arcade – an awesome online coding interface with a bunch of examples and tutorials. You can even use your ByteBoi for remote controlling your Wheelson because of the built-in Wi-Fi chipset. Build your own […]

We knew that Elon Musk had driven away tons of top advertisers, which is kind of a big deal, as the company has been desperate for revenue, if only to cover the interest payments Elon loaded the company with by using a $13 billion loan as part of his $44 billion purchase. Elon keeps talking […]

Apple has never looked too kindly upon users actually repairing their own devices. The company’s ham-fisted efforts to shut down, sue, or otherwise imperil third-party repair shops are legendary. As are the company’s efforts to force recycling shops to shred Apple products (so they can’t be refurbished and re-used). That’s before you get to Apple’s often comical attacks on […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is PaulT with a comment about just one of the many problematic details about the DoNotPay “AI lawyer”: “Josh added a clause to the TOS prohibiting users from testing the website prior to using it in a live dispute.” Because if there’s anything a software […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2018, the FCC was backing off its plans to weaken the definition of broadband, but still couldn’t admit that limited competition is a problem, and was apparently hoping that some phony dedication to rural broadband would distract people from how it just killed net neutrality. The State of Montana […]

You will recall that we spent a great deal of words and posts in 2021 discussing the problems Twitch created for itself by deciding to suddenly change the way it enforces copyright infringement claims for its streaming community, mostly without informing that community of those changes and remaining extremely opaque and vague about the standards […]

Well, a lot has happened since I first started looking into the “World’s First Robot Lawyer,” from DoNotPay. First, Joshua Browder, DoNotPay’s CEO, reached out to me via direct message (DM) and told me he would get me access to my documents by 2 PM the next day – Tuesday, January 24th – saying that […]

About a half-decade ago, major social media companies finally did something to prevent their platforms from being used to engage in mass surveillance. Prompted by revelations in public records, Twitter and Facebook began cutting off API access to certain data scrapers that sold their services to government agencies. Twitter blocked both Dataminr and Geofeedia from […]

It’s impossible to be the “aggressor” of the free world. Those words just don’t make sense together. “Defender of the free world,” maybe. If you’re going on the offensive, it seems unlikely you’re there to protect anyone’s freedoms. But that appears to be where America is heading: the aggressor that somehow protects rights and freedoms […]

We’ve explained how telecom and media giants have pulled out all the stops trying to block Gigi Sohn from being seated at the FCC. That has involved a sleazy smear campaign, seeded in the press by non-profits linked to companies like News Corporation, AT&T, and Comcast, falsely accusing Sohn of being a radical extremist who […]

The Complete 2023 CompTIA Course Super Bundle has 13 courses and over 230 hours of training to help jump start your IT career. Courses focus on IT fundamentals, project management, cybersecurity, penetration testing, and more. The bundle is on sale for $69. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion […]

There have been a whole bunch of antitrust lawsuits filed against Google over the last few years. The DOJ filed one in October of 2020 that was pathetically weak. That one seemed like it was Attorney General Bill Barr appeasing then President Trump with what Trump hoped would be an election-boosting attack on “evil woke […]

We’ve already noted how HBO and Discovery executives keep demonstrating the immense, pointless harm of media megamergers. You’ll recall AT&T’s $200 billion acquisition of Time Warner and DirecTV wound up being a hot mess, forcing AT&T to take a huge loss and run for the exits after laying off more than 50,000 employees. The subsequent […]

In a move that shouldn’t really surprise anyone, Meta has said that both Facebook and Instagram will be restoring Donald Trump’s accounts, which it had “indefinitely” suspended in the wake of the January 6th insurrection two years ago. As you’ll recall, after that suspension, the Oversight Board had agreed to hear Trump’s appeal of the […]

You might recall how struggling satellite TV network DirecTV recently kicked right wing propaganda channel OANN off of its cable lineup because it simply wasn’t profitable. That prompted weeks of performative hysteria by the GOP about how they were being “unfairly censored,” even prompting involvement of numerous Republican AGs who apparently had nothing better to […]

Who is the Barbra Streisand of Bollywood? There’s a new documentary, produced by the BBC about India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Specifically, the documentary is focused on Modi’s relationship with India’s Muslim community, including his apparent role during some anti-Muslim riots (where over 1,000 people were killed) two decades ago. And, apparently, it doesn’t make […]

The TSA isn’t great at catching terrorists. It isn’t even great at catching contraband, failing nearly 100% of the time in audits of its efficiency. What it is good at is catching eye-catching things, most of them completely unrelated to providing safer travel. Just recently, the TSA sent out a press release detailing the contraband […]

WOMBO Dream is expanding art to the masses. You don’t need a paintbrush, pencil, or any art supplies to make beautiful artwork, all you need is an idea. Take a back seat and let WOMBO Dream be the paintbrush to your artwork. Share your art with your friends and family and save your artwork to […]

This week, the NY Times had an article detailing how House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has formed a close bond with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a situation that many thought was impossible just a couple years ago when McCarthy seemed to see Greene as a shameful example of the modern Republican party’s infatuation with conspiracy theories, […]

Insurrectionist sprinter Josh Hawley has joined the growing chorus of GOP politicians who’ve spent years doing jack shit about U.S. consumer privacy abuses, and now want to pretend that banning a single app — TikTok — will protect American consumers from a problem they themselves created. Hawley, who also enjoys pretending that he cares about […]

One of the more annoying aspects of how the video game industry conducts its relationships with gaming journalists is the concept of embargos. The idea goes something like this: publishers will furnish journalists and/or game streamers with advanced copies of games, but include an embargo on any reporting, reviews, or streaming those games prior to […]

So, we’ve written a few times about DoNotPay, the supposedly AI-powered “robot lawyer” that was initially designed to help you contest parking tickets but then expanded to helping (usefully) with a bunch of consumer annoyances, like cancelling accounts, obtaining owed refunds, and the like. But it’s also got some shadiness in its past, like the […]

For a brief and interesting time, the New York Times employed a Public Editor to serve as a liaison with its readers. One of the most interesting of these was the fifth, Margaret Sullivan, who would go on to become a media columnist with the Washington Post and then, as of today, a weekly columnist […]

I just wrote about Utah’s ridiculously silly plans to sue every social media company for being dangerous to children, in which I pointed out that the actual research doesn’t support the underlying argument at all. But I forgot that a few weeks ago, Seattle’s public school district actually filed just such a lawsuit, suing basically […]

The truth remains the best defense against bogus defamation claims. And strong anti-SLAPP laws ensure the person being wrongfully accused of defamation gets to walk away with some of the anti-speech bully’s money. That’s what happened here in this case highlighted by Eric Goldman. In an extremely ill-advised move, plaintiff Chad Burmeister created a Facebook […]

The Complete 2023 Tech Training Bundle has 11 courses to help you learn how to conduct various types of computer forensic investigations. Courses cover cyber security, social engineering, penetration testing, securing networks, and more. It’s on sale for $50. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales […]

Utah, as a state, has a pretty long history of having terrible policy proposals regarding laws about the internet. And now it’s getting dumber. On Monday, the state’s Attorney General Sean Reyes and Governor Spencer Cox, hosted a very weird press conference. It was billed by them as an announcement about how Utah is suing […]

To be clear: the Chinese government is a violent authoritarian mess, and making U.S. networks more resilient to Chinese attacks is an important thing. But U.S. telecom policy is bizarrely obsessed with China to the point where all other policies, especially any policies that might upset the nation’s powerful and entrenched telecom monopolies, are routinely […]

Over a year ago, we discussed an annoying and strange set of actions taken by Rockstar and Take2, the companies behind the popular Grand Theft Auto series of games. Two actions were taken in sequence by those companies that were clearly related. First was that they worked to get a fan-made GTA 4 mod taken […]

Note: This post is an adaptation of what started initially as a Twitter thread. I’ve been going pretty hard on DoNotPay and its founder/CEO Joshua Browder for the past couple of days, and I’ve had a lot of people defending the service, saying that it could be a real boon to those who can’t otherwise […]

Automated web scraping can be problematic. Just look at Clearview, which has leveraged open access to public websites to create a facial recognition program it now sells to government agencies. But web scraping can also be quite useful for people who don’t have the power or funding government agencies and their private contractors have access […]

We recently wrote about Cory Doctorow’s great article on how the “enshittification” of social media (mainly Facebook and Twitter) was helping to lower the “switching costs” for people to try something new. In something of a follow up-piece on his Pluralistic site, Doctorow explores the process through which basically all large companies eventually hit the […]

Another Section 230 case has made its way into the federal court system. Of course, the plaintiffs really doesn’t want this to be a Section 230 case, since their lawsuit is predicated on content created by users of two chat apps. The lawsuit alleged that the developers of YOLO (an anonymous chat app) and LMK […]

Super Vectorizer Pro is used to vectorize images for personal and professional projects alike, whether you are a hobbyist or a graphic design company. With technological advances in raster-to-vector conversion, this image vectorizer program for Mac does an impressive job of vectorizing raster bitmap images and converting them to crisp, clean, scalable fine-line art illustrations […]

You may have heard last week that Amazon has announced the end of its “AmazonSmile” program, in which you could shop at Amazon, and a portion of all of the money you paid would actually go to the charity of your choice. Amazon claimed that the program “has not grown to create the impact we […]

We’ve noted a few times how the political push to ban TikTok is a dumb performance designed to do several things, none of which have to do anything with consumer privacy and security. We’ve also noted how college bans of TikTok are a dumb extension of that dumb performance, and don’t accomplish anything of meaningful […]

Cops in Nevada had better start behaving. The state’s Supreme Court has handed down a ruling that not only guarantees residents the right to sue under state law, but won’t allow officers to easily escape lawsuits by asking for qualified immunity. Here’s the background of the case, as summarized by Nick Sibilla at Forbes: What […]

We’ve long covered the trend of communities building their own broadband networks. It’s a movement directly created by decades of anger at telecom market failure, poor service, and monopolization. But since 2015, Vermont officials have taken things to an entirely different level. In 2015, the state legislature greenlit the creation of Communications Utilities Districts (CUDs). […]

Lots of people were expecting the Supreme Court to obviously agree to take the appeals of Florida’s and Texas’s social media content moderation laws. As you’ll probably recall, both Texas and Florida passed slightly different laws that effectively said that they could bar social media platforms from moderating certain types of content. Both laws were […]