Techdirt

The nation is no longer secure. I’m sorry I’m being so blunt here. But there’s no way the union can survive, not with the omnipresent threat of airborne terrorism that justifies the existence of the absolutely horrendous TSA. The “no fly” list is one of America’s many post-9/11 travesties. It’s the place we put people […]

In a move that seems unlikely to surprise anyone who has followed any bit of the life and career of former President Donald Trump, it appears that he is getting ready to come back to Twitter, in a process that will fuck over the social media site that he lent his name and brand to, […]

Unleash the power of PlayStation and explore hundreds of incredible games with a new choice of membership plan. With PlayStation Plus Essential, you’ll get to enjoy all the core PlayStation Plus benefits: join your friends in online multiplayer, add new games to your collection every month, get incredible deals from PlayStation Store, and more. Relive some […]

Once again, the federal court that had the misfortune of dealing with Donald Trump’s pile of conspiracy theory he and his lawyers generously called a “lawsuit” is handing out sanctions to Trump’s legal team. The lawsuit — which claimed Hillary Clinton (and a couple dozen others) conspired to rig the election Trump actually won — […]

T-Mobile hasn’t been what you’d call competent when it comes to protecting its customers’ data. The company has now been hacked numerous times just since 2018, with hackers at one point going so far as to publicly ridicule the company’s lousy security practices. Case in point: T-Mobile just revealed in an SEC filing (spotted by TechCrunch) that the company was […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy on our post about the FEC tossing out the GOP’s complaint about Google spam filters, where he called extra attention to the fact that no Republicans used Google’s special spam-filter evading program: That really needs to be hammered home any time […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2018, Rep. Marsha Blackburn was pushing a fake net neutrality law, while the Senate push to save net neutrality was one vote short, and lawsuits were lining up against the FCC over the repeal: first from 22 state Attorneys General, and then from Mozilla and consumer groups like Public […]

Maybe it’s time for the Israeli government to put a moratorium on Mossad-based startups. Israeli intelligence services have been the petri dishes for a particular strain of techbro — ones who have the smarts to create zero-click exploits but none of the common sense needed to cull baddies from their customer lists. The Israeli government […]

For years, scientific researchers have warned that Elon Musk’s Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband constellations are harming scientific research. Simply put, the light pollution Musk claimed would never happen in the first place is making it far more difficult to study the night sky, a problem researchers say can be mitigated somewhat but never fully eliminated. Musk […]

As you’ll recall, Elon Musk’s first “big idea” for “saving Twitter” was to get rid of the existing verification program, oddly and uncomfortably merge it with Twitter’s subscription program, Twitter Blue, and… um… profit? Lots and lots of people (including Twitter’s existing trust and safety team) explained why this was a stupid idea, but Musk […]

The good news: New York State recently passed landmark right to repair legislation that should improve consumer access to independent repair options. The bad news: despite passing the state assembly 147–2 and the senate 59–4, lobbyists managed to convince NY Governor Kathy Hochul to dramatically water down the legislation before it was passed, rendering it […]

For a political leader who’s so transparently self-serving and incredibly thin-skinned, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan sure seems to have a knack for bending other parts of the world to his will. Having criminalized pretty much any criticism of him, President Erdogan has managed to silence a lot of homegrown dissent. But it’s apparently not […]

An alarm on wheels. Clocky, the runaway alarm clock, is the rolling, jumping, moving alarm. He’s the durable bedside alarm that will run away, hide, move, roll, wheel, beep, and jump (from up to a 3-foot nightstand). He moves on carpet or wood, and changes directions over and over until you get up to turn […]

Last week, Twitter (with no notice or explanation) seemed to cut off API access to the most popular 3rd party Twitter clients. It was unclear if this was done on purpose or not. Earlier this week, it became pretty damn clear that it was done on purpose, after one of those providers, Tweetbot, dug up […]

Recently, New York State passed a new law (pdf) demanding that regional broadband providers (Verizon, Charter Spectrum, and Altice) provide low-income consumers $15, 25 Mbps broadband tiers to help them survive COVID. The goal: to try and help struggling Americans afford the high cost of broadband during an historic health crisis. Under the proposal ISPs are also […]

This is one of those interesting times when multiple topics we regularly cover here at Techdirt converge. Readers here will recall all the posts we did on the rollout and eventual demise of Google’s Stadia product. Stadia was primarily to be a game streaming service for existing games. That being said, the service also signed […]

Every amicus brief the Copia Institute has filed has been important. But the brief filed today is one where all the marbles are at stake. Up before the Supreme Court is Gonzalez v. Google, a case that puts Section 230 squarely in the sights of the Court, including its justices who have previously expressed serious […]

While some states work on how best to phase out traditional gas cars to help mitigate the climate’s steady collapse, Wyoming is busy showcasing how far its head is lodged up the ass of the oil and gas industry. Last week Wyoming’s GOP-controlled state legislature passed Senate Joint Resolution 4, which calls for a phaseout […]

Over the last year, we’ve been covering a whiny, victim-playing, bit of nonsense, inspired and pushed by a firm whose main business seems to be running spam email campaigns for Republican politicians, that Google is “unfairly” putting their campaign emails into the spam folder. This was all kicked off when some of these Republican spammer […]

Data brokers like Experian and Equifax pose tempting targets for malicious hackers looking to find another source for personal info they can hawk online to other malicious people. The sad thing is, no one really needs to hack their databases. They’re more than willing to just leave them exposed. In 2017, Equifax leaked personal info […]

MiniTool Power Data Recovery Personal is the most cost-effective data recovery program for all common Windows system users. The 100% clean data recovery software for Windows enables you to recover unlimited data (deleted or lost) from Windows computers, memory/SD cards, USB flash drives, external hard drives, etc. On one hand, it covers all the functions […]

Things are going great in Twitterland, apparently. The company has been facing lawsuits, tech outages, government investigations, bailing partners, not to mention departing users and advertisers. We had noted that 40% of advertising had gone away last month, and this week reporters are noting that an internal Twitter presentation confirms that number, while noting that […]

For decades, U.S. policymakers have utterly refused to support any meaningful privacy protections for consumers. They opposed any new Internet privacy laws, however straightforward. They opposed privacy rules for broadband ISPs. They also fought tooth and nail to ensure the nation’s top privacy enforcement agency, the FTC, lacked the authority, staff, funds, or resources to actually do […]

It’s hard to find people who care less about the law than law enforcement. Most traffic stops are pretextual. A real (or fake!) moving violation is an opportunity to go fishing for bigger fish. Conversations with drivers move from the standard requests for licenses and registrations towards anything that might broaden the scope of the […]

For years now we’ve written about the problems of the UK’s latest (in a long line) of attempts to “Disneyfy” the internet with its Online Safety Bill. While the bill had faced some hurdles along the way, made worse by the ever-rotating Prime Minister position last year, there was talk last week that some more […]

A couple of years before criticism of Israel-based NSO Group reached critical mass, the malware merchant was sued by WhatsApp. According to the messaging service (now owned by Meta), its servers were used (without its permission and in violation of the terms of service) to deliver powerful spyware to targets of NSO Group customers (which […]

“Politics,” the writer Auberon Waugh liked to say, “is for social and emotional misfits.” Its purpose is “to help them overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power.” You could accuse old Bron of painting with a rather broad brush, and you would be right. But he […]

There are lots of ways facial recognition tech can be misused. Since it’s far from infallible, the most common misuse of the tech is accepting matches as statements of fact. What should be considered, at best, an investigative lead, has instead been used to wrongly arrest people for crimes they didn’t commit. The private sector […]

The 2023 Complete Cybersecurity Ethical Hacking Bundle has 10 courses to help you go from beginner to expert in cybersecurity. You’ll learn about penetration testing, AWS Security Management, how to use Metasploit, how to protect Wi-Fi networks, and more. The bundle is on sale for $25. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated […]

In the last few weeks I’ve written about how Elon Musk’s “changes” to how Twitter is running have done an amazing job convincing people to join Mastodon. And I’ve also noted how many more people (including myself!) are realizing how much better social media can be when it’s decentralized, rather than owned and run by […]

When last we checked in with One America News (OAN), it was trying (with the help of numerous Republican AGs) to pretend that DirecTV’s decision to boot the barely watched conspiracy network from its cable lineup was part of a vast, diabolical cabal to censor conservatives. The AG lawsuit filed last March pulls out the traditional “Conservatives […]

Shirking accountability is a standard law enforcement pattern and practice. Those enforcing laws often feel they’re not obligated to follow the law. This attitude is internalized in every sense of the word. It’s not just blowing off outside oversight. The police refuse to police themselves, allowing good officers to go bad and bad officers to […]

A decade or so ago there was a wave of warnings by privacy advocates about how modern toys had become major surveillance devices. Makers of voice recognition toys in particular had a nasty habit, researchers warned, of collecting everything your child says, poorly “anonymizing” the data (a meaningless term), then failing to secure that data […]

Josh Browder — the creator of the DoNotPay AI lawbot that helped users dodge $4 million in parking tickets — thinks his AI is ready to head to the big leagues. Up until now, the bot’s progress (and its creator’s claims) have been incremental. Browder created a version of the bot to assist people in […]

Now that the House is (barely) in the control of the Republican Party, we expected an awful lot of dumb anti-tech laws (the Democrats are also pushing dumb anti-tech laws, but of a different nature). The GOP has, in the recent past, laid out a big long list of bills as part of its “big […]

If you want access to content and communications, it seems pretty obvious you should get a warrant. There are plenty of warrant exceptions, but rooting around in things pretty much everyone believes have an expectation of privacy — whether it’s their house, their phones, or their online document storage services — generally requires a warrant. […]

The 2023 Agile and Scrum Master Training Bundle has 7 courses to help you master various skills needed to be an expert project manager. Courses focus on handling difficult team members, risk management, creating user stories, and more. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A […]

Back when Elon Musk was first exploring taking over Twitter, he spoke with Jack Dorsey who (as text messages released as part of Musk’s lawsuit over the purchase revealed) told Musk that the “original sin” of Twitter was setting it up as a private company, rather than being an open source protocol. This wasn’t a […]

The auto industry in Massachusetts has successfully stalled consumer technology repair reform in the state, after repeatedly and falsely claiming that shoring up consumer repair options would be a massive boon to the state’s sexual predators. In late 2020, Massachusetts lawmakers (with overwhelming public support) passed an expansion of the state’s “right to repair” law. The original […]

At the beginning of the year, we launched the latest edition of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1927! We’re calling on game designers of all stripes to build analog or digital games based on the works that have entered the public domain this year, including: Check out Duke’s Public Domain Day article or Copyright […]

Every year, a little after New Years, I try to do a post looking at the previous years results on Techdirt, what people were interested in, what commenters were rated highly and whatnot. I always wait until after New Years (unlike some other sites!) to make sure I have the full year’s data. This year, […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with a response to someone who compared Saudi Arabia jailing Wikipedia administrators to the FBI content flagging revealed in the Twitter Files: One involves a government jailing people for years if not decades for saying unflattering things about the people in […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2018, Germany’s new hate speech law was straight out the gates with two incidents of collateral damage. Trump was complaining about the US’s “very weak” libel laws, perhaps because Steve Bannon’s publisher was very unimpressed with Trump’s defamation threats. Meanwhile, Dennis Prager was seeking an injunction against YouTube and […]

Over the summer, we discussed what looked to be a fascinating trademark dispute between NBA superstar Luka Doncic and his mother, Mirjam Poterbin. As a quick summary, Doncic consented to have trademarks referring to him registered to his mother, as he’d become a star overseas at age 13. That itself isn’t all that odd. But […]

Last night, I saw a bunch of folks complaining that the various apps through which they accessed Twitter, were no longer working. People using Tweetbot, Twitteriffic, Tweeten, and others all noted that they were blocked from actually using those services to read Twitter. It quickly became clear that Twitter’s API was completely down. There was […]

In early December 2022, a former Israeli Minister of Defense and Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, three other retired Israeli generals, a former Commissioner of the Israeli Police, and a former head of the Mossad’s Intelligence Directorate filed an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzalez v. Google arguing that Internet platforms should be civilly […]

Right after the 2016 election that saw Donald Trump elected President, there was this collective wail among many who were unable to comprehend how this could have happened, searching for someone to blame. Two targets quickly emerged: social media and Russia. Often the two were combined into “Russian trolls on social media.” As we’ve noted, […]

Last year, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in a school free speech case that came down squarely, if very narrowly, on the side of the student. The student suing over being kicked off the cheerleading squad for sending a snapchat message saying “fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything” prevailed, with the […]

This refurbished Dell Chromebook is an 11.6” touchscreen 2-in-1 laptop that performs tasks like browsing, video watching, and more. Built with the durability to withstand scholastic environments and multiple modes that adjust to varying learning needs, this device offers powerful multitasking performance for your daily tasks with its Intel Celeron processor. Its 32GB of memory […]

For all the talk of the “Twitter Files,” as we’ve detailed, they’ve mostly been, at best, misleading, and frequently actively wrong. One of the big reveals, we were told, was that the Files were going to expose the political machinations of how Twitter banned former President Trump. And, indeed, Bari Weiss’s “Part Five” of the […]