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The landed gentry are only in charge until the king comes to town and chops off a few heads. At least that seems to be the case at Reddit, where CEO Steve Huffman pretended his complaints about current moderators - who were protesting his decision to effectively cut off API access to tons of useful [...]

When I was but a wee Techdirt boy, the FBI was telling cop shops that had borrowed or obtained Stingray devices they'd best not talk about it in court or it would be their NDA'ed ass on the line. In 2015, documents the FBI hoped no one would see (and actually told local cops they [...]

Open Ear Stereo Wireless Headphones are lightweight and comfortable to wear while walking or jogging without the fear of losing them. Made from soft plastic, these headphones can be charged with a USB charger and play 6 hours of continuous playback. These dual bud, bone conduction headphones connect via Bluetooth to any device that is [...]

I don't know how many times it needs to be said, but since so many are still insisting the opposite is true, I guess many more times: Twitter's moderation policies were not driven by some anti-conservative bias, nor were they pushed by the government to block Trump or his supporters. We have, of course, discussed [...]

This week the Biden administration basically re-announced the $42.5 billion in broadband funding that will soon start flowing to the states to shore up U.S. broadband access. Despite press reports that this funding is somehow new, it came as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Not too surprisingly, numerous Republicans that voted [...]

Back in January, Walled Culture wrote about an interesting initiative by the German online audio distribution platform and music sharing service SoundCloud, with itsFan-Powered Royalties (FPR) approach. At the time, we noted that it was a kind of halfway house to thetrue fansidea this blog has promoted many times. We also pointed out that one [...]

Look, we were not kind when Genius first accused Google of copying lyrics from its site. The only interesting bit was the cleverness with which Genius figured out Google had copied the lyrics from its site, by sneakily adding in curved or non-curved apostrophes to see if the same ones showed up in Google's version [...]

We just got done noting how the FCC has spent most of the last decade under the bootheel of the telecom lobby, and in an era where all DC policy is fixated on big tech," (often for very good reasons) nobody much seems to care or have noticed. For four years under Trump, the FCC [...]

Lately, concerns about allowing minors to use social media have been front and center in the public discourse, but ways in which they use it productively have been absent from the conversation. My own anecdotal experience does not constitute comprehensive data, but it's important to understand how social media can be extremely useful for teens [...]

The UK government desires direct control of the internet. This has been the plan for years. A bill that would criminalize encryption while mandating client-side scanning to control the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) has been on the front burner for years. The bill would also turn hate speech into a crime and [...]

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A few months back I attended a workshop regarding keeping children on the internet safe, and at some point a debate broke out over whether social media was more like" cigarettes or chocolate (i.e., obviously addictive and harmful or just a little unhealthy in large doses), and a long term trust & safety executive who [...]

So a few weeks ago Trump FCC boss Ajit Pai came out of hiding to issue a dumb blog post about how killing net neutrality must not have been a bad idea because the internet still works. In his post, he prattles on about how secretly wonderful the U.S. broadband industry is, proving that his [...]

It's crazy just how many posts we've done here on the subject of tattoos. But if you go and review the posts we have done on this topic, you will notice that the majority of them involve tattoo artists as the ones asserting intellectual property rights, not those who got the tattoo on their person. [...]

There have been plenty of laws passed to keep prisoners from profiting from depictions of their crimes, encompassing not only their own recountings, but those put together by others. These so-called Son of Sam" laws got their name from serial killer David Berkowitz, who authorities speculated was going to sell off the rights to his [...]

Recently, we announced our latest game project: FutureCast, created in partnership with the United Nations' Global Pulse group. It's a highly adaptable strategic forecasting tool that aims to explore pathways of change" for different future scenarios by bringing together groups of stakeholders for a fun, insight-generating exercise. This week, we're joined by Minke Meijnders and [...]

One of Elon's big promises when he took over Twitter was that he would get rid of spam bots. So far that's been a huge fucking failure. That's from the Wall Street Journal, which has been generally supportive of Musk's tenure at Twitter. But, the article makes it clear that Musk has totally failed to [...]

Copyright is still high on the list of censorial weapons. When you live in (or target) a country that protects free speech rights and offers intermediaries immunity via Section 230, you quickly surmise there's a soft target lying between the First Amendment and the CDA. That soft target is the DMCA. Thanks to plenty of [...]

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Let's start off with this point, which some seem to ignore when I talk about this stuff: I think many of the concerns" about disinformation are totally overblown. People act as if disinformation has a sort of bizarre mind-control over other people (never themselves) to the point that they act as if disinformation itself is [...]

While the Biden administration has been a bit of a hot mess on broadband consumer protection (see: the Gigi Sohn fiasco), the administration has done some amazing things for overall investment in broadband. Largely thanks to both COVID relief legislation (The American Rescue Plan Act, ARPA) and the IIJA (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act). When [...]

Law enforcement officers and sexual assault go hand-in-hand. Give someone enough power and they're sure to abuse it. That's just human nature. Only the best people should be trusted with this much power, but this nation tends to believe that only the most law enforcement will do. Consequently, our hiring practices - not to mention [...]

The saga of Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard continues. The two biggest remaining hurdles over which Microsoft has to jump to get the deal over the finish line at this point are in the UK with the CMA and in America with the FTC. While Microsoft appeals the CMA's refusal to allow the deal to [...]

Elon Musk sure has a way of fucking over anyone who trusts him. A bunch of current and former employees, including some who agreed to stick around at Twitter with the explicit promise that they would receive the bonuses they were owed, are suing Twitter saying that those bonuses were never given (story found via [...]

The California legislature is competing with states like Florida and Texas to see who can pass laws that will be more devastating to the Internet. California's latest entry into this Internet death-spiral is theCalifornia Journalism Protection Act (CJPA, AB 886). CJPA has passed the California Assembly and is pending in the California Senate. The CJPA [...]

Full disclosure time, Techdirt peeps! I am a resident of this state. And, as such, I am painfully familiar with the governor's pro-Trump performativeness, as well as the state legislature's general disdain for the people it serves. South Dakota is basically an on-shore tax shelter camouflaged by farmland and ultra-patriotic tourist traps. Governor Kristi Noem [...]

The Agile Expert Project Management Bundle has three courses to help you master Agile. Originally developed for the software industry, Agile is the project management methodology that leverages quick, iterative sessions to rapidly identify defects and improve a product. Now that more companies are going digital, Agile is seeing even more popularity in the working [...]

We already knew that Twitter had stopped paying its cloud computing bills from Google and Amazon as Elon continues his pursuit of profitability" that he himself destroyed in Twitter (remember, Twitter was profitable in 16 of the previous 20 quarters before Elon took over at a much higher run rate, before Elon drove away somewhere [...]

We've noted several times how European telecom giants have somehow convinced European policymakers that technology giants like Netflix and Google should annually give them billions of dollars...for no coherent reason. The proposal is dressed up to sound like a sensible adult policy aimed at shoring up broadband access to the downtrodden. In reality it's net [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is TFG responding to the suggestion that the Reddit protest will be quelled by simply removing the mods: As the polls show: the mods aren't alone. The mods aren't the only ones posting the john oliver pics - there's no way that they could do [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2018, Ajit Pai was trying to pretend that everybody supported repealing net neutrality, while ISP lobbyists were trying and then succeeding at derailing California's own net neutrality law. Pai was also pushing for rule changes that would benefit Sinclair Broadcasting, while being under investigation for his relationship with the [...]

Any investigative report of any police department in the United States composed by the DOJ's Civil Rights division can be described as scathing." Bad cops doing bad things trigger these investigations, which invariably find evidence of biased policing, excessive force deployment, and a general disregard - if not actual disdain - for the people these [...]

We've noted for years how the steady, mindless consolidation by telecom monopolies has resulted in patchy broadband access, slow speeds, and high prices. But another longstanding trademark of the industry has been its abysmal customer service, created by mindless growth and a subsequent refusal to scale customer service to match. The latest customer satisfaction rankings [...]

It's hardly a secret that the Chinese government is obsessed with controlling everything that its citizens see or do online - Techdirt has written dozens of stories on the topic over the years. But control within China's borders isn't enough, it seems: the authorities there now want the ability to censor material globally. The latest [...]

Two weeks ago, Canada's Heritage Minister, Pablo Rodriguez, who has been the main Canadian government official pushing for C-18, the bullshit link tax bill, that is just a corrupt wealth transfer from one disliked industry to a favored industry, insisted that it was unacceptable" that Meta might stop allowing links to news if the bill [...]

Things are getting heated in the city that never sleeps stops bitching. Private business owners don't much care for the city telling them how to run their business, even when said business involves perhaps careless use of problematic tech. Grocery store owners in New York City oppose abillthat would limit use of facial recognition software, [...]

MagPRO Smartwatch is a tracker with multiple features that make your daily life easier. Customize the face of the watch with hundreds of different custom backgrounds to fit your needs or make your own. It comes with a magnetic no-buckle wraparound band that's sweatproof and waterproof.It's available in four different colors and is on sale [...]

The lawyers who ridiculously did not check the citations ChatGPT gave them, and when called on it, doubled down with having ChatGPT make up the matching opinions, have now been sanctioned: they have to pay $5k. That may seem light, but with all of the details, it kinda makes sense. So, yes, by now you've [...]

We've noted for several years how the race to 5G" was largely just hype by telecoms and hardware vendors eager tosell more gear and justify high U.S. mobile data prices. While 5G does provide faster, more resilient, and lower latency networks, it's more of an evolution than a revolution. But that's not what telecom giants [...]

Actions, as they say, have consequences. Or potential consequences, at least, in the case of Microsoft battling with the FTC. In the ongoing drama that is Microsoft's attempted purchase of Activision, the FTC filed for a temporary restraining order barring the consummation of the purchase while its lawsuit remains unresolved. The first trial date in [...]

Some more great reporting based on public records has emerged from ProPublica. This one shows how willing cops are to exploit the system they're supposed to be protecting and upholding. Now former officer Jeffrey Kriv certainly isn't one of Chicago's worst cops. There's simply too much competition, given the PD's long history of internal corruption [...]

If you're a Techdirt reader, a Reddit user, or both, then you probably know all about the chaos engulfing the site as users and moderators of popular subreddits protest CEO Steve Huffman's recent changes to the site's API. This week, we're joined by Jay Peters from The Verge to talk about the situation, the protests, [...]

We talk a lot about the concept of trust & safety" at internet companies, but the entire concept is relatively new, and still very confusing to many, including some who work in the field! Over the last few years we've seen a growing movement to organize and somewhat professionalize" the space, with very important and [...]

The smart" internet of things era was supposed to usher forth a new era of convenience. Instead, it often manages to advertise how dumber technology can be the smarter option, and you're not being particularly innovative if your product actually makes life harder. From smart" door locks that areeasily hackableto hackable smart" TVs that are [...]

Microsoft Office 2021 Professional is the perfect choice for any professional who needs to handle data and documents. It comes with many new features that will make you more productive in every stage of development, whether it's processing paperwork or creating presentations from scratch. To help you master Microsoft Office, the Microsoft Training Bundle is [...]

The enshittification of Reddit continues. Yesterday we wrote about the next move from protesting mods to switch their subs to NSFW, which strips those subreddits of ads, and how Reddit was experimenting with removing the mods who did that. For what it's worth, just a few days ago, Reddit insisted in a comment that it [...]

By now we've well established that the series of mergers that began with AT&T's doomed acquisition of Time Warner and ended with Time Warner's subsequent spin off and fusion with Discovery was some of the dumbest, most pointless business" exercises ever conceived by man. The idiotic saga burned through hundreds of billions in debt, saw [...]

To say that developments in the realm of artificial intelligence are coming fast at this point is a wild understatement. There's a ton going on in the space, some of it showcasing amazing things we can now do using AI, some of it showing where humans are still very much needed, and much of the [...]

The recently released files of the late Associate Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens reveal interesting details concerning some of the Court's significant copyright decisions, but leave important questions unanswered. Justice Stevens (1920-2019) left his papers to the Library of Congress, which opened them to the public inMay 2023. (Seeherefor a blog post on Justice [...]

Terrible people who represent terrible people are making terrible laws. Catering to the base is never a good idea because all it does is elevate the lowest common denominator. Utah isn't an outlier. It has competition from several other state governments that aren't necessarily as subordinate to the unofficial state religion. The separation of church [...]