Techdirt

It seems that we've had a rash of formerly loved internet services going down the enshittification curve. As coined (brilliantly) by Cory Doctorow, enshittification is the process by which a company gets gradually worse. As he puts it: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for [...]

The government of Malaysia isn't too concerned about free speech. It may be a tourist destination, but it's still subservient to a ruling class that likely can thank inbreeding for its current place at the top of the heap. Because it's still ruled by people who've never been elected to their positions, those with the [...]

The benefits of learning to speak a second language (or third) are immeasurable! With its intuitive, immersive training method, Rosetta Stone will have you reading, writing, and speaking new languages like a natural in no time. You'll start by matching words with images just like when you learned your native language as a child. Then [...]

Reddit's ongoing war with its volunteer moderators (and users) has moved up a notch. As you'll recall, last week, the ever tone-deaf CEO Steve Huffman insisted that the protests were just a blip, would be over by last Wednesday, and were having no real impact on the site anyway. That hasn't gone quite to plan. [...]

For the better part of the decade, the generally feckless FCC has been trying to require that broadband ISPs be a little more honest about broadband fees and limits at the point of sale. The FCC has been pondering implementing a nutrition label for broadband" for years but could never quite get around to it. [...]

Seward County is distinguished from Nebraska's many blink-and-you'll-miss-it counties by its penchant for seizing cash from motorists. The county's population checks in at under 18,000 but its overly enthusiastic law enforcement still manages to rake in millions of dollars every year from pretextual traffic stops. The only other thing notable in its Wikipedia article is [...]

Our posts on Katy Perry in the past have been all over the place. Sometimes Perry is an intellectual property bully. Sometimes she's more the victim of intellectual property bullying. But what is not in dispute is the Katy Perry is a cultural icon worldwide with an extremely famous, albeit misspelled, name. In Australia, Katie [...]

A year ago, we wrote about an unfortunate decision by a judge rejecting a motion to dismiss in a copyright lawsuit regarding bananas taped to walls. There was, of course, the high profile banana taped to wall" artwork by Maurizio Cattelan that got tons of public attention at Art Basel in 2019 when it sold [...]

Over the past two years, there has been a concerted push by state legislatures to regulate the Internet, the likes of which has not been seen since the late 90s/early aughts. Content moderation, financial relationships between journalists and platforms, social media design and transparency, national security," kids being exposed to bad" Internet speech-you name it, [...]

The First Amendment protects speech, even the horrible stuff. It can't protect the speaker from being criticized for being abhorrent, despite what many abhorrent people believe. It can, however, in certain cases, protect the speaker from being punished for this speech. It's not blanket coverage. The person engaging in the speech generally has to be [...]

Luminar Neo is easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative AI-driven tools. Luminar Neo was built from the ground up to be different from previous Luminar editors. It keeps your favorite LuminarAI tools and expands your arsenal with more state-of-the-art technologies and important changes at its [...]

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman really seems to underestimate the kinds of people who sign up to be Reddit mods, and their willingness to go to extreme lengths if you start pushing them. We've discussed the nonsensical nature of Huffman's new API efforts, as well as his stupid response to the subreddit blackout which caused many [...]

Satellite TV provider Dish Network isn't having much fun. Despite oodles ofdirect government assistanceduring the Trump era, the company's attempt to pivot from mediocre satellite TV provider to modern streaming TV and 5G wireless giant has been a consistent dumpster fire. Both the company's dying satellite TV service and its streaming TV platform (SlingTV) have [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is radix with a summary of Reddit CEO Steve Huffman's comments about the blackout protest: We don't do things for free, so all the unpaid mods should get back to work" is quite the statement. In second place, it's miked with some additional info on [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2018 began with a much-anticipated day: the official end of net neutrality rules. We took a long look at Ajit Pai's latest comments about the change, while the FCC was busy fending off questions about the DDoS attack it made up (and also, randomly, about Pai's big coffee mug), [...]

Amazon-owned Twitch appears to be running something of an experiment to see just how much it can piss off its creative community before a mass exodus occurs. Reading back through our posts on the platform, you will be left with the understanding that there are two types of policy rollouts when it comes to Twitch. [...]

Via Tarah Wheeler (who just destroyed the EARN IT Act recently) we find out that, while the White House has announced that it wants public comment on AI regulation, it hasn't made it at all easy to figure out how to actually comment. I'm smashblogging on a Saturday because I came across this story on [...]

NSO Group is irredeemable. It must know that by know. Its investors know it. The public knows it. Even the government of the country it set up shop in - a shop filled with ex-government employees - can hardly seem to stomach being associated with it. At any point, this could have been prevented. The [...]

Back in college, I took an arbitration class, and it was one of my favorite classes. The professor (James Gross, who just retired last year after teaching for an astounding 56 years) was amazing, and I became a little obsessed with the entire idea and process of arbitration as an alternative to the costly and [...]

It's renewal time again, and this time the snooper squad is facing unprecedented push back. Sure, a lot of it is politically motivated, what with the post-Trumpians still getting high on their own deep state" supply. Even as opportunistic as they are, they still have a point: some of their own have been subjected to [...]

Tableau 10 is the data visualization tool that breaks mounds of information down into clear, actionable insights, making it a valuable tool for any data-driven guru. This course will show you how to get started with Tableau 10, so you can create powerful visualizations and guide your business with solid, accessible answers. It's on sale [...]

Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, has decided to just keep on talking. After his disastrous AMA helped inspire more subreddits to join a 48 hour blackout, and his dismissal of the protesting subreddits as something not worth paying attention to resulted in many subreddits extending their protests indefinitely, Huffman apparently thought it would make […]

You may have noticed that for-profit healthcare in the U.S. is already a hot mess, especially in the most already marginalized parts of the country. Giant, mismanaged health care conglomerates have long pushed their underfunded staffers to the brink, while routinely under-investing in necessary technical upgrades and improvements. It’s getting consistently worse everywhere, but in […]

Ah, Monster Energy. For regular readers of Techdirt, the name of the company alone is enough to get your eyes rolling harder than a teenager at a rave. Posts on the company’s trademark bullying ways are so legion that I dare not even begin listing them; if you’re unfamiliar with them, click the link and […]

We’ve certainly been talking a lot about the “AI Doomers” who insist that AI is all too likely to destroy humanity. However, even people who aren’t fully on board with the existential threat of AI do often say that, at the very least, it’s going to destroy jobs for most people, potentially creating huge problems. […]

Technically we’ve posted this analysis before, when we posted our entire amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court in the Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith case, along with a summary of what we had written in it. But that summary also included other arguments, and a very condensed version of this one, that the First […]

For a few years now, the EU Commission has been pushing legislation that would undermine, if not actually criminalize, end-to-end encryption. It’s “for the children,” as they say. To prevent the distribution of CSAM (child sexual abuse material), the EU wants to mandate client-side scanning by tech companies — a move that would necessitate the […]

These MaxLight mini flashlights are designed to fit in your backpack or pocket. They are super bright and strong enough to be used in emergencies when you need reliable illumination. The 4 modes let you switch from super bright, medium, low, and strobe modes. These flashlights have a carabiner, kickstand, long-lasting rechargeable battery, magnetic base, […]

Elon Musk has insisted that “transparency is the key to trust” in rebuilding Twitter in his image. He says it all the time. But, of course, under Musk, Twitter has been significantly less transparent, choosing to skip its transparency reports, and generally close itself off. But one of the key methods for transparency on Twitter […]

We’ve noted repeatedly that as the streaming sector grows and consolidates, it’s revealing many of the same problems we saw inherent in traditional, shitty, cable TV. As in the need to provide Wall Street improved quarterly returns at any cost has them doing the sort of things common in the traditional cable sector they used […]

Here we go again. We’ve talked several times in the past about game publishers and studios going out of their way to shut down fan-run servers for online play. The excuses for doing so mostly amount to either claims that intellectual property laws require this sort of policing action (it doesn’t), that the publisher needs […]

The EU is currently proposing a plan to tax Big Tech companies, and throw that money at Big Telecom companies. For no coherent reason. The proposal is part of the EU’s efforts to craft digital policies for the next few decades. While this is purportedly for “broadband expansion,” it’s not… really. Both EU and U.S. telecoms […]

For years, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has had a gang problem. And for just as many years, sheriff after elected sheriff have refused to address this problem. It’s not simply a matter of taking a hands-off approach to discipline. It’s been a matter of flat-out denial from sheriffs that deputies are forming gangs seemingly […]

While U.S. consumer protection is generally a hot mess, one promising bright spot continues to be the bipartisan traction seen on right to repair issues. For decades, tech giants across numerous sectors have attempted to monopolize repair, making it harder and more expensive to repair things you own due to repair center consolidation, annoying DRM, […]

Cops keep letting us know who they really are. They can’t seem to help themselves. They demand to be viewed as good guys, but far too often, they align themselves with fascists, racists, and opportunistic politicians who align themselves with fascists and racists. When the latest presidential election delivered a loss to Donald Trump, his […]

There are, certainly, all sorts of questions about what is generally referred to today as AI, and what it will do, and if it needs to be regulated, but it would help if we had law makers who had the slightest clue what they were talking about. Senator Rand Paul is upset about AI and […]

For as long as the FBI has had access to NSA collections under its Section 702 authority, the FBI has abused this access. Section 702 allows the NSA to collect content and communications via “upstream” channels. It’s a powerful dragnet and one that is supposed to be foreign-facing, so as not to violate the rights […]

xTiles is the simplest way to visualize your workflows, projects, and ideas. Visual search and real-time collaboration enable you to make your work life more efficient. xTiles allows you to collaborate and build off ideas by sharing notes, links, and media in a second. Whether you’re brainstorming your work and personal projects or just trying […]

It’s no secret that Twitter isn’t paying many of its bills, including the rent for its headquarters. That was rumored last fall, but became much more clear when the landlords sued the company in January. Now a new lawsuit, filed last week by six former employees, provides a lot more details on Elon’s view of, […]

Guess who doesn’t want to police themselves. If you guessed “police,” you win nothing but more years of zero accountability. Everybody seems to know cops don’t want to be held responsible for their actions, but those capable of forcing cops to be accountable for their actions seem willing to let the status quo remain in […]

There’s that old saying: the coverup is always worse than the crime. There appears to be something of a corollary to that: the freak-out over a leak is always worse than the leak itself. Let’s call that Geigner’s Law, because why the hell not? You should recall that Nintendo has been in full freak-out mode […]

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is on strike again. Given how much writers contribute to the entire entertainment ecosystem—every satisfying cinematic moment begins its life on the written page—the WGA is asking studios to grant professional writers a reasonable slice of Hollywood’s huge profit pie: a higher minimum wage across all media, higher contributions […]

For many months now, Elon has been promising encrypted DMs. And, indeed, we’ve pointed out that he’s absolutely correct that this is an important feature, and one that social media services should offer. The fact that he’s brought it up a bunch and it seemed to be a priority was definitely a good thing, and […]

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Play Moderator Mayhem in your browser » Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of our newest game in partnership with Engine. Moderator Mayhem is a mobile, browser-based game that lets you see how good a job you would do as a front line content moderator for a growing technology company that hosts user-generated content […]

Satellite TV provider Dish Network isn’t having much fun. Despite oodles of direct government assistance during the Trump era, the company’s attempt to pivot from mediocre satellite TV provider to modern streaming service and wireless giant has been a hot mess. The company lost another 552,000 pay TV subscribers during the last quarter. In part […]

And here we go. Fresh after Nintendo got a pie in its face when, by intent or by confused retailers, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom leaked early, you just knew that the company would completely wig out. At first the company took the sort of useless actions it always takes in the face of leaks: […]

The Indian government really is showing the world what government censorship is all about lately. The country used to be somewhat better about speech issues online, but for years now we’ve been following the country’s descent towards censorship. Things really ramped up with the Modi government, where he seems ridiculously thin-skinned and unable to deal […]

First off, full disclosure: I live in this state. It’s one of those upper Midwestern states no one seems to live in and yet they do. I continue to endure the Trump-loving antics of our current governor, Kristi Noem, who somehow managed not to kill off a large percentage of the state’s population with her […]

Last month there was a lot of attention paid to Frank Ocean’s performance at Coachella, which has been described as “so bizarre.” Apparently there was supposed to be an elaborate ice rink involved in the set, which was scrapped at the last minute, and then everything about the actual performance, including that it was difficult […]