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We’ve documented in detail how the whole AT&T–>Time Warner–>Warner Brothers Discovery merger process has been a pointless mess, resulting in no limits of layoffs and damage to the underlying brands. What was supposed to be a gambit by these companies to dominate streaming TV, wound up being a very expensive act of seppuku by over-compensated executives clearly out of […]

Trump’s war on Chicago appears destined to end in a whimper. While he kicked off his invasion of Chicago with memes and a call to arrest J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, his out of control federal agents have reportedly begun to leave the area. That suburban ICE facility you’ve heard so much about? Assistant […]

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s 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 sponsored Spotlight episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, host Ben Whitelaw […]

Yes, as I already wrote about, the indictment against James Comey was already thrown out due to Halligan’s improper appointment, but it’s also worth covering how badly she fucked up even if she had been appointed legally. These cases were destined for the dustbin no matter what, because Halligan had no idea what she was […]

Mark Kelly—former Navy combat pilot, astronaut, sitting United States Senator—stated a simple legal fact on video: members of the US military can refuse illegal orders. Not as opinion. Not as political positioning. As established law codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and affirmed at Nuremberg when “I was following orders” was rejected as […]

The US Patent Office is about to gut the only effective tool we have for killing bad patents—and they’re doing it by administrative fiat, without Congress, in a way that would make patent trolling easier than it’s been in over a decade. They need to hear from you by Tuesday, December 2nd, or this may […]

The JavaScript DOM Game Developer Bundle has 8 courses to help you master coding fundamentals. Courses cover JavaScript DOM, Coding, HTML 5 Canvas, and more. You’ll learn how to create your own fun, interactive games. It’s on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from […]

The DOJ continues to shed talent as those who actually care about doing the job right are either quitting or being fired for refusing to be Trump’s vindictive blunt force objects. The problem with shedding this much talent is that you need to replace it with someone capable of fogging a mirror while also being […]

Trump’s right wing billionaire friend Larry Ellison (and his nepobaby son, David) recently acquired CBS and likely co-ownership of TikTok. Like Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the goal isn’t really subtle: rich, thin-skinned right wingers want to own the entirety of U.S. new and old media, then convert it into a giant propaganda and lazy infotainment bullhorn that blows […]

We’ve talked a lot about measles throughout this year, which is particularly frustrating given that America officially eliminated this disease from its endemic state back in 2000. How we got here is a very simple story: too many people refused to vaccinate themselves and/or their children, giving the virus a foothold which it had been […]

If you’ve been following the wave of age-gating laws sweeping across the country and the globe, you’ve probably noticed that lawmakers, tech companies, and advocates all seem to be using different terms for what sounds like the same thing. Age verification, age assurance, age estimation, age gating—they get thrown around interchangeably, but they technically mean different things. And those differences […]

CNN, like most U.S. cable news networks, professes to provide users access to journalism. Instead, what you’ll most consistently find is a sort of generic, ad-slathered, center-right, corporatist drivel with the rough edges (read: truth) sanded off like a Ken doll’s genitals to avoid offense. “View from nowhere” journalism that doesn’t inform so much as […]

Last week’s dismissal of the FTC’s antitrust case against Meta—combined with the earlier limited remedies in the Google search case—demonstrates something that should be obvious by now: antitrust is a pathetically weak tool for increasing competition in digital markets. This isn’t an argument against competition. Competition in digital markets matters, desperately. But antitrust enforcement is […]

Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino has already made a name for himself during Trump’s second administration. He began making this name by engaging in an unapproved sweep of the area he controlled in California as Trump was still waiting to be sworn in. Then he was sent to Chicago by a vengeful Trump who wanted […]

Dive into the world of self-driving cars, speech recognition technology, and more with the Complete Machine Learning Bundle. Over 10 courses, you will learn about pattern recognition and prediction, and how to harness the power of machine learning to take your programming to the next level. Discover quant trading, how to harness large data sets, […]

For the last few years, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and their allies have spent considerable energy attacking both academic researchers studying disinformation and the trust & safety teams at social media platforms working to identify and remove coordinated inauthentic behavior—particularly foreign influence operations. They’ve insisted that any attempt to study and limit such operations is […]

Now that streaming subscriber growth has slowed, we’ve noted repeatedly how the streaming TV sector is falling into all of the bad habits that ultimately doomed traditional cable TV. That has involved chasing pointless “growth for growth’s sake” megamergers, imposing bottomless price hikes and new annoying restrictions on customers, undermining labor, and cutting corners on product quality in […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is David with a comment about Trump’s freakout after Democrats told soldiers not to follow illegal orders: What everyone appears to overlook Trump’s tantrum here clearly shows that he is perfectly aware that orders he puts out and plans to put out in future are […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, we featured a guest post about the many problems with the idea of upload filters, while Poland was trying to get them excluded from the EU Copyright Directive. Twitch was continuing to trip over itself in response to its DMCA apocalypse, and we dug into just how bad […]

I knew this was coming but this still is absolutely maddening. In all of our coverage of RFK Jr., particularly since his vile appointment and confirmation as head of Health and Human Services, it’s been abundantly clear that he’s an anti-vaxxer. While that may seem obvious to most of our readers, it’s important to note […]