Dr. Vinay Prasad is currently the FDA’s top vaccine regulator. He’s also one of many medical goons hand-picked by RFK Jr. to help lead his decidedly anti-vaxxer movement. In fact, the last time we discussed Prasad, it was over his selective censorship attempts at avoiding public criticism for his anti-vaxxer nonsense. If you show clips […]
Surveillance technology vendors, federal agencies, and wealthy private donors have long helped provide local law enforcement “free” access to surveillance equipment that bypasses local oversight. The result is predictable: serious accountability gaps and data pipelines to other entities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), that expose millions of people to harm. The cost of “free” surveillance tools — […]
I’ve talked on Techdirt about just a few of my AI-related experiments over the past few years, including how I use it to help me edit pieces, which I still write myself. I still have no intention of letting AI write for me, but as the underlying technology has continued to level up, every so […]
The ICE surge in Minneapolis, Minnesota was instigated by a far-right click bait artist and encouraged by the president’s portrayal of Somali immigrants as “garbage” people from a “garbage” country. And those were some of the nicer words Trump used to describe the people his agencies would be hunting down first. Several weeks later, a […]
Yesterday we noted how CBS fecklessly tried to prevent Stephen Colbert from broadcasting an interview with Texas Democratic State Representative James Talarico. Which, as you’ve probably already seen, resulted in the interview on YouTube getting way more viewers than it would have normally, and Texas voters flocking to Google to figure out who Talarico is: […]
The Luminar Neo Bundle includes a one time purchase of the software, an introductory course on how to use it, and 6 add-ons. Luminar Neo is an easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative tools. Luminar Neo was built from the ground up to be different […]
For the last five years, we had to endure an endless, breathless parade of hyperbole regarding the so-called “censorship industrial complex.” We were told, repeatedly and at high volume, that the Biden administration flagging content for review by social media companies constituted a tyrannical overthrow of the First Amendment. In the Missouri v. Biden (later […]
Last week, Denver-area engineer Scott Shambaugh wrote about how an AI agent (likely prompted by its operator) started a weird little online campaign against him after he rejected its code inclusion in the popular Python charting library matplotlib. The owner likely didn’t appreciate Shambaugh openly questioning whether AI-generated code belongs in open source projects at […]
The current measles shitstorm in South Carolina has been burning for several months now, dating all the way back to October of 2025. What started with a bunch of counties that were undervaccinated for measles began spiraling out of control at the start of 2026. The federal tracker for measles cases is at best woefully […]
Recent reporting by Nieman Lab describes how some major news organizations—including The Guardian, The New York Times, and Reddit—are limiting or blocking access to their content in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. As stated in the article, these organizations are blocking access largely out of concern that generative AI companies are using the Wayback Machine […]
Support us on Patreon » Two weeks ago, we ran a bit of an AMA experiment, with a call on Bluesky for fans of Techdirt to ask Mike any questions they might have. We got lots of great responses and now, as promised, Mike is delivering the answers on this week’s episode of the podcast! You […]
“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.” —Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, September 8, 2025 From that one line, which Anil Kalhan dubbed “Kavanaugh Stops,” we see story after story of just how disconnected from […]
The right wing extremist takeover of CBS continues to go just about how you thought it might. CBS is under fire yet again, this time for forcing Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” to cancel a scheduled appearance with Texas Democratic State Representative James Talarico because it might upset our full-diapered president. Colbert acknowledged the cancellation […]
To completely understand computer security, it’s vital to step outside the fence and to think outside the box. Computer security is not just about firewalls, Intrusion Prevention Systems, or anti-viruses. It’s also about tricking people into doing whatever a hacker wishes. A secure system, network, or infrastructure is also about informed people. The All-in-One Super-Sized […]
We’ve been covering Australia’s monumentally stupid social media ban for kids under 16 since before it went into effect. We noted how dumb the whole premise was, how the rollout was an immediate mess, how a gambling ad agency helped push the whole thing, and how two massive studies involving 125,000 kids found the entire […]
Here we go again. The Trump FTC has threatened Apple and CEO Tim Cook with a fake investigation claiming that Apple News doesn’t do a good enough job coddling right wing, Trump-friendly ideology. The announcement and associated letter pretends that Apple is violating Section 5 of the FTC Act (which “prohibits unfair or deceptive acts […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment about MAGA doing things “for the children”: If conservatives stopped thinking about children so much, the children would be better off and much safer. In second place, it’s an anonymous comment inserting a little optimism into the fear that Section […]
Five Years Ago As you probably know, we marked the 30th anniversary of Section 230 this week, so it’s not surprising that this same week in 2021 we were celebrating its 25th anniversary with a special online event where we were joined by Chris Cox and Ron Wyden. We also wrote about the many reasons […]
Back in 2023, we talked about a strange trademark dispute out of the UK concerning oat-based milk products. Specifically, Oatly, a large producer of oat milk, applied for a trademark in the UK for its slogan, “Post Milk Generation.” Dairy UK, a lobbying organization representing dairy farmers in the country, opposed the trademark in the […]
Copyright owners increasingly claim more draconian copyright law and policy will fight back against big tech companies. In reality, copyright gives the most powerful companies even more control over creators and competitors. Today’s copyright policy concentrates power among a handful of corporate gatekeepers—at everyone else’s expense. We need a system that supports grassroots innovation and […]
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