We’ve been talking a lot of about the use of artificial intelligence lately, for obvious reasons. Many of those conversations have revolved around the video game industry and I’ve been fairly vocal about pushing back against the “all AI is bad everywhere forever” dogma that I see far too often. There are plenty of folks […]
The expression, “to make a federal case out of something” usually describes making a bigger deal out of something than it should be. But in the case of Anthropic and Hegseth, Trump, and the Department of Defense*, this federal case is actually quite simple: what the government defendants did to Anthropic is beyond the bounds […]
Remember when Elon Musk told advertisers to “go fuck” themselves and then sued them for the crime of taking his advice? A federal judge has now dismissed that lawsuit — with prejudice — confirming what anyone with a passing familiarity with antitrust law already knew: companies deciding they don’t want their brands plastered next to […]
In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that warrants were needed to obtain cell site location info (CSLI). That decision dealt with law enforcement’s warrantless acquisition of 127 days of location data from a cell service provider. As the court saw it, the government was leveraging access to this data to turn cell phones (which has […]
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Last week, Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri got into a heated exchange during a Senate hearing with Stanford’s Daphne Keller. Schmitt, who, as Missouri’s Attorney General, originally filed the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit, was berating Keller over Stanford’s supposed role in helping the Biden administration censor social media during the 2020 election (see if you […]
When right wing billionaire Larry Ellison (and his nepobaby kid David) hired trolling blogger Bari Weiss to run CBS News, Weiss arrived with the promise of “balanced, fact-based news,” “independent, principled journalism,” and a unique “entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision” that would completely modernize the network and reach the “everyday Americans” traditionally ignored by mainstream […]
Even at the best of times, the hallmark of RFK Jr.’s Health & Human Services is chaos. Whether it’s misinformation on vaccines and other public health matters, his unique ability to exit very smart people from public health agencies, or his desire to upend established government health protocols, it’s a constant frenzy when Kennedy is […]
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 week’s round-up of the latest news in online […]
Imagine a newspaper publisher announcing it will no longer allow libraries to keep copies of its paper. That’s effectively what’s begun happening online in the last few months. The Internet Archive—the world’s largest digital library—has preserved newspapers since it went online in the mid-1990s. The Archive’s mission is to preserve the web and make it accessible […]
For years, certain folks on the left kept insisting they wanted to bring back the Fairness Doctrine — the old FCC policy that required broadcasters to present “both sides” of controversial issues. Many of us in the tech policy world kept explaining why that was a terrible idea, one ripe for abuse and fundamentally at […]
This judge ain’t fucking around. Earlier this month, we covered New Jersey federal judge Zahid Qurashi’s response to the actions of Trump’s DOJ, which begins with lots of illegal appointments of prosecutors and runs right through these prosecutors’ inability to defend the administration’s actions. To wit: The Government’s handling of Petitioner’s detention is emblematic of […]
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First things first: Meta is a terrible company that has spent years making terrible decisions and being terrible at explaining the challenges of social media trust & safety, all while prioritizing growth metrics over user safety. If you’ve been reading Techdirt for any length of time, you know we’ve been critical of the company for […]
FCC boss Brendan Carr spends an awful lot of time pretending to be a tough guy, threatening any broadcasters that aren’t suitably deferential to our mad, idiot king. Carr’s had giant temper tantrums over comedians who make jokes, daytime and late night talk shows that refuse to kiss Republican ass, and any remaining journalists who […]
It’s somewhat stunning to realize that the United States has been operating with Surgeon Generals that are merely “acting” in the role or “performing the duties of” since January 20th of 2025. The last Senate-confirmed SG was Dr. Vivek Murthy. The current nominee from the Trump/Kennedy team is Dr. Casey Means. This nomination has been […]
I think we can all agree that nobody seems to be taking the business of governing ourselves terribly seriously. I say we can all agree on this because I think we all know that Donald Trump is a deranged, narcissistic criminal. We know this. Even those of you who nominally support him — because you […]
Last week we covered how the government successfully convinced Judge Colleen McMahon to order the plaintiffs in the DOGE/National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) lawsuit to “claw back” the viral deposition videos they had posted to YouTube — videos showing DOGE operatives Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh stumbling through questions about how they used ChatGPT […]
By any means, necessary or not: that’s how this administration gets its bigoted version of immigration enforcement done. The surges targeting cities and states that Trump doesn’t feel are loyal enough are a double-edged sword. They punish states run by Democratic party members simply for being run by Democratic party members. And they flood courts […]
It’s finally time! Once again it took us a little while to get through all the entries this year, but we’ve now selected the winners in the latest installment of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1930! As usual, we’ve got winners in six categories. Plus, at the end, we’ve got some honorable […]
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