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Rep. Finke Was Right: Age-Gating Isn’t About Kids, It’s About Control

1 week ago
When Rep. Leigh Finke spoke last month before the Minnesota House Commerce Finance and Policy Committee to testify against HF1434, a broad-sweeping proposal to age-gate the internet, she began with something disarming: agreement. “I want to support the basic part of this,” she said, the shared goal of protecting young people online. Because that is not controversial: everyone […]
Rindala Alajaji and Molly Buckley

Fifth Circuit: Actually, Putting The Ten Commandments In Schools Is Probably Fine

1 week ago
Last June, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court upheld a lower court’s ruling declaring a Louisiana law mandating the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools to be a violation of the Constitution. This decision made immediate sense, given that courts elsewhere in the nation (including the US Supreme Court) had repeatedly ruled that laws […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: The 2026 C# Course Bundle

1 week ago
The 2026 C# Course Bundle offers 8 courses that cover everything C#. You’ll master the fundamentals, explore object-oriented programming, and start building your own apps in no time. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. […]
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Brendan Carr Crafting ‘Patriotic’ Call Center Onshoring Plan To Provide Cover For Mass Looming Telecom Layoffs

1 week ago
When he’s not busy trampling free speech, crushing the First Amendment, and destroying media consolidation and consumer protection standards, Brendan Carr has other hobbies. Like helping the telecom industry patriotically sell a brutal coming wave of new layoffs caused by the kind of industry consolidation he regularly rubber stamps. Carr recently began circulating plans for […]
Karl Bode

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Money For Nothing And Clicks For A Fee

1 week 1 day ago
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 […]
Mike Masnick

The Government Uses Targeted Advertising to Track Your Location. Here’s What We Need to Do.

1 week 1 day ago
We’ve all had the unsettling experience of seeing an ad online that reveals just how much advertisers know about our lives. You’re right to be disturbed. Those very same online ad systems have been used by the government to warrantlessly track peoples’ locations, new reporting has confirmed. For years, the internet advertising industry has been […]
Lena Cohen and Hudson Hongo

Prediction Markets Promised Better Information. Instead They’re Creating Powerful Incentives to Corrupt Information.

1 week 1 day ago
There’s a concept in economics known as Goodhart’s Law, often summarized as: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” The idea, originally about monetary policy, has proven remarkably durable across domains. When you attach high enough stakes to a single metric, people stop trying to accurately reflect reality and […]
Mike Masnick

White South Africans would Rather Live In South Africa Than In The US Under Trump

1 week 1 day ago
Shortly after Trump took office for a second time, his administration made it clear that it felt constitutional rights were merely privileges it would extend only to those who fully supported whatever the hell the administration happened to be doing. At the time, the administration was not only engaged in a full-blown, bigoted war against […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: Zeus Smart Car Kit for Arduino (Battery & SunFounder UNO R3 Included)

1 week 1 day ago
Discover the innovative Zeus Smart Car Kit, a versatile robot equipped with 4WD omnidirectional movement, FPV (First Person View), app-based remote control, RGB lighting, and a durable metal frame. Powered by an Arduino Uno-compatible main board, this all-in-one kit delivers multi-functional capabilities, including obstacle avoidance, line tracking, IR remote control, face detection, gesture recognition, voice […]
Daily Deal

Afroman Wins: Jury Rules Mocking Cops Who Raided Your Home Is Protected Speech

1 week 1 day ago
As we wrote just yesterday, the defamation trial brought by seven Adams County, Ohio deputies against rapper Afroman was going about as well for the officers as their original botched raid on his home. Today we can report the inevitable conclusion: the jury sided entirely with Afroman, clearing him of all liability after just hours […]
Mike Masnick

David Zaslav Will Soon Get $550 Million For Disastrous Warner Bros Reign

1 week 1 day ago
Brunchlords can only fail upward. It’s physics. Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav is poised to get as much as $550 million in compensation and tax reimbursement as the company prepares to be acquired by Larry Ellison’s CBS/Paramount: “Zaslav, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, is set to receive $34.2 million in cash severance; $517.2 […]
Karl Bode

Daily Deal: The Modern No-Code Development Bundle

1 week 2 days ago
The Modern No-Code Creator Bundle is an extensive online curriculum specifically developed to enable individuals to construct professional websites, applications & automated workflows without the necessity of writing any code. It has five courses, covering leading no-code platforms and tools like ChatGPT, Mendix, and Tabnine. It is ideally suited for novices and non-technical professionals, empowering […]
Daily Deal