You probably already know the benefits of learning a language, so let’s focus on the app. Right off the bat, let’s be clear about one thing: When we say “app” we don’t mean that you’re limited to using Babbel on your phone. You can use Babbel on desktop, too, and your progress is synchronized across […]
Hillary Clinton has no clue how Section 230 works. She seems to think that repealing it will make websites more likely to remove misinformation (which is backwards). But what law do we need repealed to stop Clinton from spreading misinformation about Section 230 (and social media)? In April, we wrote about some comments from Hillary […]
Lina Khan has most certainly faced some growing pains as the head of the FTC, occasionally filing some undercooked cases and raising the hackles of some staff (some grumbling about real missteps, some simply grumbling about reform). At the same time, she’s the closest the U.S. has gotten to a competent antitrust enforcer any time […]
This week, both top spots on the insightful side were taken by similar comments from That One Guy. In first place, it’s a comment about the subject of free speech in the Vice Presidential debate: Broken finger vs Severed arm I mean, neither came out looking great with regards to the first amendment but whereas […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, a big new study showed once and for all that net neutrality did not hurt broadband investment, while telcos were teaming up with Rupert Murdoch to lob antitrust accusations at Google, because apparently Comcast felt qualified to give lectures on monopoly power. A court said the FCC can’t […]
A couple of years back, we discussed a win in the courts for the U.S. Dairy Export Council against both French and Swiss consortiums that had attempted to trademark the word “Gruyere” in America. Both of those groups were jointly attempting to get a PDO/PGI trademark for the term, arguing that gruyere cheese should only […]
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 roundup of the latest news in online […]
Going back many, many years, we’ve written about how the public narrative that the large social media networks engage in “anti-conservative bias” in their content moderation policies is bullshit. Because it is. And now we have yet another scientific study to prove this. The first time we covered it was in response to a ridiculous […]
The Detroit PD is a case study in misuse of powerful surveillance tech. The department is notable for being involved in no less than three wrongful arrests, due to misuse/abuse of its facial recognition tech. The city has already paid out a $300,000 settlement in one of these cases. Worse, two of the three cases […]
The Complete ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence OpenAI Training Bundle has 4 beginner-friendly courses to help you become more comfortable with the capabilities of OpenAI and ChatGPT. You’ll learn how to write effective prompts to get the best results, how to create blog posts and sales copy, and how to create your own chatbots. It’s on sale […]
In recent weeks there has been a flurry of laws, regulatory proposals, and lawsuits regarding “deepfakes,” along with the usual rising levels of concern in the media about how the world won’t be able to handle this. For some perspective, the Pessimist’s Archive just published a story highlighting how a nearly identical fear gripped the […]
I know I’ve argued that not every Elon Musk brain fart warrants its own news cycle, but this one is particularly gross given recent events. We’ve noted repeatedly how in 2020, the Trump administration tried to give Elon Musk’s low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband company Starlink nearly a billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies to connect […]
Some of our nation’s finest Drug Warriors are at it again. And by “at it,” I mean doing seriously stupid, seriously unconstitutional stuff in hopes of finding drugs or (better yet!) cash that will somehow prove they’re doing anything at all to stem the flow of illegal drugs. And yet, they weren’t even after a […]
As someone who has evangelized for the video game industry and how games, long villainized by parents, politicians, and police, are actually either a neutral or positive force for the public and culture, I never shy away from sharing studies that demonstrate this. While a great deal of time has been spent on discussions of […]
A year ago, we wrote about how a challenge brought by the Free Speech Coalition against Utah’s (obviously unconstitutional) age verification law couldn’t go forward because the district court noted (regrettably) that the structure of the law prevented FSC from challenging it before it went into effect. The issue is that it’s a “bounty” law, […]
The “no-fly” list has many problems. Pretty much any fed can “nominate” someone for the list. Pretty much everyone on the list has almost zero chance of getting off it other than by filing a lawsuit. And even though the government has been forced by court decisions to offer a venue for challenges, the federal […]
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Well, things sure move fast in this world of AI regulations. Just last week, we noted that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a pretty obviously unconstitutional set of laws regarding the use of deepfake imagery around “election communications.” Then, just hours later, he was sued for it. This week, federal judge John Mendez has already […]
As noted a few times, recent Supreme Court rulings have thrown most U.S. regulatory enforcement into operational and legal chaos. The dismantling of Chevron in particular now dictates that regulators can’t implement new rules or reforms without the explicit approval of Congress. Two problems there: one, regulators ideally have very specific subject expertise Congress doesn’t […]
Going all the way back to 2020, we have been discussing one of a series of copyright disputes centered on video games and their faithful depictions of real-life tattoos within them. While the first of these were related to depictions of NBA players in Take-Two’s NBA2K series, which the company generally successfully defended, one outlier […]
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