a Better Bubble™

TechDirt 🕸

How The Government Is Quietly Repurposing Everyone’s Data For Surveillance

1 year 1 month ago
A whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board reported an unusual spike in potentially sensitive data flowing out of the agency’s network in early March 2025 when staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency, which goes by DOGE, were granted access to the agency’s databases. On April 7, the Department of Homeland Security gained access to Internal Revenue Service […]
Mike Masnick

Trump Admits He Could Get Abrego Garcia Back, But Angrily Insists Non-Existent Tattoos Are The Reason He Won’t

1 year 1 month ago
Bizarrely buried near the bottom of NY Times article about the chaos behind the renditioning of people to a Salvadoran gulag is an important detail: the US and El Salvador have already brought back eight people who were “mistakenly” sent there: In Washington, the Trump administration was working to address Mr. Bukele’s confusion about whom […]
Mike Masnick

Trump Administration Violated Human Rights Law By Paying El Salvador To Imprison Immigrants

1 year 1 month ago
This comes as no surprise. Pretty much everything about Trump’s extrajudicial rendering of undocumented migrants to a foreign hellhole prison has been awful, but rarely lawful, to twist a phrase that’s already pretty twisted. Resurrecting a law last used to justify the mass incarceration of migrants during World War II, Trump 2.0’s acceleration of his […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: The Complete 2025 CompTIA Training Super Bundle by IDUNOVA

1 year 1 month ago
Prepare to sit a various CompTIA certification courses with the Complete 2025 CompTIA Certification Training Super Bundle by IDUNOVA. Over 17 courses, you’ll learn about penetration testing, network security, IT fundamentals, and more. It’s on sale for $50. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from […]
Daily Deal

T-Mobile Responds To Lawsuits That Its ‘Price Lock’ Is Meaningless, With A New Meaningless ‘Price Lock’ Offer

1 year 1 month ago
In the wake of the Sprint T-Mobile merger, data suggests that wireless carriers immediately stopped trying to compete on price (exactly what deal critics had warned the Trump administration would happen when you reduce sector competition). Recently, T-Mobile imposed another $3-$5 per month price hike on most of its plans — including customers who believed they were under a […]
Karl Bode

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Look What The Chat Dragged In

1 year 1 month 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

DOGE Aide Involved In Dismantling Consumer Bureau Owns Stock In Companies That Could Benefit From the Cuts

1 year 1 month ago
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. A federal employee who is helping the Trump administration carry out the drastic downsizing of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau owns stock in companies that could benefit from the agency’s dismantling, a ProPublica investigation has found. Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old Department of Government Efficiency aide, disclosed the […]
Mike Masnick

Colorado’s Social Media Moral Panic Bill Dies After Governor’s Thoughtful Veto

1 year 1 month ago
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a state legislature, caught up in the moral panic about social media, passes yet another clearly unconstitutional bill that will waste taxpayer money on doomed legal battles. This time it’s Colorado, whose legislature passed a ridiculously bad social media regulation bill (SB25-086) that looks suspiciously similar to […]
Mike Masnick

Judge In Apple / Epic Case Is Spitting Mad At Apple’s Willful Contempt

1 year 1 month ago
Back in 2021, Apple mostly won the antitrust case that Epic brought against it, and the Ninth Circuit largely agreed. The court rejected most claims about Apple’s App Store being an illegal monopoly. The company just had to make one small change: let developers tell users they could make purchases elsewhere. Simple enough. Instead, Apple […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The Ultimate Python & Artificial Intelligence Certification Bundle

1 year 1 month ago
The Ultimate Python and Artificial Intelligence Bundle has 9 courses to help you take your Python and AI knowledge to the next level. You’ll learn about data pre-processing and visualization, artificial neural networks, how to use the Keras framework, and more. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated […]
Daily Deal

Texas Lawyer Harassed At Home By Federal Agents, Fired By His Employer After He Tells His Story

1 year 1 month ago
Radley Balko’s post on Substack details an ordeal, however brief, Texas appellate lawyer Clayton Jackson suffered through recently. A longer one possibly awaits, thanks to his employer firing him shortly after he went public with his recounting of this unwanted interaction. Balko’s opening paragraph explains why the Trump Administration has hit law firms and universities […]
Tim Cushing

Brendan Carr’s FCC Abuses Run Face First Into Trump Court Efforts To Destroy Regulatory Power

1 year 1 month ago
So we’ve established by now that the second Trump administration is attempting to completely destroy regulatory authority, consumer protection, labor rights, and corporate oversight. Whether by precedent-ignoring court ruling, executive order, illegally firing commissioners, cronyism, or regulatory capture, the effort isn’t subtle, and is poised to usher forth a new golden age of corruption. That’s […]
Karl Bode

This Is Your Last Chance To Get A Copy Of Our New Social Media Card Game

1 year 1 month ago
Last year, we were thrilled with the success of our Kickstarter campaign for One Billion Users, the Social Media Card Game. In case you missed it at the time, One Billion Users is a fun, fast-paced game where 2-4 players compete to build the biggest and best social media network. Now, the game is about […]
Leigh Beadon

Techdirt Podcast Episode 416: How Tariffs Are Impacting One Small Business

1 year 1 month ago
Support us on Patreon » We probably don’t need to tell you that the current tariff situation is causing complete chaos in global supply chains, in large part due to the uncertainty — for all we know, the exact rules will have changed since this episode was recorded just yesterday. But we wanted to get some […]
Leigh Beadon

CBS Folds Like A Moist, Flushable Towelette In Response To Baseless Trump Threats

1 year 1 month ago
When last we checked in with CBS, the company was preparing to fold under pressure from the Trump administration, amidst bogus accusations that 60 Minutes had unfairly made Donald Trump look bad. As we’ve noted previously, the accusations are utterly baseless, but that’s apparently not stopping the CBS board from kissing authoritarian ass and throwing […]
Karl Bode