What is it with real life stories matching satirical online TV shows lately? We just had a story match one from The Office, and now we’ve got one (that’s much dumber) that is copied from a Futurama episode about how dating robots will lead to the downfall of civilization: Recently, the Hill published a truly […]
Two years ago, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its initial review of federal use of facial recognition tech. That report found that at least half of the 20 agencies examined were using Clearview’s controversial facial recognition tech. A follow-up released two months later found even more bad news. In addition to widespread use of […]
You may be young and modern in your thinking but you are going to love this Olden Golden Retro Mini Gramophone Bluetooth Speaker. This vintage style Bluetooth speaker is fun to have on your desk while you do your work or as a part of the decor in your den while you are enjoying Sunday […]
There is no doubt that it’s not always easy to figure out what social media websites should do about election disinformation. There are those who believe that websites need to very actively remove such content, but there’s little evidence that straight removal does very much productive, which is why it wasn’t that surprising that YouTube […]
When it comes to the early implementation of “AI,” it’s generally been the human beings that are the real problem. Case in point: the fail-upward incompetents that run the U.S. media and journalism industries have rushed to use language learning models (LLMs) to cut corners and attack labor. They’ve made it very clear they’re not […]
As you may recall, starting a little over 3 years ago we discussed Stone Brewing’s transformation from one-time icon of the craft brewing scene into a trademark bully. What kicked this whole thing off was Stone’s win in a trademark lawsuit against macro-brewer Molson Coors (then Miller Coors, but I will be using the company’s […]
Last April, Utah Governor Spencer Cox noted that “Kids are smart, they’ll find ways around” Utah’s new social media bans. But that’s not the reason why these laws will fail teens in Utah, Arkansas, and Texas. These laws will fail teens because state leaders don’t believe kids are smart enough to learn to use social […]
It’s no secret that I think this FTC has been pretty disappointing and has missed a ton of opportunities to actually make things better for the public. For reasons I really don’t understand, it has filed a lot of antitrust cases against tech companies that have almost always seemed half-baked, resulting in a losing streak […]
As we’re all too well aware, there’s plenty of money to be made in the surveillance business. The best surveillance businesses, though, are those that rely on captive markets. Sure, kids aren’t actually “captive,” but they’re in school often enough it’s tempting to let tech pick up the slack when it comes to keeping tabs […]
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What the fuck is going on with the 5th Circuit? Last week we wrote about it putting a law into effect just after a district court had laid out why it was unconstitutional (this was about mandatory made up “health warnings” and age verification on adult content websites). This followed on the 5th Circuit doing […]
With the Biden FCC now having a voting majority, the telecom industry is clearly worried about the agency’s plans to restore popular net neutrality rules stripped away by the Trump administration. To prep the lobbying field, the industry has started using its various proxy groups to seed the press with a bunch of bullshit arguments […]
A little over a year ago, Liberty Tax Service filed a trademark and defamation lawsuit against AMC. At issue was the depiction of a shady tax prep company run by con-men in the final season of the hit show Better Call Saul. In the show, the name of the tax prep company is “Sweet Liberty […]
Hey, remember when a bunch of unpopular broadband monopolies convinced a corrupt reality TV star to dismantle most oversight of their very broken industry? And remember how to accomplish this companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast spread endless lies about what was actually happening, going so far as to use fake and even dead people […]
The trust and safety conversation tends to focus on the huge platforms, and the millions of smaller websites (some still quite big!) get ignored. But those websites have trust and safety needs too, and they use a lot of different tools to meet them. Most of these tools are proprietary, but there’s a growing push […]
We’re increasingly at the mercy of bigots in this country. That’s an upsetting turn of events, considering our history, which includes a long list of enshrined rights as well as the assertion that all people are created equal. Thanks to the aberration that was the Donald Trump presidency, the worst people in the nation suddenly […]
We’ve been covering the multi-pronged ridiculousness around the Missouri/Louisiana “jawboning” cases, regarding whether or not the White House was overstepping the bounds of the 1st Amendment and pressuring private websites to moderate in a manner they deemed appropriate. Again, almost everything about this case is bizarre —and getting more bizarre with each move. Last night, […]
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It’s been eight years since the Authors Guild was thoroughly and totally embarrassed by losing its big lawsuit against Google over the Google Books scanning project. I guess they’re missing the feeling of embarrassment, as they’ve filed what is effectively the same damn suit against OpenAI over that company’s book scanning. Now, I know, some […]
It can’t be said often enough: it’s stunning that we’ve let scammers and scumbags hijack the nation’s top voice communications platform. And that we’ve let marketing and telecom industry lobbyists slowly degrade the authority of the one U.S. regulator capable of actually doing something about it. Every six months or so the FCC comes out […]
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