The House Oversight Committee is investigating NewsGuard, a private company, for supposed “censorship” for the crime of… offering its own opinions on the quality of news sites. The old marketplace of ideas seems to keep getting rejected whenever Republicans find that their ideas aren’t selling quite as well as they’d hoped. Up is down, left […]
All facial recognition tech is flawed. Some offerings may be less flawed than others, but the underlying problems (mainly, the inability to be as accurate when identifying minorities and women) remain. In Detroit, the problems became problematic fairly quickly and dramatically. Hundreds of US law enforcement agencies utilize facial recognition tech, but the Detroit PD […]
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 […]
I guess I should start this out by noting that I like Tim Wu quite a bit, and always felt like I learned something in the past when I spoke with him. He was even one of the people who reviewed and provided feedback on my big “protocols, not platforms” article months before it was […]
Four years years ago AT&T, a company that for years cheapened out on upgrading its broadband lines to fiber, effectively stopped selling DSL. While that’s understandable given the limitations of the dated copper-based tech, the problem is that thanks to concentrated telecom monopolization, many of these customers were left without any replacement options due to a […]
When it comes to policy decisions generally, and with technology platforms specifically, all we can really ask is that a policy be coherently stated and implemented in a uniform fashion. You may dislike said policy, but at a minimum it should be legible and enforced sensibly. Take, for instance, Apple’s updated policy on allowing emulation […]
There is still hope that California’s perilous, protectionist legislation for news could be reformed, but not without effort. I just returned from Sacramento, where I was invited to testify (video below) in opposition to an Assembly bill by Buffy Wicks, which I analyzed in depth in this paper and later criticized as amended. It has passed the Assembly and […]
The Supreme Court’s opinions in the NetChoice/CCIA cases have been leading to some bizarre interpretations, as many people try to read into it things they wanted to see but just aren’t there. Cathy already covered some of the oddities of Justice Alito’s concurrence (which Justices Thomas and Gorsuch signed onto), but I wanted to dig […]
Things are not looking great for SoundThinking, which hasn’t been able to outrun the reputation it earned when it was still known as ShotSpotter. More and more major cities are choosing to ditch the technology because it simply does not appear to be worth paying for. What lots of cities are finding out is that […]
Go from absolute zero to GIMP pro with this comprehensive 9 course bundle. Jump into the Complete Master GIMP Design Bundle, and you’ll go all the way from installing the GIMP software and configuring it to run on Windows, to producing banners, book covers and even memes that you’ll display using Facebook and other social […]
BREAKING NEWS: Florida’s Attorney General says the Supreme Court unanimously sided with her in a case where they unanimously ruled against her arguments. Perhaps there’s a reason that Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is so vigorously defending a Florida law that would block social media companies from diminishing the reach of disinformation: she loves spreading […]
For decades there has been endless policy wrangling over whether “unlocking your phone” (removing restrictions allowing you to take the device with you to another carrier) should be allowed. Giant carriers have generally supported onerous phone locks because it hampers competition by making it harder to switch providers. Consumer rights groups and the public broadly […]
You know, rather than paying out thousands or millions in lawsuits for retaliatory arrests, maybe states should just spend more money on skin thickening for their police officers. It’s not like case law isn’t pretty much completely established at this point. Flipping the bird to a cop is protected speech. So is complaining, however profanely, […]
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.
I was worried after oral argument in the NetChoice cases that we were going to get a mess of a decision. Maybe it would give us the right result (the Florida and Texas laws remaining canceled), but with dicta that pulled its punches and gave future would-be censors some cover for their continued attacks on […]
We keep pointing out that, contrary to the uninformed opinion of lawmakers across both major parties, laws that require age verification are clearly unconstitutional*. * Offer not valid in the 5th Circuit. Such laws have been tossed out everywhere as unconstitutional, except in Texas (and even then, the district court got it right, and only […]
If you had an extra $100k on hand and happened to be on eBay at the right time, you could have become the proud(?) owner of tech that was once so secretive and controversial, both the manufacturer and the FBI would make you sign restrictive non-disclosure agreements just to purchase one. A lot has changed […]
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Today, the Supreme Court made it pretty clear that websites have First Amendment rights to do content moderation as they see fit, but decided to send the cases challenging laws in Florida and Texas back to the lower courts to be litigated properly, effectively criticizing the litigation posture of the trade groups, NetChoice and CCIA, […]
You might recall that “way back” in 2007 Comcast here in the U.S. was caught throttling BitTorrent uploads and subsequently lying about it. Since BitTorrent was popular, hoovering up network resources, and posed a threat to traditional cable TV, Comcast execs thought their best approach would be to make an entire file transfer system less […]
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