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 ā or go straight to the RSS feed. Ben and Mike are technically off this week, but we […]
Not all cops are terrible people, but a whole lot of terrible people seem to be cops. For some reason, a police officer (who has not been officially identified by the district) has a side gig as a substitute English teacher. I don’t know what qualifications this officer brings to that job, but absolutely none […]
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What do you do when the misinformation is coming from inside the house? In the recent book Character Limit, about Musk’s takeover of Twitter, thereās an anecdote that is in the introduction. A data scientist who worked at the company (and had survived the early purge), who was horrified at how Musk had fallen for […]
At no point has the cable industry or its executives been particularly keyed in to the ācord cuttingā threat. As streaming video chipped away at their subscriber bases, most cable giants like Spectrum and Comcast responded byĀ raising prices and being difficult. When confronted by growing evidence that cord cutting (defined as cutting theĀ TVĀ cord but keeping […]
It was only a few weeks ago that we were discussing how, thanks to how fractured streaming has become, watching NFL games is becoming more and more an expensive and complicated process. It’s gotten so bad that ESPN has released an app designed specifically just to help viewers find where to watch the NFL game […]
You probably remember Redbox, the DVD-rental kiosk company that went went bankrupt last June. The story behind the bankruptcy is interesting, in case to you missed it. The company failed to pivot to streaming (you might recall the failed joint venture with Verizon), and the bankruptcy has been profoundly ugly in a scorched Earth kind […]
Axon — having apparently exhausted the market for Tasers — has moved on to hawking body cameras to police departments. The cameras are the loss leaders. The real money comes from perpetual service contracts and access fees. With every new feature added to Axon’s line of products, the difficulty level of switching manufacturers and service […]
Elon Musk’s SLAPP suit against Media Matters has hit a roadblock, as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appealsānot exactly known for its progressive rulingsāhas granted a stay on Judge Reed O’Connor’s order compelling the nonprofit to reveal its donor information. These days, the Fifth Circuit is where good law goes to die, but apparently even […]
Sometimes, people who think they know things about defamation pursue their own lawsuits, making fools of themselves because they so very firmly believe anything said about them that they don’t like must be libel. Then there are the lawyers who do the same thing. They should know better. Even if they don’t specialize in defamation […]
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Recently, Karl had a post taking FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to task for a painfully misleading Wall Street Journal article that attacked Kamala Harris. The article claimed that her policies resulted in the lack of new broadband deployments under Joe Bidenās 2021 Infrastructure Bill that put aside $42.5 billion in broadband grants for underserved communities. […]
Back in February, the Biden administration issued an executive order preventing the “large-scale transfer” of Americansā personal data to “countries of concern.” The restrictions cover genomic data, biometric data, personal health data, geolocation data, and financial data, with the goal of preventing this data from being exploited by foreign intelligence agencies. This week the administration […]
When it comes to comedy, there is a principle that a physical gag will be funny if done 3 times, but then will stop being funny on any further attempts unless it reaches a much higher number, like 9. To see this in action, you need only look at this clip of the classic gag […]
Excited delirium just won’t go away. No medical association recognizes this condition as factually true. And no cop shop will ever move away from using it as a handy excuse for in-custody killings, at least not until forced to by state legislators. Excited delirium actually pre-dates its current status as the go-to excuse for cops […]
One of the many interesting aspects of the current enthusiasm for generative AI is the way that it has electrified the formerly rather sleepy world of copyright. Where before publishers thought they had successfully locked down more or less everything digital with copyright, they now find themselves confronted with deep-pocketed companies ā both established ones like Google […]
Iām not sure Iāve ever seen a government official go from sending a clearly censorial First Amendment-violating threat letter to quitting his job to telling a court, āI was pressured to do that and I resigned so that I wouldnāt do that againā so quickly. Last week, we wrote about the fairly notable ruling in […]
People are censoring books all over the country, thanks mainly to a new wave of hatred encouraged and blessed by a failed businessman and marginal golfer who somehow managed to be elected president for a single term. These book ban laws encourage activists with “conservative views” (you know which ones) to “challenge” any content they […]
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I talk a lot about confirmation bias here because itās at the heart of many of the debates and discussions regarding disinformation. Itās something we can all fall prey to, at times. But lately, Iāve been thinking a lot more about what makes one more susceptible to confirmation bias, and Iām increasingly coming around to […]
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