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During the great TikTok moral panic of 2022-2025 we noted repeatedly how it was very weird for the public, press, and lawmakers to singularly hyperventilate about the privacy and propaganda impacts of one specific Chinese-owned app while just completely refusing to do anything about the much broader problems that TikTok (and a thousand other companies) […]
Elon Musk’s companies aren’t having the best couple of weeks, it seems. ExTwitter suffered from several outages this week, some lengthy, while Musk claimed that it was the result of a DDoS attack and hinted that Ukraine might be to blame. The story of SpaceX thus far in 2025 has mostly been one filled with […]
The big deal today is Democrats’ threatened capitulation to the GOP on the continuing resolution to keep the government open—but entirely on Trump’s terms, no matter who it bankrupts (hello, DC police and fire departments!). But the larger point made here stands, because the cowardice on display in this budget showdown is the cowardice that […]
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 […]
Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg, for giving me yet another exhibit in my museum of those who fail to understand the Streisand Effect. Meta is so desperate to silence a former employee’s book that it’s doing everything possible to ensure maximum publicity for the allegations within it. You might think that a company like Meta would […]
If there’s anything guaranteed to increase the number of leaks emanating from an entity, it’s letting people know you’re trying to track down leakers. The public sector knows this. The private sector knows this. And yet, the same thing happens again and again: a deterrent appears and everyone treats it like an instigator. Even Trump […]
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Generally speaking, if a judge says this to you, your client is unlikely to succeed in their case: “This may be amusing in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ where the Queen of Hearts yells ‘Off with their heads!’ at annoying subjects… but this cannot be the reality we are living under.” That was Judge Beryl Howell yesterday, […]
Last month U.S. oligarch Jeff Bezos gutted what was left of the paper’s op-ed section, declaring that they’d only publish pieces that supported “personal liberties and free markets” (read: kinder to right wing, corporatist ideals). As Mike noted at the time, it was an obvious trampling of editorial discretion by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos that […]
As tech advances, the law mutates. In some cases (Riley, Carpenter) we get more protections. In other cases, we get fewer protections. This case dates back to 2022. Christopher Poller was a suspect Waterbury, Connecticut police officers were seeking to arrest. While surveilling his residence, officers approached his parked car. Poller wasn’t in it at […]
At a moment when it feels like everyone is racing to “reform” Section 230, while fundamentally misunderstanding the law, and often in pursuit of conflicting goals, it’s more important than ever that people actually learn about Section 230. To that end, we’re excited that the first episode of the new podcast series I’m doing with […]
It’s not like we need any more of this sort of thing. COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) pretty much deters any app maker or social media service from catering to a very underage crowd. Compliance is difficult, if not impossible. But, all the same, it has deterred plenty of the worst developers in the […]
Let’s stipulate something before we dive into this post so that there is no misunderstanding: the rise of the anti-vax movement did not begin with Donald Trump’s foray into American politics. It’s been around since well before 2016, slowly but surely gaining momentum among a strange combination of West Coast liberal elites and a certain […]
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The people have spoken. And by “people,” I mean “Elon Musk.” Trump is now buying into the batshit crazy that is the current Musk/Cybertruck discourse. This, of course, leaves the nominal VP plenty of time to get into long personal arguments with critics on Twitter. But it leaves the head DOGE free to bend Trump’s […]
We’ve often noted how there are $42.5 billion in broadband grants headed to the states courtesy of the 2021 infrastructure bill. The GOP voted against the bill, but have repeatedly turned around and taken credit for its looming benefits among our broadly misinformed electorate. And, as we predicted, they’re now redrafting key components of the […]
Whenever we talk about an instance of the Streisand Effect, the dot-connecting portion of our readership will often chime in, wondering aloud if the subject of the post was Streisanding on purpose. Whether for attention, to generate buzz, or some other nefarious end, how do we know someone isn’t using the effect for gain? I […]
When Florida’s lawyers tried to defend the state’s social media age restriction law by claiming it’s “well known” that platforms harm children, they probably weren’t expecting to get schooled on moral panics by a judge citing his own experiences with… Dungeons & Dragons. But that’s exactly what happened in a recent hearing challenging Florida’s unconstitutional […]
Support us on Patreon » At long last, we’ve got a fresh new original episode for you! This week, Mike is joined by David Enrich, business investigations editor for the New York Times, to discuss his new book Murder The Truth, all about the abuse of defamation laws to silence journalists and discourage critical reporting of […]
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