Earlier this month we noted how a successful, often homophobic smear campaign scuttled the nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC. The GOP and telecom sector, as usual, worked in close collaboration to spread all manner of lies about Sohn, including claims she was an unhinged radical that hated Hispanics, cops, puppies, and […]
Well, well. The fight between Sony and Microsoft over the latter’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard continues to get more and more interesting. As three regulatory bodies have been poking at the deal — the European Commission for the EU, the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) in the UK, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) […]
A middle school in California has screwed up. And now it’s getting taken to court. Hillel Aron gives us the background over at Courthouse News Service: It was, perhaps, inevitable that the strange incident at a Ventura County middle school last year when dozens of students were banned from wearing T-shirts reading “Justice for Lil […]
Freedom of speech and association include the right to choose one’s communication technologies. Politicians shouldn’t be able to tell you what to say, where to say it, or who to say it to. So we are troubled by growing demands in the United States for restrictions on TikTok, a technology that many people have chosen […]
The biggest mistakes people make about Section 230 involve thinking that it is somehow a complicated law. In reality, its operation is not all that complex. Accordingly, determining whether it applies to any particular situation should not be all that difficult to evaluate, even when we think about hard or edge cases. Ultimately what we […]
Well, this is unfortunate. Back in May of last year we wrote about how Missouri and Louisiana had sued the Biden administration, claiming “censorship” over social media based on a bunch of convoluted and nonsensical claims, most of which were about events that happened during the Trump administration. We noted that, when viewed in the […]
Aspiring filmmakers, YouTubers, bloggers, and business owners alike can find something to love about the Complete Video Production Super Bundle. Video content is fast changing from the future marketing tool to the present, and in these 10 courses you’ll learn how to make professional videos on any budget. From the absolute basics to the advanced shooting […]
The international sign language for “go fuck yourself” isn’t just a protected right in the US of A. Although we may make more use of it than most, a Canadian court has declared this particular form of expression to be blessed by [insert deity of choice here]. Canadians may have a reputation for civility, but […]
If you recall, the Trump FCC under Ajit Pai spent several years stripping away popular media consolidation limits established over decades with bipartisan approval. The push was ironically to directly help aid Sinclair broadcasting’s steady consolidation of local broadcast news, which resulted in a homogenized soup of well-funded propaganda and the erosion of real, local […]
Not literally, of course. Let’s get that out of the way. The company was not sending people out to dig up bodies to take photos to add to its facial recognition database. I mean, how would that even work. Not only that, but very few desiccated corpses utilize subscription-based facial recognition services. It’s not a […]
It won’t surprise any regular read here when I say that Marvel is notoriously aggressive on matters of intellectual property. Equally unsurprising will be my reminding our dear readers that this includes the company attempting to use IP laws in the past to un-ring the leak-bell when content has been leaked early. Hell, Marvel gets […]
Given Wall Street’s insatiable demand for improved quarterly returns at any cost, a growing number of companies seem intent on nickel-and-diming once happy customers into oblivion. For many companies, that means taking a feature that was free or already paid for as part of the device’s retail price, then shoving it into a subscription tier […]
Over the last few months, Elon Musk’s handpicked journalists have continued revealing less and less with each new edition of the “Twitter Files,” to the point that even those of us who write about this area have mostly been skimming each new release, confirming that yet again these reporters have no idea what they’re talking […]
There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) pretty much unregulated use of surveillance technology. Courts have given considerable leeway to border agencies, reasoning that national security concerns outweigh the countless violations of constitutional rights. The protections the highest court in the land erects are waved away anywhere CBP […]
Portable, sleek and sophisticated, the Nix Mini 2 Color Sensor is engineered with life in mind. It’s perfect for those who find inspiration wherever they go. The Nix Mini can easily identify any color with a simple scan, ideal for those who work with color, or for those who simply want to bring it into […]
Earlier this week there was finally a hearing in the case brought by the big book publishers to kill off libraries. That, of course, is not how the publishers describe the lawsuit, but it’s absolutely what the lawsuit is about. We’ll get to some of the details in a moment, but we’ve joked in the […]
Earlier this month a homophobic smear campaign seeded in the press by the likes of AT&T, Comcast, and News Corporation successfully killed the FCC nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn. The goal: to keep the FCC in perpetual partisan gridlock, preventing the agency from making any decisions deemed even remotely controversial by the media and […]
A little over a year ago, we discussed Nintendo’s shutdown of the eShop for its 3DS and Wii U consoles. That shutdown ended up being delayed due to a metric ton of outcry from the gaming public, but that was only a stay of execution. In a matter of days, those shops will be discontinued, […]
In the days after Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, the social media platform saw a “surge in hateful conduct,” which its then safety chief put down to a “focused, short-term trolling campaign.” New research suggests that when it comes to antisemitism, it was anything but. Rather, antisemitic tweets have more than doubled over the months since Musk took […]
Playing to a crowd no one should desire to associate with, Donald Trump understudy Ron DeSantis has been saddling his constituents with a variety of noisy, performative legislation. First, he tried to bypass the First Amendment and Section 230 immunity by hustling through a law aimed at preventing private companies from booting his buddies off […]
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