We’ve mentioned repeatedly how the AT&T–>Time Warner–>Discovery series of media mergers were some of the most destructive and pointless business efforts ever, resulting in tens of thousands of layoffs, the cancellation of endless popular programs, higher prices for consumers, and a shittier overall product. One of the men at the heart of this dysfunction has […]
When you’re brought before Congress to testify, you’re not supposed to lie. I realize that sounds rather obvious to many of you, but I’ll remind you that this is the year of our lord, 2025, and such common sensibilities are not quite as common as they used to be. Even if you’re not under oath, […]
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 â or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online […]
A Canadian tribunal’s $72,000 fine against X for refusing to globally remove non-consensual intimate images (NCII) exposes a fundamental tension that courts have been dodging for years: When can one country order worldwide content takedowns, and when should platforms comply regardless of legal compulsion? Unfortunately, almost all the commentary on the case is ignoring those […]
On Monday, I published a two-part blog post about the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settlement with Aylo, parent company of Pornhub. The FTCâs complaint alleged that Aylo violated federal consumer protection law by allowing child sex abuse material (CSAM) and non-consensual pornography (which Iâll call NCII) on its various sites, despite claiming it didnât. The […]
As Mike just got done noting, our major media companies continue to respond to authoritarianism by being pathetic and feckless little shitweasels. First with the ABC and CBS bribery payments to our mad idiot king, and most recently exemplified by ABC’s firing of Jimmy Kimmel because he gave Republicans a sad. Who could have imagined […]
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Last year, there was some talk about how AI-generated wacky imagesâsummed up generally as âshrimp Jesusâ as an example of one of the most bizarreâwere taking over Facebook. It was only a matter of time until this sort of AI slop nonsense went political in some form or another. Starting last Friday, people began to […]
You might recall that one of the conditions of the FCC’s approval of The Ellison family’s $8 billion acquisition of CBS was that the agency would install a “ombudsman” at the network to ensure CBS journalism was appropriately feckless and deferential to our mad, idiot king. This was particularly ironic given decades of whining by […]
There are multiple ways into this story, but almost all of the reporting on whatâs happened claims that Disney pulled talk show host Jimmy Kimmelâs show âindefinitelyâ over comments that Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk. But that leads most people to assume that Kimmel said something unkind about Kirk or in some way celebrated his […]
It appears that the illiberal, transphobic pipe dream of banning all pornography has reached an enterprising group of far-right Christian nationalist Republicans in Michigan who want to impose the moralistic agendas of a small few on the overwhelming majority of the people. Rep. Josh Schriver leads five other lawmakers with the recent introduction of the Anticorruption of […]
It’s probably too much to ask, but I hope California law enforcement agencies will remember who to direct their hate at if this bill becomes law. It’s not the “liberals” running the state. It’s the Trump administration and its mass deportation efforts. ICE and its actions have always been controversial, but it took a group […]
Even by Donald Trump’s standards for frivolous defamation lawsuits, this one is impressively stupid. On Monday, the president filed yet another lawsuit against the NY Timesâthis time seeking $15 billion over a book that claims he’s not quite as successful a businessman as he pretends to be. The timing is almost comically bad. Trump is […]
Donald Trump has successfully used xenophobia and fake concerns about propaganda and national security to get what he’s long wanted: TikTok (and its fat ad revenues) are poised to be sold off to his right wing billionaire buddies and, inevitably, slowly converted into a right wing propaganda safe space. After endless delays, Trump insiders claim […]
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Among the attempts to create hagiographic eulogies of Charlie Kirk, Iâve seen more than a few people suggest that Kirk should be respected for being willing to talk to âthose who disagree with himâ as a sign that he was engaging in good faith. Perhaps the perfect example of this is Ezra Kleinâs silly eulogy […]
The Washington Post isn’t what it used to be. While the paper is still peppered with a few decent journalists trying to do good work, the outlet is being slowly strangled to death by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, who is steadily dismantling the last vestiges of the paper’s sagging credibility in a desperate bid to […]
We’ve all become entirely too familiar with ACIP, the CDC panel that discusses and recommends vaccination schedules across a wide swath of vaccines. The method by which ACIP became part of the general American lexicon traces all the way back to June, when RFK Jr., as head of HHS, fired every single member of the […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Donald Trumpâs loss in the 2020 election, has been appointed to a senior position in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in which sheâll help oversee the nationâs election infrastructure. Honey is a protege of Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who […]
Over the past few months, we’ve been fulfilling the orders for all the backers who helped us launch One Billion Users, the social media card game, on Kickstarter. Now that process is almost complete (except for a few backers who haven’t yet completed their orders and should do so as soon as possible) and we’re […]
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