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We’ve been writing about Section 230 for a very long time. We’ve written about why it matters, why the people attacking it are wrong, and why most of the proposed “reforms” would make the internet dramatically worse for everyone except the already powerful. And for just about as long as we’ve been doing that, Senator […]
You might have noticed that when Netflix was attempting to acquire Warner Brothers, Republicans were suddenly and uncharacteristically interested in media consolidation and antitrust reform. Republican AGs threatened investigation. The Trump DOJ launched a (fake) antitrust inquiry. Senator Mike Lee scheduled a hearing where he’d planned to press Netflix on the competitive impacts of the […]
We’ve talked a lot about the resurgence of measles in America over the past 14 or so months, and for good reason. It’s a horrible disease of historic significance. Equally historic was America achieving elimination status of the measles 26 years ago, only to see that almost certainly fall away thanks to the incompetence and […]
In late 2024, Trump Republicans killed a very popular program that provided low-income Americans $30 off of their monthly broadband bill. The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) was, unsurprisingly, very popular, with more than 23 million Americans benefiting at its peak. At the time, the GOP claimed they were simply looking to save money. The real reason the program was […]
Within hours on Friday, the Pentagon blacklisted one AI company for refusing to drop its safety commitments on surveillance and autonomous weapons, then turned around and praised a competitor for signing a deal that supposedly preserved those exact same commitments. This confused some people. Why would the Pentagon seek to destroy one company over the […]
Wow. Imagine if you could just make this shit up. The U.S. military used a laser Thursday to shoot down a “seemingly threatening” drone flying near the U.S.-Mexico border. It turned out the drone belonged to Customs and Border Protection, lawmakers said. It is to LOL. Not only did the military friendly fire a CBP […]
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Last year, in Fascism For First Time Founders, I warned the tech industry what happens when you cozy up to authoritarians. As I wrote then: Innovation requires trust. Not just between individuals, but institutional trust. People need to believe that contracts will be enforced, that property rights will be protected, that the rules won’t change […]
You might recall that when political news website Semafor entered the media industry on the back of $25 million in private money, they made all kinds of promises about how they were somehow going to revolutionize U.S. media. In reality most of their promises were relatively inane, and it didn’t take long before the outlet […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is danderbandit with a very straightforward reaction to the fallout from Ring’s Super Bowl commercial: Fuck Ring Exactly why I would never own a cloud based camera system. In second place, it’s MrWilson with a piece-by-piece reply to a comment about DHS demanding social media […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2021, Australian news sites were reacting bizarrely to Facebook’s withdrawal from sharing news in the country, just before Facebook caved and decided to restore news links. The whole ordeal was surrounded by silly reactions so we pointed to the best summary of everything, and also looked at how it […]
One of the unfortunate knock on effects of being generally insufferable is that many people don’t want to be associated with you in any way. And when you’re both insufferable and happen to be the most divisive American political figure in modern history, all the more so. And that is certainly why, during both of […]
Full disclosure up front: I sit on the board of Bluesky. That said, I had absolutely no idea this lawsuit existed until recently. Which, honestly, tells you something about how much of a legal non-event it was. But the underlying story here—about the NFL treating social media the way it treats television broadcast rights—is worth […]
ICE can’t keep up with the baseline set by resident ghoul/White House advisor Stephen Miller. Miller has demanded 3,000 arrests per day, which he presented as the minimum he would be satisfied with. To reach this goal, tons of talent from other federal law enforcement agencies have been added to the mix. The results have […]
Earlier this year we noted how the Trump FCC, at the direct request of wireless phone giants, destroyed popular phone unlocking rules making it easier and cheaper to switch wireless carriers. The rules, applied via spectrum acquisition and merger conditions after years of activism, required that Verizon unlock your phone within 60 days after purchase so […]
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If you run a company whose entire value proposition is the ability to see patterns, predict outcomes, and connect dots that others miss, you’d think someone in the building might have flagged that suing a small independent magazine over unflattering-but-accurate reporting would only guarantee that millions more people read it. And yet, here we are. […]
Netflix has retreated from its protracted bidding war with Larry Ellison for control of Warner Brothers, giving the Trump ally likely control of Warner, CNN, and HBO. In a statement, Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said that Paramount’s latest offer made the acquisition financially irresponsible: “The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder […]
Measles. Yes, yes, I know you’re sick of hearing about it. For that, though, you must lay the blame at the feet of Donald Trump, RFK Jr., and this entire administration of clown-tools that isn’t bothering to do anything about what has become the worst continuous outbreak of the disease in America in several decades. […]
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