Earlier this month, we noted how Wired and Business Insider were among a half-dozen or so major news organizations that were busted publishing fake journalism by fake journalists using AI to make up completely bogus people, narratives, and stories. The Press Gazette found that at least six outlets were conned by a fraudster going by […]
The fact that this is still going is absolutely insane. If you haven’t followed along with us in the saga of Katy Perry, the famous pop star, and Katie Perry, a local Australian clothing designer, and the trademark dispute between the two, I will happily catch you up in truncated form. Please note that I […]
“Qualified immunity” is included nowhere in the Bill of Rights. But that’s because it’s not your right. It’s a right that only exists because the Supreme Court said it should exist. And ever since it made this proclamation, it’s done everything it can to ensure this judicial doctrine can swallow nearly any rights violation thrown […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. On Feb. 10, on the third floor of the Social Security Administration’s Baltimore-area headquarters, Leland Dudek unfurled a 4-foot-wide roll of paper that extended to 20 feet in length. It was a visual guide that the agency had kept for years to explain Social Security’s many […]
This is the sort of thing any organized government would consider truly embarrassing. We don’t have one of those at the moment, so if there’s any embarrassment to be had, it has to be experienced on behalf of the Trump administration because this administration is thoroughly incapable of feeling shame itself. Let’s lay a bit […]
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The verdict is in on Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation,” and it’s devastating. A new piece in TES Magazine systematically demolishes Haidt’s claims by doing something revolutionary: actually asking experts who study this stuff what they think. The result reads like an academic execution: “When I read the book, I found it really hard to […]
What if I told you the Trump FCC just leveraged a fake investigation into an American company to force it to sell valuable assets to companies and billionaires loyal to the administration? Well that’s exactly what’s happening with the news that Dish Network and Echostar are selling $17 billion in valuable spectrum to Elon Musk, […]
Ohio State University has had a history of being fairly ridiculous when it comes to trademarks. Whether its trademarking the word “the” (yes, seriously) or stretching the concept of public confusion so far that the school challenged the trademark for a random brand of vodka, the Buckeyes sure love some trademark shenanigans. But I guess […]
CBS has decided it likes being in an abusive relationship. A few months ago, it laid the groundwork for perpetual extortion by settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump over allegedly deceptive editing of an interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Trump claimed this was election interference and sued, despite winning the election, re-taking power, and […]
Support us on Patreon » In what feels like something of a throwback to much earlier days of Techdirt, the Supreme Court is getting into the weeds of the DMCA. Cox v. Sony is a case centered around questions of repeat infringers and intermediary liability, and we’ve submitted an amicus brief from the Copia Institute, written […]
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals did something remarkable last week—they followed binding Supreme Court precedent. In 2025. Involving Trump. Which, predictably, got them immediately overruled by the Supreme Court just days later. In a 2-1 decision, the court dissolved the government’s stay and ordered that FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter be reinstated to her […]
The “fresh hell” administration keeps on rolling. There’s no need to actually ask what fresh hell awaits. You need do nothing more than exist and a new fresh hell will be delivered, almost daily. Here’s the freshest: the US military decided to blow up a boat traveling in international waters — one carrying eleven people, […]
Splunk is a powerful data platform used to gather information from multiple sources and index it for efficient access. You can then use collected data to create visualizations, analytics, and a variety of automated and security-related functions. With its web-style interface, Splunk is easy to use and is utilized by many companies worldwide. The 2025 Complete […]
You know that Family Guy meme where they have the skin color chart to determine how suspicious someone should be? Yeah, you know the one. Well, the Supreme Court just essentially codified that into constitutional law. And they did it on the lawless shadow docket without a real explanation, because of course they did. In […]
For fifty years or so, U.S. media academics warned anybody who would listen about the perils of letting your media companies consolidate in the hands of a bunch of rich assholes and giant, amoral corporations. Not only did America ignore those recommendations every step of the way, the avoidable issues our ignorance created are rearing […]
Cory Gardner, who spent a decade as a Republican senator, has been freshly announced as the CEO of the NCTA–The Internet & Television Association–the cable industry’s biggest lobbying organization. As the revolving door spins you might recall that Gardner is replacing Michael Powell, former FCC boss, whose stint at the agency has largely destroyed government […]
New data from the UK’s age verification rollout provides hard evidence of what internet governance experts have been warning about for years: these laws don’t protect children—they systematically drive users from regulated, compliant platforms to unregulated, non-compliant ones while accomplishing nothing except creating a massive privacy surveillance apparatus. The Washington Post has done the legwork […]
Good lord, here comes another act of preemptive cowardice in service of ensuring the most powerful man in the world enjoys his appearance before a crowd he can’t control or doesn’t own. Here’s Ben Rothenburg of tennis-focused blog Bounces with the scoop: An internal email sent by the U.S. Tennis Association leadership to U.S. Open […]
A longtime open internet activist recently asked me whether I’d reversed my position on internet openness and copyright because of AI. The question caught me off guard—until I realized what he was seeing. Across the tech policy world, people who spent decades fighting for an open, accessible internet are now cheering as that same internet […]
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