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Section 230 remains one of the most misunderstood laws in America, and that misunderstanding keeps producing policy proposals that would make the internet worse, not better. Last year, I wrote a lengthy response to reporter Brian Reed’s claims about Section 230, and this week Sam Seder brought us both onto The Majority Report to hash […]
Hey look everyone! More of that famous populism Trump rode into power on! The Trump FCC has announced they’re rubber stamping the approval of a merger between two of the nation’s biggest cable companies (Charter, Cox), creating the biggest cable company in the U.S. Struggling Americans were surely clamoring in support of their local shitty […]
It was plainly obvious when RFK Jr. decided to fully remake ACIP, the CDC committee that advises the nation on immunization schedules and practices, that it was done so to place Kennedy sycophants that would enact his batshit theories on vaccinations. ACIP, now chockablock with anti-vaxxer, anti-science grift-gremlins, has been slowly chipping away at decades […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms. According to videos, photos and social media […]
We’ve been pointing out the fundamental contradiction at the heart of mandatory age verification laws for years now. To verify someone’s age online, you have to collect personal data from them. If that someone turns out to be a child, congratulations: you’ve just collected personal data from a child without parental consent. Which is a […]
Of course, we’ll see what comes of this, but it’s starting to look like this administration won’t outlast this level of judicial scrutiny. It may have bullied its way past courts during Trump’s first year back in office, but now lines are being drawn. Whether or not those lines matter is an open question. But […]
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We’ve said it over and over again on this site: when you stand up to the bully, the bully backs down. When you capitulate, you get nothing but a permanent stain and an invitation for more abuse. And here we are again. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration plans to abandon […]
We’ve noted repeatedly how Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr has been abusing the FCC’s “equal opportunity” (or “equal time”) rule to try and threaten daytime and late night talk shows with government retribution if they refuse to enthusiastically coddle Republicans. Late night shows had historically been exempt from the dated rules, which required that any […]
It’s a tale as old as time, assuming time began a decade or two ago. A music artist who just wants to make and perform their craft gets on the internet and performs the song he or she created, only to receive some version of a copyright notice or warning, confusing the hell out of […]
The administration has burnt the “presumption of regularity” to a crispness normally reserved for conquered bridges succumbing to heat death. It is now well known that the Trump administration will do whatever it wants to do, whether or not it’s supported by law. And when the courts push back, the administration responds with implicit “fuck […]
The State Department wants US diplomats to fight data localization around the world. The policy position is correct. It’s just that the messenger has spent the last few months systematically destroying every reason anyone might listen. Reuters has an exclusive report on a State Department cable ordering US diplomats to lobby against data sovereignty and […]
The Trump administration is purposefully cruel. That much cannot be argued, not when it has deliberately sent deportees to foreign torture prisons, dumped them in war-torn countries with histories of human rights abuses, and stranded people its has been ordered to release far from home without their IDs, phones, or money. This regime loves to […]
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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 […]
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