The Complete 2024 Photography Master Class Bundle has 10 courses to help you become a great photographer. Courses cover night shots, macro photography, studio portraiture, using an off camera flash, landscape photography and more. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales […]
If you’ve been paying any attention to the political news in the last week, you may have seen stories about couch fucking, or dolphin porn, or burnt monkey testicles, or even cat ladies. Or really just about any of the comments coming out of the Harris campaign, or from other Democratic supporters, calling out the […]
The FCC has long run an $8 billion federal subsidy program to help bring phone and broadband services to lower income homes and schools called the Universal Service Fund. The bipartisan program has historically been funded by a fee on traditional phone lines. But with traditional phone lines dying, there’s been a long, ongoing discussion […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous reply in a discussion about how to deal with trolls: This kind of condescension mixed with vague references that assume everyone else is an idiot is completely useless because not only are you expecting people to read your mind, but you’re assuming […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we looked at how the FTC’s settlement with YouTube pissed everyone off and how its settlement with Facebook got everything backwards. Oakland was on its way to becoming the third city to ban facial recognition tech while Orlando police ended their facial recognition deal with Amazon and a […]
I don’t know what the legislative intent of Massachusetts wiretapping law was, but I can’t possibly imagine it was erected solely to allow public employees to get people arrested for filming them performing their public duties in public places. I mean, maybe it was. Maybe that’s the reason the law was enacted. But certainly no […]
There is some confusion about whether the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) regulates content or design on digital platforms like Instagram or TikTok. It’s easy to see why that is, because the bill’s authors claim they are attempting to make the bill about design. This is a good move on their part, as regulations on […]
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 — or go straight to the RSS feed. In the first ever live recording of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike and […]
There are some decent uses of AI. And then there’s everything else. While those with horses in the AI race continue to proclaim the miracles their horses will soon be performing at some indefinite point in the future, a whole lot of entities just see AI as a way to shed human capital and replace […]
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On Thursday, as expected, the Senate voted for “cloture” on the extremely problematic Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). The cloture vote is a procedural vote necessary to bring a full vote to the floor. Previously, attempts to move KOSA forward “by unanimous consent” could be (and were) blocked by objections from at least one Senator […]
With a unanimous 5-0 vote, the FCC says it is moving forward with plans that should make unlocking your mobile phone easier than ever. According to a new FCC announcement, the agency say it will begin crafting new rules that will require that wireless carriers unlock customers’ mobile phones within 60days of activation. At various […]
For the non-sports loving crowd out there, here is something of a necessary primer. Lamar Jackson is the reigning MVP of the National Football League. He plays for the Baltimore Ravens and wears number eight. Troy Aikman is a hall of fame former NFL quarterback that played for the Dallas Cowboys and wore, you guessed […]
In 2023, Tennessee enacted a new law — one that rewrote part of its existing adult entertainment statutes for the sole purpose of making it easier to prosecute drag performers. Sure, legislators took care to talk around the issue when debating it on the floor, but the bill’s language added “male or female impersonators” to […]
Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s okay to go beyond what the law allows even in pursuit of “good” intentions. It is consistently frustrating how this FTC continues to push the boundaries of its own authority, even when the underlying intentions may be good. The latest example is in its order against a […]
The recent Supreme Court case, Moody v. NetChoice & CCIA, confronted a pivotal question: Do websites have the First Amendment right to curate content they present to their global audiences? While the opinion has been dissected by many, this post peeks behind the Silicon curtain to address the practical aftermath of tech litigation. Well before […]
Italy continues to push its way towards shitshow as it’s overtaken by far-right, fascism-adjacent politicians. There’s nothing here that signals the country will try to move back towards the center. Having apparently learned nothing from history, the government continues to move further right while still (somehow!) dealing with a “woke” court. Here’s a brief recap […]
Headway Premium is the revolutionary app designed to help you turn personal growth into a habit. With a lifetime subscription, you get unlimited access to a huge number of non-fiction bestsellers, summarized into 15-minute reads. Be it personal development, business strategies, or health insights, Headway has you covered. It’s on sale for $60. Note: The […]
Does anyone actually trust Elon to be honest about, well, anything? Last week he claimed that ExTwitter hit a new “all-time high” on engagement, with “417 billion user-seconds globally” and that in the US it was 93 billion “user-seconds.” First off, what the fuck are “user-seconds”? This is not a typical measure in the internet […]
The utterly pointless, decade-long madness that was the Time Warner Discovery series of mergers has come to its pathetic conclusion. Basically announcing that the whole mess was a waste of time, company executives last week quietly announced they’d be untangling much of the partnership and try to pretend the whole thing never happened: “The theoretical […]
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