Wars, conflicts, domestic dust-ups, whatever you want to call them… they’re sensitive situations, easily made worse by even the most mild fluctuations in the political climate or the public temperament. And while I’m completely aware there’s no enshrined rights protecting journalism on par with the First Amendment in Israel, this latest turn of events does […]
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Jann Wenner, the creator of Rolling Stone magazine, was certainly an early supporter of free speech. But he seems to have reached grumpy old man status, that allows him to whine about free speech online, mostly by not knowing shit about anything. Writing for Air Mail, a publication by Graydon Carter (another Grumpy Old Man […]
As the streaming sector has consolidated and new subscriber growth has slowed, it has increasingly started chasing the bad habits of the industry it once disrupted: cable TV. Gone is stuff like encouraged password sharing and risk-taking programming. In its place is endless price hikes, weird efforts to nickel-and-dime users, lower-quality programming, annoying new consumer […]
I think it best to start this post off with an admission: I had no idea that “broccolini” was not the name of an actual vegetable, but rather a trademarked brand name. I can’t see your faces, obviously, but I imagine some sizable percentage of them also have a look of mild surprise on them. […]
The harms of deepfakes have been evident for a while. Recent examples include a Biden deepfake designed to influence voters, and the rising use of AI “nudification” apps to produce deepfake nudes of students, often female minors. But alongside the application of sophisticated AI programs to produce deepfakes there are other, lower-tech scams, often known […]
A companion bill to the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) was introduced in the House last month. Despite minor changes, it suffers from the same fundamental flaws as its Senate counterpart. At its core, this bill is still an unconstitutional censorship bill that restricts protected online speech and gives the government the power to target services and content […]
This is the sort of dumb shit you do when you feel the only people who will bother responding to your hateful dog whistle are a bunch of dogs (with valid voting registration!) that constantly have one ear cocked towards their master’s voice. You leave a web form for comments almost completely unsecured and pretty […]
You probably already know the benefits of learning a language, so let’s focus on the app. Right off the bat, let’s be clear about one thing: When we say “app” we don’t mean that you’re limited to using Babbel on your phone. You can use Babbel on desktop, too, and your progress is synchronized across […]
Whose job is it to provide consequences when someone breaks the law? It seems like this issue shouldn’t be that complicated. We expect law enforcement to deal with it when someone breaks the law. Not private individuals or organizations. Because that’s vigilantism. Yet, on the internet, over and over again, we keep seeing people set […]
“AI,” or semi-cooked language learning models are very cool. There’s a world of possibility there in terms of creativity and productivity tools to scientific research. But early adoption of AI has been more of a rushed mess driven by speculative VC bros who are more interested in making money off of hype (see: pointless AI […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with a comment about the lawsuit between cops that resulted more than $23 million in damages: ‘They hospitalized a cop, but he’s a black guy and they’re white so…’ The injuries:And he’s already secured a settlement from the city for $5 […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, Texas began pushing its bill that would allow the state to sue Twitter for banning conservatives, while Facebook filed a questionable lawsuit over fake followers and likes, and a New York saxophonist became the latest to join the bandwagon of suing Fortnite developers. The Supreme Court asked the […]
Roberto Escobar appears to want to keep banging his head against this particular brick wall for some reason. Roberto, brother to infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, has been trying to assert trademark and other rights to his brother’s name for years now. It started in Columbia, in which the country flat out refused to grant […]
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 this week’s round-up of the latest news in online […]
As much as I dislike and distrust Axon (formerly Taser and the leading proponent of the “excited delirium” theory of cop exoneration), I just don’t think there’s much going on here. Sometimes there are actual monopolies. And sometimes, one business is just better at business than its competitors. But that’s what a few cities are […]
Schools have always kept tabs on students using school-issued devices. Prior to the pandemic, this had mostly been limited to filtering software that prevents students from accessing content schools don’t approve of. Of course, this has also kept students from accessing content that might be useful to them personally (self-harm prevention, LGBTQ+ content) or scholastically […]
Embrace the evolution of image scanning technology with the Kodak Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner. This state-of-the-art device is designed to digitally preserve and enhance your cherished memories, ensuring they stay vivid for years to come. The Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner can effortlessly scan color and B&W negatives (135, 110, 126) and […]
It’s almost laughable that these two stories happened so close to one another. The Australian government has just announced a pilot program to test an online age verification system: And then, just hours later, it was reported that law enforcement is investigating an apparent breach of club and bar patrons’ personal data, which the venues […]
When the Trump administration killed net neutrality, telecom industry giants convinced them to push their luck and declared that not only would federal regulators no longer try to meaningfully oversee telecom giants like Comcast and AT&T, but that states couldn’t either. They got greedy. The courts didn’t like that much, repeatedly ruling that the FCC […]
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