Hitch yourself to a wagon and see what you get. Area dog-killer/current governor/possible DHS head Kristi Noem boarded the Trump Train when it first passed through town nearly a decade ago. Since then, she’s won the loyalty of a bunch of fascist-adjacent dipshits who don’t care how much they vote against their own interests, as […]
As streaming video chipped away at traditional cable TV subscriber bases, most cable giants like Spectrum and Comcast responded by raising prices and being difficult. When confronted with growing evidence that cord cutting (defined as cutting the TV cord but keeping broadband and streaming TV) was a growing trend, most of these same executives spent years first denying cord cutting […]
This one is from a couple months ago, but I finally had a chance to catch up on some older stories. In late 2023, we wrote about one of the most egregious SLAPP suits we’d ever seen. In a case that seems to defy both law and basic human decency, King Vanga, a Stanford student, […]
There but for the grace of whatever god goes any of us. Who among us is worthy to judge the actions of someone who has the power to do right, but uses it to do wrong? Apparently, none of us. Not even the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. (h/t Short Circuit) We like to believe […]
This was inevitable, ever since Donald Trump and the MAGA world freaked out when social media’s attempts to fact-check the President were deemed “censorship.” The reaction was both swift and entirely predictable. After all, how dare anyone question Dear Leader’s proclamations, even if they are demonstrably false? It wasn’t long before we started to see […]
On Friday I attended the oral argument in the TikTok ban case in person, seated in the second row behind the table where the government’s lawyers were sitting, and only about 15-20 feet away from the justices themselves. There’s something kind of profound about being a normal human distance from them, instead of just in […]
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Ohio residents pay for the cops. They pay for the cameras. Now, they’re expected to pay for the footage generated by cops and their cameras. Governor Mike DeWine, serving no one but cops and their desire for opacity, recently signed a bill into law that will make it much more expensive for residents to exercise […]
We’ve noted for several years how the “race to 5G” was largely just hype by telecoms and hardware vendors eager to sell more gear and justify high U.S. mobile data prices. While 5G does provide faster, more resilient, and lower latency networks, it’s more of an evolution than a revolution. But that’s not what telecom giants […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment about Mark Zuckerberg’s pathetic deference to Trump: I’ve said it before, but what’s even the point of having that level of wealth if you’re just going to debase yourself for somebody like Trump? For what will it profit a man […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, the libel tourism of Devin Nunes was continuing to highlight the problems of weak anti-SLAPP laws. A patent troll got smacked down by an appeals court, while there was a twist in Oracle’s attacks on Google, and Apple became the latest company to up the ante in abusing […]
Early last year, streaming company Fubo filed an antitrust lawsuit against Disney, Fox, and Warner Brothers Discovery after the three companies decided to launch their own joint streaming live sports venture. Fubo, in the lawsuit, claims the collective power of the three companies would stifle competition in the sports streaming space, ultimately driving up costs […]
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 […]
In a twist that highlights the absurdity of UK libel laws, former Prime Minister Liz Truss is threatening to sue current PM Keir Starmer for saying she “crashed the economy” during her chaotic 49 days in office… conveniently forgetting that she made the exact same accusation against an earlier PM herself. That’s right, Truss, whose […]
I don’t know what kind of warrant system they’re running in Pennsylvania, but it doesn’t sound like a good one. Either the system is deliberately broken, or the testifying cops were playing fast and loose with the facts. Whatever the case is, the end result is the loss of the evidence obtained with Schrodinger’s Warrant, […]
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For quite some time now, we’ve pointed out how Jim Jordan has weaponized the government to suppress speech. Quite frequently, he seems to be doing this in coordination with Elon Musk. And yet, somehow, it felt like we were the only ones calling this out. So many in the media seem fine repeating the lie […]
In February 2024, AT&T bungled a network update causing a massive outage that it took AT&T twelve hours to fix. DownDetector lit up with 70,000 problem reports. The outage impacted an estimated 125 million wireless devices, blocked an estimated 92 million phone calls by AT&T customers, and prevented an estimated 25,000 attempts to reach 911. A […]
Well, I’ll give the Ninth Circuit this much: at least when the court is wrong, it is wrong fast. It was just a few weeks back that we discussed Molson Coors’ appeal for both the rulings and damages over its trademark fight with Stone Brewing. For those not familiar with the history here, here’s a […]
Last April, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a law designed specifically to make it easier for cops to arrest people who film them. While it’s generally accepted (without Supreme Court precedent… for some weird reason) by most courts that recording public employees in public while they perform their public duties is protected by the First […]
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