Larry Ellison has succeeded in fusing Paramount and Warner Brothers in a $110 billion merger that will culminate in mass layoffs, higher prices, lower-quality product, and news outlets like CNN becoming even more friendly to corporate power and the U.S. right wing. This enshittification will arrive despite endless promises by the Ellisons that none of […]
There’s looking a gift horse in the mouth, and then there’s deciding to shoot that gift horse in the face repeatedly for no good reason. Famed West Coast burger chain In-N-Out has an equally robust reputation as a trademark bully and bad actor. Whether it’s the trademark tourism the company engages in, in which it […]
I’ve written a few times now about why Meta’s big “settlement” with the states is a bad deal. It’s Meta seeking to control how the rest of the internet is regulated in a way that, as Eric Goldman’s op-ed we republished explains, is anti-competitive. It’s also bad for kids (while everyone is pretending it protects […]
Trump has declared any non-white migrants to be garbage people from shithole countries (that’s in his own words, believe it or not) and has acted accordingly. Mass deportation efforts are a daily event, randomly punctuated by court order violations and the occasional murders of US citizens. Trump often wonders why people from Nordic nations aren’t […]
I feel I need to start out posts like this by reminding anyone that nudification apps are bad. They’re almost exclusively used to abuse and harass people, most often women. That said, if you’re going to ban them legally, you can’t just say “nudification apps are illegal.” That’s not how the First Amendment works. And, […]
The Salesforce Certification Exam Training Bundle includes practice exam questions and study guides for various certifications, covering a wide range of roles such as administrators, developers, architects, sales representatives, and marketing cloud professionals. With lifetime access to the resources, professionals can continually update their skills and stay ahead in the evolving Salesforce landscape. Regardless of […]
Yet another one of Trump’s many, many, often blatantly illegal playbooks is on display here. It seems Trump really doesn’t know who’s going to be loyal enough to satisfy him and also able to pass the rudimentary screening we generously call the Senate Confirmation Process. So, what tends to happen is that Trump places someone […]
Meta’s agentic AI product Muse has had a rocky few weeks since launch. The product, which features an animated avatar named Jolly (one presumes to make mass hyper surveillance seem adorable) is supposed to help you offload busywork like making restaurant reservations, paying bills, or ordering groceries. Despite Meta having claimed repeatedly that Muse was […]
The measles outbreaks in America, and specifically in Pennsylvania, are getting worse instead of getting better. And, while RFK Jr. has and will continue to attempt to lay blame for this total failure of federal leadership at the feet of state officials, anyone with a few brain cells to rub together knows that’s bullshit. While […]
The Metric Is Not the Mission is a ten-part examination of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives and assumptions. Across the series, the argument follows the evolution of the platform economy—from the optimism of the early internet to the growing tensions around […]
The other day the Copia Institute filed an amicus brief at the Fourth Circuit in a case involving West Virginia attempting to punish Apple for not filtering CSAM the way it thinks it should. The issue raised in the appeal was in some respects a narrow one: could Apple cause the case West Virginia brought […]
Update: About four hours after this article went up, Warner/Chappell backed down and released their ridiculous claim on the video, so it’s now back online. Techdirt has been around for almost 30 years now, and the one internet law issue that never seems to change is the bullshit use of copyright to take down speech. […]
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Finally. Now, it doesn’t matter what Trump wants his DOJ minions to do. If he’s going to try to pin a botched repair job on people who just happened to stick a hand into his algae-infested, liner chunk-filled Reflecting Pool/metaphor for his entire presidency, he’s going to have to stick it to someone other than […]
Trump FCC Boss Brendan Carr loves to insist he’s being tough on robocalls, which have increasingly rendered U.S. voice communications networks less and less usable. Except whenever you actually dig into his plans, it usually involves making it easier for big companies and Republicans — who often use the same tactics as outright scammers — […]
This week, our first place winner is danderbandit with a comment about the California ruling against a rogue sheriff who seized 650,000 ballots: So a sheriff broke the law, was confirmed by the state’s top court on two counts. But he is still working as the county sheriff. When is he going to be held […]
I must be getting old, because the concept around most IoT injections into otherwise perfectly usable home devices has me wanting to get all these smart-devices off of my lawn. Call me a luddite if you like, but I just don’t think my toothbrush needs to be connected to the internet. And if you ask […]
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. In the lead-up to the 2026 midterm elections, how is the U.S. government performing in terms of human rights? Listening to politicians, it can be difficult to know. On one hand, some have pointed to a number of potential human rights abuses committed by the U.S. government […]
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. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on […]
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