There’s this narrative out there that “it has been decided” that social media is “bad for children” and that it is such a big danger that “regulation is needed.” A few months ago, we wrote about a Berkeley professor who claimed that this was settled and that there was “no longer any question as to […]
Back in July, BMW raised a bit of a ruckus when the company announced that it would be making heated seats a luxury option for an additional $18 per month. Now, Mercedes aims to take the concept one step further by announcing that buyers of the company’s new Mercedes EQ electric models will need to pay […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is WarioBarker, responding to our post that suggested Elon Musk’s fans will never realize his actions at Twitter are exactly what they accused Jack Dorsey of doing before: I disagree – they’ll recognize it, but consider it perfectly fine because Musk’s on their side. In […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, it became clear the FCC was gearing up for an attempt to hide its attack on net neutrality just before the Thanksgiving weekend. While Comcast once again falsely claimed there was nothing to worry about, the agency did exactly that and released its order on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the […]
Two years ago, the DOJ opened up an investigation into the Springfield, Massachusetts police department, targeting its troubled Narcotics Unit. Like far too many other drug-focused units, the Springfield Narcotics Unit was filled with officers who routinely engaged rights violations. Narcotics Bureau officers regularly punch subjects in the head and neck area without legal justification. […]
When people speak of culture, and preserving it, they usually mean the works of recognized artistic giants like Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci, Charlie Chaplin, and Miles Davis. They rarely mean things like live streams of Korean pop music, generally known as K-pop. And yet K-pop is undoubtedly an expression – some would say a particularly […]
This week, we have a special joint episode with The Neoliberal Podcast, discussing the question on a lot of minds: just what the hell is going on at Twitter now that Elon Musk is in charge? He’s owned the company for less than a month, and it’s already in chaos. Mike sits down with Neoliberal […]
A new report claims that more than a third of Twitter’s biggest advertisers have now pulled their ads from the platform, as the unstable and unpredictable nature of the new owner, combined with his implicit encouragement for hate, has made the site less and less welcoming to the brands with money to spend. Dozens of […]
Soon after Musk took over Twitter, he announced that no big content moderation changes would occur until after he had convened a “content moderation council” made up of “diverse” perspectives. Never mind that Twitter had actually done that years earlier. Musk will reinvent anything and take credit for it if he can. Of course, it […]
Mindfulness.com makes mindful living easy, practical, and simple to use in everyday life. You’ll learn science-based skills that leading health experts from around the world are teaching as part of the modern day mental health toolkit. Make good sleep a habit, be more in touch with yourself, and learn so much more to help you improve […]
To save the children, we must destroy everything. That’s the reality of the EARN IT Act. I mean, you can get some sort of sense of what you’re in store for just by reading the actual words behind the extremely labored acronym: Eliminating Abuse and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act. Whew. It’s a mouthful. […]
For the last few years, Apple has worked overtime trying to market itself as a more privacy-focused company. 40-foot billboards of the iPhone with the slogan “Privacy. That’s iPhone” have been a key part of company marketing. The only problem: researchers keep highlighting how a lot of Apple’s well-hyped privacy changes are performative in nature. […]
You may think you can take a hands-off approach to local law enforcement. But you’d be wrong. Trusting the police to police themselves has never worked out. If you don’t end up targeted by a DOJ investigation, all the work you didn’t do to oversee your police officers can (and will) be used against you […]
After posting the following AI-generated images, I got private replies asking the same question: “Can you tell me how you made these?” So, here I will provide the background and “how to” of creating such AI portraits, but also describe the ethical considerations and the dangers we should address right now. Background Generative AI – […]
Back in 2014, New York City officials decided they would replace the city’s dated pay phones with “information kiosks” providing free public Wi-Fi, phone calls, device charging, and a tablet for access to city services, maps and directions. The kiosks were to be funded by “context-aware” ads based on a variety of data collected from […]
There is a Korean proverb that says: “There is always a way out, look for it.” South Korea’s recent revision of its Telecommunications Business Act (TBA) might, however, be the one thing South Korea is not able to get out of, unless it abandons its plans for redistributing the monopoly power back to telecommunication providers. […]
There was an interesting post on Blind recently from an advertiser who said that, while some big name advertisers had quickly paused their advertising on Twitter while they waited to see what Elon Musk’s plans for the site were, they’ve decided to pause their $750k per month ad spend on the site after seeing what […]
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Moderation at scale is impossible. This truism has been enshrined on the pages of Techdirt. Anyone working for a platform with thousands of users — much less millions or billions of users — knows this is true. Meta, the rebrand now controlling Facebook, certainly knows this to be true. Facebook has billions of users and […]
After countless years pondering the idea, the FCC has finally announced that it’s going to politely ask the nation’s lumbering telecom monopolies to affix a sort of “nutrition label” on to broadband connections. The labels will clearly disclose the speed and latency (ping) of your connection, any hidden fees users will encounter, and whether the […]
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