I really used to love our series of posts on how companies and content creators can build more revenue and loyalty with their customers through what we called the “Connect with Fans and a Reason to Buy” philosophy. Shortened to “Cwf+RtB,” the idea is that by treating fans in an awesome and human way, concerns […]
You can’t say that Elon Musk hasn’t gotten his money’s worth after spending $277 million to help buy Donald Trump an election victory (that’s not including the $44 billion Musk spent on turning Twitter into a right wing propaganda mill). The end of the numerous investigations into labor, environmental, and consumer fraud abuses alone have […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. One of Elon Musk’s employees is earning between $100,001 and $1 million annually as a political adviser to his billionaire boss while simultaneously helping to dismantle the federal agency that regulates two of Musk’s biggest companies, according to court records and a financial disclosure report obtained by ProPublica. […]
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FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson begged Donald Trump for his job by promising he would “end Lina Khan’s politically motivated investigations.” And, yet, one of his first orders of business upon getting the job was to… kick off a politically motivated investigation regarding “big tech censorship,” which he (falsely) claimed was potentially illegally targeting conservative speech […]
Last week we noted how Trump illegally declared he was killing the $2.75 billion Digital Equity Act. The law, passed as part of the infrastructure bill, was slated to bring millions in new broadband grants and digital literacy tools to Americans of all kinds long stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide. The […]
I would love to say that it feels like the era of RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary is starting to come to an end, but that would be optimistic in the extreme. Still, I think we’re starting to see the edges fray a bit and it’s no surprise as to why. Kennedy has overseen budget, […]
Every so often, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court will surprise you with a well-reasoned decision that cuts against the grain of its usual pro-cop, pro-censorship, pro-“conservative values” output. This one, brought to us by Raffi Melkonian, unfortunately isn’t one of those exceptions. This one is more aligned with the rule. This potential class-action lawsuit, brought […]
Within the next decade, generative AI could join computers and electricity as one of the most transformational technologies in history, with all of the promise and peril that implies. Governments’ responses to GenAI—including new legal precedents—need to thoughtfully address real-world harms without destroying the public benefits GenAI can offer. Unfortunately, the U.S. Copyright Office’s rushed draft report on AI […]
The rushed adoption of half-cooked automation in America’s already broadly broken media and journalism industry continues to go smashingly, thanks for asking. U.S. media companies have long been at the forefront of managerial dysfunction. More recently, that mismanagement has taken the form of wave after wave of “AI” scandals, ranging from getting busted for using […]
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So powerful. And yet, sooooo sensitive. Washington Post columnist Philip Bump asked a simple question: why are so many ICE agents covering their faces when disappearing people from US city streets? Pointing to the extremely disturbing arrest of Turkish PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk over her criticism of her university for its Israel-Palestine conflict stance, Bump […]
At a time when mainstream media continues to struggle with calling out Trump’s censorial power grabs for what they are, John Oliver just devoted an entire segment to exposing what Techdirt readers already know: Donald Trump’s administration has been waging a direct and sustained assault on free speech and the First Amendment, with FCC chairman […]
We’ve talked about how, in the digital space at least, the concept of “ownership” has undergone a massive philisophical shift. It used to be that you would go out somewhere, buy a thing, and own that thing. When the product is digital, however, or if it is connected to the internet and subject to firmware […]
Afew weeks ago, the UK’s regional and national daily news titles ran similar front covers, exhorting the government there to “Make it Fair.” The campaign Web site explained: Tech companies use creative content, such as news articles, books, music, film, photography, visual art, and all kinds of creative work, to train their generative AI models. Publishers and […]
Our Secretary of Homeland Security, tasked with overseeing the detention of thousands of people, doesn’t understand one of the most fundamental protections against unlawful imprisonment in our legal system. And we’re not talking about some obscure technical detail — we’re talking about habeas corpus, a basic right that’s been around since the Magna Carta. Kristi […]
The DEA may not be an early adopter of forward-looking policies, but it certainly leads the pack when it comes to shedding accountability like a teen ditching an ill-fitting sports coat the instant a family portrait session has wrapped up. Federal law enforcement agencies definitely trailed the trends when it came to body cam use […]
Here’s a question about the First Amendment and social media companies that used to just be in the realm of crazy law school hypotheticals: What makes social media sites “state actors” subject to constitutional constraints? For years, we heard from some that merely talking to government officials was enough — at least according to Vivek […]
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For years, the DHS has been expanding its intrusive surveillance of anyone attempting to enter this country. (It has also expanded this to include people leaving the country.) The current onboarding procedure for US entry includes demands for account passwords and deep dives into devices carried by migrants, visitors, asylum seekers, and anyone else CBP […]
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