Techdirt has been reporting on the rotten state of academic publishing for more than ten years. Abuses include publishers willing to publish anything for a fee, and the sale of nonsense papers so that they can be used to bulk up an academic’s CV. But the world moves on, and Nature has a report about […]
Confirmation bias. It’s expensive. Just ask David Love, who has written out a $100,000 check to two drag performers for defamatory comments he made — more than once! — while supposedly serving his constituents in his position as a New Hampshire state rep. New Hampshire residents Robert Champion, who performs under the stage name Monique […]
Earlier this year, we discussed an example of the Streisand Effect in action when a large home builder, Taylor Morrison, petitioned the Arizona Board of Technical Registration to discipline Cy Porter, a home inspector who has built up a large online following by posting videos of his inspections. He does that to educate Arizona homebuyers […]
Can the fear of students using generative AI and the rise of questionable AI “checker” tools create a culture devoid of creativity? It’s a topic that is curiously one worth delving into a bit more deeply, in part because of something that happened this weekend. Earlier this year, we had a post by Alan Kyle […]
Having completely shit the bed in its handling of a recent ransomware act, the city of Columbus, Ohio has decided the person who must be silenced — and, hopefully punished — should be the person who informed city workers and residents their PII was available on the dark web. The messenger hasn’t been shot quite […]
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In today’s episode of ‘Won’t Someone Think of the Children?!’, celebrity attorney David Boies is leading a baseless charge against Meta, claiming Instagram is inherently harmful to kids. Spoiler alert: it’s not. This one was filed last month and covered in the Washington Post, though without a link to the complaint, because the Washington Post […]
Despite the best efforts of automakers and companies like Apple, states continue to push forward with popular “right to repair” reforms that make it easier and more affordable for consumers to repair tech they own. While they vary in potency, New York, Oregon, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, and Minnesota have all now passed some flavor of right to […]
The fractured entertainment streaming environment we’re currently in continues to be a problem. Where’s that thing you want to watch? Well, not only could it be in one of a dozen places today, depending on what agreements have been worked out with content owners, but where that content can be streamed might also change in […]
In the ongoing battle between Elon Musk and the Brazilian Supreme Court, it appears that Elon was the first to blink. At least a little bit. What started to shape up as a new front in the battle, with Elon’s SpaceX defying the order to block X on its Starlink satellite internet service, crumbled on […]
When it comes to Judge Reed O’Connor, the only thing more predictable than his partisan rulings is the Supreme Court overturning them. But that hasn’t stopped him from giving the green light to Elon Musk’s ridiculous SLAPP suit against Media Matters. O’Connor’s problematic decision basically means that Elon has won. Even if the eventual case […]
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit concluded, in Anderson v. TikTok, that algorithmic recommendations aren’t protected by Section 230. Because they’re the platforms’ First Amendment-protected expression, the court reasoned, algorithms are the platforms’ “own first-party speech,” and thus fall outside Section 230’s liability shield for the publication of third-party speech. […]
Well, here’s a not-so-fun new twist in the search-and-seizure narrative. Car owners are being deprived of their vehicles just because cops think footage of a crime may have been captured by the car’s on-board cameras. Tesla’s vehicles carry more cameras than most. Added to the cars as a way to protect owners — either by […]
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Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s a good thing when political leaders go around calling for the arresting or punishing of people for their speech, even when that speech is terrible. But apparently, former Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich feels differently. Indeed, it would be nice if the leadership of either major political […]
Last March Oregon became the seventh state to pass “right to repair” legislation making it easier, cheaper, and more convenient to repair technology you own. The bill’s passage came on the heels of legislation passed in Massachusetts (in 2012 and 2020), Colorado (in 2022 and 2023), New York (2023), Minnesota, Maine and California. All told, 30 states are considering […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with a comment about Oklahoma revoking the license of a teacher who pushed back against state censorship: ‘The only acceptable political agenda in the classroom is a conservative one!’ “There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, the Ninth Circuit was putting at least some limits on warrantless device searches at the border, while the EFF sued CBP and ICE for refusing to hand over GPS tracking device policies. The judge in one of Devin Nunes’s lawsuits asked for the identity of the famous Twitter […]
In the battle between Elon Musk and Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the biggest losers are Brazilians. They are now at risk of being stripped of VPNs while facing massive fines if they somehow get around a countrywide ban on ExTwitter. Yesterday, I wrote about the standoff between Elon Musk and Brazil, and […]
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 […]
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