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Streaming’s Slow Enshittification Continues As Netflix Kicks Users Off Cheapest Ad-Free Tiers

9 months 1 week ago
We’ve illustrated repeatedly how as streaming subscriber growth has slowed, streaming giants have had to pivot to some bad industry habits to ensure Wall Street gets those sweet improved quarterly returns. That’s included everything from utterly pointless layoff-creating mergers and price hikes, to annoying new restrictions and a steady increase in ads (that you have […]
Karl Bode

Phoenix PD, Union Already Complaining About DOJ Consent Decree That Hasn’t Even Been Served Yet

9 months 1 week ago
As all DOJ investigations of law enforcement agencies are, the one targeting the Phoenix, Arizona Police Department was scathing in its assessment of the department’s officers and tactics. It led off with this, before providing graphic details covering everything from routine abuse of force to unchecked biased policing that led the DOJ to conclude “PhxPD […]
Tim Cushing

Techdirt Podcast Episode 397: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality

9 months 1 week ago
It was over six years ago when we last had Renée DiResta on the podcast for a detailed discussion about misinformation and disinformation on social media. Since then, she’s not only led extensive research on the subject, she’s also become a central figure in the fever-dream conspiracy theories of online disinformation peddlers. Her new book […]
Leigh Beadon

Daily Deal: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro

9 months 1 week ago
Microsoft Windows 11 Pro is designed with the modern professional in mind. Whether you are a developer who needs a secure platform, an artist seeking a seamless experience, or an entrepreneur needing to stay connected effortlessly, Windows 11 Pro is your solution. This version is designed for PCs that need a new license for Windows […]
Gretchen Heckmann

The Corrupt Supreme Court Makes A Reckless Mess Of Broadband Consumer Protection (And Everything Else)

9 months 1 week ago
The Supreme Court issued a recent ruling that could take an absolute wrecking ball to everything from consumer protection and environmental reform to public safety. It was a ruling that dismantled decades of precedent and puts nearly all regulatory enforcement efforts at risk, yet it somehow barely warranted much coverage by a largely disinterested, billionaire-owned […]
Karl Bode

Clarence Thomas Learned Nothing From The Mess He Helped Create Regarding Section 230, Blogs Ignorantly About 230 Yet Again

9 months 1 week ago
Have we considered giving Supreme Court justices their own blogs in which they can vent their ill-informed brain farts, rather than leaving them to use official Supreme Court order lists as a form of a blog? Justice Clarence Thomas has been the absolute worst on this front, using various denials of certiorari on other topics […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The Ultimate Adobe CC Training Bundle

9 months 1 week ago
The Ultimate Adobe CC Training Bundle has 12 courses to help you get the most out of the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. Courses cover Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, After Effects, and more. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Big Telecom Eyes More Broadband Usage Caps (And A Tax On Big Tech) As Revenues Sag

9 months 1 week ago
Things aren’t too exciting if you’re a telecom executive right now. All the hype in tech is singularly fixated on the more headline catching, stock fluffing, and usually very broken aspects of “AI.” 5G, hyped as a transformative world changing tech by overly eager telecom marketing departments, wound up being a consumer dud that users […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

9 months 1 week ago
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment on our post about clarifying robots.txt in the age of AI crawlers: As I understand it, the crux of the debate is that AI tools are not making bulk requests to servers. They’re making very limited requests to specific pages based […]
Leigh Beadon

This Week In Techdirt History: June 30th – July 6th

9 months 1 week ago
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, the Wall Street Journal came out with an op-ed in defense of Section 230, while we wrote about implementation questions around the few good parts of the EU Copyright Directive. A California college decided to start targeting its own student newspaper with public records requests, and a Massachusetts […]
Leigh Beadon