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Over and over again, we see politicians browbeat companies until they agree to support terrible legislation. Back when FOSTA was being debated, there was tremendous pressure from the media and Congress for tech to support it, falsely claiming that without it they were enabling sex trafficking. Eventually, after a ton of pressure was put on […]
When last we checked in with Hewlett Packard (HP), the company had just been sued (for the second time) for crippling customer printers if owners attempt to use cheaper, third-party printer cartridges. It was just the latest in a long saga where printer manufacturers use DRM or dodgy software updates to wage all out war […]
This week, both our top comments on the insightful side come in response to our post about the misrepresentation of Ben Franklin’s opinion on content moderation by private platforms. In first place, it’s an anonymous commenter with some clarification: So you, too, are unable to comprehend pretty basic sentences. Franklin is explaining that he can […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we took a close look at an interesting and challenging case about Section 230, while Google asked the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling about copyright in APIs. We wrote about the decline in broadband network investment post-net-neutrality despite promises from Ajit Pai and the telecoms. US media […]
The mice finally agreed how they wanted the cat to behave, and congratulated each other on the difficult consensus. They celebrated in lavish cheese island retreats and especially feted those brave heroes who promised to place the bells and controls.The heroes received generous funding, with which they first built a safe fortress in which to […]
As you may recall, Utah was the first of a bunch of states to pass one of the now increasingly popular laws trying to ban kids from social media. Utah legislators knew they’d get sued over it, and for that reason set a date for the law to go into effect in March of this […]
The FBI’s counter-terrorism work has always been noted for its willingness to radicalize people just to arrest them. The FBI has a lot of wins in the win column, but many of those wins have been obtained through… well, let’s call it what it is: cheating. People with mental issues or deep wells of insecurity […]
Okay, look, this post is basically a repost of a post from two years ago. But, because David Mamet has decided to refile the exact same amicus brief he filed for the 5th Circuit again at the Supreme Court, I figured we can repost the same exact post ripping it apart (with a few tiny […]
There’s not much that’s more inadvertently hilarious than the efforts of law enforcement officials to convince the general public that simply being in the immediate area of fentanyl could result in instant death. That’s not how drugs work. Drugs need to be ingested. While some drugs can obviously be absorbed through the skin, it takes […]
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Nikko D’Ambrosio has had a pretty rough week, but apparently that’s not going to stop him from texting the court from a new number. You may recall this dude bro from the Chicago area, for his decision to sue basically everyone he could think of after a few women he dated wrote about their experiences […]
Neither the FCC nor FTC has a particularly good track record of standing up to broadband and cable giants when it comes to their longstanding track record of anticompetitive behavior, price gouging, or nickel-and-diming their often captive customers with bogus, hidden fees. Though occasionally one of the two agencies does step in to try make […]
When it comes to copyright suits or conflicts that never should have existed, one of the most common misunderstandings that births them is not understanding the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law. Even to most laypeople, once you explain it, it’s quite simple. You can copyright a specific expression of something, such as literature, recorded music, […]
In our continuing Error 402 series on the monetization of web content, we’ve been talking a lot about things that haven’t worked and a few things that have (kinda?) worked, but not in a particularly appealing way (ads, mainly). We will eventually get to more examples of things that are working — along with some […]
We’ve got a nice fresh live recording for you today! Just yesterday, Mike was at the Knight Foundation’s INFORMED Conference to participate in a panel discussion with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, moderated by former Twitter Trust & Safety head Yoel Roth. The subject was decentralized and federated social media, especially its implications for content moderation, […]
It seems that if anything has gone wrong in the world, ignorant and foolish politicians have a readymade scapegoat: it’s all social media’s fault. NYC Mayor Eric Adams is facing a pretty big list of crises, some of his own making. He’s facing what appears to be a pretty serious corruption investigation. He’s cutting a […]
Pretty much every law enforcement agency gets exactly what it wants during budget discussions. The spending on policing always seems to increase, despite years of diminishing returns. The money flows in, but very little flows back out in terms of community relations, accountability, or transparency. In recent years, there have been discussions about “defunding” law […]
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Well, here’s a weird one. I was going through the various amicus briefs filed in support of the governments of Texas and Florida’s ability to tell websites that they must host speech that violates their rules, and, damn, there are some ridiculous ones (more posts coming on that front soon…). However, one of them — […]
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