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A month ago we wrote about Google effectively “pulling up the ladder” on the open internet by embracing age verification mandates as part of a regulatory approach to child safety. As we pointed out at the time, this is bizarre and stupid for a variety of reasons, but also not too surprising. It’s bizarre because […]
For decades, the FCC has maintained an arguably pathetic definition of “broadband,” allowing the telecom industry to under-deliver substandard access. And despite some new rhetoric from the agency under Biden, that doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon. Broadband was originally defined as any 200 kbps connection. In 2010, that pathetic definition was changed to […]
I don’t know what it is about US law enforcement culture, but it far too often seems to be that officers deployed to help people choose to hurt people instead. When people are suffering mental distress, cops become first responders. Unlike other first responders, like EMTs or firefighters, the desire to harm tends to surpass […]
With almost zero public notice, the Board of Supervisors of Marin County, California (just to the north of San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge) is on the verge of approving tomorrow a demand by the county sheriff’s department to install license plate cameras throughout the county. As a county resident, I object. My comment […]
We’ve noted how the GOP’s obsession with TikTok is… weird and superficial. Guys like Ted Cruz or Brendan Carr will suffer absolute embolisms about TikTok (and TikTok only) to get on cable news where they’ll be portrayed as good faith privacy reformers. While simultaneously refusing to pass a privacy law or regulate dodgy data brokers […]
Facial recognition tech has slowly gone mainstream over the past half-decade. Not just in acceptance, but also in opposition. Kashmir Hill exposed perhaps the worst purveyor of this tech — Clearview — with a series of articles exposing the company’s tactics as well as its far right backers. Clearview has managed to become a pariah […]
Luminar Neo is an easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative AI-driven tools. Luminar Neo was built from the ground up to be different from previous Luminar editors. It keeps your favorite LuminarAI tools and expands your arsenal with more state-of-the-art technologies and important changes at […]
We’ve already discussed the extremely censorial nature of ExTwitter’s lawsuit against Media Matters for accurately describing ads from major brands that appeared next to explicitly neoNazi content. The lawsuit outright admits that Media Matters did, in fact, see those ads next to that content. Its main complaint is that Elon is mad that he thinks […]
Two years ago the state of California unveiled a major broadband plan that, among other things, aims to spend $3.5 billion to create a massive, open access “middle mile” fiber network in a bid to boost competition. It’s part of a broader quest to make broadband both more affordable and more competitive (see our Copia report from last year discussing the […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a simple comment about Elon Musk’s extremely terrible lawsuit against Media Matters: Of course, as you know firsthand, a suit doesn’t have to have any merit to make life miserable for its targets. In second place, it’s Mechanical Rhizome with a comment […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2018, the government agreed to delete data copied from a traveler’s phone after being hit with a “motion for return of property” while, in something of an inverse situation, prosecutors charged a suspect with evidence tampering after a seized iPhone was remotely wiped. Cord-cutting was setting more records while […]
Given that the overwhelming majority of DMCA takedown notices are generated by copyright bots that are only moderately good at their job, at best, perhaps it’s not terribly surprising that these bots keep finding new and interesting ways to cause collateral damage unintentionally. From publishers taking down YouTubers because of an oopsie to Viacom DMCAing […]
For years we’ve talked about the growing threat of SIM hijacking, which involves a criminal covertly porting out your phone number from right underneath your nose (quite often with the help of bribed or conned wireless carrier employees). Once they have your phone identity, they have access to most of your personal accounts secured by two-factor […]
It’s somewhat incredible when you look at the full story, but once again, the DOJ has failed in its attempt to claim that Backpage founder/editor Michael Lacey was facilitating sex trafficking with the site. They did convict him on one count of money laundering, for transferring $16.5 million to a bank in Hungary right around […]
In Italy, an age-verification coalition against porn is getting traction. On September 4th, the Minister of Family Eugenia Roccella, representing the right-wing majority, initiated consultations for introducing a law to prevent minors from accessing pornographic content. On November 13th, the Democratic Party (currently the main opposition party) presented the Digital Innovation Act, whose Article 17 aims to prevent minors from accessing […]
There are few moves that make reporting more credible than suing the reporter for defamation and losing. It not only revives the negative reporting that might have faded into the white noise of constant internet churn, but also exposes the plaintiff as someone unable to handle being the subject of factual reporting. The Streisand Effect, […]
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Over the last few years, we’ve highlighted study after study after study showing that, contrary to the public narrative, claims by politicians, the media, and plaintiffs in many, many lawsuits, the actual evidence just does not show at all that social media/internet is doing damage to kids. In a recent post we highlighted just a […]
We’ve noted many times how the GOP’s obsession with TikTok is stupid, performative, and utterly hollow. For example, the party desperately wants to ban TikTok for “privacy reasons,” yet consistently opposes passing privacy laws, or regulating data brokers that traffic in far more data — at a far greater international scale — than TikTok executives […]
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