For decades, major U.S. wireless providers have collected sensitive customer movement and location data (often down to the meter), then sold it to a long list of random dipshits — usually without bothering to clearly inform customers or get their consent. Five years ago, this resulted in folks like stalkers and people pretending to be law enforcement abusing said […]
While members of Congress waste time grandstanding about “censorship” and politicians threaten to jail tech executives for their moderation choices, actual trust & safety teams are quietly doing work that saves lives in active war zones. But you’d never know it from all the political theater. That’s why we’ve partnered with the International Committee of […]
I have not written at all about Charlie Kirk in the wake of his disgusting murder, so allow me a bit of throat clearing. When I learned of his murder, my reaction was to be both depressed and a bit sick to my stomach. I’m under no illusions about who Kirk was, what he stood […]
The Supreme Court pulled off another shadow docket masterpiece this week, granting Trump’s request to keep FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter fired while simultaneously pretending they haven’t already made up their minds about whether presidents can ignore 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent. What makes this particularly brazen is that the Court is allowing Trump to violate […]
After the Sept. 10, 2025, assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump claimed that radical leftist groups foment political violence in the U.S., and “they should be put in jail.” “The radical left causes tremendous violence,” he said, asserting that “they seem to do it in a bigger way” than groups on the right. […]
The regime that controls the nation and constantly shoves it towards the next constitutional crisis is at it again. And by “it,” I mean complaining that people aren’t nicer to it. Yes, the deliberately antagonistic Trump administration can dish it out, but it definitely can’t take it. That has resulted in this latest bit of […]
Discover the future of AI with the ChatGPT and Gemini AI Advanced Course. Harness the power of cutting-edge tools like ChatGPT, Gemini AI, GPT 3.5, GPT 4, Bard, DALL-E 2, and more. Transform your creative process, boost productivity, and explore limitless possibilities in text, image, video, and audio generation. Dive into hands-on learning and real-world […]
Look, if you want to cut to the chase: the lawyers working for Google and Meta know that the MAGA world is very, very stupid and very, very gullible, and it’s very, very easy to tell them something that they know will be interpreted as a “victory” while actually signaling something very, very different. You […]
The Secret Service says it has uncovered what it’s calling “a network of electronic devices located throughout the New York Tri-state area that were used to conduct multiple telecommunications-related threats directed towards senior U.S. government officials.” The news was announced, in part, over at the right wing propaganda website run by an overt white supremacist […]
If we were to play a Techdirt word association game where you say the first thing that comes to your mind when I say “Nintendo,” the answer had better be “intellectual property bully” for most regular readers here. If not, well, I specifically haven’t done my job very well. Nintendo is incredibly protective and litigious […]
We’ve repeated over and over again that anyone who believes Donald Trump’s claims of supporting free speech is either a brainwashed cultist or the dumbest person alive. And now, in his doddering old age, he’s becoming ever more brazen and belligerent in his attacks on speech. He’s not even trying to put forth a veneer […]
Brendan Carr is fairly typical of a far right wing zealot, in that he has absolutely no compulsion about lying, constantly, about everything. The latest case in point: Brendan Carr is trying to pretend he didn’t abuse FCC power and break the law to try and censor a comedian critical of our mad, idiot king. […]
Everything’s a purge in this administration. The Defense Department — now absurdly referred to by the administration as the “Department of War” — is headed by a guy no one really seems to respect and who has the unfortunate habit of ignoring OPSEC 101 at every opportunity. Pete Hegseth is the victim of self-inflicted wounds […]
Visual Studio Professional 2022 is a fully featured development environment. Their first 64-bit IDE makes it easier to work with even bigger projects and more complex workloads. Enhance your productivity, write high-quality code, and re-imagine collaboration with an advanced suite of tools and built-in integrations to tackle the most challenging development workflows and deliver innovative […]
Since we know that FCC Chair Brendan Carr sometimes reads what we write here at Techdirt, I figured I’d post this one just for him and hopes that he watches it, seeing as we know that, thanks to his own mafioso-like tactics, his good friends at Sinclair Broadcasting (along with Nexstar) refused to show Jimmy […]
The flood of outrage at the Disney/FCC cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel ultimately forced the company to retreat and put Kimmel back on the air. Disney apparently didn’t much like the wave of folks cancelling their Disney+ streaming video subscriptions in response to the government and a major corporation coordinating a frontal assault on the First […]
The latest generation of AI systems, based on large language models (LLMs), is perceived as the biggest threat in decades to the established copyright order. The scale of that threat can be gauged by the flurry of AI lawsuits that publishers and others have launched against generative AI companies. Since the first of these, reported here […]
Back in April, RFK Jr. committed publicly to firmly knowing the cause of autism by September of this year. In May, Donald Trump himself weighed in with the already baked conclusion that autism doesn’t “occur naturally” and therefore must have some environmental cause. Both statements were absurd at the time. Autism causes have been studied […]
Support us on Patreon » Last week, we published three separate posts that looked at the FTC’s recent settlement with Aylo, the parent company of multiple adult websites including, most famously, Pornhub. Those posts, written by Stanford HAI policy fellow Riana Pfefferkorn, examined the legally complicated but very important issues that arise from the settlement forcing […]
ICE made the bed and now California law enforcement officers have to lie in it. The flashpoint of ICE backlash occurred in Los Angeles, as Trump’s mass deportation desires manifested itself in the form of masked officers chasing day laborers through Home Depot parking lots. As protests ensued, ICE officers continued to operate without face […]
stLouIST