Last week, we told the story of how the Communications Decency Act came to be. On this week’s episode of Otherwise Objectionable, we look at how it quickly went down in flames — except, of course, for the all-important Section 230. Episode 5: Blowback, and the Dust Settles Just four months after being signed into […]
I’m not going to rehash the entire recent history of book bans/book challenges in this nation. Suffice to say that ever since Trump first took office in 2017, there’s been a significant increase in the number of suddenly “concerned” citizens seeking to remove books from libraries and a corresponding, equally-significant increase in legislation seeking to […]
A second child has died from measles. And RFK Jr. attended the funeral. Kennedy said in a social media post that he was working to “control the outbreak” and went to Gaines County to comfort the families who have buried two young children. He was seen late Sunday afternoon outside of a Mennonite church where the funeral […]
For someone who claims he single-handedly “brought free speech back,” Donald Trump sure spends a lot of time trying to silence speech he doesn’t like. His latest attempt just got demolished by one of his own hand-picked judges, as Judge Trevor McFadden ruled against the administration for its blatantly retaliatory ban of Associated Press reporters […]
The 2025 Canva Bundle has six courses to help you learn about graphic design. From logo design to business cards to branding to bulk content creation, these courses have you covered. It’s on sale for $25. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals […]
Don’t let the White House (or the media!) get away with calling trafficking people they don’t like to foreign slave labor camps “deportation.” As we’ve noted, deportation involves due process. It also (by definition) means removing a foreigner from a country. As we’ve covered lately, the government’s belief that it can engage in human trafficking […]
Nearly every modern medical treatment can be traced to research funded by the National Institutes of Health: from over-the-counter and prescription medications that treat high cholesterol and pain to protection from infectious diseases such as polio and smallpox. The remarkable successes of the decades-old partnership between biomedical research institutions and the federal government are so intertwined with daily life that it’s easy […]
There are obviously a wide range of philosophies companies have when it comes to both intellectual property and modding communities that tend to spring up around successful video games. Some are jealous protectors of all things IP, which is generally a giant mistake that limits the reach, the fun, and the engagement these companies should […]
One of the many interesting aspects of the new wave of artificial intelligence systems is that with them, copyright has moved from the fringe to center stage. There are continuing debates about what role copyright should play in the world of generative AI, not to mention various lawsuits asking the courts to rule on that […]
T-Mobile has long been a hot mess on issues of security and privacy. Distracted by its problematic merger with Sprint, T-Mobile was hacked eight times in less than five years, leaking oodles of sensitive customer information onto the open web. The company was also a key player in gobbling up user sensitive location data to […]
Welcome to the arena, Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society! Here’s your Streisand Beachfront Property commemorative dinner plates which, we must inform you, contain massive amounts of lead and should never, for any reason, be used as dinner plates. PTK (as its abbreviated everywhere, even by the “society” itself) considers itself to be above the frat […]
No coding experience? This is the course for you. Whether you’ve dabbled in HTML or never touched a single line of code in your life, the Complete Web Developer Bootcamp will prepare you to take on programming jobs big and small. From basic CSS styling to popular frameworks like Bootstrap, this training will help you […]
Every little thing the current administration does furthers the ultimate goals of Trump and his enablers: homogenization of the population and elevation of Trump to the position of a demigod. While a lot of that was on display during his first term, the massive acceleration of these efforts during the first few months of Trump […]
The Supreme Court yesterday effectively provided the executive branch with a technical manual for legally disappearing people to foreign slave labor camps. While claiming to require “due process,” the Court’s ruling dismantles real protections by treating fundamental human rights violations as mere procedural technicalities that can be overcome with minimal paperwork. We’ve been covering this […]
We came a bit too close to losing one of the most important First Amendment protections in American history — but at least for now we have a tiny bit of good news. Billionaire Steve Wynn, joining a growing chorus of the wealthy and powerful who want to make it easier to sue critics into […]
Last week, Mike put together a detailed post explaining the Trump tariff rollout, how the calculations for it were built, some of the more idiotic aspects of it, and basically how stupid the whole program is. If you haven’t read the whole thing, you really should. If you want the briefest of summaries: Trump based […]
Some days, you just have to take the small victories. As the Trump Administration continues to barrage the nation with every terrible thing it can think of doing, it’s clear there’s no level of reprisal capable of keeping pace. This is one of the small victories, even if it — at first glance — it […]
More than a decade ago, Congress tried to pass SOPA and PIPA—two sweeping bills that would have allowed the government and copyright holders to quickly shut down entire websites based on allegations of piracy. The backlash was immediate and massive. Internet users, free speech advocates, and tech companies flooded lawmakers with protests, culminating in an “Internet Blackout” […]
A fusion of authoritarianism and corporatism is destroying what’s left of U.S. federal consumer protection. Whether by dodgy Supreme Court ruling, executive order, or captured regulators, the U.S. right, often in lockstep with consolidated corporate power, are making massive, historic, and potentially irreversible inroads in destroying federal corporate oversight, labor protections, public safety provisions, environmental […]
In what might be the most perfectly on-brand Elon Musk move yet, at the end of March on a Friday evening, Elon Musk suddenly declared that xAI, his AI company that was always connected at the hip with X (which we’d been calling ExTwitter to avoid confusion), was officially “acquiring” X at a valuation of […]
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