There are few things the government loves less than admitting wrongdoing, especially when the admission might affect multiple levels of government. That’s why nearly every settlement paid out to litigants includes a disavowment of any wrongdoing. And that’s why courts — at multiple levels — are so extremely reluctant to give possibly innocent people an […]
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It has been rumored for a while that Elon wants to remove the official “block” functionality on ExTwitter, but now it’s official. The company has announced that it will soon start rolling out a new version of “block” that no longer blocks content, only interactions. That’s ExTwitter’s engineering team saying: Soon we’ll be launching a […]
While FTC boss Lina Khan certainly has had some growing pains, she’s fought for consumer protection and antitrust reform in a way that U.S. regulators haven’t seen for the better part of a generation. Whether it’s taking on automaker privacy abuses, supporting right to repair reforms, or taking aim at Amazon’s attempt to dominate the […]
It can be easy for people to dislike the secondary market if they aren’t the ones selling into it. Commonly referred to as “scalpers”, the fact is that the secondary market is a very important part of the economy. It’s how goods retain some of their value, for instance. And when goods are sold several […]
There is simply too much going on here to pretend there’s a way to succinctly sum up what’s led us to this point in our coverage. A small Kansas newspaper’s offices, the home of its 98-year-old owner (who died shortly after the raid), and the home of Marion vice mayor Ruth Herbel were all raided […]
Over the summer we noted how the brunchlords in charge of Paramount (CBS) decided to eliminate decades of MTV News journalism and Comedy Central history as part of their ongoing and utterly mindless “cost saving” efforts. It was just the latest casualties in an ever-consolidating and very broken U.S. media business routinely run by some of the least competent […]
Of course, Elon Musk had to take Twitter private. If he had to answer to shareholders, he would have been ousted months ago for his systematic, single-minded destruction of the company’s value. Pretty much every move he’s made has been some level of bad, ranging from confusing to annoying to infuriating to catastrophic. Alienating long-term […]
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When Congress passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) in 1994, they were assured by then-FBI Director Louis Freeh that the mandated wiretap backdoors posed no security risks. Fast forward to today, following the news of a massive CALEA hack and Senator Ron Wyden is reminding the DOJ of that history, while urging […]
I’ve written extensively that U.S. broadband is slow, spotty, and expensive thanks to regulatory capture and regional monopoly power. Republicans have propped up this broken status quo at every opportunity, routinely working to undermine state and federal consumer protection, while letting companies like AT&T and Comcast quite literally write terrible state and federal telecom law. […]
There’s no evidence anywhere that even remotely suggests registered sex offenders leverage Halloween to lure victims to their homes. It’s just as untrue and ridiculous as the annual assertions people are lacing (cheap) candy with (expensive) drugs for… well, those reasons go completely unexplored. Sex offenders are already subject to a considerable number of restrictions, […]
We’re coming right up to the election here in America, so it is obviously time for all kinds of intellectual property strife surrounding political campaigns and advocacy groups. We see all kinds of ways these disputes happen, from campaigns making use of music at rallies, to political ads that use music, up to and including […]
As far back as 2017, Techdirt was warning that robot vacuum cleaners represented a threat to privacy. In that instance, it concerned the possibility that iRobot, makers of the robot vacuum Roomba, might sell the data that its device collected about the size and layout of a home. Five years later, it was becoming clear […]
How should we feel when an AI journalist operation falsely accuses someone of murder? How about if the person falsely accused is a public figure? I know there are some questions lately about where liability should land when an AI system hallucinates, but here it seems pretty clear who is at fault: a nonsense peddling […]
A couple of years ago, private prison giant CoreCivic decided it had had enough. It went to court to secure an order blocking noted First Amendment lawyer Daniel Horwitz from talking about it. Horwitz was then currently engaged in multiple lawsuits against the private prison company, the most prominent being his representation of the family […]
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There is a widely believed but totally false claim by Trumpists that the “Biden administration” told Twitter to “censor” the NY Post article about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop four years ago. Indeed, just a few weeks ago, Donald Trump himself accused the Biden administration of doing as much: Of course, in 2020 Donald […]
A favorite tactic of U.S. corporations looking to dismantle consumer protection reforms (or anything they don’t like, really) is to create entirely fake consumer groups custom-built to confuse voters and journalists. Such groups are usually used in combination with think tanks and other pseudo-objective organizations to muddy the waters, confuse constituents, and mislead the press […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is DisgruntledAnonymous with a comment on our post about Elon Musk seizing people’s Twitter accounts to promote Donald Trump: This just solidified my decision to delete and deactivate my accounts (primary and burner) on that site. I would advise those who haven’t fallen into the […]
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