The Fifth Circuit’s unlikely decision to side with a constitutional right that wasn’t the Second Amendment is starting to trickle down to the lower levels of the federal court system. Last August, the Fifth Circuit bucked its own cop-friendly trend by ruling that geofence warrants — warrants that demand massive amounts of geolocation data when […]
Last year Trumplicans killed a popular program that provided poor people with $30 off of their monthly broadband bill. The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) was unsurprisingly very popular, with more than 23 million Americans benefitting at its peak. At the time, the GOP claimed they were simply looking to save money. The real reason, […]
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online […]
In our recent discussion about Valve releasing the source code for Team Fortress 2, you should have noticed that that post was headlined as a “Part 1.” This post is Part 2 and is arguably way more impressive and important for a couple of reasons we’ll get into. But as a reminder, the entire reason […]
The city of Detroit finally revamped the rules for police department use of facial recognition tech last July. We’ll have to wait and see whether adding guardrails will result in fewer false arrests, but what may end up being too little definitely arrived too late for a Detroit woman who was falsely arrested by the […]
Here’s a puzzle: When does a Supreme Court justice believe courts can review executive branch decisions? The answer, at least for Justice Alito, appears to be “whenever a Democrat is president, but only then.” There is plenty of commentary making the rounds regarding yesterday’s 5-4 Supreme Court decision confirming that of course a judge can […]
The hate and stupidity continues. Emboldened by Trump’s first presidential term and his subsequent, extremely destructive return to the Oval Office, legislators with an unacknowledged preference for fascism are pushing further and further, comfortable in the uncomfortable fact that the only thing capable of stopping them is their own shame. And since they don’t have […]
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During his address to Congress this week, Donald Trump endorsed the Take It Down Act while openly declaring his plans to abuse it: “And I’m going to use that bill for myself too, if you don’t mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody.” (You might think a former president openly declaring […]
After some initial waffling, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has finally shredded his Province’s $100 million contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite broadband service. Like many politicians (and shitty c-tier comedians turned podcasters), Ford was apparently tricked into thinking that the expensive, capacity-constrained broadband service was a sort of magic bullet for rural broadband access. But […]
One of the more frustrating aspects of any conversation we have around the preservation of video games, something that is simply not being done for the most part today for the vast majority of titles created, is how easy and simple the ultimate fix is. It isn’t a secret. It’s not an arduous process. It […]
Last October, Donald Trump sued CBS claiming (falsely) that a “60 Minutes” interview of Kamala Harris had been “deceitfully edited” to her benefit (they simply shortened some of her answers for brevity, as news outlets often do). As Mike explored, the lawsuit tramples the First Amendment and editorial discretion. At the same time, Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr […]
My project thus far has been to educate you, to help you renormalize history from a common ethical center. To show you what should be abundantly clear: that simple truths, all around us, reveal things that are blatantly obvious. That we are now ruled by liars, cheaters, and men with an unbounded appetite for power. […]
It is almost difficult to believe this is a real thing that happened with the President of the United States, but here’s what actually happened on Tuesday. In the morning, Donald Trump threatened to imprison protesters and defund any university that allows certain protests. Then, that same evening, he stood before Congress and declared — […]
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I don’t know if Trump believes this is what will finally score him a Nobel Peace Prize for him to wave around as proof of his impeccable deal-making skills, but while we wait for the world to get even worse, things are going to get a little less secure here in the United States. Here’s […]
Late last year we wrote about how LA Times billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong confidently announced that he was going to use AI to display “artificial intelligence-generated ratings” of news content, while also providing “AI-generated lists of alternative political views on that issue” under each article. After he got done firing a lot of longstanding LA […]
Trademark disputes where it is very clear that the complaining party is actually concerned about something other than customer confusion are always fun. All the more so when the target is a work of fiction, with the supposedly offending content also being fictional. We saw an example of this when a software company sued Warner […]
Okay, people. You keep asking me, “Mike, but what should we do?” I am going to condescend to you now, about what you should do. The only resistance worth a damn is the one where you stop calculating the odds and start living your truth without reservation. What separates the merely clever from the genuinely […]
Support us on Patreon » We’re finally getting back into the rhythm of things, and in fact right at this very moment Mike is recording a brand new original episode for next week on the podcast — but this week, we’ve got a cross-post and a special extra treat. Mike recently once again joined Andy Levy […]
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