In the conversation about keeping kids safe online, the actual experts with the most to offer are all too often treated as outsiders and interlopers. One such expert is Candice Odgers, Professor of Psychological Science and Informatics at the University of California Irvine, who has recently been involved in a lot of debates against people […]
We’ve noted repeatedly how early attempts to integrate “AI” into journalism have proven to be a comical mess, resulting in no shortage of shoddy product, dangerous falsehoods, and plagiarism. It’s thanks in large part to the incompetent executives at many large media companies, who see AI primarily as a way to cut corners, assault unionized labor, and […]
This lawsuit might be a long shot, but it’s not completely a foregone conclusion at this point. The state of Illinois has tougher privacy laws than most states, which may factor into the judge’s decision. On the other hand, this lawsuit — filed by two Illinois residents with the assistance of the Liberty Justice Center […]
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You may have heard that yesterday the Surgeon General of the US, Vivek Murthy, announced that Congress should mandate “Surgeon General warnings” on social media, saying that it is harmful to kids. Over at the Daily Beast I went into great detail about just how far from the actual science this suggestion is. As with […]
We’ve noted repeatedly how T-Mobile simply hasn’t been the same company since its controversial 2020 merger with Sprint. All of the pre-merger concerns deal critics warned about came true, whether it was 9,000 layoffs, worse service, or higher wireless prices. Long gone is the company’s John Legere-era pretense that it was ever seriously interested in […]
Every report delivered by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division can be described as “scathing” or “damning.” There are simply no exceptions to this rule. It’s not like the Civil Rights unit picks a US law enforcement agency out of the hat and then initiates an investigation. (Maybe it should? I mean, I’m sure there’s plenty […]
Last Halloween, thousands of users for U.S. broadband provider Windstream began complaining online about the fact that their routers simply stopped working. At the time, Windstream (one of the worst ranked ISPs in the country) sent users replacement routers, but couldn’t be bothered to transparently inform customers what was happening. More than half a year […]
Clearview was probably its healthiest when it was still flying under the radar. It courted billionaires with a new facial recognition tech plaything — one capable of searching millions (and, ultimately, billions) of images for a match for any uploaded photo. The dirty secret? All of the images and data had been scraped from the […]
You know those lawsuits where you kinda hope everyone can lose? Yeah. This is one of those. Some crypto bros are suing the world’s most hated pharma bro, who jacked up prices on some essential pharmaceuticals before eventually being arrested and sentenced to jail. And the lawsuit is about a Wu-Tang album that almost no […]
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Sheriffs answer to no one but voters. Consequently, they often answer to no one. Voters tend to gravitate towards names they recognize. Sheriffs count on this form of “loyalty” to ensure years or decades at the helm of a county law enforcement agency. And this loyalty continues to pay off even when sheriffs are less […]
We’ve noted more than a few times that for all of the government’s talk about wanting to “bridge the digital divide,” it’s consistently struggled to even map where broadband access is or isn’t available. The government has spent more than $400 million on trying to map broadband access to date, and while there certainly have […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous reply to someone comparing Black History Month to white power celebrations: Black people: celebrating overcoming slavery and other historical injustices Nazis: celebrating having white skin, and committing historical injustices Idiots on the internet: “these are the same thing” In second place, it’s […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we looked at the two-sided political attacks on Section 230, while an appeals court issued a strong but easily-misrepresented Section 230 ruling, and the law was also used to begin smackin down a lawsuit from Craig Brittain. A prominent copyright troll ran away when finally challenged, the NY […]
We know cops kill dozens of dogs every day. This much has been verified by the US Department of Justice, which called it an “epidemic.” It’s not just anecdotal evidence generated by a handful of court cases. We also know most cops who kill dogs get away with it, even though multiple courts have ruled […]
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 round-up of the latest news in online […]
Whether intentional or not, the process for tech companies to fall to the process of enshittification seems to be a very real trend. The term, coined by Cory Doctorow, describes the process by which once good and useful technology platforms devolve to become worse and less useful as the owners of those platforms move on […]
Reminding everyone that racism is just a thing we do in the United States, six Rankin County deputies were indicated on criminal charges related to the literal torture of two black men. All six pleaded guilty. Deputy Hunter Elward was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison. The other officers are also currently serving prison time. […]
For not the first time, the Supreme Court seems to regard the First Amendment as secondary when it comes to cases involving some form of intellectual property. This has happened all too frequently. Perhaps most famously, in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the Court more or less said that the First Amendment gets a pass in copyright […]
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