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Latest posts by Techdirt @techdirt.com.web.brid.gy

Trump Administration Using Gross Video Game Footage To Cheerlead Its War Efforts We should all know by now that this iteration of the Trump administration absolutely loves using pop culture imagery, including that of video games, to help message its horrible policies. Want to gloat about ICE terrorizing American cities and generally pissing everyone off when they’re not too busy perforating innocents? Let’s use images from Pokémon […]
06.03.2026 03:59 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Ctrl-Alt-Speech: The (Content Moderation) Eras Tour 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 a special episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Ben and Mike discuss […]
05.03.2026 23:35 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
OpenAI Rewrites Contract, Anthropic Returns to Negotiate—The Chaos Continues In less than a week, the Pentagon blacklisted an AI company for having ethics, declared it a supply chain risk, watched its preferred replacement face a massive user revolt, and then sat down to amend the replacement’s contract to address the very concerns the blacklisted company had been raising all along. Meanwhile, the blacklisted company […]
05.03.2026 21:38 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Kristi Noem Misled Congress About Corey Lewandowski’s Role In DHS Contracts This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem misled Congress on Tuesday about the powers of her controversial top aide Corey Lewandowski, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and four current and former DHS officials. Lewandowski has an unusual role at DHS, where he is not a paid government […]
05.03.2026 20:02 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Judges To AG Pam Bondi: It’s OK For The Gov’t To Dox People, But Not OK For People To Dox Gov’t Employees? Yet another one to add to the “it’s OK if we do it” file for the Trump administration. This administration is cool with censoring speech, nationalizing elections, seizing the means of production, and blackmailing law firms and universities. It would be heated AF if any other administration did these things, but since it’s the one […]
05.03.2026 19:01 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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05.03.2026 18:56 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Section 230 Isn’t The Problem: Debating The Law On The Majority Report Section 230 remains one of the most misunderstood laws in America, and that misunderstanding keeps producing policy proposals that would make the internet worse, not better. Last year, I wrote a lengthy response to reporter Brian Reed’s claims about Section 230, and this week Sam Seder brought us both onto The Majority Report to hash […]
05.03.2026 17:26 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
FCC Approves Cox, Charter Merger On Condition They Promise To Be More Racist Hey look everyone! More of that famous populism Trump rode into power on! The Trump FCC has announced they’re rubber stamping the approval of a merger between two of the nation’s biggest cable companies (Charter, Cox), creating the biggest cable company in the U.S. Struggling Americans were surely clamoring in support of their local shitty […]
05.03.2026 13:30 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
ACIP To Discuss COVID ‘Vaccine Injuries’ Next Month, Despite That Not Being In Its Purview It was plainly obvious when RFK Jr. decided to fully remake ACIP, the CDC committee that advises the nation on immunization schedules and practices, that it was done so to place Kennedy sycophants that would enact his batshit theories on vaccinations. ACIP, now chockablock with anti-vaxxer, anti-science grift-gremlins, has been slowly chipping away at decades […]
05.03.2026 03:55 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Trump Officials Attended a Summit Of Election Deniers Who Want The President To Take Over The Midterms This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms. According to videos, photos and social media […]
04.03.2026 23:32 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
FTC Admits Age Verification Violates Children’s Privacy Law, Decides To Just Ignore That We’ve been pointing out the fundamental contradiction at the heart of mandatory age verification laws for years now. To verify someone’s age online, you have to collect personal data from them. If that someone turns out to be a child, congratulations: you’ve just collected personal data from a child without parental consent. Which is a […]
04.03.2026 20:59 👍 0 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Judge Says He’s Sick Of The Government’s Shit; Threatens To Make DHS, DOJ Testify Under Oath Of course, we’ll see what comes of this, but it’s starting to look like this administration won’t outlast this level of judicial scrutiny. It may have bullied its way past courts during Trump’s first year back in office, but now lines are being drawn. Whether or not those lines matter is an open question. But […]
04.03.2026 18:52 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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04.03.2026 18:47 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
The Trump Administration Just Admitted Its War On Law Firms Was A Bluff. The Cowards Who Folded Already Paid The Price. We’ve said it over and over again on this site: when you stand up to the bully, the bully backs down. When you capitulate, you get nothing but a permanent stain and an invitation for more abuse. And here we are again. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration plans to abandon […]
04.03.2026 17:25 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Brendan Carr Can’t Explain Why ‘Equal Time’ Rule Doesn’t Apply To Right Wing Radio We’ve noted repeatedly how Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr has been abusing the FCC’s “equal opportunity” (or “equal time”) rule to try and threaten daytime and late night talk shows with government retribution if they refuse to enthusiastically coddle Republicans. Late night shows had historically been exempt from the dated rules, which required that any […]
04.03.2026 13:26 👍 22 🔁 19 💬 1 📌 1
OPM Musical Artist Gets Copyright Notice For Performing His Own Song It’s a tale as old as time, assuming time began a decade or two ago. A music artist who just wants to make and perform their craft gets on the internet and performs the song he or she created, only to receive some version of a copyright notice or warning, confusing the hell out of […]
04.03.2026 04:12 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Fuck ICE Says West Virginia Court, Threatening Fines And Contempt Charges The administration has burnt the “presumption of regularity” to a crispness normally reserved for conquered bridges succumbing to heat death. It is now well known that the Trump administration will do whatever it wants to do, whether or not it’s supported by law. And when the courts push back, the administration responds with implicit “fuck […]
03.03.2026 23:07 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Rubio To World: Stop Doing The Exact Same Thing The US Just Did The State Department wants US diplomats to fight data localization around the world. The policy position is correct. It’s just that the messenger has spent the last few months systematically destroying every reason anyone might listen. Reuters has an exclusive report on a State Department cable ordering US diplomats to lobby against data sovereignty and […]
03.03.2026 21:00 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Minnesota Judge Shuts Down DHS’s Attempt To Expel Thousands Of Refugees The Trump administration is purposefully cruel. That much cannot be argued, not when it has deliberately sent deportees to foreign torture prisons, dumped them in war-torn countries with histories of human rights abuses, and stranded people its has been ordered to release far from home without their IDs, phones, or money. This regime loves to […]
03.03.2026 18:59 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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03.03.2026 18:54 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Ron Wyden Is Begging His Colleagues To Stop Trying To Hand Trump A Censorship Weapon We’ve been writing about Section 230 for a very long time. We’ve written about why it matters, why the people attacking it are wrong, and why most of the proposed “reforms” would make the internet dramatically worse for everyone except the already powerful. And for just about as long as we’ve been doing that, Senator […]
03.03.2026 17:24 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
GOP “Antitrust Concerns” Magically Disappear Now That Larry Ellison Is Buying Warner Brothers You might have noticed that when Netflix was attempting to acquire Warner Brothers, Republicans were suddenly and uncharacteristically interested in media consolidation and antitrust reform. Republican AGs threatened investigation. The Trump DOJ launched a (fake) antitrust inquiry. Senator Mike Lee scheduled a hearing where he’d planned to press Netflix on the competitive impacts of the […]
03.03.2026 13:27 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
The Return Of Measles Is Bad. A Polio Comeback Would Be So, So Much Worse We’ve talked a lot about the resurgence of measles in America over the past 14 or so months, and for good reason. It’s a horrible disease of historic significance. Equally historic was America achieving elimination status of the measles 26 years ago, only to see that almost certainly fall away thanks to the incompetence and […]
03.03.2026 04:19 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
New Mexico Dems Pass An Affordable Broadband Law In 25 Days In late 2024, Trump Republicans killed a very popular program that provided low-income Americans $30 off of their monthly broadband bill. The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) was, unsurprisingly, very popular, with more than 23 million Americans benefiting at its peak. At the time, the GOP claimed they were simply looking to save money. The real reason the program was […]
02.03.2026 23:13 👍 2 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
OpenAI’s ‘Red Lines’ Are Written In The NSA’s Dictionary—Where Words Mean What The NSA Wants Them To Mean Within hours on Friday, the Pentagon blacklisted one AI company for refusing to drop its safety commitments on surveillance and autonomous weapons, then turned around and praised a competitor for signing a deal that supposedly preserved those exact same commitments. This confused some people. Why would the Pentagon seek to destroy one company over the […]
02.03.2026 20:52 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
US Military Shoots Down CBP Drone, Which Certainly Instills Confidence In Its Offshore Murder Program Wow. Imagine if you could just make this shit up. The U.S. military used a laser Thursday to shoot down a “seemingly threatening” drone flying near the U.S.-Mexico border. It turned out the drone belonged to Customs and Border Protection, lawmakers said. It is to LOL. Not only did the military friendly fire a CBP […]
02.03.2026 18:52 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Daily Deal: Adobe Lightroom 1-Year Subscription Adobe Lightroom is a cloud-based photo editing and organizing tool designed for photographers of all levels. With an intuitive interface and advanced features, it allows you to create stunning images, manage your photo library, and work seamlessly across desktop, mobile, and web. Lightroom Classic provides robust tools for handling large volumes of images, offering precise […]
02.03.2026 18:47 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
AI Bros Wanted Trump. Now They Learn What Happens When You Tell Him No. Last year, in Fascism For First Time Founders, I warned the tech industry what happens when you cozy up to authoritarians. As I wrote then: Innovation requires trust. Not just between individuals, but institutional trust. People need to believe that contracts will be enforced, that property rights will be protected, that the rules won’t change […]
02.03.2026 17:20 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Semafor Keeps Hosting Ridiculous “Restoring Trust In Media” Events That Only Further Undermine Trust In Media You might recall that when political news website Semafor entered the media industry on the back of $25 million in private money, they made all kinds of promises about how they were somehow going to revolutionize U.S. media. In reality most of their promises were relatively inane, and it didn’t take long before the outlet […]
02.03.2026 13:20 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is danderbandit with a very straightforward reaction to the fallout from Ring’s Super Bowl commercial: Fuck Ring Exactly why I would never own a cloud based camera system. In second place, it’s MrWilson with a piece-by-piece reply to a comment about DHS demanding social media […]
01.03.2026 20:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0