CBS Folds Like A Moist, Flushable Towelette In Response To Baseless Trump Threats
When last we checked in with CBS, the company was preparing to fold under pressure from the Trump administration, amidst bogus accusations that 60 Minutes had unfairly made Donald Trump look bad. As we’ve noted previously, the accusations are utterly baseless, but that’s apparently not stopping the CBS board from kissing authoritarian ass and throwing […]
Trump Executive Order Says It’s Time To ‘Unleash’ Cops, Turn America Into A Police State
Donald Trump’s two terms in office have proven Orwell right. No, not the “1984 is not an instruction manual” thing. The other one. Animal Farm. Some animals are more equal than others. At the top of the heap? The pigs. Trump led off his first term in office by threatening to create a police state […]
Google Kills Software Support For Many Nest Users, Eroding Trust In The Brand
Google is developing a tried and true reputation for buying products people like, making them worse, then pulling the rug out from under users’ feet. That’s been a particular problem with Google’s purchase of FitBit, which has generally resulted in less useful hardware, more paywalls, more annoying nickel-and-diming efforts, and just a more miserable user […]
US Measles Cases On Pace To Eclipse 2019, 1994 Case Numbers
Roughly two weeks ago, in a post about how America was risking losing its elimination status for measles as the current outbreak is exploding thanks to the inaction from RFK Jr. and his Health and Human Services department, I wrote the following paragraph: At the start of April, we were at 483 confirmed reported measles […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/29/us-measles-cases-on-pace-to-eclipse-2019-1994-case-numbers/
DOJ Deportation Memo Pretends The Fourth Amendment Doesn’t Exist
USA Today has secured the DOJ’s official rules of engagement for mass deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. (Better yet, it has shared it with everyone, rather than keep it to itself!) Trump’s resurrection of a law no one thought the Land of the Free would ever use again is disturbing enough. What’s in the […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/29/doj-deportation-memo-pretends-the-fourth-amendment-doesnt-exist/
FTC’s ‘Tech Censorship’ Investigation Is Censoring Comments About ‘Censorship’
The FTC’s politically motivated inquiry into “tech censorship” has managed to prove exactly the opposite of what it intended: the government agency is now actively censoring public comments from people complaining about being censored by tech platforms. It’s almost too perfect. The FTC, under Chair Andrew Ferguson, launched what it called an investigation into “tech […]
Federal Judge Shreds DOJ’s Bullshit Venezuelan Gang Affiliation Claims
The administration’s justification for reviving the justifiably reviled Alien Enemies Act is the literally unbelievable claim that the Venezuelan government has sent Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang members to the United States to wreak general havoc, something the Trump Administration claims is a literal act of war. It’s just not happening. There’s no link between […]
Daily Deal: Academy of Educational Engineering
The Academy of Educational Engineering is a premier platform tailored for aspiring and professional geeks. This all-in-one educational ecosystem is designed to empower you with expert-level knowledge and hands-on experience across embedded systems, electronics, IoT, and software development. As a premium member, you’ll access comprehensive tools, engaging projects, personalized feedback, and direct mentorship, helping you […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/29/daily-deal-academy-of-educational-engineering/
FCC Commissioner Gomez Blasts Brendan Carr’s ‘Campaign Of Censorship’
When Biden FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel stepped down, we noted how she couldn’t be bothered to even mention that terrible things were brewing at her agency. Same for Democratic FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, who recently decided to sheepishly step down without, again, so much as acknowledging the dangerous and radical zealotry Brendan Carr has been […]
One Of RFK Jr.’s ‘Extraordinary Healers’ Caught Measles, Kept Treating Patients In Facilities
You know, there’s stupid, and then there’s stupid on a level that is unbelievably dangerous. While RFK Jr. is very busy attempting to ensure that America loses its measles elimination status through a combination of vaccine skepticism, pushing alternative treatments, and generally being unable to present a solid message around the current outbreak, you will […]
The Untold Story Of How Ed Martin Ghostwrote Online Attacks Against A Judge — And Still Became A Top Trump Prosecutor
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. The attacks on Judge John Barberis in the fall of 2016 appeared on his personal Facebook page. They impugned his ethics, criticized a recent ruling and branded him as a “politician” with the “LOWEST rating for a judge in Illinois.” Barberis, […]
FBI Arrests Wisconsin Judge For Allegedly Obstructing The Arrest Of An Undocumented Immigrant
Oh hooray. Another part of our new normal under Trump 2.0. Here’s the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel with the gory details: Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was charged April 25 with two felonies on allegations of trying to help an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest after he appeared in her courtroom. According to a 13-page complaint, Dugan, 65, is accused […]
Congress Moving Forward On Unconstitutional Take It Down Act
Here’s a puzzle: How do you write a law that’s so badly designed that (1) the people it’s meant to help oppose it, (2) the people who hate regulation support it, and (3) everyone involved admits it will be abused? The answer, it turns out, is the Take It Down Act. The bill started with […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/28/congress-moving-forward-on-unconstitutional-take-it-down-act/
DHS Deported A Two-Year-Old US Citizen To Honduras And Now A Federal Judge Wants Some Answers
Does anyone want to be OK with this just because it might end up barely clearing the legality bar? Is this what the US wants to be known for: the forcible expulsion of anyone originating south of our borders just because the current administration doesn’t want to share space with undocumented (but otherwise law-abiding) immigrants? […]
Ohio Could Be The Latest State To Pass ‘Right To Repair’ Law, Showcasing Broad, Bipartisan Support
State laws attempting to make it cheaper and easier to repair your own technology continue to gain steam. With the recent introduction of a new “right to repair” law in Wisconsin, groups like U.S. PIRG note that all 50 U.S. states have now at least introduced such bills. But so far only Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and Oregon have actually […]
Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Mamba with a response to a failed “fact check” by another commenter: Hey twinkle farts, President Roosevelt invoked the Alien Enemies Act immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to authorize the government to detain enemy aliens. Further, the executive order didn’t need to […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/27/funniest-most-insightful-comments-of-the-week-at-techdirt-158/
Microsoft Allows Bethesda To Continue To Be Cool Regarding Fan-Made Remake Projects
Bethesda has something of a history of embracing its modding communities. This has historically included not being aggressive on matters of IP against modders, attempting to build an economy around the modding community itself, and even being quite tolerant of fan-made expansions and the like of the publisher’s titles. This was all well and good […]
In DOGE’s Hunt For Imaginary Censors, It Kills Actual Anti-Censorship Research
The people most loudly (misleadingly) complaining about censorship just… helped enable actual censorship. Not metaphorical censorship, not “they won’t let me tweet slurs” censorship, but literal “we’re going to stop research into fighting actual government censorship” censorship. It’s painfully stupid, but that’s just what we get with the folks running the government these days. This […]
FTC, Hoping To Prop Up Admin Myth They Still Care About Consumer Protection, Sues Uber For Making It Hard To Cancel
A few days ago I talked about how the Trump administration is desperate to present the illusion it still cares about consumer protection and “antitrust reform.” Via executive order, regulatory capture, DOGE cuts, and a rightward-lurching court system, Trump 2.0 really is taking an absolute hatchet to consumer protection, labor rights, corporate oversight, environmental law, […]
Nintendo Once Again Seeking To Unmask Discord User For Leaking Content
Leaks can be both embarrassing and aggrevating for any content producer, though we often see the most anger over this sort of thing coming from large corporate interests. The video game space is lousy with examples of this, but there is perhaps no more notoriously draconian respondant to leaks than Nintendo. The company has unsurprisingly […]
Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Red Pills & Blue Checks
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 […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/24/ctrl-alt-speech-red-pills-blue-checks/
Otherwise Objectionable: Can Section 230 Survive In An AI-Driven World?
As Artificial Intelligence reshapes the internet landscape, we’re watching history repeat itself: The same people who fundamentally misunderstood Section 230’s role in enabling the modern internet are now making eerily similar mistakes about how we should approach AI regulation. This week’s episode of Otherwise Objectionable dives into these parallel debates, exploring both how Section 230’s […]
Intelligence Assessment Shows Trump Admin’s Venezuelan Gang War Claims Are Lies
For a long time, we’ve believed no president would dare enact the Alien Enemies Act again, not after it was abused to send more than 100,000 residents and citizens of Japanese descent to US concentration camps during the Second World War. Even the administrative power grabs and uptick in bigotry that followed the 9/11 attacks […]
5th Circuit Obediently Lets AT&T Off The Hook For Major Location Data Privacy Violations
For decades, major wireless carriers AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile collected vast troves of sensitive user location and movement data, then sold access to any random nitwit with two nickels to rub together. The result was a parade of scandals wherein everybody from stalkers , law enforcement (or people pretending to be law enforcement), car companies, governments, and right wing […]
Federal COVID-19 Resource Site Now Redirects To A White House Vendetta Blog & Conspiracy Site
While I’m sure all of us would like to completely forget about COVID-19, it is simply the case that the virus hasn’t forgotten about us. Gone are the days of the pandemic, of course, so this isn’t meant to fear monger. But the fact is that hundreds of Americans are still dying of this disease […]
Techdirt Podcast Episode 415: The Problems With Age Verification
Support us on Patreon » It’s hard to create a law about children online without first identifying who the children are. We’ve written a lot about the problems that arise with mandated age verification, and a new paper by Eric Goldman, The “Segregate-and-Suppress” Approach to Regulating Child Safety Online, digs into why the entire popular approach […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/22/techdirt-podcast-episode-415-the-problems-with-age-verification/
Verizon CEO Sowmyanarayan Sampath Gives Predictably Wimpy Response To Being Bullied By Radical Trump FCC
For decades, telecom giants like Verizon reacted hysterically every single time the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) tried to do anything to protect consumers or hold telecom giants accountable. I spent decades covering it as a telecom policy reporter. Whether privacy rules or popular net neutrality rules, Verizon (and its lobbying proxies at various think tanks) […]
Industry Begins Embracing True Fans, Super Fans, Core Fans As An Alternative Way To Fund Creators
Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) concluded with a look at “true fans,” an alternative way of funding creators that avoids the main problems of the current copyright system. The approach is based on nurturing the connection between artists and their most dedicated fans, allowing the former to generate extra revenue by providing the […]
A New One: House Speaker Blames Video Games For Medicaid ‘Abuse’
I guess it’s good to know there are still surprises left for me in this universe. We have talked about the common absurdity in which video games are blamed for all manner of things. It’s the moral panic of our time. Video games are blamed for violence, for supposed addictions, for violence, for the eventual […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/21/a-new-one-house-speaker-blames-video-games-for-medicaid-abuse/
Hegseth Shared Attack Plans In Another Signal Chat… With His Wife, Brother & Lawyer
There’s a certain predictable pattern when unqualified MAGA political appointees get put in charge of highly technical government operations. First, they demonstrate their complete misunderstanding of the systems they’re supposed to oversee. Then, they make a series of increasingly dangerous mistakes. Finally, they try to distract from those mistakes by focusing on culture war issues. […]
Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment about the Trump administration’s pivot to claiming that it meant to send Abrego Garcia to El Salvador: Remember, folks: If they’ll do it to non-citizens, they’ll do it to citizens soon enough. They want you afraid of being […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/20/funniest-most-insightful-comments-of-the-week-at-techdirt-157/
Pushing The ‘Shoplifting Crime Wave’ Narrative Allowed Cops To Stock Up On LEO Goodies
For most of a half-decade, law enforcement officials and retail execs have been engaged in a “mass crime spree” duet. Despite this hysteria being debunked several times by rigorous reporting, cops and shops have been manipulating a non-existent shoplifting crime wave for their own benefit for nearly as long. Every time another smash-and-grab hits TikTok, […]