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0	0	0			AI Slop Startup To Flood The Internet With Thousands Of AI Slop Podcasts, Calls Critics Of AI Slop ‘Luddites’ So look, I’m not one of these people who thinks “AI” has no useful applications. Just this week I had an efficient conversation with a Gemini chatbot when trying to cancel a Google subscription. I used ChatGPT to help me fact check my own work debunking false claims made by a different AI (an aggregation […] 2025-09-22 12:26:00 UTC
0	0	0			Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Heart of Dawn with a comment about Disney pulling Jimmy Kimmel’s show: Conservatives absolutely hate “cancel culture” right up to the point they are the ones doing it. Hypocrisy is dead to these people. In second place, it’s Thad with a comment about Trump […] 2025-09-21 19:00:00 UTC
0	0	0			This Week In Techdirt History: September 14th – 20th Five Years Ago This week in 2020, the first phase of the TikTok fight resolved with Oracle getting a lucrative hosting deal instead of buying the company in a deal driven by Trump-world insiders, while a court refused to block Trump’s executive order. At the same time, users were fighting to block the less-discussed part […] 2025-09-20 19:10:00 UTC
0	0	0			Ryan Walters’ Plan To Teach OK Students Election And COVID Conspiracies Put On Hold By State Supreme Court We’ve talked a lot about Ryan Walters recently, mostly because he keeps forgetting that the United States Constitution applies to him and his state. Between his attempt to inject Christian theocracy into the public school system while enriching Dear Leader Trump or his fight with his own board members in the wake of some mild […] 2025-09-20 02:39:00 UTC
0	0	0			Copyright Troll Backfires: Has To Pay Up To Get Out Of Its Lawsuit Of Lies It’s been a good while since we’ve had an old-fashioned copyright troll nonsense story around here, and boy do we have a doozy for you today. Regular Techdirt readers know that we’ve covered Paul Levy’s work for years—the man who the Washingtonian once dubbed “the web bully’s worst enemy” has been taking down copyright trolls […] 2025-09-19 21:40:03 UTC
0	0	0			You Don’t Own What You Buy: New Lawsuit Dings Amazon For Misleading Video ‘Purchases’ Techdirt has long lamented how in the modern era, you don’t really “own” what you buy. That game console, smart lock, or smart refrigerator can quickly become less useful (or completely useless) with a firmware update, bankruptcy, or addition of annoying subscription paywall. The problem is particularly bad when it comes to digital rentals. In […] 2025-09-19 19:10:03 UTC
0	0	0			How MAGA Killed Foreign Influence Research, But Now Demands Social Media Stop Foreign Influence Campaigns It’s fascinating how quickly the tune changes when the shoe’s on the other foot. For years, we’ve been treated to endless screaming about how any effort to identify and counter foreign manipulation on social media was “censorship” and a violation of Americans’ free speech rights. The same crowd that turned researchers into pariahs and shut […] 2025-09-19 17:50:30 UTC
0	0	0			Daily Deal: Hypergear 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Dock The Hypergear 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Dock is meticulously engineered to reduce the cable clutter and streamline your daily routine. Featuring 2 dedicated wireless charging surfaces, you can power up your phone and AirPods easily. In addition, you can charge your Apple Watch with the built-in charger mount. Stylish and compact, the dock is perfect for […] 2025-09-19 17:45:30 UTC
0	0	0			Bill Would Give The State Dept. The Ability To Deny Passports To Citizens Who Criticize Israel This isn’t anything that actually needed to be done. The federal government has plenty of options at its disposal if it thinks someone is providing material support for terrorism. It’s one of things that keeps the FBI loaded up with anti-terrorism dollars, thanks to its ability to radicalize people just so it can arrest them. […] 2025-09-19 16:29:44 UTC
0	0	0			Warner Bros CEO Laments ‘Terrible’ Streaming TV Experience’ He Created, Proposes More Shitty Mergers And Price Hikes As The Fix We’ve mentioned repeatedly how the AT&T–>Time Warner–>Discovery series of media mergers were some of the most destructive and pointless business efforts ever, resulting in tens of thousands of layoffs, the cancellation of endless popular programs, higher prices for consumers, and a shittier overall product. One of the men at the heart of this dysfunction has […] 2025-09-19 12:26:44 UTC
0	0	0			Somebody’s Lying: Susan Monarez’s Congressional Testimony Is 180 Degrees From RFK Jr.’s When you’re brought before Congress to testify, you’re not supposed to lie. I realize that sounds rather obvious to many of you, but I’ll remind you that this is the year of our lord, 2025, and such common sensibilities are not quite as common as they used to be. Even if you’re not under oath, […] 2025-09-19 03:09:32 UTC
0	0	0			Ctrl-Alt-Speech: From ‘Free Speech’ To ‘Flag This’ 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 […] 2025-09-18 22:49:43 UTC
0	0	0			X And Canada Fight Over Takedowns And They’re Both Wrong A Canadian tribunal’s $72,000 fine against X for refusing to globally remove non-consensual intimate images (NCII) exposes a fundamental tension that courts have been dodging for years: When can one country order worldwide content takedowns, and when should platforms comply regardless of legal compulsion? Unfortunately, almost all the commentary on the case is ignoring those […] 2025-09-18 20:47:15 UTC
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0	0	0			Facebook Flooded With Agitslop Of AI Grief Farming About Charlie Kirk Last year, there was some talk about how AI-generated wacky images—summed up generally as “shrimp Jesus” as an example of one of the most bizarre—were taking over Facebook. It was only a matter of time until this sort of AI slop nonsense went political in some form or another. Starting last Friday, people began to […] 2025-09-18 16:20:15 UTC
0	0	0			The Trump FCC’s CBS ‘Truth Nanny’ Is Unsurprisingly A Trump Lackey Who Has No Idea How Journalism Works You might recall that one of the conditions of the FCC’s approval of The Ellison family’s $8 billion acquisition of CBS was that the agency would install a “ombudsman” at the network to ensure CBS journalism was appropriately feckless and deferential to our mad, idiot king. This was particularly ironic given decades of whining by […] 2025-09-18 12:28:00 UTC
0	0	0			Cowardly Disney Caves To Brendan Carr’s Bogus Censorial Threats, Pulling Jimmy Kimmel There are multiple ways into this story, but almost all of the reporting on what’s happened claims that Disney pulled talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s show “indefinitely” over comments that Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk. But that leads most people to assume that Kimmel said something unkind about Kirk or in some way celebrated his […] 2025-09-18 00:36:36 UTC
0	0	0			The Illiberal, Transphobic Pipe Dream Of Banning Porn Reaches Michigan Republicans It appears that the illiberal, transphobic pipe dream of banning all pornography has reached an enterprising group of far-right Christian nationalist Republicans in Michigan who want to impose the moralistic agendas of a small few on the overwhelming majority of the people. Rep. Josh Schriver leads five other lawmakers with the recent introduction of the Anticorruption of […] 2025-09-17 22:33:55 UTC
0	0	0			California Lawmakers Pass A Bill That Would Ban Use of Face Masks By Law Enforcement It’s probably too much to ask, but I hope California law enforcement agencies will remember who to direct their hate at if this bill becomes law. It’s not the “liberals” running the state. It’s the Trump administration and its mass deportation efforts. ICE and its actions have always been controversial, but it took a group […] 2025-09-17 20:33:40 UTC
0	0	0			World’s Sorest Winner: Trump Demands $15 Billion From NY Times For Not Fluffing His Ego Enough Even by Donald Trump’s standards for frivolous defamation lawsuits, this one is impressively stupid. On Monday, the president filed yet another lawsuit against the NY Times—this time seeking $15 billion over a book that claims he’s not quite as successful a businessman as he pretends to be. The timing is almost comically bad. Trump is […] 2025-09-17 19:05:29 UTC
0	0	0			TikTok To Be Sold To Trump’s Right Wing Billionaire Buddies And Converted Into A Propaganda Mill Donald Trump has successfully used xenophobia and fake concerns about propaganda and national security to get what he’s long wanted: TikTok (and its fat ad revenues) are poised to be sold off to his right wing billionaire buddies and, inevitably, slowly converted into a right wing propaganda safe space. After endless delays, Trump insiders claim […] 2025-09-17 17:50:26 UTC
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0	0	0			The “Debate Me Bro” Grift: How Trolls Weaponized The Marketplace Of Ideas Among the attempts to create hagiographic eulogies of Charlie Kirk, I’ve seen more than a few people suggest that Kirk should be respected for being willing to talk to “those who disagree with him” as a sign that he was engaging in good faith. Perhaps the perfect example of this is Ezra Klein’s silly eulogy […] 2025-09-17 16:31:00 UTC
0	0	0			The Washington Post Fires Its Last Black Opinion Columnist For Directly Quoting A Bigot The Washington Post isn’t what it used to be. While the paper is still peppered with a few decent journalists trying to do good work, the outlet is being slowly strangled to death by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, who is steadily dismantling the last vestiges of the paper’s sagging credibility in a desperate bid to […] 2025-09-17 12:25:00 UTC
0	0	0			RFK Jr. Adds Five More Unqualified, Anti-Vaxx Members To ACIP We’ve all become entirely too familiar with ACIP, the CDC panel that discusses and recommends vaccination schedules across a wide swath of vaccines. The method by which ACIP became part of the general American lexicon traces all the way back to June, when RFK Jr., as head of HHS, fired every single member of the […] 2025-09-17 02:54:11 UTC