For years, big ISPs have made it abundantly clear that they dream of being able to abuse their gatekeeper power over telecom markets to tilt the playing field in their favor. Whether it was Verizon’s early attempts to force you to buy their GPS apps and mapping services, to AT&T’s later-year efforts with “sponsored data” (letting certain big companies buy a network advantage), their goals have never been subtle. Unfortunately for them, consumer groups, activists, and regulators keep screwing up their plans with that whole “net neutrality” thing. Last month, the FCC finally got around to re ..read more

While I’m still waiting for TikTok to release its 30-second long dancing interpretation of why the TikTok ban is unconstitutional, at least it’s now going to court to make the argument for real. It took maybe a week or so longer than expected, but TikTok and ByteDance have now officially filed their lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the TikTok ban law. This lawsuit was always going to happen, and now it’s here. The complaint does not mince words: Congress has taken the unprecedented step of expressly singling out and banning TikTok: a vibrant online forum for protected speech and e ..read more

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children‘s CyberTipline is a central component of the fight against child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online, but there have been a lot of questions about how well it truly works. A recent report from the Stanford Internet Observatory, which we’ve published two recent posts about, provides an extremely useful window into the system. This week, we’re joined by two of the report’s authors, Shelby Grossman and Riana Pfefferkorn, to dig into the content of the report and the light it sheds on the challenges faced by the CyberTipline. Follow the Te ..read more

Editor’s Note: This post was written before TikTok & ByteDance filed a lawsuit challenging the law this morning. So, while it says that no lawsuit has been filed, that’s no longer the case. The rest of the article is still relevant, though. We’ll have an analysis of the actual lawsuit later (probably tomorrow). Over the last month, lawmakers moved swiftly to pass legislation that would effectively ban TikTok in the United States, eventually including it in a foreign aid package that was signed by President Biden. The impact of this legislation isn’t entirely clear yet, but what i ..read more

Wars, conflicts, domestic dust-ups, whatever you want to call them… they’re sensitive situations, easily made worse by even the most mild fluctuations in the political climate or the public temperament. And while I’m completely aware there’s no enshrined rights protecting journalism on par with the First Amendment in Israel, this latest turn of events does the country’s government no favors… especially when it’s already on the losing end of a lot of battles in the court of public opinion. Israeli authorities raided a Jerusalem hotel room used by Al Jazeera as its office after the government d ..read more

The Complete 2024 CompTIA Certification Training Super Bundle by IDUNOVA has 15 courses to help you prepare for various CompTIA certification exams. Courses cover everything from the fundamentals to cloud essentials to cybersecurity. The bundle is on sale for $59.97. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team ..read more

Jann Wenner, the creator of Rolling Stone magazine, was certainly an early supporter of free speech. But he seems to have reached grumpy old man status, that allows him to whine about free speech online, mostly by not knowing shit about anything. Writing for Air Mail, a publication by Graydon Carter (another Grumpy Old Man of Media), Wenner has a facts-optional screed about Section 230, which has done more for free speech than Wenner ever did. First off, Wenner gets the purpose and history of Section 230 backwards. Like exactly 100% backwards. This is the kind of thing any fact checker would c ..read more

As the streaming sector has consolidated and new subscriber growth has slowed, it has increasingly started chasing the bad habits of the industry it once disrupted: cable TV. Gone is stuff like encouraged password sharing and risk-taking programming. In its place is endless price hikes, weird efforts to nickel-and-dime users, lower-quality programming, annoying new consumer restrictions, and layoffs. One of the favorite tweaks of sectors that have run out of ideas is consolidation and megamergers. Such deals almost always result in layoffs, lower-quality product, large debt loads, price hikes ..read more

I think it best to start this post off with an admission: I had no idea that “broccolini” was not the name of an actual vegetable, but rather a trademarked brand name. I can’t see your faces, obviously, but I imagine some sizable percentage of them also have a look of mild surprise on them. Well, it’s true. “Broccolini” is a registered trademark of Fresh Del Monte Produce, distributed by its subsidiary, Mann Packing. And if you’re wondering how it’s possible that the term is out there in grocery stores and restaurants all over the place without the trademark symbol appended next to it, that’s ..read more

The harms of deepfakes have been evident for a while. Recent examples include a Biden deepfake designed to influence voters, and the rising use of AI “nudification” apps to produce deepfake nudes of students, often female minors. But alongside the application of sophisticated AI programs to produce deepfakes there are other, lower-tech scams, often known as “shallowfakes”. An article in the Guardian explains “shallowfakes can be created using conventional editing software on a phone and apps such as Photoshop.” This is leading to a “surge in fraud cases” according to the article, involving veh ..read more