Here we go again. Back in February, the FTC wanted to dive back into its battle with Microsoft over its acquisition of Activision Blizzard due to Microsoft announcing thousands of jobs worth of layoffs, including many developers from Activision Blizzard. When the FTC had asked for an injunction to block the sale, Microsoft made two claims. First, it indicated that the injunction wasn’t needed as this was a horizontal acquisition, not a vertical one, meaning that it wasn’t going to reduce staff after the purchase due to redundancies in the workforce. Second, it indicated that the injunction wasn’t necessary due to the hands-off approach Microsoft would take at these studios, meaning that it could easily divest from these developers if ordered to, rather than having to shut them down entirely. Post acquisition, Microsoft went right ahead and announced plans to lay off nearly 2,000 people, rather than doing any divesting. A complete one-eighty from what it told the courts, in other words.

And one that may be part of a larger effort, considering Microsoft also just closed up several developers that came over in the Bethesda acquisition as well.

Microsoft has closed a number of Bethesda studios, including Redfall maker Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi Rush and The Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks, and more in devastating cuts at Bethesda, IGN can confirm.

Alpha Dog Games, maker of mobile game Mighty Doom, will also close. Roundhouse Studios will be absorbed by The Elder Scrolls Online developer ZeniMax Online Studios. Microsoft, currently valued at over $3 trillion, did not say how many staff will lose their jobs, but significant layoffs are inevitable. IGN has asked Bethesda for comment. Microsoft declined to expand further when contacted by IGN.

Now, layoffs across the video game industry occurred throughout 2023 and into 2024, so it’s not as if Microsoft is alone in this. On the other hand, Microsoft is also, obviously, one of the largest players in the gaming space, with the largest revenue streams coming in from multiple avenues in the industry, and it just shelled out billions and billions of dollars to acquire a massive portfolio of gaming companies and franchises. For the coda to all of that to amount to Microsoft both laying off thousands of people and to pretend it’s sticking to its claim that this isn’t somehow a consolidation of roles resulting from cuts to redundancy post-acquisition is absolutely silly.

And while Microsoft and Bethesda may not be commenting publicly about all of this, the wider gaming industry certainly is.

“This is absolutely terrible,” tweeted Bakaba, co-creative director at the remaining Arkane studio, in the wake of the news. “Permission to be human: to any executive reading this, friendly reminder that video games are an entertainment/cultural industry, and your business as a corporation is to take care of your artists/entertainers and help them create value for you.”

And, to harken back to an earlier claim Microsoft made to combat the injunction the FTC wanted, some are questioning why these studios had to be closed to begin with.

It’s a fair question, given Microsoft’s previous claims. If the company isn’t interested in the games, franchises, and other work these studios are doing, why not divest? The answer is, because in many cases, Microsoft is interested in those things and is simply going to fold them into other parts of its gaming infrastructure.

And before anyone wants to chime in that there are broader economic forces at work that are causing Microsoft to trim any supposed fat, that’s certainly not represented in Microsoft’s overall numbers.

No, it’s far more likely that this is simply the result of lies and greed at work. Lies to the courts and FTC about what its plans were all along, and greed propelling layoffs and studio closures purely to shift their previous efforts to Microsoft teams that are already in place and established.

One would hope the FTC is paying attention.

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 speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:

• Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership (Tom’s Hardware)
• Tech firms must tame toxic algorithms to protect children online (Ofcom)
• Reddit Lays Out Content Policy While Seeking More Licensing Deals (Bloomberg)
• Extremist Militias Are Coordinating in More Than 100 Facebook Groups (Wired)
• Politicians Scapegoat Social Media While Ignoring Real Solutions (Techdirt)
• ‘Facebook Tries to Combat Russian Disinformation in Ukraine’ – FB Public Policy Manager (Kyiv Post)
• TikTok Sues U.S. Government Over Law Forcing Sale or Ban (New York Times)
• Swiss public broadcasters withdraw from X/Twitter (Swissinfo)
• Congressional Committee Threatens To Investigate Any Company Helping TikTok Defend Its Rights (Techdirt)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.

Mobile phones are currently banned in all Australian state schools and many Catholic and independent schools around the country. This is part of a global trend over more than a decade to restrict phone use in schools.

Australian governments say banning mobile phones will reduce distractions in class, allow students to focus on learning, improve student wellbeing and reduce cyberbullying.

But previous research has shown there is little evidence on whether the bans actually achieve these aims.

Many places that restricted phones in schools before Australia did have now reversed their decisions. For example, several school districts in Canada implemented outright bans then revoked them as they were too hard to maintain. They now allow teachers to make decisions that suit their own classrooms.

A ban was similarly revoked in New York City, partly because bans made it harder for parents to stay in contact with their children.

What does recent research say about phone bans in schools?

Our study

We conducted a “scoping review” of all published and unpublished global evidence for and against banning mobile phones in schools.

Our review, which is pending publication, aims to shed light on whether mobile phones in schools impact academic achievement (including paying attention and distraction), students’ mental health and wellbeing, and the incidence of cyberbullying.

A scoping review is done when researchers know there aren’t many studies on a particular topic. This means researchers cast a very inclusive net, to gather as much evidence as possible.

Our team screened 1,317 articles and reports as well as dissertations from masters and PhD students. We identified 22 studies that examined schools before and after phone bans. There was a mix of study types. Some looked at multiple schools and jurisdictions, some looked at a small number of schools, some collected quantitative data, others sought qualitative views.

In a sign of just how little research there is on this topic, 12 of the studies we identified were done by masters and doctoral students. This means they are not peer-reviewed but done by research students under supervision by an academic in the field.

But in a sign of how fresh this evidence is, almost half the studies we identified were published or completed since 2020.

The studies looked at schools in Bermuda, China, the Czech Republic, Ghana, Malawi, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States. None of them looked at schools in Australia.

Academic achievement

Our research found four studies that identified a slight improvement in academic achievement when phones were banned in schools. However, two of these studies found this improvement only applied to disadvantaged or low-achieving students.

Some studies compared schools where there were partial bans against schools with complete bans. This is a problem because it confuses the issue.

But three studies found no differences in academic achievement, whether there were mobile phone bans or not. Two of these studies used very large samples. This masters thesis looked at 30% of all schools in Norway. Another study used a nationwide cohort in Sweden. This means we can be reasonably confident in these results.

Mental health and wellbeing

Two studies in our review, including this doctoral thesis, reported mobile phone bans had positive effects on students’ mental health. However, both studies used teachers’ and parents’ perceptions of students’ wellbeing (the students were not asked themselves).

Two other studies showed no differences in psychological wellbeing following mobile phone bans. However, three studies reported more harm to students’ mental health and wellbeing when they were subjected to phone bans.

The students reported they felt more anxious without being able to use their phone. This was especially evident in one doctoral thesis carried out when students were returning to school after the pandemic, having been very reliant on their devices during lockdown.

So the evidence for banning mobile phones for the mental health and wellbeing of student is inconclusive and based only on anecdotes or perceptions, rather than the recorded incidence of mental illness.

Bullying and cyberbullying

Four studies reported a small reduction in bullying in schools following phone bans, especially among older students. However, the studies did not specify whether or not they were talking about cyberbullying.

Teachers in two other studies, including this doctoral thesis, reported they believed having mobile phones in schools increased cyberbullying.

But two other studies showed the number of incidents of online victimisation and harassment was greater in schools with mobile phone bans compared with those without bans. The study didn’t collect data on whether the online harassment was happening inside or outside school hours.

The authors suggested this might be because students saw the phone bans as punitive, which made the school climate less egalitarian and less positive. Other research has linked a positive school climate with fewer incidents of bullying.

There is no research evidence that students do or don’t use other devices to bully each other if there are phone bans. But it is of course possible for students to use laptops, tablets, smartwatches or library computers to conduct cyberbullying.

Even if phone bans were effective, they would not address the bulk of school bullying. A 2019 Australian study found 99% of students who were cyberbullied were also bullied face-to-face.

What does this tell us?

Overall, our study suggests the evidence for banning mobile phones in schools is weak and inconclusive.

As Australian education academic Neil Selwyn argued in 2021, the impetus for mobile phone bans says more about MPs responding to community concerns rather than research evidence.

Politicians should leave this decision to individual schools, which have direct experience of the pros or cons of a ban in their particular community. For example, a community in remote Queensland could have different needs and priorities from a school in central Brisbane.

Mobile phones are an integral part of our lives. We need to be teaching children about appropriate use of phones, rather than simply banning them. This will help students learn how to use their phones safely and responsibly at school, at home and beyond.

Marilyn Campbell, Professor, School of Early Childhood & Inclusive Education, Queensland University of Technology and Elizabeth J Edwards, Associate Professor in Education, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

No matter how you might feel about constitutional rights or which ones are your favorites, the fact remains that it’s often people with the least amount of cultural cachet and/or the most to lose who make the best case law.

And so it is here, where we’re dealing with a sex offender who tried to follow both the letter and spirit of the law just to find himself arrested by the same people who defined the letter of the law for him.

However you may feel about sex offenders (and keep in mind this list includes teens who sexted other teens), there’s no denying they’re subject to some very extreme restrictions. These restrictions make it almost impossible for them to find housing. They certainly make it impossible for them to find anything but the worst forms of employment. And, in many states, paying for your crimes with jail time means nothing. Offenders (and not even those suspected to be prone to re-offending) are saddled with years — if not decades — of work/life restrictions that far surpass those handed to people convicted of violent crimes.

But, as long as offenders comply with these restrictions, they can continue whatever’s left of their lives in (very restricted) freedom. But the rules are complex, subject to change, and subject to broad interpretation by the government employees tasked with enforcing them.

This decision [PDF], issued by the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court, calls out cops for actions one usually expects from corrupt government employees doing the bidding of their totalitarian masters. The US is — at least until the next presidential election — still a democratic republic. The sorts of things detailed here simply should not be happening. (h/t Short Circuit)

North Carolina resident David Thurston sued after he was pretty much railroaded by local law enforcement officers who arrested him for (supposedly) violating his sex offender registration requirements. Thurston pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a minor charges in 1992. He served his time in Montana. He moved to North Carolina more than thirty years later, in 2015. He contacted Sheriff Kevin Frye and Deputy Lee Buchanan to make sure he complied with his new home’s offender registration requirements.

He complied with the state’s restrictions. A year after moving to North Carolina, Thurston contacted the sheriff to inform him he was planning to attend his nephew’s wedding in Spokane, Washington the following month. He asked for guidance on how to handle this temporary exit from the state, as well as what he needed to do to ensure compliance during this visit as well as after his return from the wedding.

Sheriff Frye was understanding, even if he wasn’t all that much help.

After they exchanged texts, Sheriff Frye told Thurston on August 11 that he could “[g]o on” because the Sheriff’s Office was “working on it.” All Thurston needed to do, Sheriff Frye explained, was email a copy of Thurston’s Washington visitor-registration form within ten days of his arrival.

Having seemingly been given permission to attend this wedding and stay in Washington until he decided to return to North Carolina, Thurston left town. But his trip was immediately interrupted by Sheriff Frye, who now seemed a bit more concerned with keeping tabs on Thurston’s whereabouts. He asked Thurston for the address where he would be staying and to contact him after he arrived in Washington. Thurston immediately provided the address and promised to reach out after his arrival.

Once in Washington, Thurston contacted local law enforcement to register as a “visitor” in order to remain in compliance with his sex offender obligations. Thurston stayed in Spokane for the next month, during which he made a couple of trips to Seattle to visit a friend.

The sheriff and his office should have known Thurston was still in Washington. But they either forgot about the trip he had informed them about or simply didn’t care. Either way, the deputy charged with handling sex offenders began making things worse for Thurston, who was still in full compliance with the Sheriff’s demands and North Carolina law.

On September 9, while Thurston was away, the Sheriff’s Office mailed his verification form. Thurston’s sister, who lived with him in North Carolina, told him about the form, prompting Thurston to contact Sheriff Frye for guidance. But Sheriff Frye never responded, so Thurston decided to “let it lie,” given their prior interactions.

The Sheriff’s Office, however, did not “let it lie.” Instead, Deputy Buchanan began investigating Thurston. Three times after Thurston’s September 12 verification deadline, Deputy Buchanan stopped by Thurston’s residence. Of course, Thurston was not there.

Roughly six weeks after his arrival in Spokane, the Spokane Sheriff’s Department contacted Thurston to inform him that (North Carolina) deputy Lee Buchanan was “looking for him.” Thurston called Deputy Buchanan, who told him his “absence” was “causing problems back home.” The deputy also (incorrectly) informed Thurston that it was “illegal” for him to be out of the state for more than 30 days. Then the deputy said this:

[I]n the same breath, [Deputy Buchanan] also said that he had spoken with Sheriff Frye and had decided that, as long as Thurston was back in North Carolina by October 19, “there would be no problem.”

Thurston returned on October 19th. It didn’t matter, at least not to Deputy Buchanan.

Even so, Deputy Buchanan discussed potential criminal liability with an assistant district attorney, who recommended that Deputy Buchanan pursue charges against Thurston. And on October 19—knowing that he and Sheriff Frye had given Thurston until that day to return to the state—Deputy Buchanan obtained a warrant from a local magistrate alleging three different criminal violations committed from September 19 to October 18: (1) “being out of state for thirty (30) + days,” (2) willfully failing to return his verification, and (3) willfully failing to report in person to the Sheriff’s Office.

And the trap was set. Thurston went to the Avery County Sheriff’s Office (completely unprompted by law enforcement visits or calls) to deliver his verification form. In return for this, he was arrested. The charges were later dropped, with the prosecutor explaining it away as “a misunderstanding with regard to how to comply with technical requirements.”

Well, the only “misunderstanding” was on the part of Deputy Buchanan, who managed to “misunderstand” direct communications with his sheriff so poorly (whether deliberately or not) that he had a man arrested for doing exactly what he had been instructed to do both by Sheriff Frye and Deputy Buchanan.

That dog won’t hunt, says the Fourth Circuit. It cites the lower court’s findings, which it upholds here:

Deputy Buchanan and Sheriff Frye therefore needed some reason to believe that Thurston either purposefully violated the law or acted with some other improper purpose. But the district court’s order forecloses any argument that they believed this. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Thurston, the district court accepted that both defendants “definitely knew that . . . Thurston was eager to comply with the law.” And the district court accepted that the officers knew that Sheriff Frye gave Thurston permission to travel and that Thurston followed every instruction the Sheriff’s Office gave him. In so concluding, the district court not only accepted the facts alleged about Thurston’s actions but also accepted that the officers had concluded, based on those actions, that Thurston was eager to comply with the law throughout his sojourn.

This sort of ruling means nothing if it’s not followed by a denial of qualified immunity. After all, officers are free to violate rights so long as they can credibly (lol) argue their clear violations of established rights were different enough from standing case law they could not have possibly known their actions were unconstitutional (even if it’s immediately obvious to everyone else). That doesn’t work here because (1) the rights violation is pretty fucking obvious and (2) the circuit has some precedent that aligns with the current case.

In this case, it’s the Fourth Circuit’s 2012 Merchant v. Bauer decision, which involved an officer seeking a search warrant to arrest someone for impersonating an officer. The court held then that the warrant was void and unconstitutional because the officer applying for it was in possession of knowledge that would have exonerated the suspect of the proposed criminal charge.

It’s the same thing here:

In other words, we held that knowledge of sufficiently exculpatory information trumps the inculpatory evidence of the warrant. So too here. The district court found that Sheriff Frye and Deputy Buchanan knew that Thurston was not acting willfully and thus could not satisfy each element of the relevant crimes, yet they sought a warrant and arrested him anyway. After Merchant, no reasonable officer could believe that an arrest in such circumstances was lawful.

If it’s not “reasonable,” it’s not constitutional. And since the standard is “reasonable officer” rather than “regular American,” reasonableness is the operative factor, even when most reasonable non-cops would clearly understand that arresting someone for following specific instructions issued by law enforcement officers is a violation of that person’s rights. There’s no new precedent here. But at least there’s another affirmation that trying to arrest someone for following the law is so far out of the range of “reasonable,” no officer can expect to be immunized for their blatant constitutional violations.

The Ultimate Python and Artificial Intelligence Bundle has 9 courses to help you take your Python and AI knowledge to the next level. You’ll learn about data pre-processing and visualization, artificial neural networks, how to use the Keras framework, and more. It’s on sale for $40.

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.

“Do you now, or have you ever, worked with TikTok to help defend its rights?”

That McCarthyism-esque question is apparently being asked by members of Congress to organizations that have been working with TikTok to defend its Constitutional rights.

Does anyone think it’s right for Congress to threaten to punish organizations from working with TikTok? Does that sound like a First Amendment violation to you? Because it sure does to me.

Over the last year or so, we’ve been hearing a lot of talk out of Congress on two specific issues: the supposed horrors of government officials suppressing speech and, at the same time, the supposed horrors of a successful social media app that has ties to China.

Would it surprise you to find that there are some hypocrites in Congress about all of this? Shocking, I know.

We already highlighted how a bunch of members of Congress both signed an amicus brief in the Murthy case saying that governments should never, ever, interfere with speech and also voted to ban TikTok. But, would those same members of Congress who are so worried about “jawboning” by government officials to suppress speech also then use the power of Congress to silence voices trying to defend TikTok?

Yeah, you know where this is going.

NetChoice has been the main trade group that has been defending against all the terrible laws being thrust upon the internet over the last few years. Often people dismiss NetChoice as “big tech” or “the tech industry,” but in my experience they’ve been solidly standing up for good and important internet speech policies. NetChoice has been structured to be independent of its members (i.e., they get to decide what cases they take on, not their members, which sometimes means their members dislike the causes and cases NetChoice takes on).

On Wednesday of this week, NetChoice’s membership roster looked like this:

I highlighted TikTok in particular, because on Thursday, NetChoice’s membership roster looked like this:

TikTok is missing.

Why? Well, because members of Congress threatened to investigate NetChoice if it didn’t drop TikTok from its roster. Politico had some of this story last night, claiming that there was pressure from Congress to drop TikTok:

“The Select Committee’s brazen efforts to intimidate private organizations for associating with a company with 170 million American users is a clear abuse of power that smacks of McCarthyism,” TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said in a statement, referring to the House China panel. “It’s a sad day when Members of Congress single out individual companies without evidence while trampling on constitutional rights and the democratic process,” Haurek added. A spokesperson for NetChoice didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The two people told Daniel that NetChoice faced pressure from the office of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) to dump TikTok. A third person said that while no threat was made, NetChoice was told that the Select Committee on China would be investigating groups associated with TikTok and decided to sever ties as a result.

I’ve heard that the claim there was “no threat” is not accurate. As the rest of that paragraph makes clear, there was very much an implied threat that Congress would investigate organizations working with TikTok to defend its rights. I’m also hearing that others, like PR agencies and lobbying organizations that work with TikTok, are now facing similar threats from Congress.

Indeed, despite the “denial” of any threat, Politico gets the “House Select Committee on the CCP” to admit that it will launch an investigation into any organization that helps TikTok defend its rights:

“Significant bipartisan majorities in both the House and the Senate deemed TikTok a grave national security threat and the President signed a bill into law requiring them to divest from the CCP,” a Scalise spokesperson told PI. “It should not come as a surprise to those representing TikTok that as long as TikTok remains connected to the CCP, Congress will continue its rigorous oversight efforts to safeguard Americans from foreign threats.”

Guys, that’s not “rigorous oversight” or “safeguarding Americans.” That’s using the threats of bogus costly investigations to force companies to stop working with TikTok and helping it defend its rights under the Constitution. That seems to be a hell of a lot more like “jawboning” and a much bigger First Amendment problem than the Biden administration complaining publicly that they didn’t like how Facebook was handling COVID misinformation.

Remember, this is what the GOP Congressional folks said when they filed their amicus in the Murthy case:

Wielding threats of intervention, the executive branch of the federal government has engaged in a sustained effort to coerce private parties into censoring speech on matters of public concern. On issue after issue, the Biden Administration has distorted the free marketplace of ideas promised by the First Amendment, bringing the weight of federal authority to bear on any speech it dislikes

Isn’t that… exactly what these Congressional committees are now doing themselves? Except, much worse? Because the threats are much more direct, and the punitive nature of not obeying is even clearer and more directly tied to the speech at issue?

This sure seems to be exactly unconstitutional “jawboning.”

Whether or not you believe that there are real risks from China, it seems absolutely ridiculous that Congress is now basically following an authoritarian playbook, threatening companies for merely associating with and/or defending the rights of a company.

It undermines the principles of free speech and association, allowing governmental entities to dictate what organizations can and cannot support. This overreach of power directly chills advocacy efforts and hinders the protection of fundamental rights.

By now it’s been made fairly clear that the bedazzling wonderment that is “AI” doesn’t come cheap. Story after story have highlighted how the technology consumes massive amounts of electricity and water, and we’re not really adapting to keep pace. This is also occurring alongside a destabilizing climate crisis that’s already putting a capacity and financial strain on aging electrical infrastructure.

A new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) indicates that the 460 terawatt-hours (TWh) consumed by data centers in 2022 represented 2% of all global electricity usage, mostly driven by data centers and data center cooling. AI and crypto mining is expected to double that consumption by 2026.

Marc Ganzi, CEO of data center company DigitalBridge, isn’t really being subtle about his warnings. He claims that data centers are going to start running out of power within the next 18-24 months:

“We started talking about this over two years ago at the Berlin Infrastructure Conference when I told the investor world, we’re running out of power in five years. Well, I was wrong about that. We’re kind of running out of power in the next 18 to 24 months.”

Of course when these guys say “we” are going to run out of power, they really mean you (the plebs) will be running out of power. They’ll find solutions to address their need for unlimited power, and the strain will likely be shifted to areas, companies, and residents with far less robust lobbying budgets.

Data centers can move operations closer to natural gas, hydropower sources, or nuclear plants. Some are even using decommissioned Navy ships to exploit liquid cooling. But a report by the financial analysts at TD Cowen says there’s now a 3+ year lead time on bringing new power connections to data centers. It’s a 7 year wait in Silicon Valley; 8 years in markets like Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin.

Network engineers have seen this problem coming for years. Yet crypto and AI power consumption, combined with the strain of climate dysregulation, still isn’t really a problem the sector is prepared for. And when the blame comes, the VC hype bros who got out over their skis, or utilities that failed to modernize for modern demand and climate stability issues won’t blame themselves, but regulation:

“[Cisco VP Denise] Lee said that, now, two major trends are getting ready to crash into each other: Cutting-edge AI is supercharging demand for power-hungry data center processing, while slow-moving power utilities are struggling to keep up with demand amid outdated technologies and voluminous regulations.”

While I’m sure utilities and data centers certainly face some annoying regulations, the real problem rests on the back of technology hype cycles that don’t really care about the real-world impact of their hyper-scaled profit seeking. As always, the real-world impact of the relentless pursuit of unlimited wealth and impossible scale is somebody else’s problem to figure out later, likely at significant taxpayer cost.

This story is playing out to a backdrop of a total breakdown of federal regulatory guidance. Bickering state partisans are struggling to coordinate vastly different and often incompatible visions of our energy future. While at the same time a corrupt Supreme Court prepares several pro-corporate rulings designed to dismantle what’s left of coherent federal regulatory independence.

I would suspect the crypto and AI-hyping VCs (and the data centers that profit off of the relentless demand for unlimited computational power and energy) will be fine. Not so sure about everybody else, though.

This didn’t go the way anyone (other than cops and their unions) wanted it to, but first let’s acknowledge the fact that the city of Denver is actually trying to make things better for both cops and the people they serve.

Here’s how that’s going:

In its first three months, STAR handled 350 calls — only a very small percentage of 911 calls. But the immediate developments appeared positive. A supposed indecent exposure call handled by STAR turned out to be a homeless woman changing clothes in an alley. A trespassing call turned out to be another homeless person setting up a tent near some homes. Suicidal persons were helped and taken to care centers. Homeless residents were taken to shelters. No one was arrested. No one was beaten, tased, or shot.

The zero arrests streak continues. STAR has released its six-month report [PDF] and the calls it has handled have yet to result in an arrest, strongly suggesting police officers aren’t the best personnel to handle crises like these — unless the desired result is more people in holding cells.

Denver decided to try what (far too few) other cities are trying: routing mental health/social services calls to professionals in those fields, rather than hand them off to police officers. And for good reason! Police officers aren’t trained to handle these sorts of issues. That lack of training tends to result in arrests, violence, and even the killing of people police have been asked to help.

Denver’s STAR (Support Team Assistance Response) has been able to handle many calls normally routed to cops without deploying cop tactics: you know, the command-and-control aggression that often manages to make these situations worse, if not actually deadly for those requiring mental health assistance.

So, there’s that. A limited test has shown consistently good results, which should be all the argument Denver legislators need to provide funding to expand STAR assistance to a round-the-clock effort.

But that’s just Denver. Even though it’s the state’s most populous city, its success story has been overlooked by state legislators who apparently feel the best thing for cops is the same lack of accountability they’ve enjoyed for years.

Legislators had a chance to impose greater accountability, but decided to go the other way, as Marissa Ventrelli reports for the Denver Gazette.

A bill that would have required law enforcement agencies to investigate all allegations of officer misconduct died in the House last week following significant revisions.

Sponsors said the measure would increase protections for officers who report alleged misconduct by their peers. Critics, notably law enforcement agencies and organizations, argued the sponsors did not include them in discussions for such an important measure.

Under House Bill 1460 as introduced, the failure to investigate reports of misconduct would have constituted workplace discrimination, for which civil action may be initiated.

The bill’s origin story is one of cop-on-cop harassment. Former Edgewater police officer McKinzie Rees helped craft the bill after being sexually assaulted twice by a fellow officer. Reporting it to supervisors did nothing but force Rees to resign, along with being placed on the state’s Brady list, ensuring she’d never be used as a witness in court, no matter what law enforcement agency employed her.

But it had obvious benefits for regular people, too. It strengthened whistleblower protections for cops reporting on other cops, but also would have benefited citizens who’ve filed complaints by forcing law enforcement agencies to instigate investigations, rather than just ignore the complaints of the policed.

The main opposition was none other than the state’s largest police union. Police unions routinely oppose efforts that might result in more scrutiny of officers. In this case, though, the union opposed any additional scrutiny being applied to cops who attacked, harassed, or sexually assaulted other cops.

The Fraternal Order of Police requested sponsors withdraw the bill and to instead convene a working group during the interim to discuss a multitude of issues related to whistleblowing, such as officer obligation to report misconduct, due process for officers facing allegations by whistleblowers, and protections for the whistleblowers themselves.

“We hope that you will accept this offer to engage in research and dialogue over the summer and fall so that all interested parties can feel assured that any future legislation on these topics in the upcoming session is founded in fact, necessity, and effective collaboration,” the group said. 

This makes it clear police unions are there to protect the worst cops — the ones willing to cross the “thin blue line” to harm other police officers. While everyone expects cops to treat citizens like punching bags and doormats, the “thin blue line” illusion is supposed to trick everyone into believing cops stand together united against evil. But if it’s internal evil, the police union wants nothing to do with any efforts to root it out. That’s just fucking disgusting.

And that’s how a bill dies, with the approval of people who think cops shouldn’t be scrutinized — much less punished — for any misconduct they commit, even if the targets of their wrongdoing are their fellow officers. These are the words of a legislator who seems more willing to provide gratis car washes for officers’ personal cars than serve any member of his constituency that can’t be bothered to get a badge-wearing job.

Rep. Ryan Armagost, R-Berthoud, a former law enforcement officer and member of the committee that heard the bill, said he was “offended” that law enforcement agencies had not been involved in discussions about the bill to the extent they wanted to be. 

Here’s an idea, Rep. Armagost: fuck ’em. If these agencies want to be involved, they’re sure to be involved. All this statement means is this rep is offended someone didn’t ask the kind of cops he likes (which would be the kind that sexually assault fellow officers) what kind of legislation they wanted and instead tried to right some wrongs by offering the state’s sexual assault victims (well… at least those in uniform) some form of protection, redress, and deterrence.

And it was state reps like Armagost who got what they wanted by stripping the bill of anything meaningful and parking it on blocks out in the front yard. For those of you who still think there’s nothing partisan about full-throated support of the worst cops this nation employs, please re-read the second quoted paragraph until the truth sinks in.

By the time the bill reached the floor for its third and final reading, all of its major provisions had been amended out, save for the creation of a working group. 

Ultimately, the bill died, 31-33. All of the Republicans, except Soper, voted in opposition, though it’s possible he would’ve asked for a recount and switched his vote if the bill had passed.

To add insult to the injuries suffered by former officer McKinzie Rees, the union added this statement after the bill was carved up by bootlickers and left to die on the House floor:

“We appreciate that the majority of House members shared our concerns about the need for a robust stakeholder process before passing legislation of this importance. Ensuring law enforcement employees have due process protection and a safe and healthy work environment are serious, complex issues that warrant responsible and thoughtful solutions.”

It pretty much makes you want to vomit. The union cheered on “due process” and “a safe and healthy work environment.” But it really doesn’t care much about the first (the bill only required an investigation to be opened, which means plenty of due process was still available to officers) and obviously gives zero shits about the latter, since it means officers attacked/assaulted by other officers will continue to be frozen out by the worst in their ranks and expected to leave the force, rather than see their grievances adequately addressed by the government agencies that hired them.

We’ve been talking a lot about video game mods recently, typically not for happy reasons. There is a spectrum out there when it comes to how developers and publishers react to organic modding communities that spring up around their games. On one end of the spectrum, typically inhabited by larger companies, are those that somehow see mods as a threat to the game to be combatted and tamped down by any means possible. On the other end are the more reasonable folks, those who realize that modding communities represent some of the most passionate fans of their games, and that mods often times make games more attractive for purchase, or extend their gameplay lifecycle.

We’ve recently seen companies like Bandai Namco, The Pokémon Company, and Rockstar go to war with their own modding communities. It’s that larger climate that makes it so refreshing to see the developer behind the latest hit PC game, Manor Lords, go so far as to praise at least one mod for their game.

Manor Lords is a city building game with a third-person camera view. One modding community, Flat2VR, dedicates itself to making non-VR games playable in a VR format. And they did so with Manor Lords.

The community’s Twitter account announced the achievement, saying: “Seven years in development, Manor Lords was the most wish-listed Steam game & released in EA this past week. It has the highest concurrent user counts ever on a city builder. Thankfully, it works perfectly in 6DOF VR with Praydog’s UEVR!” They also confirm that the mod uses M&K, but with Demeo or Little Cities-like motion controls to help players navigate their budding villages and towns. 

The short video attached alongside the announcement also shows how this VR mod allows you to do pretty much everything you’d normally do in Manor Lords, including building roads, managing resources, and walking around the streets as the Lord you’ve chosen to embody. 

Imagine how the companies I mentioned before might react to something like this. Bandai Namco might just issue takedowns for the mods without explanation. The Pokémon Company would probably just scream “INFRINGEMENT!!!” while doing likewise. Rockstar could issue takedowns over some potential paid expansion pack including VR or some such nonsense.

But if you’re the developer of Manor Lords, your reaction is pretty much, “No shit? That works? Cool!”

To quote some of us from ten years ago: that’s it, that’s the tweet. Or X. Or whatever.

In any case, you will notice that the developer didn’t then follow up with a threat of a takedown, discussions of intellectual property laws, or really any hand-wringing whatsoever. Nope, just an acknowledgement of an awesome mod on the game’s official ExTwitter account.

It sure would be nice if more developers, and the larger companies, realized why this is the perfect reaction to someone making your game better and more attractive to a wider audience. That such enlightenment remains so elusive is a puzzle I have been unable to solve.

As California (and possibly Congress) are, again, revisiting instituting link taxes in the US, it’s worth highlighting that our prediction about the Canadian link tax has now been shown to be correct. It didn’t harm Meta one bit to remove news.

The entire premise behind these link taxes/bargaining codes is that social media gets “so much free value” from news orgs, that they must pay up. Indeed, a ridiculously bad study that came out last fall, and was widely passed around, that argued that Google and Meta had stripped $14 billion worth of value from news orgs and should offer to pay up that amount.

$14 billion. With a “b.”

No one, who understands anything, believes that’s true. Again, social media is not taking value away from news orgs. It’s giving them free distribution and free circulation, things that, historically, cost media organizations a ton of money.

But, now a study, in Canada is proving that social media companies get basically zero value from news links. Meta, somewhat famously, blocked links to news in Canada in response to that country’s link tax. This sent many observers into a tizzy, claiming that it was somehow both unfair for Meta to link to news orgs AND to not link to news orgs.

Yes, media organizations are struggling. Yes, the problems facing the news industry are incredibly important to solve to help protect democracy. Yes, we should be thinking and talking about creative solutions for funding.

But, taxing links to force internet companies to pay media companies is simply a terrible solution.

Thanks to Meta , not giving in to Canada and blocking links to news, we now have some data on what happens when a link tax approach is put in place. Some new research from McGill University and the University of Toronto has found that Meta didn’t lose very much engagement from a lack of news links. But media orgs lost out big time.

Laura Hazard Owen has a good summary at Nieman Lab.

“We expected the disappearance of news on Meta platforms to have caused a major shock to the Canadian information ecosystem,” the paper’s authors — Sara Parker, Saewon Park, Zeynep Pehlivan, Alexei Abrahams, Mika Desblancs, Taylor Owen, Jennie Phillips, and Aengus Bridgman — write. But the shock appears to have been one-sided. While “the ban has significantly impacted Canadian news outlets,” the authors write, “Meta has deprived users of the affordance of news sharing without suffering any loss in engagement of their user base.”

What the researchers found is that users are still using Meta platforms just as much, and still getting news from those platforms. They’re just no longer following links back to the sources. This has done particular harm to smaller local news organizations:

This remarkable stability in Meta platform users’ continued use of the platforms for politics and current affairs anticipates the findings from the detailed investigation into engagement and posting behaviour of Canadians. We find that the ban has significantly impacted Canadian news outlets but had little impact on Canadian user behaviour. Consistent with the ban’s goal, we find a precipitous decline in engagement with Canadian news and consequently the posting of news content by Canadian news outlets. The effect is particularly acute for local news outlets, while some news outlets with national or international scope have been able to make a partial recovery after a few months. Additionally, posting by and engagement with alternative sources of information about Canadian current affairs appears unmoved by the ban. We further find that Groups focused on Canadian politics enjoy the same frequency of posting and diversity of engagement after the ban as before. While link sharing declines, we document a complementary uptick in the sharing of screenshots of Canadian news in a sample of these political Groups, and confirm by reviewing a number of such posts where users deliberately circumvented the link-sharing ban by posting screenshots. Although the screenshots do not compensate for the total loss of link sharing, the screenshots themselves garner the same total amount of engagement as news links previously had.

I feel like I need to keep pointing this out, but: when you tax something, you get less of it. Canada has decided to tax news links, so they get fewer news links. But users still want to talk about news, so they’re replacing the links with screenshots and discussions. And it’s pretty impressive how quickly users switched over:

Meaning the only one losing out here are the news publishers themselves who claimed to have wanted this law so badly.

The impact on Canadian news orgs appears to be quite dramatic:

But the activity on Meta platform groups dedicated to news doesn’t seem to have changed that much:

If “news links” were so valuable to Meta, then, um, wouldn’t that have declined once Meta blocked links?

One somewhat incredible finding in the paper is that “misinformation” links also declined after Meta banned news links:

Surprisingly, the number of misinformation links in political and local community Groups decreased after the ban.

Political Groups:

• Prior to the ban: 2.8% of links (5612 out of 198,587 links) were misinformation links
• After the ban: 1.4% of links (5306 out of 379,202 links) were misinformation links

Though the paper admits that this could just be a function of users recognizing they can’t share links.

This is still quite early research, but it is notable, especially given that the US continues to push for this kind of law as well. Maybe, just maybe, we should take a step back and recognize that taxing links is not helpful for news orgs and misunderstands the overall issue.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the approach taken by Canada and other countries to force platforms like Meta to pay for news links is misguided and counterproductive. These laws are reducing the reach and engagement of news organizations while doing little to address the underlying challenges facing the industry. Instead of helping news organizations, these laws are having the opposite effect. Policymakers need to take a more nuanced and evidence-based approach that recognizes the complex dynamics of the online news ecosystem.