This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment on our post about Democrats moving from fact-checking to vibe-checking:

I think describing it as “vibes” is reductive. The vibe is certainly part of it, but it’s not just about vibes. It’s about substance, too.

When we talk about how weird the Republicans are, we’re not just talking about Trump’s hair or whatever, we’re talking about Alito quoting a fucking 17th-century witch-hunter to justify overturning Roe. We’re talking about the Heritage Foundation wanting to put an end to recreational sex and the Project 2025 guy having ties to Opus Dei.

That shit is weird, man. Not weird like Trump’s spray-tan is weird, weird like a bunch of self-professed Christians running a guy who raped a woman and then responded to the allegations by calling her ugly is weird.

Context matters.

Like, if there’s a group of adults meeting in robes and calling themselves dragons and wizards, that’s a little weird, but if it’s a LARP session that’s a very different class of weird than if it’s a Klan rally.

In second place, it’s an anonymous comment about Jim Jordan demanding that advertisers explain why they don’t advertise on MAGA media sites:

GOP: We love the free market and free speech!
Free market: Advertising on your sites is a PR nightmare. We’re taking our business elsewhere.
GOP: That’s not what we meant!

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with another comment (also anonymous) about vibe checks over fact checks:

We are post-truth. Facts don’t matter anymore. If they did, president Trump never would have happened. Between Trickle-Down-Economics and the Iraq war, the right wing has blown all its credibility with rational people. To maintain any level of power, they necessarily had to create an environment where there is no objective truth.

Reality and facts are for the rational. Anyone thinking of voting GQP at this stage is the game needs a different tack.

Next, it’s a comment from Pseudonymous Coward about House Republicans killing KOSA:

My personal suspicion is that it has more to do with “we don’t want the Dems to pass anything they can claim has bipartisan support in an election year” than anything to do with what the bill does or does not do.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is tanj with a comment on our post about the Fifth Circuit ruling against the FCC’s rural broadband subsidy program:

I find it unsurprising that TD is in favor of rural subsidies that would make the site more accessible.

In second place, it’s an anonymous clapback to some dumb comment calling us degenerates:

Can you stop fucking the keyboard for just one post?

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got a pair of comments from Pixelation. First, it’s one about AI mass surveillance at the Paris Olympics:

It’s okay because, France has always been at war with Eastasia.

Finally, it’s one about Google autocomplete following up “President Donald” with “duck” before “Trump”:

Well, to be fair, Donald Duck would make a better president.

That’s all for this week, folks!

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, the New York Times stood up for Section 230 and called out the politicians who were lying about it, like Rep. Gosar who had previously been sued for blocking constituents on social media, while we tried to put an end to the myth that big tech was censoring conservatives (and that platforms legally had to be neutral) and looked closer at Josh Hawley’s latest bill that would make him product manager for the internet. And, as expected, Nick Sandmann’s lawsuit against the Washington Post was quickly dismissed.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, Michael Hayden had a moment of accidental honesty and admitted that Ed Snowden was a whistleblower, while the EFF was asking the court to declare that the NSA’s “internet backbone” collections were unconstitutional, and Keith Alexander was going around asking for $1 million a month for his cybersecurity services. The recording industry was going after Ford and General Motors for cars with built-in CD rippers, City of London police were pulling some ridiculous shenanigans to “fight piracy”, and Prenda received another appeals court smackdown. Also, a podcasting patent troll was trying to run away from a lawsuit after realizing podcasting didn’t make much money.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, an earlier patent troll was stepping up to claim it owned pretty much all podcasting. The Associated Press was trying to get out of having to talk any more about its plans for news DRM, Hollywood was still calling for more movie DRM, and Barnes & Noble was defending its practice of putting DRM on public domain ebooks. A new ruling in Europe said that an 11-word snippet could be copyright infringement, a publisher was nervous about letting an author quote a single sentence, and we saw what might be the first defamation lawsuit over a tweet.

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, the New York Times stood up for Section 230 and called out the politicians who were lying about it, like Rep. Gosar who had previously been sued for blocking constituents on social media, while we tried to put an end to the myth that big tech was censoring conservatives (and that platforms legally had to be neutral) and looked closer at Josh Hawley’s latest bill that would make him product manager for the internet. And, as expected, Nick Sandmann’s lawsuit against the Washington Post was quickly dismissed.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, Michael Hayden had a moment of accidental honesty and admitted that Ed Snowden was a whistleblower, while the EFF was asking the court to declare that the NSA’s “internet backbone” collections were unconstitutional, and Keith Alexander was going around asking for $1 million a month for his cybersecurity services. The recording industry was going after Ford and General Motors for cars with built-in CD rippers, City of London police were pulling some ridiculous shenanigans to “fight piracy”, and Prenda received another appeals court smackdown. Also, a podcasting patent troll was trying to run away from a lawsuit after realizing podcasting didn’t make much money.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, an earlier patent troll was stepping up to claim it owned pretty much all podcasting. The Associated Press was trying to get out of having to talk any more about its plans for news DRM, Hollywood was still calling for more movie DRM, and Barnes & Noble was defending its practice of putting DRM on public domain ebooks. A new ruling in Europe said that an 11-word snippet could be copyright infringement, a publisher was nervous about letting an author quote a single sentence, and we saw what might be the first defamation lawsuit over a tweet.

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.

IIn this week’s round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:

• Jim Jordan Demands Advertisers Explain Why They Don’t Advertise On MAGA Media Sites (Techdirt)
• TikTok Has a Nazi Problem (Wired)
• NazTok: An organized neo-Nazi TikTok network is getting millions of views (Institute for Strategic Dialogue)
• How TikTok bots and AI have powered a resurgence in UK far-right violence (The Guardian)
• Senate Passes Child Online Safety Bill, Sending It to an Uncertain House Fate (New York Tmes)
• The teens lobbying against the Kids Online Safety Act (The Verge)
• Social Media Mishaps Aren’t Always Billionaire Election Stealing Plots (Techdirt)
• X suspends ‘White Dudes for Harris’ account after massive fundraiser (Washington Post)
• Why Won’t Google Auto-complete ‘Trump Assassination Attempt’? (Intelligencer)
• ‘Technical glitch’ is no longer an excuse (Everything in Moderation from 2020)
• A message to our Black community (TikTok from 2020)

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund, and by our sponsor Discord. In our Bonus Chat at the end of the episode, Mike speaks to Juliet Shen and Camille Francois about the Trust & Safety Tooling Consortium at Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, and the importance of open source tools for trust and safety.

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side Rico R. with a comment about the Surgeon General’s call for a warning label on social media:

Bullying somewhere does not make that place bad for kids

Surgeon General Warning: Enrolling your child in a public school can increase issues with your child’s mental health due to peer pressure and bullying. Homeschooling is advised.

See how ridiculous that sounds? I was bullied WAY more in school than I was on social media growing up, and yet I don’t see the Surgeon General demanding warnings on school enrollment forms.

And if some troll says, “School is mandatory, but social media is not,” let me ask you why is school mandatory? Because of its net benefit to society. A good quality education is important. Yet, whenever someone points out how social media can be beneficial to teens (i.e., helps them express themselves, get help when needed, feel like they belong, etc.) and research backs up that this is the case, such studies are hand-waved away as irrelevant.

Social media isn’t the boogeyman many claim it is. It reflects real life, and real life has good and bad things about it. It can build people up or bring people down. So can social media. So don’t write it off as “all bad” for kids.

In second place, it’s an anonymous comment about the fictional crime wave:

There’s another factor underlying this

A lot of the people wailing about “a historic crime wave” don’t care about preventing crime – at all. They care about pandering to their base (in the US: old racist white people in suburbs who think cities are hellholes) and ensuring that their supporters (like police unions) are well-funded.

Unsurprisingly, these are the same people who vociferously oppose every proposal to stop crime well before it happens. They campaign/vote against school lunches, education programs for the unemployed, housing for the homeless, lead paint/pipe removal (yes, it’s linked to crime rates), youth recreational programs, substance abuse help, mental health counseling, offender rehabilitation, etc. – every possible thing that could actually help people so that they’re not so desperate that they resort to crime.

So every time you hear someone trumpeting “law and order”, know that what you’re really hearing is a vicious, sadistic thug who is willing to doom tens of millions of people to miserable lives in order to pander to the wealthy and privileged.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with one more comment about the Surgeon General’s concerns, this time from an anonymous commenter:

In my experience, it largely seems to be ostensible adults who are brain damaged from social media.

Next, it’s That One Guy with a comment about the attacks on the Internet Archive:

Names to remember and avoid

Hatchette
Harper Collins
John Wiley
Penguin Random House

Any time those publishers try to claim that they have no problem with libraries the only response should be pointing to their actions here, where they’ve made crystal clear that if they could they would absolutely destroy the very concept of libraries and require anyone who wants to read a book to buy their own copy to do so.

Those publishers are friends to neither readers or authors, and should be avoided by both as a result.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous comment about a reference we made to people who cry libel every time they are insulted:

Giving them way too much credit here, Tim. As often as not, they cry “slander” rather than “libel” when encountering written words that upset them.

In second place, it’s tanj with a comment about New York’s “save the children” bill:

Blame Canada

He’s blaming The Internet when he should be blaming Canada.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with one more comment from tanj, this time about all the dastardly pirates defending the Internet Archive:

You pirates also think the purpose of copyright is to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authord and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries rather than enriching publishers.

Finally, it’s an anonymous comment about the lawsuit against Martin Shkreli over the Wu Tang album:

Watch your step, Shkreli,
Protect ya neck, kid.

That’s all for this week, folks!

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, we reiterated the all-important point that there is no legal distinction between a “platform” and a “publisher”, and explained why the freedom to decide what content to facilitate is essential to Section 230, while the Supreme Court signaled its recognition that social media sites don’t have to allow all speech. Genius picked a dumb fight with Google over song lyrics, which quickly got even dumber. And Congress was stirring up a moral panic about deepfakes, while Kim Kardashian got one such deepfake taken down with a copyright claim. Also, Prenda’s Paul Hansmeier was finally hit with a fine and prison time.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, more details emerged about how the US government had no idea to solve a problem like Ed Snowden, while congressmen were admitting that the NSA spied on Americans without a warrant. Techdirt received our first right to be forgotten request, and we breathed a sigh of relief (while also chuckling) as an appeals court ruled that having “dirt” in your domain name doesn’t remove safe harbor protections. Another copyright troll ran away upon details of its practices coming to light, and a new ruling repeated the forcible case that Sherlock Holmes had entered the public domain.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, Hulu was accused of being “anti-American” for providing free content, while Blu-Ray was allowing users to make copies with a lot of strings attached. A French court ordered a P2P news site to cover recent file sharing convictions, while the NY Times was correcting its false article about the Pirate Bay appeal but still getting it wrong. Also, the much-anticipated penalty in the Jammie Thomas case arrived, clocking in at an absurd $1.92 million that was quickly defended by a bunch of RIAA mouthpieces.

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:

• Surgeon General: Why I’m Calling for a Warning Label on Social Media Platforms (New York Times)
• The Surgeon General Is Wrong. Social Media Doesn’t Need Warning Labels (The Daily Beast)
• Anthropic calls for AI red teaming to be standardized (Fortune)
• How small claims court became Meta’s customer service hotline (Engadget)
• Pornhub to block five more states over age verification laws (The Verge)
• New York Outlaws ‘Addictive’ Social Media Feeds For Teen Users (PC Mag)
• Meta Oversight Board’s Helle Thorning-Schmidt: ‘Not all AI-generated content is harmful’ (Financial Times)

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

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment about Trump threatening ProPublica, and our point that he remains “exhibit A” for why anti-SLAPP laws are needed:

The funny thing is, this statement could apply to a lot of situations: SLAPPs, campaign finance fraud, attempting to overthrow the government…

In second place, it’s MrWilson with some thoughts on banning kids from social media:

Banning kids from social media is like home schooling kids. Sure, it’ll limit their access to some of the genuinely awful stuff out there, but it will also prevent them from seeing all the good stuff out there, developing positive social experiences and relationships outside of their bubble, and it will mean their parents and siblings and neighbors are their only social outlet or influence, which can be pretty shitty if your parents are authoritarian fundamentalists who think children are somewhere between prisoners or slaves.

Once again, the bad shit in social media is due to the nature of people, not to the nature of social media. And you can’t legislate people to not be shitty people.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with one more comment about Trump’s threats, this time from an anonymous commenter reminding everyone that we knew it was coming:

“One of the things I’m going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we’re certainly leading. I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws.”

Even back in 2016 he was broadcasting his plans to not let anyone tell the truth about him.

Next, it’s PaulT with a comment about the EU court saying there’s no right to online anonymity and equating things like downloading with serious crimes:

Sadly, we’ve been arguing this for a long time. A copied file does not necessarily mean a lost sale, and in the spirit of mixtapes and movies recorded from TV could actually mean increased sales from some people.

The best option is giving people access to what they wish to access, at a reasonable price level. But, between confusing licencing agreements, regional restrictions and regular price hikes, I’m hearing more and more people just saying “f**k it, I’m pirating again”. When Netflix first came to Europe and when Spotify started, my selling point for people was saying that it was easier than piracy. I can definitely say that removing peoples’ privacy will not cause them to do anything other than work out how to use security features, and that peoples’ lives will be ruined unnecessarily by concentrating on people who copy files vs. people who refuse to give people what they will pay for.

“Piracy” is a good excuse, but it’s usually a cover for other things. That was true in the days of mixtapes, VHS tape trading and floppy disk trades, and it’s true now.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous reply to Stephen Stone’s first place insightful comment:

Trump’s next job…

Interviewer: Are there any accomplishments from your last job that you’re particularly proud of?

Candidate: I’m responsible for ten new rules in their employee handbook.

Interviewer: That’s great! You wrote them?

Candidate: That’s not what I said.

In second place, it’s Section_230 with a response to a commenter spouting something weird about Nazis:

Speed running Godwin’s law are we?

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got a pair of comments about Trump campaigning on TikTok. First, it’s Pixelation with a change of heart on the reasons for banning the app:

With Trump using it, TikTok is definitely a national security threat.

Finally, it’s an anonymous prognostication:

Some Gen Alpha kid is gonna give him a stroke and we’re gonna owe them for the rest of our lives.

That’s all for this week, folks!

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, the FCC was remaining in denial about the lack of broadband competition, while we asked why all the antitrust attention was focused on Big Tech but not Big Telecom. Officials in Germany were pushing for encryption backdoors while Facebook was considering going ahead and undermining its own encryption regardless, and the EU Court of Justice was suggesting that maybe the entire internet should be censored and filtered. The targets of Devin Nunes’s cow lawsuits were fighting back, and some drama at YouTube once again demonstrated the impossibility of content moderation.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, a failed patent troll was hit with legal fees and the Supreme Court issued two more smackdowns of the CAFC, while Malibu Media was trying to get more ammo against its targets and the EU Court of Justice ruled that just viewing stuff online isn’t copyright infringement. The EFF argued in court that the NSA knowingly and illegally destroyed evidence, while the UK government was trying (and failing) to hide details of GCHQ fiber line taps, while courts in both countries were holding secret trials related to terrorism. Also, we hit the one year anniversary of the very first Snowden revelation, and noted that while much had changed since then, it wasn’t enough.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, the Supreme Court agreed to take on the Bilski case about whether software and business models could be patented. The RIAA’s voluntary program for ISPs was not exactly a hit, ASCAP was looking to get some of that sweet video game money, and JD Salinger infamously sued the author of an unauthorized sequel to Catcher in the Rye. Apple proved the EFF’s point about arbitrary app store rejections by rejecting the EFF’s RSS reader, and Creative Commons was still facing some problems due to the blurry line between commercial and non-commercial. Also, Barbara Streisand decided to publish an entire book about the Malibu home that she once rather famously wanted to keep secret.

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:

• EU Explores Whether Telegram Falls Under Strict New Content Law (Bloomberg)
• Too Small to Police, Too Big to Ignore: Telegram Is the App Dividing Europe (Bloomberg) 
• NIST Reports First Results From Age Estimation Software Evaluation (NIST) 
• Supersharers of fake news on Twitter (Science) 
• Digital town square? Nextdoor’s offline contexts and online discourse (JQD:DM) 
• The first social media babies are adults now. Some are pushing for laws to protect kids from their parents’ oversharing (CNN) 
• TikTok offered an extraordinary deal. The U.S. government took a pass. (Washington Post) 
• Q&A: Ireland’s Digital Services Coordinator On 100 Days of the DSA (Tech Policy Press)

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

This week, both our winners on the insightful side come from our post about a facts-free op-ed defending the bipartisan bill to repeal Section 230. In first place, it’s Stephen T. Stone reiterating a rule that holds true:

Once more, with feeling:

No one can oppose Section 230 without lying about it.

In second place, it’s Strawb with a reply to the claim that Section 230 allows “blatant viewpoint discrimination”:

No, that’s the First Amendment. But keep telling Mike how he “doesn’t understand the law”.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Dan B about Ajit Pai supporting the TikTok ban:

What makes this weird, to me, is that this isn’t even good politics for him.

Trump is (currently) against the ban, as are a plurality of independent voters. On top of that, there are solid, non-crazy legal arguments that the ban is unconstitutional. So this would have been an opportunity for Pai to simultaneously suck up to Trump, help the Republicans’ chances in 2024, and… do the right thing.

Next, it’s Drew Wilson with a comment about the potential (or not-so-potential) sale of TikTok:

I’m with Mike on this. The likelihood TikTok getting sold is very low at this point. TikTok made it very clear that they aren’t selling. They have their litigation effort (along with creator litigation next to them) fully ahead of them at this point. It makes WAY more sense that both TikTok and the creators that use the platform to focus on the lawsuits they filed. If it’s looking unlikely that the lawsuit is going to win and they change their mind on selling afterwards, then we’ll talk, but that’s a LONG way down the road and, what’s more, that’s a very big “if”.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous comment from last week’s winners post, responding to the winning insightful comment from that week, which was itself a reply to a comment throwing around some legal nonsense and included the line “the irony is that your hallucinated ‘facts’ are more offensive than ChatGPT’s”:

Hey, good news. Humans are still better at hallucinating than AI. Who’da thunk it.

In second place, it’s Boba Fatt with a comment about the bogus takedowns of “Fuck the LAPD” shirts:

I predict a new T-shirt design

now with “and the LAPDF, too”

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from i havent had coffee yet confessing a misreading of the headline on our post about “the streaming sector”:

I first read the title as “Screaming Sector Continues Its…” and assumed it was about maga/conservatives.

Finally, it’s an anonymous comment about the latest nonsense from the mayor of New York City:

Someone should just switch Eric Adams with Eric André one night just to see what happens.

That’s all for this week, folks!

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, the government hit whistleblower David Hale with espionage charges. All four major wireless carriers were hit with lawsuits over sharing location data, while employees of AT&T and Verizon were caught up in a DOJ bust over SIM hijacking. Canada’s Prime Minister was threatening to fine social media companies over fake news, while a Canadian committee published a ludicrous fantasy pretending to be a copyright reform analysis. And, in perhaps the most notable news for us this week, we announced the conclusion of our legal dispute with Shiva Ayyadurai.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, AT&T was warning of a parade of horribles that would supposedly happen if the FCC reclassified broadband, the cable industry was lying about having invested in broadband and supported net neutrality (since the industry’s own numbers showed a general decline in investment over the years), and Tom Wheeler was revising his net neutrality plans before opening the floor to comments. Then, an initial vote on new open internet rules was reported in drastically different ways in different publications. We also wrote about why making APIs copyrightable is bad news for innovation, while Automattic announced that it wouldn’t claim copyright over its APIs.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, there was a tidal wave of lawsuits over pirated clip-art, while we continued writing about how people make a lot of bad assumptions about copyright and it’s almost impossible to live your life without infringing. The BSA released more bogus piracy numbers, the CEO of Sony Pictures was complaining about the internet, and Francea approved a three-strikes law. Meanwhile, Craigslist gave in to constant attacks by Attorneys General and started locking down its “erotic services” category, which (amusingly) actually annoyed some AGs like Andrew Cuomo and Henry McMaster, because Craigslist just did it without giving them the photo op and fawning press coverage they hoped for.

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:

• Commission opens formal proceedings against Meta under the Digital Services Act related to the protection of minors on Facebook and Instagram (European Commission)
• Meta, TikTok, other platforms told to expect EU guidelines soon on child protection, age verification (MLex)
• Got a text that you think is a scam? S’pore’s new centre to fight online harms can help verify it (Straits Times)
• Bipartisan Bill To Repeal Section 230 Defended In Facts-Optional Op-Ed (Techdirt)
• Indian journalists turned to YouTube to dodge Modi’s censorship. Some of their channels are now being blocked (Reuters Institute for Journalism)
• She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all (The Guardian)
• Commission services sign administrative arrangement with Ofcom to support the enforcement of social media regulations (Pub Affairs Bruxelles)
• Singapore’s proposed online safety laws look like more censorship in disguise (Rest of World)

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

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson, with a comment on our post about ChatGPT and privacy rights in Europe, specifically in response to someone who raised the issue of “false light” torts:

False light is a privacy tort in the US. We’re talking about Europe. But also, false light typically requires the defendant to publish the information widely rather than just in a private chat, it requires the misinformation to be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and the defendant must be at fault. These requirements aren’t met unless you can prove the company intentionally programmed an LLM to specifically identify and defame individuals and did so to a large audience rather than just one person in a chat. And no reasonable person, understanding that a non-human LLM literally makes up everything it says by its very nature (barring a web search or a RAG), would be offended by it. So you’re wrong on top of being wrong on top of being wrong.

The irony is that your hallucinated “facts” are more offensive than ChatGPT’s.

In second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone with a comment on our post about Utah’s transphobic snitch form:

When the anti-trans crowd is done with trans people, they’ll go after other queer people next. Anti-trans bigots never stopped being anti-queer⁠—they just stopped being so loud about gay people because nobody was buying into their shit any more.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a pair of comments responding to the idea that banning TikTok is okay because China bans sites already. First, it’s an anonymous reply:

I’ve seen loads of people make this argument (they ban us, we’ll ban them), only it’s a 5 year child’s argument, not that of an adult.

Next, it’s That One Guy expressing a similar sentiment:

If you would throw your principles aside that easily you never had them

It’s both telling and disturbing how quickly some people are to dismiss any moral high ground or principles they might have held the second they find it inconvenient to hold them or or beneficial to throw them aside.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is a reply to another comment that just barely didn’t make the winners, so we’re going to go a little out of order and slip that one in as an editor’s choice first, to provide proper context. So, as our first editor’s choice, it’s an anonymous comment about ChatGPT privacy concerns:

They’re really gonna have fun with my Magic 8 Ball.

Now, for our first place winner on the funny side, it’s an anonymous reply to that comment:

Don’t count on it.

In second place on the funny side, it’s another anonymous comment from the post about Utah, this time replying to a commenter who went on a rant about gender identity which, in their hate-filled world, is apparently casually abbreviated to GI and decried for not being “a valid science”:

I’m pretty sure the Gastro-Intestional tract is both real and both a part of science and medicine. Though I do agree there there’s no reason for a GI Tract Bill Of Rights outside the context of a Taco Bell bathroom.

Finally, for our second editor’s choice on the funny side, it’s an anonymous comment about Louis Vuitton’s latest silly trademark crusade:

Louis Vuitton: Next lawsuit, “Ludwig van Beethoven” aka “L V Beethoven”, let’s ask 1€ per CD ever sold.

That’s all for this week, folks!

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, there was a legal fight over whether it’s protected speech to flash your headlights to warn of hidden cops. We looked at how little the FCC had done to police wireless location data scandals, and how it was doubling down on bogus claims about broadband availability, as well as hiding details about fake net neutrality comments, and ignoring phone companies ripping people off. Apple was engaging in some more silly trademark aggression, this time over a bicycle path in Germany, while a motorcycle rally was continuing to assert trademarks that had been invalidated. And a broad coalition of people were calling on Congress to bring back to Office of Technology Assessment.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, what was Congress voting against? Well… bringing back the Office of Technology Assessment. Meanwhile, we looked at the ways broadband companies were killing net neutrality without actually violating it and trying to make the internet more like the old, broken phone system. Congress was also looking at competing NSA reform bills, the better of which had already been watered down, and the two sides eventually reached a compromise. And we wrote about how easy it is to casually violate copyright and how the world of copyright policymaking seems allergic to facts (as quickly demonstrated by an industry report on the dangers of pirate sites that didn’t include any data).

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, we discussed what (if anything) the Wolverine leak cost the movie at the box office. A popular video was demonstrating the beauty of remixes, while 20th Century Fox was taking down entries in its own mashup contest. California was considering a troubling photo removal law for social media, the UK was looking to wildly increase the fines for copyright infringement, Italy was taking a troubling view of the internet, and there were legal questions about Facebook blocking links to The Pirate Bay. This was also the week when the LA Times dug up and spread the funny little story of why SMS text messages are limited to 160 characters.

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.

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, there was a legal fight over whether it’s protected speech to flash your headlights to warn of hidden cops. We looked at how little the FCC had done to police wireless location data scandals, and how it was doubling down on bogus claims about broadband availability, as well as hiding details about fake net neutrality comments, and ignoring phone companies ripping people off. Apple was engaging in some more silly trademark aggression, this time over a bicycle path in Germany, while a motorcycle rally was continuing to assert trademarks that had been invalidated. And a broad coalition of people were calling on Congress to bring back to Office of Technology Assessment.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, what was Congress voting against? Well… bringing back the Office of Technology Assessment. Meanwhile, we looked at the ways broadband companies were killing net neutrality without actually violating it and trying to make the internet more like the old, broken phone system. Congress was also looking at competing NSA reform bills, the better of which had already been watered down, and the two sides eventually reached a compromise. And we wrote about how easy it is to casually violate copyright and how the world of copyright policymaking seems allergic to facts (as quickly demonstrated by an industry report on the dangers of pirate sites that didn’t include any data).

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, we discussed what (if anything) the Wolverine leak cost the movie at the box office. A popular video was demonstrating the beauty of remixes, while 20th Century Fox was taking down entries in its own mashup contest. California was considering a troubling photo removal law for social media, the UK was looking to wildly increase the fines for copyright infringement, Italy was taking a troubling view of the internet, and there were legal questions about Facebook blocking links to The Pirate Bay. This was also the week when the LA Times dug up and spread the funny little story of why SMS text messages are limited to 160 characters.

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.

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.

This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to our post about Google blocking news sites in California because of bad link tax laws, and specifically in reply to a commenter who suggested the link tax would just be “Google giving back” money. In first place, it’s an anonymous reply:

What. Any money google earns through ads on their own products is purely from value of googles services. The links the the news sites do not contain the news itself. That’s like saying the yellow pages is pizza. And Chinese food. And Mexican.

In case this is not blindly obvious: that’s bat shit crazy.

The news sites have their content. And google is only making it easy for people to get to it. If the news sites can’t make any money off it: That’s like Restaurants blaming the yellow pages for them going out of business.

And in second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone making a different version of the point:

Irrelevant. To charge for links is to undercut the basic functionality of the Internet for the sake of profit. Google, Twitter, Facebook, or any other interactive web service or website should have no obligation to pay for the right to link to a newspaper’s website.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with one more comment on that post, this time from another anonymous commenter making a very simple and important point:

Taxes disincentivize the taxed behavior. If you tax links, you’re disincentivizing linking. This is not rocket surgery.

Next, it’s still another anonymous commenter, this time on our post about the possibility of a TikTok ban, in reply to a commenter trying to shift the burden of proof and demand a “debunking” of fears about TikTok:

You can’t “debunk a concern”. People will have a moral panic over whatever they like in service of any number of agendas.

The actual problem, though, is that’s all you have: Concern, and claims. Bring evidence of privacy issues unique to TikTok, and/or influence issues caused by TikTok (while not ignoring the First Amendment). Then others can support or debunk your evidence with additional evidence. That’s how this works. Make a testable claim, then test it, then show your work and the evidence produced by testing. It is no one else’s job to counter things that don’t exist, but lucky you, articles like the one above are already doing just that.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is NotTheMomma with a comment about other child safety laws that would block sites:

Come on now, Mike, this will work, look at how prohibition went? Most of these people pushing for this were alive then.

In second place, it’s bonk with another comment about TikTok panic, and people comparing it to fentanyl:

I heard from a friend’s friend that they had a brother that was so addicted to social media he died. It took the paramedics ten minutes to dislodge the smartphone he had snorted, but he had already perished at that point.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got two more anonymous comments. The first is another response to “TikTok as fentanyl”:

Projection?

… I’m starting to think that the folks in charge are just projecting their own insecurities brought on by years of just believing whatever entity was waving money in their face.

Finally, it’s a comment about the rise of “chemtrail” legislation:

WHEREAS, it is documented, among those within the pseudoscience of bullshitery, that the Earth is flat, and that the Earth is at the center of the universe.

WHEREAS, the constant Pi is commonly referred to as an irrational number, it will from now on be known as 3.

We have the best science, no one has better science than we do. Did you land on the moon? No? Hahaha

That’s all for this week, folks!

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, Starz was going after tweets about a TorrentFreak article, then issuing a laughably unbelievable excuse and apology. The EU nations, as expected, rubber stamped the copyright directive, while the Parliament moved on to the terrorist content regulations and quickly pushed those through too. We learned some more about ICE’s fake university sting operation, while Motel 6 was set to pay out another $12 million for handing guest info to ICE. And Facebook and a very, very bad week on the privacy front, while the Sixth Circuit dumped a lawsuit attempting to hold Twitter responsible for the Pulse nightclub shooting.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, we looked at the lessons from the suspicion and denial around the NSA and the Heartbleed vulnerability, and how the agency could certainly still be using it. The Guardian and the Washington Post won Pulitzers for their Snowden coverage, leading to some backlash that got pretty bizarre. Hollywood was pressuring Australia to make ISPs act as copyright cops, Eli Lilley was pressuring Canada to approve a patent on a useless drug, and General Mills was trying out quite a legal theory about what you can agree to by “Liking” a page on Facebook.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, Google turned off uploads in Korea rather than abide by a requirement to identify and disclose users, some new research was being misrepresented to claim that “Twitter makes you immoral”, and there was one of many examples of Amazon’s DRM turning a Kindle into a paperweight. An activist group was using bogus DMCA claims to take down videos exposing its use of fake “concerned citizens”, while a news station was doing the same to hide the fact that it fell for an April Fool’s prank. And the Coldplay/Satriani copyright fight continued, with Coldplay’s filing that denied any copying.

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, Starz was going after tweets about a TorrentFreak article, then issuing a laughably unbelievable excuse and apology. The EU nations, as expected, rubber stamped the copyright directive, while the Parliament moved on to the terrorist content regulations and quickly pushed those through too. We learned some more about ICE’s fake university sting operation, while Motel 6 was set to pay out another $12 million for handing guest info to ICE. And Facebook and a very, very bad week on the privacy front, while the Sixth Circuit dumped a lawsuit attempting to hold Twitter responsible for the Pulse nightclub shooting.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, we looked at the lessons from the suspicion and denial around the NSA and the Heartbleed vulnerability, and how the agency could certainly still be using it. The Guardian and the Washington Post won Pulitzers for their Snowden coverage, leading to some backlash that got pretty bizarre. Hollywood was pressuring Australia to make ISPs act as copyright cops, Eli Lilley was pressuring Canada to approve a patent on a useless drug, and General Mills was trying out quite a legal theory about what you can agree to by “Liking” a page on Facebook.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, Google turned off uploads in Korea rather than abide by a requirement to identify and disclose users, some new research was being misrepresented to claim that “Twitter makes you immoral”, and there was one of many examples of Amazon’s DRM turning a Kindle into a paperweight. An activist group was using bogus DMCA claims to take down videos exposing its use of fake “concerned citizens”, while a news station was doing the same to hide the fact that it fell for an April Fool’s prank. And the Coldplay/Satriani copyright fight continued, with Coldplay’s filing that denied any copying.

In our coverage of the problems with KOSA and other legislative pushes to “protect the children” online, we usually (for obvious reasons) come at the subject from the technology side, and look at all the ways these laws misunderstand the internet. But that’s not their only flaw: these proposals also tend to lack any real understanding of child safety. Maureen Flatley is someone who has been vocal from the other side, having covered child safety issues for about as long as we’ve covered tech, and she joins us on this week’s episode to discuss how KOSA and its ilk aren’t rooted in what we really know about keeping kids safe.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous piece-by-piece reply to another comment about the reporter who was suspended from ExTwitter hours after publishing an article about it:

“In other words, he either bot boosted an article about botting, or else the botting services are giving him a freebie.”

You need to up your reading comprehension, dude.

See: Séamas O’Reilly: I criticised ‘free speech absolutist’ Elon Musk’s X. My account was suspended where your 75% figure comes from.

“Five minutes since I’d posted that article on Twitter, 75% of the replies I’d received had themselves been spam bots trying to sell fake shite to my followers.”

Not something beneficial for O’Reilly, no matter how you spin it. And describing self-interest on the part of the bot runners as “a freebie” is like calling #GamerGate “constructive criticism”.

In second place, it’s Amazing Rando with a comment about ExTwitter and regulatory compliance:

That’s why it’s so important to have a team, maybe call them Trust & Safety or Compliance to keep you out of this sort of trouble!

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a pair of comments about Wired’s recent fact-deficient attack on Section 230, and attacks on Section 230 in general. First, it’s an anonymous one:

Has anybody else noted that the hinted at subtext of all these anti 230 rants is: ‘The internet should be full of opinions that I like, and those that I dislike should be removed’. or ‘How dare you stop me from harassing people by telling them how wrong they are’.

Next, it’s That One Guy with a similar point:

A most telling absence

And the ‘There are no honest and/or reality-based arguments against 230’ streak remains unbroken since it made it into law.

It’s so strange, if the law really was as terrible as it’s critics want people to believe it is you’d think by now they’d have come up with at least one good argument against it that isn’t based upon misconceptions or flat out lies…

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is MrWilson with a response to our post about the cop who got in a fight with an acorn:

Just more anti-police hate speech from Tim. That acorn was dangerous and after it saw what happened to the back window of the vehicle, it’ll think twice about scarin’ the bajeezus out of that there brave deputy. Bet you wouldn’t be so brave as to unload a clip when a violent acorn comes for you!

Acorns Can Assault Badges!

In second place, it’s smb with a reply to a comment praising Musk and denying reality:

You forgot: “XTwitter is better and more popular than ever!”

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a response from Stephen T. Stone to a comment speculating about the reasons for ExTwitter’s deletion of a reporter’s account:

If Elon wants to ban Twitter accounts that make him (and his run as owner of Twitter) look bad, he should start with his own.

Finally, it’s That One Guy again, replying to a comment that did say “ExTwitter is better than ever”:

Not the brag you think it is

‘Since the local chapter of the KKK started hanging out at the bar I go to it’s been better than ever!’

That’s all for this week, folks!

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, the EU was stalwartly moving forward with Article 13 as part of its terrible copyright directive. Trump was preparing to ban Huawei, Monster Energy lost its trademark fight with Mosta Pizza, and a lawsuit against Bloomberg brought the “hot news doctrine” back into the conversation. A report showed that ICE almost never punished its contractors despite many violations, while key FOSTA supporter Cindy McCain claimed credit for stopping sex trafficking after misidentifying a child. A judge in Minnesota spent only minutes approving warrants to sweep up thousands of cellphone users, someone impersonated the New Jersey Attorney General to demand a takedown of 3D-printed gun instructions, and Sony was using copyright claims to take down its own anti-piracy propaganda.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, government officials were leaking classified info to journalists in order to discredit Snowden for doing that very thing, while Snowden was expressing his willingness to answer questions from the European Parliament. US copyright lobbyists equated fair dealing with piracy, MPAA boss Chris Dodd was pretending to be ready to discuss copyright reform, details emerged about ASCAP screwing over Pandora, and a bunch of musicians joined forces to fight against compulsory licenses for remixes. This was also the week that the world was briefly confused, and amused, by the appearance and then rapid disappearance of Nathan Fielder’s “Dumb Starbucks”.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, the biggest viral hit was the recording of Christian Bale rampaging on the set of a movie, and the director suggested Warner Bros might try to abuse copyright to suppress the clip. Dianne Feinstein was trying to sneak ISP copyright filtering into a broadband stimulus bill, the Pirate Bay trial in Sweden was set to be broadcast online, ASCAP was continuing its attacks against Lawrence Lessig and free culture, an EU Committee ignored all the research and approved copyright extension, and we learned about how US IP interests pressured Canada to join the WTO fight against China. We also had some questions about the curious fact that Google launched Android without multitouch functionality, while concerns were mounting over Google’s book search settlement.