Trump DOJ Fires Prosecutors, Scrubs Court Records Of Mention Of January 6 Insurrection Nothing survives a purge. Especially not the truth. The DOJ secured a conviction for Washington state resident Taylor Taranto. According to the DOJ's May 21, 2025 press release, Taranto had committed several…

Larry Ellison’s CBS Acquisition Leads To Mass Layoffs As Bari Weiss Enjoys $10k A Day Security Detail U.S. media mergers always follow the same trajectory. Pre-merger, executives promise all manner of amazing synergies and deal benefits. Post-merger, not only do those benefits generally never…

USPTO To Re-Examine Recently Approved Nintendo Patent Well, this is actually pretty fascinating. We've been discussing the somewhat bizzare patent lawsuit Nintendo is waging against PocketPair in Japan for some time now. PocketPair is the company behind the hit game Palworld, which has obviously…

Whoops: Your ‘Smart’ Vacuum May Be Broadcasting A 3D Map Of Your Home We've long established that modern "smart" devices aren't always all that smart. Whether it's "smart" door locks that are easily hacked to gain entry, "smart" refrigerators that leak your Gmail credentials, or "smart" vehicles…

Student Gets Handcuffed, Searched At Gunpoint Because AI Thought A Bag Of Chips Was A Handgun We've always been wary of putting cops in schools. Putting cops in schools just means administrative issues (i.e., student discipline) get the law enforcement treatment, which turns misbehavior into…

NC GOP Threatens ProPublica: Drop This Story Or We’ll Call Trump To Punish You The faux “party of free speech” strikes again. For years, the MAGA GOP has insisted that it is the true “party of free” speech even as all evidence suggests this administration is the most censorial and the most…

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What’s Left Of The FBI Gets Back To Turning Teens Into Terrorists The FBI is currently flying at half-staff. A bunch of its field agents are now just immigration officers, thanks to this administration's desire to eject as many brown people from countries south of our border from the US as…

Comcast, Netflix, And CBS Will All Now Kiss Trump’s Ass To Try And Acquire Warner Brothers And CNN As we've documented, Trump's right wing billionaire friend Larry Ellison (and his nepobaby son, David) recently acquired CBS and likely co-ownership of TikTok. Like Elon Musk's acquisition of…

Samsung Officially Rolls Out Update To Annoy You With Ads On Smart Fridges If I had to pick one iconic line spoken by Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise, it would be this one. The confident evil of a villain who calmly acknowledges that the deal struck with him is changing and there is nothing…

Science Must Decentralize Knowledge production doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Every great scientific breakthrough is built on prior work, and an ongoing exchange with peers in the field. That’s why we need to address the threat of major publishers and platforms having an improper influence on how…

Techdirt Podcast Episode 437: Social Media Is Always Changing Support us on Patreon » For two decades, the landscape of social media has been constantly changing, and the discourse about "free speech" has been changing alongside it. This week, we've got a bit of an open-ended discussion with…

DOJ Prosecutor Says He’ll Just Keep Prosecuting Despite Court Ruling He Was Illegally Appointed Another "fuck you" has been delivered to federal courts by the Trump administration. This time, the extended middle finger is embodied by (extremely recently now-former) US Attorney Bill Essayli.…

Fox News Fell For AI-Generated Rage Bait, Rewrote Story To Pretend It Didn’t Fox News has a problem: when you build your entire editorial model around feeding your audience's biases, you stop asking whether the stories feeding those biases are actually true. Case in point: last week, they…

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Seventh Circuit Says CBP Commander Won’t Have To Explain Why He’s Violating Court Orders On A Daily Basis CBP commander Gregory Bovino has been given a temporary free pass by the Seventh Circuit Appeals Court to continue violating a court order he's been violating since the lower court first…

Trump Admin Blocking Billions In Already Awarded Broadband Grants To States That Enforce Net Neutrality Or Engage In Telecom Oversight The Trump administration is promising to block billions in already-awarded infrastructure bill broadband grants to any states that enforce net neutrality or try to…

Japan Patent Office Rejects Key Patent Application In Nintendo’s ‘Palworld’ Lawsuit Nintendo and the Pokémon Company's lawsuit in Japan against PocketPair, makers of the hit game Palworld, is still ongoing. As we've reported previously, this isn't the copyright or trademark lawsuit that everyone…

Symbolic Strength More Important Than Facts When It Comes To Misinformation Why do some people endorse claims that can easily be disproved? It’s one thing to believe false information, but another to actively stick with something that’s obviously wrong. Our new research, published in the Journal…

Man Arrested By Charlie Kirk Fan/Sheriff For Directly Quoting Donald Trump We know there's a concerted effort to punish anyone who dares to show anything but complete, unqualified reverence for Charlie Kirk's corpse. The man who made millions by denigrating anyone who wasn't as white, straight,…

60 Minutes Edits Donald Trump Telling Them 60 Minutes Should Edit Donald Trump Talking About How 60 Minutes Paid Him For Editing Kamala Harris 60 Minutes is under new management and things are getting stupid faster than you might expect. Last night’s episode featured President Trump, which is…

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DC Cops Sued After Arresting A Man For Playing Darth Vader’s Theme Music Near Federal Troops To say the irony was lost on them would be to assume they ever thought some irony might exist. DC resident Sam O'Hara came across a bunch of out-of-state National Guard troops and put his own spin on their…

Trump FCC Makes It Easier For Prison Phone Monopolies To Rip Off Inmate Families Much of the federal government is shuttered, but that's not preventing the Trump administration from finding new ways to screw over struggling Americans. Last week, the Trump FCC under Brendan Carr voted to…

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment on our post about how "neutrality" and "free speech" become excuses for bigotry: You can't be neutral about bigotry “Neutrality” is for elements of policy,…

This Week In Techdirt History: October 26th – November 1st Five Years Ago This week in 2020, the RIAA tossed out a bogus DMCA claim to get a YouTube downloading tool pulled from Github, and was still flooding Twitch with takedowns that the company was responding to by freaking out and courting a…

When AI And Secure Chat Meet, Users Deserve Strong Controls Over How They Interact Both Google and Apple are cramming new AI features into their phones and other devices, and neither company has offered clear ways to control which apps those AI systems can access. Recent issues around WhatsApp on…

ICE’s Hiring Surge Is Attracting A Bunch Of People Who Are Too Unfit (Or Too Criminal) To Work At ICE ICE can generate multiple horrible stories a day but it still can't seem to find enough brown people to deport daily to satisfy White House advisor Stephen Miller's demands for 3,000 arrests per…

RFK Jr. Just Made Texas AG Ken Paxton Look Like An Asshole And It’s Hilarious When it comes to RFK Jr., I tend not to find much humor in the chaos he creates. The man's work involves American health and illness, life and death, so it's just generally not funny. And that holds true to Kennedy's…

Kids Turn Podcast Comments Into Secret Chat Rooms, Because Of Course They Do As anyone who has read Techdirt for any length of time knows full well, there’s been a years-long campaign to demonize kids and social media. Never mind that actual experts have said the data doesn’t support the claims of…

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DHS, White House Shrug Off Having Their Social Media Lies Pointed Out To Them It surprises absolutely no one that the Trump administration lies. Trump himself has been lying constantly ever since his first spin in the resolute desk chair. His new administration is right there with him this time…

Study: AI Models Trained On Clickbait Slop Result In AI ‘Brain Rot,’ ‘Hostility’ While "AI" certainly has some useful applications, a lot of the folks in charge of the trajectory of LLMs clearly want to use it to build a giant, badly automated ouroboros of lazy internet slop that shits out ad…

Yes, There Are Some National Guard Willing To Do The Right Thing As of this moment, the National Guard is indefinitely prevented from deploying within the Chicagoland area. The court order was issued pending the Supreme Court's decision to rule on the matter. And because this administration is a…

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Chat Bot Your Tongue? 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…

Pentagon Proudly Announces Its New Stable Of Propagandists Going forward, the only thing you'll hear reported from the Pentagon will be delivered by subservient, right-wing stenographers. The War Department has its own Ministry of Truth, staffed by people whose organizations have seen their…

As Social Media Restrictions Spread, Is The Internet Entering Its Victorian Era? A wave of proposed social media bans for young people has swept the globe recently, fuelled by mounting concern about the apparent harm the likes of TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat can cause to vulnerable minds.…

Trump’s Government Of Spite: Political Performance Art For Assholes A couple weeks ago, as hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets in what may have been the largest single day of protest in U.S. history, the President of the United States responded by… posting a video of himself…

Daily Deal: The 2025 AI Super Skills Bundle The 2025 AI Super Skills Bundle has 8 courses to help you get familiar with how to use some of the latest and coolest artificial intelligence tools out there. Courses cover ChatGPT, DALL-E 3, Leonardo AI, Quillbot, and more. It's on sale for $30. Note:…

Pete Hegseth May Be The Defense Department Boss, But Top Officers Say He’s No Leader Like far too many people in the Trump administration -- including the 79-year-old child currently sitting in the Oval Office -- Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth thinks he's owed respect simply because of the…

Trump FCC Votes To Make It Easier For Your Broadband ISP To Rip You Off As promised, the Trump FCC under Brendan Carr this week voted to begin dismantling rules requiring that your ISP offer clear and transparent details on the cost and limitations of your broadband connection. The rules,…

UK Woman Threatens Trademark Legal Action Against Cookbook Over ‘Sabzi’ It's sort of funny in a way to see how ownership culture has specifically invaded the realm of the culinary arts. If ever there was a place for cultural fusion and an openness culture, it surely should be in cooking. And, yet,…

In Order To Illegally Deport People To El Salvador, Trump Administration Stripped Informants Of Their Protections You're just a commodity in Trump's marketplace of horrific ideas. Sure, criminal informants are seldom the trustworthiest of people, what with their stay-out-of-jail free cards being…

The Kavanaugh Stop’s Legacy: 50 Days, 170+ Detained Citizens, Zero Answers It was just last month that Brett Kavanaugh gave his explanation for why it was perfectly okay for Homeland Security goons to profile brown people and detain them based on nothing more than the color of their skin. While…

Suing To Seat Grijalva, And Why This Long Shot Is Both Plausible And (At Least Currently Still) Necessary There are two big reasons why the lawsuit the State of Arizona and Adelita Grijalva has brought against the House of Representatives to force Grijalva to be sworn in ultimately might not…

Tiniest Crack In The Wall: Senate Votes To Dump Trump’s Vindictive Brazil Tariffs For the first time in ten months of near-total congressional capitulation to Trump, five Republican Senators broke ranks on Tuesday, siding with Democrats to block the nonsense tariffs Trump unilaterally declared on…

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Trump Continues To Attack Biden For All The Stuff Trump Officials Did While Trump Was Still President If there was anyone with any spine, honesty, or morality in the Trump administration, these astounding gaffes would have been headed off. But there's no one left with any of these traits in the…

Comcast Happy To Fund Trump’s Ballroom Despite Years Of Being Shit On Thanks to the government shutdown, federal employees are stuck sitting in long food bank lines just to survive. While President Trump is destroying the White House east wing to install a ballroom nobody asked for. Without any of…

Mexican Government To Tax Violent Video Games It Says Make Kids Violent The whole "blame video games for everything" theme seems to be resurfacing more and more these days. It's a bit strange, as I honestly thought that this bizarre reflex would be waning as each new generation that increasingly…