CEO David Zaslav Poised To Get $567 million (!) Payout For Screwing Up Warner Brothers I’ve written a lot about the AOL–>AT&T–>Time Warner–>Discovery mergers simply because I think they perfectly encapsulate the pointless, destructive incompetence at the heart of modern media consolidation, and…

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment about Trump announcing all the things he's going to spend his tariff tax revenue on: Behold, the Party of Fiscal Responsibility Corruptibility! In second…

This Week In Techdirt History: December 14th – 20th Five Years Ago This week in 2020, USA Today published its latest bogus oped against Section 230 that misrepresented the law, a district court rejected CDT's challenge of Trump's ridiculous executive order about 230, and Trump appointed an…

California Brings Former CDC Staff On To Do The Work RFK Jr. Refuses To Do Nationally With national public health being run by RFK Jr., or run into the ground if you prefer, it's been left to individual states to figure out where and how to fill in the gaps. Some states, such as Florida, have…

The Best Big Media Merger Is No Merger At All The state of streaming is... bad. It’s very bad. The first step in wanting to watch anything is a web search: “Where can I stream X?” Then you have to scroll past an AI summary with no answers, and then scroll past the sponsored links. After that, you…

Warner Bros Rejects Larry Ellison’s Hostile Takeover Bid, Trump Will Likely Intervene In 2026 To Help Ellison Dominate U.S. Media We've noted how Larry Ellison, as part of his attempt to control the entirety of media, had launched a $108 million hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers. Larry, as…

Senators Want To Hold The Open Internet Hostage, Demand Zuckerberg Write The Ransom Note Not this shit again. A bipartisan group of the most anti-internet Senators around have released their latest version of a plan to “sunset Section 230.” We went over this last year when they floated the same…

The Summer of Starvation: Amid Trump’s Foreign Aid Cuts, A Mother Struggles To Keep Her Sons Alive This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Rose Natabo needs to leave one of her starving sons behind. At dawn, she squeezes her firstborn…

Daily Deal: PiCar-X Smart Video Robot Car Kit for Raspberry Pi 4 Dive into the world of robotics, programming, and electronics with the PiCar-X, an engaging and versatile smart car designed for learners from elementary school to advanced hobbyists. Combining powerful features, exceptional quality,…

SD Governor Gets Shitty After Town Announces It Won’t Be Pitching In With Upcoming ICE Raids If there's anything the GOP/MAGA party can't stand, it's people who won't fall in line. It openly courts fascism while still pretending its ultimate concern is the protection of (certain) civil liberties.…

TikTok Deal Done And It’s Somehow The Shittiest Possible Outcome, Making Everything Worse There were rumblings about this for a while, but it looks like the Trump TikTok deal is done, and it's somehow the worst of all possible outcomes, amazingly making all of the biggest criticisms about TikTok…

RFK Jr. Exacts Revenge On The AAP: Claws Back Millions In Approved HHS Grants As RFK Jr. continues to dismantle public health in this country policy brick by policy brick, there have fortunately been some consistent sources of sanity for the public to turn to. One of those sources has been the…

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Have Yourself A Very Meta Christmas 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 —…

Thousands Tell The Patent Office: Don’t Hide Bad Patents From Review We filed our own comment with the USPTO regarding their attempt to weaken the important inter partes review (IPR) process that has been hugely helpful in getting rid of bad patents. Over at EFF, Joe Mullin wrote up an analysis of…

Inside The Trump Administration’s Man-Made Hunger Crisis This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. On July 18, a mild, overcast night in Nairobi, Kenya, a team of President Donald Trump’s top foreign aid advisers ducked into a meeting room at…

FCC Boss Brendan Carr Showcases How He’s A Shameless Liar And Opportunist In Testimony Before Congress FCC boss Brendan Carr was dragged before Congress this week for some light questioning about his repeated, often-illegal abuses of FCC power. It was the first time the FCC has had to appear…

Daily Deal: The Complete MATLAB Programming Master Class MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creating of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages. That's all well and good, but it means nothing if you…

Trump Files $10 Billion Defamation Suit Over BBC Doc That Never Aired Here—Using VPN Stats As Evidence President Trump, who keeps pretending he’s for free speech, but who has filed more defamation lawsuits against more media organizations than any president in history (combined), has done so…

Jared Kushner Doesn’t Want The Heat, Exits Warner Bros Hostile Takeover Bid Shortly after Netflix announced a $82.7 billion acquisition of Warner Brothers, the Ellison family, alongside Jared Kushner and the Saudis, unveiled their own hostile takeover bid to pre-empt the deal. As we've discussed,…

The ‘Koozie’ People Bullied A Wooden Drink Sleeve Product, ‘Woodzie’, Into A Name Change I've said it roughly a zillion times: trademark bullying exists because it works. One of the unfortunate inequities of our system is that having a large legal warchest simply allows someone to push around…

Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera. This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. The original has additional imagery which is worth checking out as well. On the one-month anniversary of President…

When The Internet Grew Up — And Locked Out Its Kids In December 2025, the world crossed a threshold. For the first time ever, access to the major social media platforms was no longer guaranteed by interest, connection, or curiosity — but by a birth date. A new law in Australia decrees that people…

ICE Ramps Up Deportation Efforts In Minneapolis After Trump Claims Somalians Are ‘Garbage’ Trump was always going to target Minnesota and, specifically, the home of its most liberal residents, Minneapolis. Trump hates the state's governor, Tim Walz. He also hates one of the state's congressional…

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Section 230 Faces Repeal. Support The Coverage That’s Been Getting It Right All Along. Yesterday, Rep. Harriet Hageman released her bill to repeal Section 230. She's calling it "reform," but make no mistake—it's a repeal, and I'll explain why below. The law turns 30 in February, and there's a very…

Elon Musk’s Taxpayer-Subsidized Starlink Yanks Cheaper $40 Plan Because Network Couldn’t Handle The Load We've noted how Republicans are rewriting the 2021 infrastructure bill (they voted against) to ensure that billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded broadband grants wind up in the back pocket of…

Mike Pence Calls For RFK Jr.’s Ouster…But Not For The Reasons You Would Think There are lots of good reasons to call for the impeachment or ouster or RFK Jr. He's flatly unqualified for the role. He's introducing all kinds of health risks for diseases we shouldn't even have to worry about any…

As Federal Prisons Run Low On Food And Toilet Paper, Corrections Officers Are Leaving In Droves For ICE This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. After years of struggling to find enough workers for some of the nation’s toughest lockups, the…

Techdirt Podcast Episode 440: Could News Publishers Embrace AI Via An API? Support us on Patreon » The relationship between journalism and AI has been off to an antagonistic start, with multiple court cases underway and plenty of discourse about what should happen next. There are various proposed…

When People Realize How Good The Latest Chinese Open Source Models Are (And Free), The GenAI Bubble Could Finally Pop Although the field of artificial intelligence (AI) goes back more than half century, its latest incarnation — generative AI — is still very new: ChatGPT was launched just three…

Trump Has Announced Nine Different Things He’s Going To Spend His Unconstitutional Tariff Tax Revenue On The President of the United States is currently promising to spend the same pot of money on at least nine different things. The pot in question: revenue from all the random and fluctuating…

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:…

Trump Declares Fentanyl To Be A ‘Weapon Of Mass Destruction’ So He Can Get Back To Boat Strikes And Martial Law There is no doubt that fentanyl is a dangerous drug. It has long since surpassed heroin on the list of drugs people only do once. That its prevalence has more to do with pharma companies…

Nobody (Including Advertisers) Cared About Bari Weiss’ New CBS ‘Town Hall’ We've already explored at length how Bari Weiss was hired by the billionaire Ellison family to make CBS even more friendly to billionaires and authoritarians after their embarrassing capitulation to (and bribery of) U.S.…

‘Let It Die: Inferno’ Is A Very Interesting Trial Balloon For AI Use In Video Games On the topic of artificial intelligence, like far too many topics these days, it seems that the vast majority of opinions out there are highly polarized. Either you're all about making fun of AI not living up to…

The UK Has It Wrong On Digital ID. Here’s Why. In late September, the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his government’s plans to introduce a new digital ID scheme in the country to take effect before the end of the Parliament (no later than August 2029). The scheme…

Truly Unhinged: Trump Suggests Rob Reiner Had It Coming For Criticizing Him When Hollywood legend Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were murdered Sunday evening—allegedly by their son, who was arrested—you might (had you been living in another time with a different President) have…

The Real Reason For Boat Strike ‘Double Taps’ Is Preventing Survivors From Challenging Extrajudicial Killings In Court The Trump Administration's murder-in-international-waters program debuted far ahead of its legal rationale. Many people inside the administration were blindsided by this sudden…

Daily Deal: The Complete Big Data And Power BI Bundle The Complete Big Data and Power BI Bundle has 5 courses to help you learn how to effectively sort, analyze, and visualize all of your data. Courses cover Power BI, Power Query, Excel, and Access. It's on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals…

Australia’s Social Media Ban Was Pushed By Ad Agency Focused On Gambling Ads It Didn’t Want Banned We’ve talked about the Australian social media ban that went into effect last week, how dumb it is, and why it’s already a mess. But late last week, some additional news broke that makes the whole…

Literal Enshittification: ‘Smart’ Toilets Play Fast And Loose With Your Pooping Data In the enshittification era, companies rushing to profit off the gold mine of mass commercial surveillance are routinely intent on pushing their luck. Automakers spy on your driving habits (without telling you) to…

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is drew repeating an important point about how ICE keeps deporting people while blowing off court rulings: Nothing will change Until the courts charge some people with contempt and…

This Week In Techdirt History: December 7th – 13th Five Years Ago This week in 2020, the ACLU told congress not to add a terrible copyright bill to the must-pass government funding bill, Senator Tillis was trying to slide a dangerous felony streaming bill in as well (the details of which showed it…

The Measles Outbreak In South Carolina Is Growing I'm certain some people are getting tired of this refrain, but I'm going to keep repeating it to make the point: we shouldn't have to talk about measles in this country in 2025. This is a disease that had been officially put in elimination status…

How Cops Are Using Flock Safety’s ALPR Network To Surveil Protesters And Activists It's no secret that 2025 has given Americans plenty to protest about. But as news cameras showed protesters filling streets of cities across the country, law enforcement officers—including U.S. Border Patrol…

Trump Pretends To Block State AI Laws; Media Pretends That’s Legal The mainstream media just failed a basic civics test so badly that you'd think their brains have been pickled by the kinds of folks who spend all their time on X (oh, wait…). Headlines across major outlets are breathlessly…

Rep. Green Again Pounds The Drum On Impeachment, And This Time A Majority Of Democrats March To The Beat This week Representative Al Green (Texas) filed another set of impeachment articles against Trump. They didn't move forward; in fact, they failed an initial vote for Congress to decide to even…

Daily Deal: 3-in-1 Magnetic Wireless Charging Pad This 3-in-1 Magnetic Wireless Charging Pad integrates three charging modules for cell phones, headphones, and watches—a maximum power of 15W for cell phone charging, 5W for Airpods charging, and 2.5W for Apple Watch charging. This charging pad can…

India’s Government Rolls Back Invasive Cell Phone Tracking Mandate 48 Hours After Issuing It The government of India -- especially under Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- has never been shy about wanting to know what every one of its billion-plus citizens are up to at any given time. Not only does…

Politico’s Union Journalists Win Key Ruling In Battle Against Lazy, Undercooked AI The rushed integration of half-cooked automation into the already broken U.S. journalism industry simply isn’t going very well. There have been just countless examples where affluent media owners rushed to embrace…