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A good old fashioned blog that has been covering tech, law, policy, and democracy for almost three decades now.

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TechdirtOct 5, 2026

Brendan Carr Is Making It Easier For Republicans To Harass You With Midterm AI Robocalls

Trump FCC Boss Brendan Carr loves to insist he's being tough on robocalls, which have increasingly rendered U.S. voice communications networks less and less usable. Except whenever you actually dig into his plans, it usually involves making it easier for big companies and Republicans -- who often use the same tactics as outright scammers --...

brendan carrburners

TechdirtOct 4, 2026

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

This week, our first place winner is danderbandit with a comment about the California ruling against a rogue sheriff who seized 650,000 ballots: So a sheriff broke the law, was confirmed by the state’s top court on two counts. But he is still working as the county sheriff. When is he going to be held...

TechdirtOct 3, 2026

This Week In Techdirt History: September 27th – October 3rd

This Week in 2016 Traffic Is Fake, Audience Numbers Are Garbage, And Nobody Knows How Many People See Anything The EU's Proposed Copyright Directive Is Likely To Be A Wonderful Gift — For US Internet Giants Immigration Board Says You Can Be Deported For Copyright Infringement Can Someone Explain To The RIAA That SOPA Didn't...

historylook back

TechdirtOct 3, 2026

Koreans Left With Spoiled Food Due To Borked Samsung Firmware Update For ‘Smart’ Fridges

I must be getting old, because the concept around most IoT injections into otherwise perfectly usable home devices has me wanting to get all these smart-devices off of my lawn. Call me a luddite if you like, but I just don't think my toothbrush needs to be connected to the internet. And if you ask...

firmware updateiot

TechdirtOct 2, 2026

US Human Rights Record Plummets From An Already Dismal Starting Point

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. In the lead-up to the 2026 midterm elections, how is the U.S. government performing in terms of human rights? Listening to politicians, it can be difficult to know. On one hand, some have pointed to a number of potential...

human rightsoecd

TechdirtOct 2, 2026

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Going To The Ballot Bot

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. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on...

aiartificial intelligence

TechdirtOct 2, 2026

Bricks & Minifigs Really Doesn’t Want You To Know About The BAM Map, Sues To Unmask Whoever Runs It

A few days ago I wrote about the anti-SLAPP motion filed by "Reckless" Ben Schneider against Bricks & Minifigs (BAM Franchising) over the ridiculous RICO suit they filed against him for his efforts to get BAM to pay back the money owed to Bryan Mansell. The original suit was based on the laughable claim that...

1st amendmentammon mcneff

TechdirtOct 2, 2026

Daily Deal: The Complete Raspberry Pi And Alexa A-Z Bundle

Learn Raspberry Pi and start building Amazon Alexa projects with The Complete Raspberry Pi and Alexa A-Z Bundle. Catered for all levels, these project-based courses will get you up and running with the basics of Pi, before escalating to full projects. Before you know it, you’ll be building a gaming system to play old Nintendo,...

daily deal

TechdirtOct 2, 2026

Flock Promises Even More Ineffectual Features In Response To Congressional Demands

Flock is in the middle of a long losing streak. It's one thing to lose hearts and minds via PR work. It's quite another to lose actual dollars because you've lost a ton of hearts and minds by being on the losing end of mainstream media coverage for most the past two years. If it...

acabalpr

TechdirtOct 2, 2026

Trump Breaks Law(s), Uses $20 Million In Taxpayer Money To Fund Midterm Propaganda

Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr endlessly pays empty lip service to the "public interest" and the "value of broadcasting integrity" as he engages in ham-fisted censorship of comedians and journalists the president doesn't like. Or the illegal dismantling of media consolidation limits. Or helps the president and his friends steal TikTok.But any time there's an...

advertisementsagitprop

TechdirtOct 2, 2026

CDC Opens Up COVID Vaccine Procurement Without Explanation

Among the many promises that RFK Jr. offered in his confirmation hearings, promises that he has gone about breaking in spectacular fashion, one was a promise of "radical transparency". His approach, in his own words, was laid out directly to Congress. My approach to administration HHS will be transparency. If members of this committee or...

anti-vaxxerscdc

TechdirtOct 1, 2026

The Metric Is Not The Mission: The Digital Climate

The Metric Is Not the Mission is a ten-part examination of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives and assumptions. Across the series, the argument follows the evolution of the platform economy—from the optimism of the early internet to the growing tensions...

behaviorbig tech