Interesting read here from Masnick. I’m not familiar with everything he writes about here, but I always appreciate his perspective.

Don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Insightful speculation by Masnick. Ye’s said some horrible things recently, but that doesn’t mean Parlement can’t be taking advantage of him.

Politicians need to better understand the internet. This is just as dumb (and perhaps more devious) than the nonsense the governor of Missouri was up to.

Amazing stuff here.

This is juvenile enough that I feel guilty finding it funny, but it’s a good demonstration of the problems with this backlash against content moderation.

Great movie, great example of the difficulty of content moderation.

Americans should be more worried about the NSA than they are.

Intellectual property is a social justice issue.

I appreciate the way that Masnick uses examples from the news to call out how dumb some of these laws are.

I read Torba’s blog post last week but hadn’t been aware of the context. Interesting read.

Masnick makes two good points here: The GOP seems to only care about content moderation in self-serving ways, but also we should be wary of political mandates for content moderation.

Masnick’s critiques of Pearson here are better than anything I could have written.

Unsurprising, but still a valuable read.

Intellectual property is important, but copyright filters are an absolute mess.

It’s funny how conditional the GOP’s concerns about free speech are. That’s not to say that free speech isn’t a complicated topic to be weighed in conjunction with other concerns—it absolutely is. But if a party wants to use a simplistic view of free speech as a rallying cry, stunts like this show how just how simplistic that view is.

Ugh. We “buy” too many things this way.

This is such a dumb development. Why are we letting technology whittle away at ownership instead of increasing access to things?

This is why I’m trying to buy more physical copies of things—or at least DRM-free stuff. I have lots of regrets about the size of my Kindle library, for example.

I always appreciate Masnick’s going into the legal details that are above my head. Techdirt has proven to be one of the most helpful sources for understanding this fiasco.

Concern about privacy is good, but not when it’s Sinophobic posturing. Yes, what TikTok is doing is worrying and problematic, but Bode makes an important point here: If they aren’t willing to fix the broader infrastructure, stances like Rubio’s just come down to trying to score cheap political points.

A terrifying teminder that content moderation can easily overreach.

Good writing here. Vague Sinophobia drives a lot of media and political concerns, and I appreciate Bode’s challenging of that here.

Good example here of how content moderation can absolutely overreach. Arguments that platforms shouldn’t moderate are nonsense, but I appreciate Masnick’s emphasis on the need to be very careful about how we moderate.

I mean, there’s still plenty to be worried about when it comes to targeted advertising and smart TVs, but this is a good reminder to take a step back.

This is a peak example of what performative concerns about “free speech” boil down to.

Depressing read, though I’ll freely admit I haven’t been paying enough attention here myself.

Some good thoughts by Masnick on a good op-ed by Wheaton.

The only way to make emotion detection tech worse is, of course, to make it ed tech.

Never thought to connect Gab back to net neutrality; interesting reflection here.

I have only been reading Techdirt for a short amount of time, but I increasingly appreciate Masnick’s perspectives on issues like this.

Losing dumb TVs is not an acceptable option.

Insightful piece on trolling and feeding trolls.

TikTok should not be protected from criticism, but it should not be subjected to this garbage either.

Really appreciate Masnick’s perspective here—especially the point that EVERYONE believes in content moderation even if there are disagreements on how to do it. It’s irresponsible for so many (on the right) to describe moderation as censorship.

Do not be fooled by the headline, the article’s best contribution is its indictment of U.S. politicians and companies for their complicity in this sort of thing.