Check out Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike Masnick's brand new podcast with Ben Whitelaw, creator of the Everything in Moderation newsletter.In this teaser excerpt from last week's episode, Mike and Ben discuss the startling epidemic of "sextortion" sca

1 day ago 34m 27s

This week, we've got another cross-post episode for you. Mike recently appeared on the Sidebar podcast from Courthouse News as part of an episode taking an in-depth look at why copyright is actually the biggest free speech restriction in the US

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Facebook's New AI Content Policy (Teaser)

7 days ago 9m 58s

Check out Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike Masnick's brand new podcast with Ben Whitelaw, creator of the Everything in Moderation newsletter.In this teaser excerpt from last week's episode, Ben and guest host Alice Hunsberger discuss Meta/Facebook's new

Abolishing Section 230 Would Abolish Wikipedia

9 days ago 43m 41s

Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee had a hearing all about Section 230, in which they didn't even attempt to find a witness pointing out its benefits. Among the many organizations that could have provided that vital perspective

Democratic Design For Online Spaces

16 days ago 48m 39s

One very important thing to understand in the conversation about online speech is that there are many different kinds of online communities, big and small, and they all have their own needs when it comes to rules and governance. This fact is a

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: The Most Moderated Word on Meta (Teaser)

21 days ago 11m 20s

How Important Will The Murthy Case Be?

22 days ago 50m 27s

We've written a lot about the Murthy case at the Supreme Court, and especially how poor of a job the states did in making their argument. Now, as we await the ruling, there are a lot of questions about what it will look like and how consequenti

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Elon Musk & Stonetoss (Teaser)

28 days ago 9m 53s

Cognitive Liberty Is The End Goal Of Decentralization

1 month ago 1h 4m

Last year in September, we released a cross-post episode of Mike's appearance on the DWeb Decoded podcast with Danny O'Brien. If you listened to that episode, you know that Mike and Danny go way back, and Danny played an important role in the f

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: The TikTok Ban (Teaser)

Mar 18th, 2024 13m 57s

Check out Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike Masnick's brand new podcast with Ben Whitelaw, creator of the Everything in Moderation newsletter.In this teaser excerpt from the debut episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike and Ben discuss the US bill that aims to

Gaming Like It's 1928!

Mar 13th, 2024 43m 58s

As is tradition, now that we've announced the winners of our latest public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1928, it's time for a special episode of the podcast taking a closer look at them. Just like in past years, Mike is joined by myself an

Checking In On Bluesky With Jay Graber

Mar 5th, 2024 57m 45s

Anyone who follows Techdirt knows we're very interested in the progress of Bluesky, the decentralized social network that embraces our concept of protocols over platforms. Bluesky recently ended its invite-only beta and opened its doors to the

KOSA Isn't Just Wrong About The Internet, It's Wrong About Child Safety

Feb 21st, 2024 49m 13s

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 intern

How To Actually Help Kids Online

Feb 13th, 2024 38m 9s

As we've written about repeatedly, efforts to protect kids online and improve their mental health at the moment all seem to be focused on taking social media away from them, even though all the evidence suggests this would be harmful, not helpf

Is the Internet Killing Culture? (No. Don’t Be Stupid.)

Feb 6th, 2024 1h 2m

A couple weeks ago, we released the 2024 edition of our Sky Is Rising report about the state of the entertainment industries. Last week, Mike and I joined Corbin Barthold on Techfreedom's Tech Policy Podcast for a discussion about the report an

The Data Transfer Initiative After One Year

Feb 1st, 2024 38m 48s

Back in April, we were joined on the podcast by Chris Riley, the Executive Director of the new nonprofit Data Transfer Initiative that aimed to promote data portability and empower users to transfer their data from one service to another. Today

Protocols, Not Platforms

Jan 25th, 2024 1h 2m

We've got a nice fresh live recording for you today! Just yesterday, Mike was at the Knight Foundation's INFORMED Conference to participate in a panel discussion with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, moderated by former Twitter Trust & Safety head Yoel

Beeper And The Power Of Protocols

Jan 17th, 2024 47m 26s

Last month, we wrote about Apple's nonsensical attack on Beeper, a universal messaging app that exemplifies many of the things we talk about here on Techdirt, like adversarial interoperability and the value of embracing open protocols over wall

Could A Design Code Help Social Media Serve Society Better?

Jan 9th, 2024 57m 57s

We're back from the holidays, and it's time for a new episode of the Techdirt Podcast! This week, we're joined by Ravi Iyer, Research Director for the USC Marshall School's Neely Center and Managing Director of the Psychology of Technology Inst

Content Moderation Games

Dec 19th, 2023 1h 14m

Many of you might know Andrew "K'Tetch" Norton as a Techdirt commenter, or from his work at TorrentFreak or for the Pirate Party, and some of you might know that he also runs his own podcast, Tetch Talk. Recently, Andrew asked Mike and I to joi

Could Engineer Licensing Make AI Safer?

Dec 13th, 2023 57m 42s

There's plenty of discussion right now about what approach, regulatory or otherwise, could rein in the potential harms of AI systems. This week, we're joined by professor and researcher Chinmayi Sharma to discuss her brand new article that offe

Decentralizing Innovation

Dec 5th, 2023 1h

We've got another cross-post episode this week! Recently, Mike joined the debut episode of the new Dot Social podcast from Flipboard CEO Mike McCue for a discussion about decentralized social media and the open social web, and the ways in which

AI Is Going To Change More Than You Realize

Nov 28th, 2023 50m 44s

The world of generative AI has been changing rapidly, and that's not something that's going to stop any time soon. Today, we're joined on the podcast by Jonathan Ross, founder and CEO of Groq (no, not Elon Musk's new bot called Grok) — a compan

Trust & Safety In Wartime

Oct 31st, 2023 57m 44s

As you hopefully know, we recently launched (and then released a podcast about) our new game, Trust & Safety Tycoon, which we created in association with the Atlantic Council's Task Force for a Trustworthy Future Web. This week, we've got two p

Your Face Belongs To Us, With Kashmir Hill

Oct 24th, 2023 48m 1s

We've written plenty about facial recognition here on Techdirt, and especially the infamous Clearview AI. Now, journalist Kashmir Hill, who wrote the original New York Times story that told the story about the company's inception, has written a