Techdirt, founded by Mike Masnick, covers technology policy, free speech, copyright, and Section 230 law.
Commenters cite it for in-depth coverage of legal cases like Prenda Law, for music industry revenue questions, and for debunking First Amendment myths.
Also coming to mind is some other recent Techdirt,
> Dear Senators Klobuchar & Lujan: Now Do You See Why Letting HHS Censor “Misinformation” Is A Terrible Idea?
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/11/20/dear-senators-klobuchar-lujan-now-do-you-see-why-letting-hhs-censor-misinformation-is-a-terrible-idea
Because facts are at best malleable and at worst disinformation, and what seems about to happen with HHS seems like some seriously dangerous alt-facts.
I'm making a leap in domain here, but also alas, Trump is already about facing on any pretense of things like journalistic shield laws. This government seems so intent on pursuing a very specific narrow interpretation of facts, and doing incredibly bad things to people who have ever said otherwise.
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/11/25/trump-orders-republicans-to-kill-journalism-shield-law-they-had-supported/
Measles Has Now Begun To Infect Immigrant Detention Camps
It’s darkly funny, in a way, to recall a racist trope that gets trotted out about immigration all the time: immigrants bring disease into the country. That in itself isn’t funny, obviously. The funny part is that it seems like we’re proving the opposite to be true under the Trump administration. As the measles outbreak in America continues to rage, immigration detention camps are starting to feel the effects.
...
It’s also worth remembering that the spread of disease is a recurring feature in the concentration camp industry. Deaths from disease as well. And, unlike the trope mentioned above, these are infections immigrants are getting from America, not bringing to her soil.
~ https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/04/measles-has-now-begun-to-infect-immigrant-detention-camps/
Related text from https://www.techdirt.com/2011/04/08/if-youre-arguing-that-someone-deserves-copyright-your-argument-is-wrong/:
> Julian Sanchez, who has been doing excellent work on copyright issues of late, has a nice post about how such arguments are totally irrelevant to copyright policy. He notes that it’s no surprise that artistic and creative people want greater copyright privileges, and fewer exceptions such as fair use, but that’s meaningless:
> > These will often be wonderful, likeable, creative people, and the correct policy response to these objections as such is: Cry me a fucking river; now piss off.
> And the reasoning why is that copyright policy is not about what someone deserves or about rewarding people based on some moral grounding. Its purpose is and has always been clear: to provide incentive to promote progress.
Interestingly (on reflection, not surprisingly) since going back to RSS, I've been reading a lot more from sites with expert content, but ugly typography.
- Math Babe (https://mathbabe.org)
+ Superb musings and coverage on the societal
impact of everything becoming a prediction
problem (occasional applied technical
discussion)
- Tech Dirt (https://www.techdirt.com/)
+ Lawyers Rule Everything Around Me
- Light Blue Touchpaper (https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org)
+ Thoughts on infosec from Cambridge Computer
Laboratory (influential on policy, excellent
coverage of conferences)
- Muckrock (https://www.muckrock.com/)
+ News from the FOIA wars
For some reason this is an unpopular opinion on HN but I'm going to say it again: federation solves a problem users don't care about and creates problems like this (as well as all the other predictable problems we've seen from decades of email such as spam).
For context, it seems like Elon Musk is toying with the idea of removing blocking from Twitter [1].
As another aside, I'm personally exhausted with the pet projects of annoying billionaires [2].
[1]: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/09/elon-musk-says-twitter-is-going-to-get-rid-of-the-block-feature-enabling-greater-harassment/
[2]: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-founder-jack-dorsey-backs-rfk-jr-s-2024-presidential-bid/
Yea, there’s a strong resistance because somehow the community thinks algorithms are only there for the benefit of investors and could actually be of benefit to users who don’t want to micromanage who they’re following.
As for search, it’s bizarre any community would be against such a basic feature.
From TechDirt: “I would talk about some of the cooler Mastodon algorithms I’d been finding, but after a few them then were yelled at by a bunch of Mastodon users, I’ve generally decided it’s not worth promoting those useful tools, for fear that people yell at them to shut them down.”
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/28/six-months-in-thoughts-on-the-current-post-twitter-diaspora-options/