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All Episodes

Techdirt — 460 episodes

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Title
1

Meet The EFF's New Executive Director

2

How To Stop Good Companies From Going Bad

3

Preserving The Web In The Age Of AI

4

Infrastructure For The New Private Internet

5

The Dangers Of Product Design Liability For Social Media

6

Transaction Denied

7

The Future Of Section 230

8

Mike And Karl Talk AI

9

The Vision For The Decentralized Internet

10

Answering Your Questions

11

The Supreme Court's Internet Cases

12

Does AI Remove Or Provide User Agency?

13

A Manifesto To Build A Better Internet

14

Could News Publishers Embrace AI Via An API

15

The Resonant Computing Manifesto

16

Saving Democracy From Fascism

17

Social Media Is Always Changing

18

Venture Capital Is Eating The World

19

An Insider's View Of Decentralized Social Media

20

The New Generation Of Independent Journalists

21

DuckDuckGo Wants You To Have More Control Over AI

22

The Fictional Censorship Cinematic Universe

23

The Many Problems With The FTC's Pornhub Settlement

24

Copyright And The First Amendment Collide At The Supreme Court

25

The Eternal September

26

Blacksky Demonstrates The Promise Of Open Social Media Protocols

27

Why Data Portability Is Crucial For The AI Future

28

The Media Capitulation Index

29

What's Next For Ctrl-Alt-Speech

30

Reclaiming The Internet

31

A History Of Techdirt, And More

32

The Political Power Of Mockery

33

The Fracturing Internet

34

The FTC's Quixotic Social Media Inquiry

35

Blitzscaling For Tyrants

36

The Elonification Of Government

37

The Rise Of The Open Social Web

38

How Tariffs Are Impacting One Small Business

39

The Problems With Age Verification

40

Disruptive Tech Solutions For Reproductive Health

41

Ron Wyden On Chutzpah

42

Chris Hayes On How Attention Ate The World

43

A New Podcast All About Section 230

44

Murder The Truth

45

What Twitter Teaches Us About DOGE

46

Copyright Versus AI: Hollywood & Creators

47

Brendan Carr Is A Threat To Free Speech

48

One Billion Users

49

Regulating Speech In An Age Of Fake News

50

From The Streisand Effect To Bluesky

51

Useful Lessons From 'Slow Social Media'

52

The Story Of Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover

53

How Fact Checking Fails

54

AI As A Tool For Writing, Not A Replacement

55

The NCMEC Board Is Captured & Failing, Says Former Member

56

Link Taxes Won't Save Journalism

57

The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality

58

Ctrl-Alt-Speech Minisode: The Supreme Court’s NetChoice Ruling

59

Raising Kids In A Digital World

60

What An Actual Expert Thinks About Kids & Social Media

61

A Primer On Child Online Safety Legislation

62

The Importance Of Section 230 For Online Communities

63

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Deepfake It Till You Make It (Teaser)

64

Platform Moderation Or Individual Control?

65

Generative AI Is Doomed

66

The Challenges Facing NCMEC's CyberTipline

67

Talking TikTok

68

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Combating Sextortion (Teaser)

69

Copyright Conundrum

70

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

71

Abolishing Section 230 Would Abolish Wikipedia

72

Democratic Design For Online Spaces

73

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

74

How Important Will The Murthy Case Be?

75

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

76

Cognitive Liberty Is The End Goal Of Decentralization

77

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

78

Gaming Like It's 1928!

79

Checking In On Bluesky With Jay Graber

80

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

81

How To Actually Help Kids Online

82

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

83

The Data Transfer Initiative After One Year

84

Protocols, Not Platforms

85

Beeper And The Power Of Protocols

86

Could A Design Code Help Social Media Serve Society Better?

87

Content Moderation Games

88

Could Engineer Licensing Make AI Safer?

89

Decentralizing Innovation

90

AI Is Going To Change More Than You Realize

91

Trust & Safety In Wartime

92

Your Face Belongs To Us, With Kashmir Hill

93

Trust & Safety Tycoon

94

Open Sourcing The Trust & Safety Toolkit

95

Liability, Speech & Marketplaces

96

Link Taxes Are (Still) Bad

97

Thinking About Decentralization

98

Social Media & Mental Health

99

Gigi Sohn On Community Broadband

100

The YouTube Effect, With Alex Winter

101

Can Interoperability Be Mandated?

102

Red Team Blues, Part Two (With Cory Doctorow)

103

Social Media In Chaos

104

Red Team Blues, Part One

105

FutureCast

106

The Reddit Meltdown

107

Decentralizing Content Moderation

108

Moderator Mayhem!

109

Utah's War On Porn

110

Save The Children (From State Social Media Laws)

111

The Data Transfer Initiative

112

Link Taxes Are Bad, Canada Edition

113

Sci-Fi & Silicon Valley

114

Why Is Congress So Wrong About Section 230?

115

Gaming Like It's 1927

116

The Supreme Court Takes On 230

117

The DoNotPay Story, With Kathryn Tewson

118

Congress v. Twitter

119

Margaret Sullivan On The Future Of Media

120

In Defense Of The Global, Open Internet

121

The New Abnormal On Twitter

122

Understanding Meta's Special Whitelist Program

123

Scrutinizing "The Twitter Files"

124

Will Elon Kill Twitter?

125

The DSA Is A Mess, But Will Now Rule The Internet

126

Can An Oversight Board Solve Infrastructure Moderation Questions?

127

Can You Mandate Editorial Transparency?

128

Walled Culture

129

Celebrating 25 Years Of Techdirt

130

Kiwi Farms, Cloudflare, And Infrastructure Content Moderation

131

Elon Musk Takes His Chances In The Court Of Chancery

132

Is AI Art The End For Artists?

133

The Problems With The California Kids' Code

134

Walled Culture Interview

135

Broadband Competition Is Just A Click Away

136

What Is Web5?

137

Revisiting The Question Of Proprietary Platforms For Media Companies

138

Why Patent Quality Matters

139

What Is Platform Democracy?

140

There Are Both Smart & Dumb Ways To Improve Copyright

141

Elon Musk Doesn't Understand Twitter

142

The Startup Trail

143

The Real Beneficiaries Of Section 230

144

Algorithmic Destruction

145

Predicting The Future

146

The Right To Repair

147

Gaming Like It's 1926

148

The United States Of Anonymous

149

Regulating The Internet

150

EARN IT Is Still Bad

151

A Global History Of Free Speech

152

Remembering The SOPA Fight, With Rep. Zoe Lofgren

153

Getting Out Of Control

154

Evolving Norms In The Governance Of Online Communities

155

Lessons From The First Internet Ages

156

Missouri Hasn't Really Learned Its Lesson

157

What Everyone Gets Wrong About Facebook

158

The Facebook Papers & The Media

159

Creating A New Social Media Ecosystem With Middleware

160

Scarcity, Abundance & NFTs

161

How Our Views Have Changed Over 300 Episodes

162

The Misinformation About Disinformation

163

The Impact Of "Shadowbanning"

164

The Future Of Libraries

165

Internet Policy & The Canadian Election

166

What Oracle/Google Means For Copyright And Interoperability

167

When Your Art Projects Keep Getting Cease & Desist Letters

168

Understanding California's Digital Vaccine Records

169

The Problem Of 'Jawboning'

170

Free Speech, Elections, Vaccines, And Social Media

171

Patent Quality Week

172

Florida's Social Media Bill Fiasco, With State Rep. Anna Eskamani

173

Rep. Zoe Lofgren Sees Problems On Every Page Of These Antitrust Bills

174

Regulating Amplification Is A Lot Harder Than You Think

175

How GirlCon Is Fighting To Empower Women In Tech

176

Welcome To Money City

177

How To Think About Cybersecurity

178

Debating Section 230, With WIRED's Gilad Edelman

179

The Facebook Oversight Board's Trump Decision

180

Twitter, Free Speech, And Mob Behavior

181

Beyond Blocking: Thinking Creatively About Content Moderation

182

How Rights Went Wrong

183

Two Curious Cases

184

Section 230 & The PACT Act

185

Silicon Values, With Jillian York

186

The State Of Trust & Safety

187

Lessons In Innovation From The History Of Fabric

188

How The Techlash Happened

189

Section 230 Matters, With Ron Wyden & Chris Cox

190

Gaming Like It's 1925

191

Regulating The Internet Won't Fix A Broken Government

192

The Oversight Board Starts Overseeing Facebook

193

A New Approach To Fighting Online Harassment

194

A Section 230 Roundtable

195

In Defense Of Section 230 & A Decentralized Internet

196

The Future Of US Broadband

197

A More Competitive Web, With Cory Doctorow & Daphne Keller

198

Is The Techlash Over?

199

An Open Protocol For Web Monetization

200

How Would You Regulate The Internet?

201

The Future Of Silicon Valley

202

A New Model For Independent Journalism, With Casey Newton

203

The TikTok Order And What It Means For Innovation

204

Making A Better Internet

205

Little Brother vs. Big Audiobook, With Cory Doctorow

206

Threatcasting The Election

207

Does Amazon Really Have A Data Advantage?

208

Post-Pandemic Tech

209

The Key To Encryption

210

Don't Sweat The Copycats

211

Modeling The Pandemic

212

The Greenhouse Privacy Wrapup

213

The Most Serious Threat To Section 230

214

Trust & Safety Has A Posse

215

The Latest Attacks On Section 230

216

Pandemic Privacy

217

Section 230 & Trump's Executive Order

218

The .ORG Deal Post-Mortem, With Mike Godwin

219

Protocols Versus Platforms, Part 2

220

Protocols Versus Platforms, Part One

221

The Fate Of HQ Trivia

222

Gaming Like It's 1924

223

Larry Lessig Defends His 'Clickbait Defamation' Lawsuit

224

How Privacy Laws Harm Criminal Defendants

225

Talkin' Jomboy, New Media & Copyright

226

The CES 2020 Post-Mortem

227

Mike Godwin Defends Selling .ORG

228

Your Secret Consumer Score

229

Copying Is Not Theft

230

Working Futures, Part Two

231

Backpage v. The Feds

232

Pirate Shaming Lists Don't Work

233

Working Futures

234

Rep. Mark Takano On Tech In Congress

235

The "Facebook Supreme Court"

236

Does Dynamic Pricing Deserve The Hate?

237

Trying To Be Optimistic About The Internet

238

Bedbugs & Beyond, With David Karpf

239

Bringing Back The Internet's True Promise

240

What's Really In The FCC's Facebook Settlement, Part Two

241

What's Really In The FTC's Facebook Settlement, Part One

242

A Policy Bootcamp For Technologists

243

Don't Panic

244

Public Interest Tech, With Bruce Schneier

245

Hawley's Bill Sucks: Let Us Count The Ways...

246

Experimenting With Twitch

247

Blame Fox News Before Facebook

248

What If Congress Actually Understood Technology?

249

Breaking Facebook, With Mike Godwin And David Kaye

250

Politicians (Usually) Don't Understand Technology

251

Cory Doctorow On Anti-Circumvention (And More)

252

The Past & Future Of Section 230

253

A Free Speech Chat With FIRE

254

MEP Julia Reda Explains What's Next With The EU Copyright Directive

255

Charter Cities & Innovative Governance

256

The Surveillance State, With Marcy Wheeler

257

The Failure Of High Tech Policing

258

Crying Wolf Over Conservative Censorship

259

Delivery-Driven Government

260

Can Journalism Survive A Free Market?

261

The (Big?) Business Of Podcasting

262

From Apple To The ACLU, With Jon Callas

263

Life Without The Tech Giants

264

The Grand Re-Opening Of The Public Domain

265

The CES 2019 Post-Mortem

266

The EU Endangers Free Speech Online... Again

267

Ninja Future, With Gary Shapiro

268

Can Anyone Disrupt The Disruptors?

269

Section 230 And Political Bias

270

Free Speech Disorder, With Mike Godwin

271

Should We Break Up Big Tech?

272

What The Hell Is Initiative Q?

273

Government, Activism & Silicon Valley

274

AI, Free Speech & Human Rights

275

Free Speech & Content Moderation (Panel Discussion)

276

Building New Senses (Plus The Possible End Of The World)

277

Life Insurance, Life Surveillance

278

No Easy Answers For Content Moderation

279

Anonymity In The Media & Online

280

There's Always Something New To Learn About Copyright

281

Do Short-Term Profits Hurt Long-Term Innovation?

282

Emoji & The Law

283

Old Tweets & Your Permanent Record

284

Why People Don't Trust Capitalism Anymore

285

The EU's Copyright Threat To The Open Internet

286

Building Communities Outside Facebook

287

How Private Agreements Recreated SOPA

288

Sci-Fi & Scenario Planning

289

Are Tech And Journalism Att Odds With Each Other?

290

Debating Steam's New Hands-Off Policy

291

Are E-Scooters A Problem?

292

MEP Julia Reda On EU's Dangerous Copyright Proposal

293

Rob Reid's Mind-Bending Podcast

294

CIA: Collect It All

295

How The Courts Created The Surveillance State

296

Is "Free" Bad?

297

Getting News Without Social Media

298

Teaching The Law Via Podcasts

299

Can The Blockchain Save Publishers?

300

How One Court Just Screwed Up Software Development

301

Overreacting To Facebook's Mistakes Won't Solve Anything

302

What Does It Mean For Social Media To Be Held Accountable?

303

How MoviePass Makes Money

304

The Worst Of Both Worlds: SESTA & FOSTA Together

305

Disrupting Google

306

Lies, Damned Lies & Audience Metrics

307

Truth, Trust, Transparency & Tribalism

308

An Interview With Rep Zoe Lofgren

309

Free Speech & The Marketplace Of Ideas

310

Facebook Won't Save Democracy

311

The CES 2018 Post-Mortem

312

Barbies v. Bratz

313

The Lost Art Of Productive Debate

314

Games That Tell Stories

315

Can A Trivia App Resurrect Appointment Viewing?

316

Tom Wheeler Reacts To Trump's FCC

317

The Perils Of Internet Platform Regulation

318

No Easy Answers: Facebook & The Election

319

Who Still Needs A Personal Computer?

320

Donald Trump, Howard Stern... And Copyright

321

WTF With Tim O'Reilly

322

How Scandalous Are Facebook's Ad Scandals?

323

When Godwin's Law Met The Streisand Effect

324

Customize Everything!

325

Pokémon Gone?

326

20 Years Of Techdirt

327

The Problems With SESTA And Why Section 230 Matters

328

These Scammers Picked The Wrong Guy

329

Is There Any Smartphone Innovation Left?

330

Is The Economy More Important Than Democracy?

331

Is It Bad If Facebook Copies Everything Snapchat Does?

332

Rob Reid On Writing & Publishing A SciFi Novel In 2017

333

Patent Trolls, With Cloudflare's General Counsel

334

Copyright, Music & 'Theft'

335

Talking Freedom Of Information With A "FOIA Terrorist"

336

Re-Decentralizing The Web

337

The Future Of Internet Copyright, With TechFreedom

338

No, The MP3 Isn't Dead

339

Truth And Fiction With Cory Doctorow

340

The Crypto Wars May Never End

341

The Surveillance State

342

Does Pharma Really Need Patents?

343

The Evolution Of The Office

344

Why This ISP Supports Net Neutrality, Privacy Rules And More

345

The Truth About VPNs

346

The End Of Ownership

347

Alexa, Play This Podcast

348

Will Regulations Ground Drone Innovation?

349

When A Typo Breaks The Internet

350

The Miracle Of Booking Flights

351

Luck In Silicon Valley, With Robert Frank

352

The New FCC

353

Autonomous Cars Are Accelerating

354

Changing Government Starts With You

355

An Office In A Bag

356

The CES 2017 Post-Mortem

357

The Pros And Cons Of Pros And Cons

358

Is The Internet Of Things The Future, A Total Mess, Or Both?

359

Can We Really Colonize Mars?

360

Where Do You Get Your News?

361

Supporting Creators, With Patreon Founder Jack Conte

362

Debating The Facebook Filter Bubble, With Mathew Ingram

363

Is There A Better Way To Pick A President?

364

Can Tech Be Trusted Without Antitrust?

365

Death Knell For Software Patents

366

A Presidential Tech Policy Wish List

367

The Headphone Jack Apocalypse!

368

Pardon Snowden

369

Passwords Suck; What's Next?

370

Is Facebook Moderation A Necessary Evil?

371

Is Capitalism Over?

372

Inside A Really Good Kickstarter Campaign

373

The Gawker Debate

374

An Interview With Kim Dotcom's Lawyer

375

Have Platforms Killed The Open Internet By Replacing Protocols?

376

Is Your Algorithm Racist?

377

Is It The 'Pokémon' Or The 'Go' That Matters?

378

'Disruption' Is Not An Excuse For Lying

379

Chatbots: Fad Or The Future?

380

Senator Wyden On The Expansion Of FBI Surveillance

381

Can Direct Democracy Work?

382

What's Next For Net Neutrality?

383

What's Next For Online Video?

384

The Link Between Credit And Surveillance

385

Tech Policy Goes Local

386

What Happened At The Oracle Google Trial?

387

Why Is Tesla So Successful?

388

Is There Enough Demand For The On Demand Economy?

389

The Tough Choices Platforms Make

390

Should Internet Companies Sway Elections?

391

Is It Futile To Draw Borders On The Internet?

392

Free Culture And Aaron Swartz (Part Two)

393

Free Culture And Aaron Swartz (Part One)

394

The Great Encryption Debate: Should There Be Back Doors?

395

Why Are There So Many Messaging Companies?

396

Net Neutrality, Zero Rating & The Games Internet Providers Play

397

Apple, The FBI & You

398

Hacking The Patent System

399

The Best/Worst Time To Be A Content Creator

400

Barry Eisler On Publishing, Keanu Reeves And More (Part Two)

401

Barry Eisler On Truth, Fiction And The Surveillance State (Part One)

402

Does The Internet Create More "Winner Take All" Companies?

403

Just How Bad Is The TPP?

404

Can Silicon Valley Help "Disrupt" ISIS?

405

The CES Post-Mortem

406

How Much Surveillance Is Acceptable?

407

It Ain't Easy To Give Away $45 Billion

408

Why Intermediary Liability Is The Most Important Question Online

409

The EU Has Set Privacy & Free Speech On A Collision Course

410

Bubbles, Busts & Unicorns

411

Our Podcast About Podcasts

412

A Whirlwind Tour Of Current Policy Issues In Tech

413

Our Hacking Laws Are A Mess

414

Trademarks: Intellectual Property Or Consumer Protection?

415

Things We Got Wrong

416

No, You're Not The Product

417

Why The Freedom To Tinker Matters

418

Why Do We Let An 86 Year Old Librarian Decide Who's Allowed To Innovate?

419

Adblocking Wouldn't Be A Problem If Ads Didn't Suck So Much

420

Privacy Policies Have Nothing To Do With Privacy

421

Is Silicon Valley Only Building Tech For The Rich?

422

Technology's Impact On Democracy

423

Yes, There Are Business Models That Don't Need Intellectual Property

424

Humble Bundle Deserves More Credit For Its Many Innovations

425

In Defense Of Copying

426

Kevin Smith On How To Be Yourself And Make A Living

427

Apple Versus Google

428

Reddit And The Challenges Of Building A Business Out Of A Community

429

Are Smart Watches The New Calculator Watches?

430

Closing In On Virtual Reality

431

Does Distance Matter In The Digital Age?

432

Autonomous Vehicles Will Change Everything

433

Is Car Ownership On The Way Out?

434

The Rise Of The On-Demand Economy

435

Silicon Valley's Secret Ingredient

436

EFF's Parker Higgins On Correcting Copyright Misconceptions

437

EFF's Parker Higgins On Common Copyright Misconceptions

438

Is AirBnB Good Or Bad For Cities?

439

Are Smaller Online Media Players Doomed In The Age Of Buzzfeed?

440

How The Patent System Can Be Fixed

441

How The Patent System Is Broken

442

From Lulz To Activism, With Gabriella Coleman

443

The Many Faces Of Anonymous, With Gabriella Coleman

444

Musicians Making Money, With Composer Adam Fong

445

Rethinking Work, Income & Leisure: Albert Wenger On Basic Income

446

What's It Like To Drive For Uber And Lyft?

447

Do You Need A Proprietary Platform To Be A Serious Media Company Today?

448

Fair Use Protects Culture From Copyright, Not The Other Way Around

449

Former CIA Employee Barry Eisler Explains Why You Shouldn't Trust The CIA

450

Barry Eisler Dissects The Publishing Industry

451

Is Cybersecurity A Real Issue Or Government Boondoggle?

452

Is Muni Broadband A Monopoly Killer Or A Killer Monopoly?

453

Threats To Internet Freedom, Recorded Live At BitTorrent

454

Terms Of Service Are The New Constitution: Do They Need A First Amendment?

455

Should Kids Be Forced To Learn Coding? Or Economics? Or Stats?

456

The Internet From Space!

457

In Defense Of Advertising

458

Amanda Palmer And The Art Of Asking

459

Privacy And User Control, With Brad Burnham

460

Can You Increase Privacy By Increasing Surveillance?