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All Episodes

Techdirt — 458 episodes

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Title
1

Preserving The Web In The Age Of AI

2

Infrastructure For The New Private Internet

3

The Dangers Of Product Design Liability For Social Media

4

Transaction Denied

5

The Future Of Section 230

6

Mike And Karl Talk AI

7

The Vision For The Decentralized Internet

8

Answering Your Questions

9

The Supreme Court's Internet Cases

10

Does AI Remove Or Provide User Agency?

11

A Manifesto To Build A Better Internet

12

Could News Publishers Embrace AI Via An API

13

The Resonant Computing Manifesto

14

Saving Democracy From Fascism

15

Social Media Is Always Changing

16

Venture Capital Is Eating The World

17

An Insider's View Of Decentralized Social Media

18

The New Generation Of Independent Journalists

19

DuckDuckGo Wants You To Have More Control Over AI

20

The Fictional Censorship Cinematic Universe

21

The Many Problems With The FTC's Pornhub Settlement

22

Copyright And The First Amendment Collide At The Supreme Court

23

The Eternal September

24

Blacksky Demonstrates The Promise Of Open Social Media Protocols

25

Why Data Portability Is Crucial For The AI Future

26

The Media Capitulation Index

27

What's Next For Ctrl-Alt-Speech

28

Reclaiming The Internet

29

A History Of Techdirt, And More

30

The Political Power Of Mockery

31

The Fracturing Internet

32

The FTC's Quixotic Social Media Inquiry

33

Blitzscaling For Tyrants

34

The Elonification Of Government

35

The Rise Of The Open Social Web

36

How Tariffs Are Impacting One Small Business

37

The Problems With Age Verification

38

Disruptive Tech Solutions For Reproductive Health

39

Ron Wyden On Chutzpah

40

Chris Hayes On How Attention Ate The World

41

A New Podcast All About Section 230

42

Murder The Truth

43

What Twitter Teaches Us About DOGE

44

Copyright Versus AI: Hollywood & Creators

45

Brendan Carr Is A Threat To Free Speech

46

One Billion Users

47

Regulating Speech In An Age Of Fake News

48

From The Streisand Effect To Bluesky

49

Useful Lessons From 'Slow Social Media'

50

The Story Of Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover

51

How Fact Checking Fails

52

AI As A Tool For Writing, Not A Replacement

53

The NCMEC Board Is Captured & Failing, Says Former Member

54

Link Taxes Won't Save Journalism

55

The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality

56

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

57

Raising Kids In A Digital World

58

What An Actual Expert Thinks About Kids & Social Media

59

A Primer On Child Online Safety Legislation

60

The Importance Of Section 230 For Online Communities

61

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

62

Platform Moderation Or Individual Control?

63

Generative AI Is Doomed

64

The Challenges Facing NCMEC's CyberTipline

65

Talking TikTok

66

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Combating Sextortion (Teaser)

67

Copyright Conundrum

68

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

69

Abolishing Section 230 Would Abolish Wikipedia

70

Democratic Design For Online Spaces

71

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

72

How Important Will The Murthy Case Be?

73

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

74

Cognitive Liberty Is The End Goal Of Decentralization

75

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

76

Gaming Like It's 1928!

77

Checking In On Bluesky With Jay Graber

78

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

79

How To Actually Help Kids Online

80

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

81

The Data Transfer Initiative After One Year

82

Protocols, Not Platforms

83

Beeper And The Power Of Protocols

84

Could A Design Code Help Social Media Serve Society Better?

85

Content Moderation Games

86

Could Engineer Licensing Make AI Safer?

87

Decentralizing Innovation

88

AI Is Going To Change More Than You Realize

89

Trust & Safety In Wartime

90

Your Face Belongs To Us, With Kashmir Hill

91

Trust & Safety Tycoon

92

Open Sourcing The Trust & Safety Toolkit

93

Liability, Speech & Marketplaces

94

Link Taxes Are (Still) Bad

95

Thinking About Decentralization

96

Social Media & Mental Health

97

Gigi Sohn On Community Broadband

98

The YouTube Effect, With Alex Winter

99

Can Interoperability Be Mandated?

100

Red Team Blues, Part Two (With Cory Doctorow)

101

Social Media In Chaos

102

Red Team Blues, Part One

103

FutureCast

104

The Reddit Meltdown

105

Decentralizing Content Moderation

106

Moderator Mayhem!

107

Utah's War On Porn

108

Save The Children (From State Social Media Laws)

109

The Data Transfer Initiative

110

Link Taxes Are Bad, Canada Edition

111

Sci-Fi & Silicon Valley

112

Why Is Congress So Wrong About Section 230?

113

Gaming Like It's 1927

114

The Supreme Court Takes On 230

115

The DoNotPay Story, With Kathryn Tewson

116

Congress v. Twitter

117

Margaret Sullivan On The Future Of Media

118

In Defense Of The Global, Open Internet

119

The New Abnormal On Twitter

120

Understanding Meta's Special Whitelist Program

121

Scrutinizing "The Twitter Files"

122

Will Elon Kill Twitter?

123

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

124

Can An Oversight Board Solve Infrastructure Moderation Questions?

125

Can You Mandate Editorial Transparency?

126

Walled Culture

127

Celebrating 25 Years Of Techdirt

128

Kiwi Farms, Cloudflare, And Infrastructure Content Moderation

129

Elon Musk Takes His Chances In The Court Of Chancery

130

Is AI Art The End For Artists?

131

The Problems With The California Kids' Code

132

Walled Culture Interview

133

Broadband Competition Is Just A Click Away

134

What Is Web5?

135

Revisiting The Question Of Proprietary Platforms For Media Companies

136

Why Patent Quality Matters

137

What Is Platform Democracy?

138

There Are Both Smart & Dumb Ways To Improve Copyright

139

Elon Musk Doesn't Understand Twitter

140

The Startup Trail

141

The Real Beneficiaries Of Section 230

142

Algorithmic Destruction

143

Predicting The Future

144

The Right To Repair

145

Gaming Like It's 1926

146

The United States Of Anonymous

147

Regulating The Internet

148

EARN IT Is Still Bad

149

A Global History Of Free Speech

150

Remembering The SOPA Fight, With Rep. Zoe Lofgren

151

Getting Out Of Control

152

Evolving Norms In The Governance Of Online Communities

153

Lessons From The First Internet Ages

154

Missouri Hasn't Really Learned Its Lesson

155

What Everyone Gets Wrong About Facebook

156

The Facebook Papers & The Media

157

Creating A New Social Media Ecosystem With Middleware

158

Scarcity, Abundance & NFTs

159

How Our Views Have Changed Over 300 Episodes

160

The Misinformation About Disinformation

161

The Impact Of "Shadowbanning"

162

The Future Of Libraries

163

Internet Policy & The Canadian Election

164

What Oracle/Google Means For Copyright And Interoperability

165

When Your Art Projects Keep Getting Cease & Desist Letters

166

Understanding California's Digital Vaccine Records

167

The Problem Of 'Jawboning'

168

Free Speech, Elections, Vaccines, And Social Media

169

Patent Quality Week

170

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

171

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

172

Regulating Amplification Is A Lot Harder Than You Think

173

How GirlCon Is Fighting To Empower Women In Tech

174

Welcome To Money City

175

How To Think About Cybersecurity

176

Debating Section 230, With WIRED's Gilad Edelman

177

The Facebook Oversight Board's Trump Decision

178

Twitter, Free Speech, And Mob Behavior

179

Beyond Blocking: Thinking Creatively About Content Moderation

180

How Rights Went Wrong

181

Two Curious Cases

182

Section 230 & The PACT Act

183

Silicon Values, With Jillian York

184

The State Of Trust & Safety

185

Lessons In Innovation From The History Of Fabric

186

How The Techlash Happened

187

Section 230 Matters, With Ron Wyden & Chris Cox

188

Gaming Like It's 1925

189

Regulating The Internet Won't Fix A Broken Government

190

The Oversight Board Starts Overseeing Facebook

191

A New Approach To Fighting Online Harassment

192

A Section 230 Roundtable

193

In Defense Of Section 230 & A Decentralized Internet

194

The Future Of US Broadband

195

A More Competitive Web, With Cory Doctorow & Daphne Keller

196

Is The Techlash Over?

197

An Open Protocol For Web Monetization

198

How Would You Regulate The Internet?

199

The Future Of Silicon Valley

200

A New Model For Independent Journalism, With Casey Newton

201

The TikTok Order And What It Means For Innovation

202

Making A Better Internet

203

Little Brother vs. Big Audiobook, With Cory Doctorow

204

Threatcasting The Election

205

Does Amazon Really Have A Data Advantage?

206

Post-Pandemic Tech

207

The Key To Encryption

208

Don't Sweat The Copycats

209

Modeling The Pandemic

210

The Greenhouse Privacy Wrapup

211

The Most Serious Threat To Section 230

212

Trust & Safety Has A Posse

213

The Latest Attacks On Section 230

214

Pandemic Privacy

215

Section 230 & Trump's Executive Order

216

The .ORG Deal Post-Mortem, With Mike Godwin

217

Protocols Versus Platforms, Part 2

218

Protocols Versus Platforms, Part One

219

The Fate Of HQ Trivia

220

Gaming Like It's 1924

221

Larry Lessig Defends His 'Clickbait Defamation' Lawsuit

222

How Privacy Laws Harm Criminal Defendants

223

Talkin' Jomboy, New Media & Copyright

224

The CES 2020 Post-Mortem

225

Mike Godwin Defends Selling .ORG

226

Your Secret Consumer Score

227

Copying Is Not Theft

228

Working Futures, Part Two

229

Backpage v. The Feds

230

Pirate Shaming Lists Don't Work

231

Working Futures

232

Rep. Mark Takano On Tech In Congress

233

The "Facebook Supreme Court"

234

Does Dynamic Pricing Deserve The Hate?

235

Trying To Be Optimistic About The Internet

236

Bedbugs & Beyond, With David Karpf

237

Bringing Back The Internet's True Promise

238

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

239

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

240

A Policy Bootcamp For Technologists

241

Don't Panic

242

Public Interest Tech, With Bruce Schneier

243

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

244

Experimenting With Twitch

245

Blame Fox News Before Facebook

246

What If Congress Actually Understood Technology?

247

Breaking Facebook, With Mike Godwin And David Kaye

248

Politicians (Usually) Don't Understand Technology

249

Cory Doctorow On Anti-Circumvention (And More)

250

The Past & Future Of Section 230

251

A Free Speech Chat With FIRE

252

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

253

Charter Cities & Innovative Governance

254

The Surveillance State, With Marcy Wheeler

255

The Failure Of High Tech Policing

256

Crying Wolf Over Conservative Censorship

257

Delivery-Driven Government

258

Can Journalism Survive A Free Market?

259

The (Big?) Business Of Podcasting

260

From Apple To The ACLU, With Jon Callas

261

Life Without The Tech Giants

262

The Grand Re-Opening Of The Public Domain

263

The CES 2019 Post-Mortem

264

The EU Endangers Free Speech Online... Again

265

Ninja Future, With Gary Shapiro

266

Can Anyone Disrupt The Disruptors?

267

Section 230 And Political Bias

268

Free Speech Disorder, With Mike Godwin

269

Should We Break Up Big Tech?

270

What The Hell Is Initiative Q?

271

Government, Activism & Silicon Valley

272

AI, Free Speech & Human Rights

273

Free Speech & Content Moderation (Panel Discussion)

274

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

275

Life Insurance, Life Surveillance

276

No Easy Answers For Content Moderation

277

Anonymity In The Media & Online

278

There's Always Something New To Learn About Copyright

279

Do Short-Term Profits Hurt Long-Term Innovation?

280

Emoji & The Law

281

Old Tweets & Your Permanent Record

282

Why People Don't Trust Capitalism Anymore

283

The EU's Copyright Threat To The Open Internet

284

Building Communities Outside Facebook

285

How Private Agreements Recreated SOPA

286

Sci-Fi & Scenario Planning

287

Are Tech And Journalism Att Odds With Each Other?

288

Debating Steam's New Hands-Off Policy

289

Are E-Scooters A Problem?

290

MEP Julia Reda On EU's Dangerous Copyright Proposal

291

Rob Reid's Mind-Bending Podcast

292

CIA: Collect It All

293

How The Courts Created The Surveillance State

294

Is "Free" Bad?

295

Getting News Without Social Media

296

Teaching The Law Via Podcasts

297

Can The Blockchain Save Publishers?

298

How One Court Just Screwed Up Software Development

299

Overreacting To Facebook's Mistakes Won't Solve Anything

300

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

301

How MoviePass Makes Money

302

The Worst Of Both Worlds: SESTA & FOSTA Together

303

Disrupting Google

304

Lies, Damned Lies & Audience Metrics

305

Truth, Trust, Transparency & Tribalism

306

An Interview With Rep Zoe Lofgren

307

Free Speech & The Marketplace Of Ideas

308

Facebook Won't Save Democracy

309

The CES 2018 Post-Mortem

310

Barbies v. Bratz

311

The Lost Art Of Productive Debate

312

Games That Tell Stories

313

Can A Trivia App Resurrect Appointment Viewing?

314

Tom Wheeler Reacts To Trump's FCC

315

The Perils Of Internet Platform Regulation

316

No Easy Answers: Facebook & The Election

317

Who Still Needs A Personal Computer?

318

Donald Trump, Howard Stern... And Copyright

319

WTF With Tim O'Reilly

320

How Scandalous Are Facebook's Ad Scandals?

321

When Godwin's Law Met The Streisand Effect

322

Customize Everything!

323

Pokémon Gone?

324

20 Years Of Techdirt

325

The Problems With SESTA And Why Section 230 Matters

326

These Scammers Picked The Wrong Guy

327

Is There Any Smartphone Innovation Left?

328

Is The Economy More Important Than Democracy?

329

Is It Bad If Facebook Copies Everything Snapchat Does?

330

Rob Reid On Writing & Publishing A SciFi Novel In 2017

331

Patent Trolls, With Cloudflare's General Counsel

332

Copyright, Music & 'Theft'

333

Talking Freedom Of Information With A "FOIA Terrorist"

334

Re-Decentralizing The Web

335

The Future Of Internet Copyright, With TechFreedom

336

No, The MP3 Isn't Dead

337

Truth And Fiction With Cory Doctorow

338

The Crypto Wars May Never End

339

The Surveillance State

340

Does Pharma Really Need Patents?

341

The Evolution Of The Office

342

Why This ISP Supports Net Neutrality, Privacy Rules And More

343

The Truth About VPNs

344

The End Of Ownership

345

Alexa, Play This Podcast

346

Will Regulations Ground Drone Innovation?

347

When A Typo Breaks The Internet

348

The Miracle Of Booking Flights

349

Luck In Silicon Valley, With Robert Frank

350

The New FCC

351

Autonomous Cars Are Accelerating

352

Changing Government Starts With You

353

An Office In A Bag

354

The CES 2017 Post-Mortem

355

The Pros And Cons Of Pros And Cons

356

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

357

Can We Really Colonize Mars?

358

Where Do You Get Your News?

359

Supporting Creators, With Patreon Founder Jack Conte

360

Debating The Facebook Filter Bubble, With Mathew Ingram

361

Is There A Better Way To Pick A President?

362

Can Tech Be Trusted Without Antitrust?

363

Death Knell For Software Patents

364

A Presidential Tech Policy Wish List

365

The Headphone Jack Apocalypse!

366

Pardon Snowden

367

Passwords Suck; What's Next?

368

Is Facebook Moderation A Necessary Evil?

369

Is Capitalism Over?

370

Inside A Really Good Kickstarter Campaign

371

The Gawker Debate

372

An Interview With Kim Dotcom's Lawyer

373

Have Platforms Killed The Open Internet By Replacing Protocols?

374

Is Your Algorithm Racist?

375

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

376

'Disruption' Is Not An Excuse For Lying

377

Chatbots: Fad Or The Future?

378

Senator Wyden On The Expansion Of FBI Surveillance

379

Can Direct Democracy Work?

380

What's Next For Net Neutrality?

381

What's Next For Online Video?

382

The Link Between Credit And Surveillance

383

Tech Policy Goes Local

384

What Happened At The Oracle Google Trial?

385

Why Is Tesla So Successful?

386

Is There Enough Demand For The On Demand Economy?

387

The Tough Choices Platforms Make

388

Should Internet Companies Sway Elections?

389

Is It Futile To Draw Borders On The Internet?

390

Free Culture And Aaron Swartz (Part Two)

391

Free Culture And Aaron Swartz (Part One)

392

The Great Encryption Debate: Should There Be Back Doors?

393

Why Are There So Many Messaging Companies?

394

Net Neutrality, Zero Rating & The Games Internet Providers Play

395

Apple, The FBI & You

396

Hacking The Patent System

397

The Best/Worst Time To Be A Content Creator

398

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

399

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

400

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

401

Just How Bad Is The TPP?

402

Can Silicon Valley Help "Disrupt" ISIS?

403

The CES Post-Mortem

404

How Much Surveillance Is Acceptable?

405

It Ain't Easy To Give Away $45 Billion

406

Why Intermediary Liability Is The Most Important Question Online

407

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

408

Bubbles, Busts & Unicorns

409

Our Podcast About Podcasts

410

A Whirlwind Tour Of Current Policy Issues In Tech

411

Our Hacking Laws Are A Mess

412

Trademarks: Intellectual Property Or Consumer Protection?

413

Things We Got Wrong

414

No, You're Not The Product

415

Why The Freedom To Tinker Matters

416

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

417

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

418

Privacy Policies Have Nothing To Do With Privacy

419

Is Silicon Valley Only Building Tech For The Rich?

420

Technology's Impact On Democracy

421

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

422

Humble Bundle Deserves More Credit For Its Many Innovations

423

In Defense Of Copying

424

Kevin Smith On How To Be Yourself And Make A Living

425

Apple Versus Google

426

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

427

Are Smart Watches The New Calculator Watches?

428

Closing In On Virtual Reality

429

Does Distance Matter In The Digital Age?

430

Autonomous Vehicles Will Change Everything

431

Is Car Ownership On The Way Out?

432

The Rise Of The On-Demand Economy

433

Silicon Valley's Secret Ingredient

434

EFF's Parker Higgins On Correcting Copyright Misconceptions

435

EFF's Parker Higgins On Common Copyright Misconceptions

436

Is AirBnB Good Or Bad For Cities?

437

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

438

How The Patent System Can Be Fixed

439

How The Patent System Is Broken

440

From Lulz To Activism, With Gabriella Coleman

441

The Many Faces Of Anonymous, With Gabriella Coleman

442

Musicians Making Money, With Composer Adam Fong

443

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

444

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

445

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

446

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

447

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

448

Barry Eisler Dissects The Publishing Industry

449

Is Cybersecurity A Real Issue Or Government Boondoggle?

450

Is Muni Broadband A Monopoly Killer Or A Killer Monopoly?

451

Threats To Internet Freedom, Recorded Live At BitTorrent

452

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

453

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

454

The Internet From Space!

455

In Defense Of Advertising

456

Amanda Palmer And The Art Of Asking

457

Privacy And User Control, With Brad Burnham

458

Can You Increase Privacy By Increasing Surveillance?