What You Should Know When Joining Bluesky

Bluesky promises to rethink social media by focusing on openness and user control. But what does this actually mean for the millions of people joining the site?November was a good month for alternatives to X. Many users hit their balking point...

No matter what the bank says, it's YOUR money, YOUR data, and YOUR choice

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) has just finalized a rule that makes it easy and safe for you to figure out which bank will give you the best deal and switch to that bank, with just a couple of clicks. We love this kind of thing: the...

Court Orders Google (a Monopolist) To Knock It Off With the Monopoly Stuff

A federal court recently ordered Google to make it easier for Android users to switch to rival app stores, banned Google from using its vast cash reserves to block competitors, and hit Google with a bundle of thou-shalt-nots and assorted...

Disability Rights Are Technology Rights

During Disability Employee Awareness month, we call out the medical tech industry for fighting disabled people's right to repair or modify the tech that they own.

2024 Photomicrography Competition

View the winning entries from the 2024 Photomicrography Competition

A Flourishing Internet Depends on Competition

Antitrust law has long recognized that monopolies stifle innovation and gouge consumers on price. When it comes to Big Tech, harm to innovation—in the form of “kill zones,” where major corporations buy up new entrants to a market before they can...

FTC Findings on Commercial Surveillance Can Lead to Better Alternatives

On September 19, the FTC published a staff report following a multi-year investigation of nine social media and video streaming companies. The report found a myriad of privacy violations to consumers stemming largely from the ad-revenue based...

Supercon 2023: [Cory Doctorow] With An Audacious Plan To Halt The Internet’s Enshittification And Throw It Into Reverse

Those of us old enough to remember BBS servers or even rainbow banners often go down the nostalgia hole about how the internet was better “back in the day” than it is now as a handful o…

NextNav’s Callous Land-Grab to Privatize 900 MHz

The 900 MHz band, a frequency range serving as a commons for all, is now at risk due to NextNav’s brazen attempt to privatize this shared resource. Left by the FCC for use by amateur radio operators, unlicensed consumer devices, and industrial,...

CrowdStrike, Antitrust, and the Digital Monoculture

Last month’s unprecedented global IT failure should be a wakeup call. Decades of antitrust inaction have made many industries dangerously reliant on the same tools, making such crises inevitable. We must demand regulators break up the digital...

Podcast Episode: Fighting Enshittification

The early internet had a lot of “technological self-determination" — you could opt out of things, protect your privacy, control your experience. The problem was that it took a fair amount of technical skill to exercise that self-determination. But...

How the FTC Can Make the Internet Safe for Chatbots

No points for guessing the subject of the first question the Wall Street Journal asked FTC Chair Lina Khan: of course it was about AI.Between the hype, the lawmaking, the saber-rattling, the trillion-dollar market caps, and the predictions of...

What’s the Difference Between Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads?

The ongoing Twitter exodus sparked life into a new way of doing social media. Instead of a handful of platforms trying to control your life online, people are reclaiming control by building more open and empowering approaches to social media. Some...

Ah, Steamboat Willie. It’s been too long. 🐭

Did you know Disney’s Steamboat Willie entered the public domain this year? Since its 1928 debut, U.S. Congress has made multiple changes to copyright law, extending Disney’s ownership of this cultural icon for almost a century. A...

Hand me the flashlight. I’ll be right back...

It’s time for the second installment of campfire tales from The Encryptids. Do you ever feel like tech companies still own the devices you’ve paid for? Monsieur Jackalope tells us why interoperability plays a key role in giving you freedom in tech.

Wanna Make Big Tech Monopolies Even Worse? Kill Section 230

It’s no fun when your friends ask you to take sides in their disputes. The plans for every dinner party, wedding, and even funeral arrive at a juncture where you find yourself thinking, “Dang, if I invite her, then he won’t come.”It’s even less...

Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

The European Union’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a complex, many-legged beast, but at root, it is a regulation that aims to make it easier for the public to control the technology they use and rely on. One DMA rule forces the powerful...