It’s always nice when you get several stories in a row that contrast with one another in order to make a point. We were just discussing Rockstar’s decision to scoop up a roleplaying and modding community in order to build in new and interesting ways to play GTA and Red Dead Redemption games. What I had hoped out loud would be a sign that Rockstar was turning over a new leaf on modding communities was dashed almost immediately as the company then went after another group of mod-makers for the crime of being fans of its games and trying to make them more interesting and playable. Game companies don’t have to do this sort of thing.
And that is now evidenced by Nvidia’s recent announcement that it has partnered with four different modding communities to push out a new graphically updated version of Half-Life 2, with Valve’s silence on the announcement serving as its tacit endorsement.
Awkwardly titled Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, the remaster is currently in development with no set release date. Nvidia announced it today as part of its pre-Gamescom presentations. The remaster will use RTX Remix, which is Nvidia’s toolkit for bringing ray-tracing to classic PC games. RTX Remix was previously announced using The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind as an example; it seeks to give community modders and hobbyists the ability to do ray-tracing conversions for old games, but it’s still only available to a few people.
The people, in this case, are a group of modders from multiple community projects who have banded together under the name Orbifold Studios. The team includes modders who worked on VR Half-Life 2 project Project 17, asset remastering project Half-Life 2 Remade Assets, total conversation mod Raising the Bar: Redux, and another VR mod simply called Half-Life 2 VR, among others.
There has been no public statement I’m aware of by Valve on this project, but it has been made very clear in industry publications that the company behind the original game series has nothing to do with the actual making of this remake. That being said, the company is said to be very aware of the project. Therefore, while I’d love to see a full-throated endorsement of the modding community doing this sort of thing from Valve, its silence and a company like Nvidia’s involvement sure seems to indicate that the company isn’t going to disappear this whole thing.
This thing just kicked off into development, so I suppose there would still be time for Valve to reverse course, but I doubt it will, mostly because I highly doubt Nvidia would announce this at all if there was even a chance that Valve would nix the project. So why is it that Valve can see the usefulness in fan projects like this, but Rockstar can’t?
Back in 2015 domain registrar Tucows announced it would hope to modestly kickstart stagnant broadband competition by buying a small Virginia ISP by the name of Blue Ridge InternetWorks (BRI). Operating under the Ting brand name, the company said the goal was to bring a “shockingly human experience and fair, honest pricing” to a broken broadband market dominated by a handful of monopolies.
A lot has changed since then. Ting has subsequently expanded its broadband disruption efforts into six different states, and is currently either operating or building broadband networks in 16 different locations.
In many instances, Ting is partnering with local governments looking to provide better, faster, and cheaper broadband. That includes Colorado Springs, which is currently building its own “open access” fiber network via its existing electric utility, with Ting as the first anchor tenant. The city will be Ting’s biggest partner to date:
“Ting is an interesting type of fiber provider in the U.S., using different business strategies to deliver fiber to customers. Sometimes it builds and owns its own networks. But other times, it leverages municipal-owned backbone fiber and then builds last mile connections to residential customers. Or, in the case with Colorado Springs Utilities, it acts as an anchor tenant on the fiber network of a city or utility.”
The network is open access, meaning that while Colorado Springs owns the underlying infrastructure, numerous ISPs can come in and compete in layers. Everybody wins: the city makes money from lease agreements (and can ensure uniform coverage to marginalized neighborhoods), and ISPs can have access to local residents for a fraction of what it would have cost to build the networks themselves.
In some such deployments, like Ammon, Idaho, customers can switch ISPs in a matter of seconds using an online portal. Locally owned, such providers are usually more responsible to complaints since they actually live in the communities they serve. We discussed this and similar models in notable detail in our Copia report on broadband competition last year.
In Colorado Springs, Ting is providing 2 Gbps (gigabit per second) broadband connections for $89 a month with no caps, no hidden fees, and no long term contracts. Data routinely indicates that community owned, open access broadband networks tend to provide better, cheaper, faster service than regional incumbent monopolies. Such efforts have pushed the cost of gigabit service below $70 in many markets.
Unsurprisingly this model, where numerous competitors drive down prices and spur ISPs to actually try is a nightmare for companies like AT&T and Comcast, which is why they’ve worked tirelessly for years to ban such efforts on both the state and federal level. Such companies, routinely engaged in fraud and slathered in wasted subsidies, insist their opposition is strictly rooted in concern for taxpayer welfare.
Ting is moving cautiously, and currently only serves an estimated 85,500 addresses nationwide (though the Colorado Springs network is expected to serve around 200,000 residents). But the open access model they’ve been embracing is taking root all over the country, driving competition to markets where Comcast has been the only meaningful broadband provider for several decades.
All told, more than 900 communities have built their own broadband networks, either directly as a municipality, as an extension of the city-owned utility, or via local cooperatives. And it’s a trend that’s accelerating for two reasons: the billions now flowing into the sector courtesy of the infrastructure bill, and the widespread frustration communities had with substandard broadband during peak COVID.
As you’ll recall, Montana passed a law earlier this year to ban TikTok (and ban mobile app stores from offering TikTok for download). The bill has lots of problems, not the least of which was that Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen flat out told the NY Times that the purpose of the bill was to censor speech that parents were complaining about:
Mr. Knudsen, a Republican, said his team had received scores of complaints from parents about TikTok content referring to drugs, suicide or pornography. As the state’s legislative session approached this year, his office began looking at the idea of fully banning the app.
Montana’s governor Greg Gianforte knows the bill is unconstitutional, because he originally asked the legislature to change the bill so that it applied to more platforms rather than just directly targeting TikTok. But the legislature didn’t take him up on it, and he still signed the bill.
Knudsen — who gave that “of course we’re trying to ban protected speech” answer above — is now in charge of defending the lawsuits, and he’s filed basically the same memorandom in opposition to both cases. And, as is all too often the case in these types of lawsuits, Knudsen seems to see this as a political document, rather than a legal one.
Which is to say, whoooo boy, is there a whole lotta nonsense in here. There’s a lot of fussing and prattling on about China and the “C.C.P.” and how evil they are, without much attempt to address the underlying question of how the hell do you get away with banning an entire app. The 1st Amendment arguments are… ridiculous.
The First Amendment leaves Montana “no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.” Police Dep’t of Chi. v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 95 (1972). But SB419 doesn’t prohibit certain messages, ideas, subject matter, or content. It prohibits the use of a product in Montana.
This is “we’re not banning speech, we’re just smashing your printing press.” That argument has never been supported, and even things like special taxes on newspapers have been deemed to violate the 1st Amendment for it being retaliatory based on speech.
From there, Knudsen claims that there’s no 1st Amendment protection in “the enforcement of a public health regulation…” and then proceeds to try to argue that banning TikTok is all about health, and not about speech (even though Knudsen has clearly stated otherwise).
And, from there, Knudsen pulls out the “cancer-causing radio” comparison:
Were it otherwise, Montana would be powerless to ban a cancer-causing radio merely because that radio also transmitted protected speech, or to ban sports-betting apps merely because those apps also shared informative videos teaching their users the intricacies of sports gambling. The targeted harms—preventing cancer, illegal gambling, or data-gathering by a hostile foreign state—are inherently nonexpressive and thus subject to Montana’s plenary police-power regulations. Overlaying them with expressive conduct—radio communications or instructive videos—doesn’t change that calculus.
But… TikTok is not cancer-causing. And, this comparison makes no sense. I know that it’s a common fallacy among the moral panic set to compare social media to poisons, but speech is not a poison, or something you ingest. The main issue with Knudsen’s comparison here is that if there were “cancer-causing radios,” it wouldn’t be the speech part that is causing the cancer, nor would the ban on such radios be targeted at stopping the speech.
But here, the issue that Knudsen himself admitted, is that it’s very much the “speech” that “parents” are complaining about which resulted in Knudsen crafting this bill. That matters. If you care about the 1st Amendment.
Hilariously, Knudsen then tries to claim that this move, banning all of TikTok across the entire state, is limited in a manner that could survive intermediate scrutiny. First of all, the law should be judged under strict scrutiny, but even if it were under intermediate scrutiny, that requires the law to be about an important government interest regulated in a narrowly tailored way.
There is nothing narrowly tailored about this. It bans the app flat out for everyone in the state. That’s not narrowly tailored:
Finally, SB419’s restrictions are “no greater than is essential” to furthering Montana’s interest in protecting Montanans’ data privacy.
No one actually believes that. You want to narrowly “protect Montanans’ data privacy,” then pass a privacy law regarding the transfer of data, not ban an entire app by name.
SB419 is narrowly drawn. It doesn’t ban all “online platform[s] that enable users to create, share, and view videos and other forms of content.” TikTok.Br.2. Rather, it “eliminate[d] the exact source of the evil it sought to remedy.” City of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 808 (1984). Plaintiffs’ cases are inapposite. SB419 is like the school-uniform policy in Jacobs—it regulates one channel of internet expression but leaves all others untouched. Thus, it’s not a blanket prohibition on creating, sharing, and viewing videos on every internet-based application in the same way that Plaintiffs’ cases banned the speakers’ preferred medium entirely.
So this is a fun twist. Knudsen is claiming that because they just banned one company, that shows it’s not about banning speech. But… they’re missing which speech is being talked about here. It’s banning TikTok’s speech.
No one would take seriously the argument that Knudsen could shut down one newspaper in the state because other newspapers exist, or because the internet exists. But that’s the crux of Knudsen’s argument here. “We can shut down anyone’s speech we want, so long as there are other ways of speaking.”
There’s a lot more in there, but it’s… not a very strong argument. One hopes the court will recognize that.
In 2014, the Supreme Court made it clear: phone searches require warrants. While it did note the case involved a search “incident to an arrest,” the precedent was undeniable. If a phone search attached to an arrest requires a warrant, it would logically follow that any phone search by law enforcement — even those not subsequent to an arrest — requires a warrant.
Since then, multiple federal courts have come to the opposite conclusion in cases involving searches of phones at borders or international airports. According to these judges, the Riley decision simply doesn’t apply when border security is in play. And it doesn’t matter whether the searched device belongs to an American citizen or a resident of a foreign country.
The law shouldn’t be unsettled, but it is. There’s no consensus at the appellate level. Nor is there one at the lower levels. All we have is a lack of clarity to work with. One federal judge (Jed Rakoff) said warrants are needed for “some” border phone searches — specifically “forensic” searches in which the government makes itself a copy of all data on a person’s phone.
The Fourth Circuit Appeals Court also made a limited finding in favor of Riley’s warrant requirement, stating that border law enforcement officers must have at least articulable suspicion to engage in forensic searches. That’s still a long way from probable cause, but it’s more than the “nothing at all” standard CBP and Border Patrol officers have been held to.
The Seventh Circuit had a chance to set precedent in another border device search case, but instead chose to save the question for a later day, leaving the “because border security” rationale for warrantless searches undisturbed.
This indecision has led to a steady increase in border device searches, driven by the ubiquity of smartphones and no one at the judicial level willing to decisively tell border officers a warrant is needed.
Texas immigration lawyer Adam Malik has given the Fifth Circuit a chance to set precedent more aligned with the Supreme Court’s 2014 Riley decision. Unfortunately, the Fifth Circuit has decided a forensic search of Malik’s device (which was held by the CBP for three weeks) isn’t a violation of the Fourth Amendment. (via FourthAmendment.com)
Malik sued the DHS and CBP in early 2021, after his phone was seized, searched, and held by the CBP. One of Malik’s many concerns was the government’s warrantless access to privileged attorney-client information. This is what happened during the search Malik sued over.
In response to Mr. Malik’s assertion of privilege, Officer Sullivan informed Mr. Malik that DHS was seizing the iPhone and that the digital contents would be searched. Officer Sullivan did not disconnect the iPhone from the internet or the communications network. He failed to take action that would protect the iPhone from accessing the internet or a communications network. Officer Sullivan ordered Mr. Malik to leave the deferred inspection area without the iPhone while the iPhone still was connected to the internet and a communications network.
Neither Officer Sullivan nor any other employee of Defendants asked Mr. Malik to disable connectivity of the iPhone to the internet or to any network. Had Officer Sullivan or any employee of Defendants offered to permit Mr. Malik to place the iPhone in airplane mode upon or after seizure of the iPhone, Mr. Malik would have done so immediately.
On top of not preventing the phone from continuing to collect data and communications, the DHS held on to Malik’s phone for five months. According to this, from the Fifth Circuit’s decision [PDF], part of that time was given over to the government’s efforts to avoid accessing privileged information.
The phone’s passcode feature prevented the border officers from accessing the phone, and thus from searching it, so they sent it to a forensics lab. The lab bypassed the phone’s security features, extracted the phone’s data, and returned the phone and the data to DHS. All of that took about three months. DHS then used a “filter team” to screen the extracted data for any privileged materials. That took about two more months. Once the filter team had finished, they provided the border officers in Dallas with “two thumb drives . . . consisting of the data that the filter team determined [the officers] were authorized to search.” DHS then conducted a border search of that data, and DHS returned the phone to Malik on May 21, 2021.
What’s not explained here is what the DHS was searching for. That it has the power to engage in warrantless searches of devices doesn’t automatically create reasons for it to do so. Very little was explained to Malik, other than that the officers could do this and, therefore, they were going to do this. All of this happened despite Malik being a government-approved member of the CBP’s Global Entry Trusted Traveler Program, which should have seen him subjected to less scrutiny when crossing borders, rather than what he was actually subjected to.
Following somehard questions posed to the DHS by Senator Ron Wyden, Malik sought to obtain more information to use in his lawsuit against the agency.
Discovery closed on February 11, 2022. Malik moved to reopen discovery a few weeks later, citing a public letter that United States Senator Ron Wyden sent to DHS’s Inspector General. Among other things, the letter alleges that DHS conducted “bulk surveillance of Americans’ financial records” by collecting troves of “transaction data” from Western Union. While the letter asks DHS to investigate these allegations, it does not address individual border searches, phone records, decryption, or DHS’s data-retention policies. The district court denied Malik’s motion.
The court denied this motion. Then it decided in favor of the DHS, ruling it had not violated Malik’s rights with this search of his phone.
Unfortunately, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court (which splits the US-Mexico border with the Ninth Circuit) agrees with the lower court. No rights violation here, not when border security is on the line.
Malik argues that we should extend Riley v. California to border searches. Yet, for “[routine] cell phone searches at the border, our sister circuits have uniformly held that Riley does not require either a warrant or reasonable suspicion.” We have held the same. Even for non-routine searches, our sister circuit “have differed only as to whether reasonablesuspicion is required.” We are not aware of any circuit court that has extended Riley’s warrant requirement to the border.
“Ordinarily, we would expect a party encouraging us to adopt a new constitutional [theory] to convincingly distinguish adverse authorities” and “to discuss the contours of the doctrine [he] wishes us to adopt. Malik has not done any of that. He has not even attempted to argue that the search was anything other than routine. He also has not discussed or analyzed Riley at any length, nor has he addressed the fact that “[e]very circuit that has faced this question has agreed that Riley does not mandate a warrant requirement for border searches of electronic devices, whether basic or advanced.
Instead, Malik has asked us to “intervene” and hold “that a judicial warrant is required at this time for the search of an attorney’s confidential client files and communications at the border.” Malik’s request for our “intervention” is itself a tacit concession that our precedent does not currently require a warrant for cell-phone searches at the border. We express no view on how the border-search exception may develop or be clarified in future cases, but we do expressly decline to address it further here.
So, like the Seventh Circuit, the Fifth Circuit decides analyzing Riley in terms of border searches is a question for another day. And, by passing on this opportunity, it ensures the next time someone asks the same question, it will be able to refer to its previous punt to kick the constitutional can further down the road.
That being said, the lawsuit isn’t entirely dead. Malik also wants to ensure the DHS destroys all the data it pulled from his phone, which includes plenty of privileged material. Not only were there attorney-client communications, but likely information dealing with ongoing immigration litigation against the government — work product that is likewise shielded from government snooping.
The Fifth Circuit agrees Malik is right to demand this form of expungement and the DHS is wrong to refuse to destroy this seized data unless Malik drops his lawsuit. (All emphasis in the original.)
In the district court, DHS argued that “the information is being retained only because Malik requested a litigation hold,” and that Malik cannot not rely on this self-inflicted injury to show standing. And, on appeal, DHS has represented that it will “destroy the remaining data in its possession and will be happy to provide an appropriate certification to Malik that all data in the government’s possession has been destroyed and that no data was transferred to any other governmental or nongovernmental entity or person” as soon as these “proceedings” conclude. DHS made similar representations to the district court. In other words, DHS argues that this lawsuit is the only obstacle separating Malik from the expungement that he seeks.
We do not agree that Malik’s injury is self-inflicted. The injury is that DHS still possesses privileged information that it unlawfully seized from his phone. Malik did not volunteer that data to DHS, and he has no control over how DHS handles it. That is why Malik came to court. DHS argues that it will delete the data if Malik non-suits this case. But while the possibility of an alternate form of relief confirms that Malik has suffered an injury, it does not mean that he caused the injury. That is especially true here, where Malik lacks any power to redress his injury. Instead, the most he can do is non-suit this case and trust DHS to delete the data. Where redress cannot be self-actuated, we are hesitant to conclude that an injury is self-inflicted.
We also do not agree that DHS can moot Malik’s suit merely by promising to delete the data once the suit is over. By its very nature, a promise of some future action cannot redress Malik’s injury now. DHS’s promise, then, supports no more than a prediction that this case could be moot in the future. But it is not presently moot. Rather, DHS still has Malik’s data. Just as we will not rely on “conjectural or hypothetical” facts to find that standingis present, so too we will not rely on predictions and what-ifs to find that standing is absent. We hold that Malik has standing to seek expungement.
That’s great but there’s nothing in here for Malik, other US citizens, or their constitutional rights. When it comes to the border, the house always wins. What Malik is being given here is nothing more than existing precedent regarding expungement of privileged material. What no one is being given is any more protection from their own government just because they cross borders or seek to board international flights. When it comes to anything the government calls a “border,” the rights we were guaranteed are mostly null and void.
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There is no space for nuanced discussion about reality any more, as it seems that nonsense floods the zone. So, please try to follow along here as there needs to be some nuance to finally get down to the details of this issue. It’s nonsense, piled on top of nonsense, piled on top of nonsense, which ends with Elon Musk suggesting he’s going to sue George Soros for… advocating for laws that Elon doesn’t like (for what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure the laws being talked about are problematic, but the details aren’t clear, and there’s no law against advocating for bad laws).
Let’s start here: we’re extremely skeptical of any sort of “hate speech law.” This is not because we like hate speech, far from it. But as we’ve reportedagain and again and again, in practice hate speech laws are frequently abused by the powerful to punish the powerless and marginalized. We’ve long argued that there are better ways to deal with hate speech than criminalizing it. Shun it, shame it, diminish it’s power, counter it, etc.
Of course, in the age of social media, some very, very silly people consider attempts to do the latter the equivalent of censorship. That is, when a private company chooses to de-prioritize hateful speech, they claim that this is the same thing as the government “censoring” it. But nothing is farther from the truth. The government cracking down on hate speech is a free speech issue. A private company refusing to host or promote hate speech is a way for them to use their own speech to condemn such speech. It is a quintessential “more speech” type of response.
One of the people who has a long history of misrepresenting private companies expressing their own free speech rights of association as the equivalent of government censorship is a nonsense peddler named Michael Shellenberger, one of the hand-picked nonsense peddlers that Elon gave some of his “Twitter Files” to, allowing them to completely misrepresent things. Shellenberger, who has a long career peddling complete and utter nonsense, took to the job perfectly, and so completely misunderstood things in the Twitter Files that he ridiculously claimed that FBI was paying Twitter to censor accounts.
The truth was nothing of the sort, and anyone with even the most basic understanding of the law and basic facts could explain it to you (as far as I can tell, Shellenberger has yet to retract or correct his false statements on this). What he was actually reporting on were investigatory requests for data under a 2703(d) request (which require a court order or a warrant, depending on the type of data sought). These are requests for customer communications or records, not for taking down information. That law says that when the government makes a 2703(d) request, the government needs to reimburse the service provider “for such costs as are reasonably necessary and which have been directly incurred in search for, assembling, reproducing, or otherwise providing such information.”
Now there are lots of concerns about the 2703(d) program, and we (unlike the nonsense peddlers who are screaming today) have been calling out the problems with that program for at least a decade. But we’re focused on what the program actually is, not some made up idea that this is “the FBI paying Twitter to censor.”
Shellenberger has continued to peddle more nonsense about social media content moderation, a concept he does not seem to understand one bit, falsely accusing researchers who study information flows of being part of a “censorship industrial complex” and a bunch of other ridiculous stuff. But, of course, a bunch of very silly people eat this nonsense up and believe every word of it, because why not?
Not surprisingly, Shellenberger these days has a very popular Substack where his nonsense is often published. He probably makes more money each week from subscribers than Techdirt makes in a year, because we deal in facts, not nonsense, and facts don’t seem to pay as well.
Anyway, on his Substack, he had another reporter publish an article with the headline “Soros-Funded NGOs Demand Crackdown on Free Speech as Politicians Spread Hate Misinformation.” The article is behind a paywall, so I have no idea what it’s actually referring to. It is entirely possible that Open Society (which is funded by Soros) is advocating for hate speech laws, but the parts that are available to read are just a lot of fluff about whether or not hate is on the rise in Ireland, not the specific laws or what the various NGOs are advocating for.
So maybe Open Society NGOs are supporting hate speech laws. If true, that would be bad, as we’ve described above (and for years here on Techdirt) how such laws are prone to abuse and don’t do much to stop actual hate. But, of course, Soros is free to spend his money as he wishes, and the NGOs he funds are free to advocate for whatever laws they want. That’s part of their free speech.
Anyway, here’s where we finally get around to Elon Musk, who saw this story being promoted… and claimed he’s going to sue over it.
That’s Elon responding to a Shellenberger tweet. Shellenberger’s tweet says:
Politicians & George Soros-funded NGOs say “hate incidents” are rising, but they’re not. The data show the opposite: higher-than-ever and rising levels of tolerance of minorities. The reason they’re spreading hate misinformation is to justify a draconian crackdown on free speech.
So… first off, an increase in “levels of tolerance of minorities” (which is, by itself, an odd way to frame this) is not mutually exclusive with “rising hate incidents.” Both things could be true. I don’t know what points are being conveyed in the article itself (again, paywall), but the Irish police have published stats saying that “hate crimes” and “hate related incidents” went up from 2021 to 2022.
That’s not to say those stats are trustworthy. Also, hate speech and hate crime are not the same thing.
None of that means that Irish politicians aren’t overhyping the matter. They may well be. They may also be pushing for laws that intend to stifle free speech. I’m sure some are, because politicians all over the world seem to keep doing that. And it’s possible that Open Society funded NGOs are supporting some of those laws. And, as frustrating as that may be to us, it’s still very much allowed because of free speech.
Yet, then we have Elon jumping in to respond to Shellenberger’s already questionable claim by saying:
Exactly.
X will be filing legal action to stop this. Can’t wait for discovery to start!
There’s a lot to break down in this short tweet. What is he saying “exactly” about? And what kind of legal action is he filing?
But, first, let’s just make this point that I’ve made before, but is important to make again. It’s pretty common when lawsuits are threatened for some people to say something along the lines of “can’t wait for discovery,” which generally just shows that they have no idea how any of this works. Many people seem to think that “discovery” is some magical process by which all your dirty laundry gets aired publicly.
That is… rarely the case. First off, while discovery is a total pain for basically everyone involved, discovery is (generally) limited to issues directly dealing with the legal issues at hand. Parties may seek a lot more, and those on the other side may push back on those requests. But, more importantly, most of the time, what’s handed over in discovery never sees the light of day. Sometimes there are direct limits on what parties can share publicly, and often the only bits of discovery that become public are what’s revealed as the case moves towards trial (if it gets that far). People who are “eager” for discovery are… usually disappointed.
And, of course, in theory, any such “legal action” would take place in Ireland, which seems to have fairly similar discovery rules as the US, such that any discovery has to be “relevant and necessary” to the claims at hand.
Which brings us to the big question: who is he suing and for what? Many people (perhaps reasonably?) interpreted Musk’s statement to mean he was going to sue Soros. But, of course, he has no standing whatsoever for that, and the only thing he could possibly sue Soros over was for his advocacy (and funding), both of which would be protected speech. If the implication is that Elon is going to sue Soros for his free speech, that will (yet again!) raise questions about Elon’s actual commitment to “free speech.”
Perhaps a more charitable explanation here is that Elon actually means he’d be suing in Ireland (or, perhaps more likely, in the European Court of Justice?) to block any such law should it pass. But… that would require the details of the law to understand what the issue was. And, if that was the plan, then it’s difficult to see what sorts of “discovery” he’s expecting to get access to.
And, sure, if Ireland passes a really bad law, I do hope that exTwitter challenges it in court. But that’s got nothing to do with Soros, and I don’t see how discovery is going to be even remotely meaningful.
Of course, even if his plan really is to challenge the eventual Irish law (should it ever become law), it’s pretty clear from the replies to his tweet, that most of his gullible fans think he’s talking about suing Soros directly for his speech… and they’re ridiculously claiming that this shows how much Elon supports free speech. It’s possible that Elon recognizes that his confusingly worded tweet implies one thing when he really means another, though he hasn’t tried to correct the misperception at all. Or, of course, he really thinks that he’s going to sue Soros for exercising his own free speech, and his idiot fans are insisting that suing someone for their own speech is support of free speech.
We’ve noted repeatedly how the hyperventilation about TikTok privacy is largely just a distraction from the U.S.’ ongoing failure to pass even a basic privacy law or meaningfully regulate data brokers.
We haven’t done those things for two reasons. One, the dysfunctional status quo (where companies mindlessly over-collect data and fail to secure it, resulting in endless privacy scandals) is hugely profitable to everybody in the chain. Two, the government long ago realized it can abuse the barely regulated info-hoovering user tracking system we’ve built to avoid having to get warrants.
There’s simply no meaningful incentive for reform.
None of this is helped by the fact that an ad-based, wealth-obsessed tech press is financially incentivized to prioritize engagement clickbait (billionaire cage matches! Poorly-made blockchain-based ape art will change the world!), over nuance and deeper analysis. A media ecosystem owned by billionaires that seems to have an ever-dwindling interest in meaningfully challenging money, power, or the status quo.
The result of our collective superficiality isn’t hard to find when looking at the tech knowledge of the broader public. A recent Pew survey of 5,101 U.S. adults found that 80 percent of Americans know that Elon Musk now owns Tesla and Twitter, but just 23 percent were aware that the United States lacks a meaningful privacy law addressing how companies can use the data they collect:
52 percent of the public wasn’t sure if we had a privacy law. At the same time, while 77 percent of the public knows that Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021, less than half (48 percent) of those surveyed know what two-factor authentication is. And while 87 percent know that more complicated passwords are better, just 32 percent have a basic understanding of how “AI” (LLMs) function.
When the press covers consumer privacy, the fact that the U.S. government has proven too corrupt to pass even a basic internet-era privacy law rarely gets mentioned. The idea that the government has been lobbied into apathy on this subject for 30 years by a broad coalition of industries (opposed to anything but the most toothless oversight) rarely even warrants a mention in mainstream tech coverage.
While I’m sure a superficial, clickbait obsessed tech press isn’t the only culprit here (our shaky education standards surely play a role), I can’t imagine it helps much. As a tech reporter I’ve watched a long, long line of quality independent tech news outlets get dismantled in favor of superficial clickbait machines, terrified of offending anyone in power, whose output is now being clumsily supercharged by “AI”.
Tech journalism’s failure to accurately portray the sorry state of U.S. privacy was perfectly exemplified by coverage over the TikTok privacy scandals. Endless outlets parroted worries that a single app might share U.S. consumer data with the Chinese government; few if any could be bothered to note that same Chinese government can buy endless reams of consumer data from barely regulated data brokers.
As a broadband and telecom beat reporter in particular, I’ve similarly seen how when press outlets cover substandard broadband, the real underlying problem (consolidated monopoly power has lobbied a corrupt government into apathy) again rarely warrants a mention. It’s systemic, and until we dedicate some serious time toward creatively funding independent journalism, it’s simply not getting better.
