At a time when Section 230 faces unprecedented threats from all sides — with both major political parties gunning for it, albeit for opposite reasons — understanding this crucial internet law has never been more important. That’s probably why our “Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Section 230” post remains one of Techdirt’s most referenced articles.
So last year, when the Competitive Enterprise Institute approached me about hosting a documentary-style podcast exploring the past, present, and (hopefully) future of Section 230, I was understandably skeptical. After all, much of the discourse around 230 comes from people who fundamentally misunderstand it. But it quickly became clear that CEI truly grasped both the technical aspects and the broader implications of the law and shared my vision for the kind of deep, nuanced exploration this topic deserves.
The result is “Otherwise Objectionable: the most misunderstood law on the internet,” launching March 12th. The podcast format allows us to dig deep into the human stories behind Section 230 — both from those who shaped the law and those whose lives were shaped by it. Rather than just explaining the legal technicalities, we explore how this short statute enabled the creation of countless online communities and gave voice to millions who previously had none.
We’ve assembled an impressive array of voices: Chris Cox and Ron Wyden, the original authors of Section 230, walk us through not just what they wrote, but why they wrote it. Lawyers who fought in the earliest internet cases explain how the legal landscape evolved, both before and after 230’s passage. Yes, we also talk to a few critics of the law as well. And perhaps most importantly, we hear from people whose lives were transformed by the very online communities and services that 230 made possible — including one of my first online friends from the Usenet days.
For people who want to understand the importance of Section 230, the series should be invaluable. But even for those of you who think you already know all about Section 230, I promise you’ll learn something new (I certainly did in the process).
The trailer is available now on all major podcast platforms (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Pandora, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music), with the first full episode dropping next week. At a moment when Section 230’s future hangs in the balance, understanding its past has never been more crucial.
Look, I’m no rocket-building super-genius*, but I have this weird idea that if you want to make an organization more efficient, you might start by talking to the people who are… already making it efficient? A crazy idea, I know.
(*Neither are some other people who pretend to be).
But Elon Musk had a different idea. His approach to bringing efficiency to government was to first identify all the people actually making government more efficient, and then systematically remove them from their jobs. It’s a bold strategy!
Elon Musk has launched a systematic purge of the government’s most effective technical innovators. On Friday at midnight, he abruptly fired the entire 18F team — a group of technical experts who had spent over a decade making government services actually work better for Americans. This followed his earlier moves that gut the US Digital Service (USDS).
These weren’t just any government techies. 18F were the people who built login.gov, created the IRS’s Direct File platform, and ensured government websites were properly encrypted. In other words, they were doing exactly what Musk claims DOGE is supposed to do — but with actual results rather than 4chan-inspired dank memes.
And this is just part of a broader pattern. The purge began just as the Musk/Trump administration took office, with the illegal firing of 17 Inspectors General — the very officials responsible for investigating and stopping waste, fraud, and abuse in government.
These would be the last people you would want to fire if you actually wanted to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse. They are the people you would fire if your intention was to loot the government, and you didn’t want anyone to call out the fact that you were doing so.
The destruction of 18F and USDS is particularly revealing of DOGE’s true priorities. Both agencies were created a decade ago with a simple mission: recruit talented technologists who believe in public service to make government work better. And unlike DOGE’s meme-driven destructive and harmful publicity stunts, they actually delivered results.
Want to see what real government efficiency looks like? Prior to Musk’s purge, 18F was self-funded through payments from the agencies it helped — meaning it cost taxpayers nothing while saving millions by preventing agencies from being gouged by traditional government IT contractors. USDS, meanwhile, had been quietly modernizing critical government systems, from veterans’ healthcare to immigration services.
In fact, DOGE itself only “exists” because Trump couldn’t legally create a new department without congressional approval. So instead, he simply “renamed” USDS as the “US DOGE Service” — and then proceeded to gut the very capabilities that made it effective.
So what happens when you put inexperienced, incurious, overly confident jackasses in charge of complex government systems? Well, first they get rid of the experts who might point out their mistakes. Two weeks ago, Musk laid off about a third of the USDS staff. Then, in what might be called a vote of no confidence (if you’re being polite) or a mass exodus from a burning building (if you’re being honest), another third of the remaining staff quit in protest. Their resignation letter didn’t mince words:
We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.
The resigning USDS staffers painted a disturbing picture of DOGE’s operations. The new team’s idea of “vetting” consisted of rushed 15-minute interviews by unidentified individuals who seemed more interested in political loyalty than technical competence:
On January 21st, we completed 15-minute interviews with individuals wearing White House visitor badges. Several of these interviewers refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability. This process created significant security risks.
This cavalier approach to security wasn’t an isolated incident. Prior to Musk abruptly terminating 18F late last Friday, his team demanded immediate access to sensitive government systems while bypassing standard security protocols. It’s a pattern that suggests either stunning incompetence or deliberate sabotage.
The timing and manner of 18F’s termination are particularly revealing. This wasn’t a cost-cutting measure — as mentioned, 18F was self-funded through its work with other agencies. This wasn’t about improving efficiency — they were already saving taxpayers millions by preventing agencies from being gouged by traditional contractors. This was about eliminating a team of proven technical experts who might stand in the way of DOGE’s more destructive ambitions.
18F was what Musk and his ignorant fans were telling us DOGE was going to do. But, because one of the brain-wormed idiots that Musk follows on ExTwitter claimed they were “far left” Elon decided he had to fire them all. Even Community Notes knew that Elon was full of shit, but it didn’t stop him from killing the group:
Apparently it’s “far left” and worth disbanding a group for… [checks notes] making it easier for people to file their taxes for free. Who knew?
In response, the 18F team has published a letter to the American public that lets their record of non-partisan public service speak for itself:
For over 11 years, 18F has been proudly serving you to make government technology work better. We are non-partisan civil servants. 18F has worked on hundreds of projects, all designed to make government technology not just efficient but effective, and to save money for American taxpayers.
They noted that when the guy Musk inserted over them, Thomas Shedd, came in he told them they were “the gold standard” of government techies.
When former Tesla engineer Thomas Shedd took the position of TTS director and met with TTS including 18F on February 3, 2025, he acknowledged that the group isthe “gold standard” of civic technologistsand that “you guys have been doing this far longer than I’ve been even aware that your group exists.” He repeatedly emphasized the importance of the work, and the value of the talent that the teams bring to government.
But that was before his boss decided they were too woke for making it easier for people to file taxes or use other government services.
They also note that Team DOGE again violated security procedures just before they were fired:
Before today’s RIF, DOGE members and GSA political appointees demanded and took access to IT systems that hold sensitive information. They ignored security precautions. Some who pushed back on this questionable behavior resigned rather than grant access. Others were met with reprisals like being booted from work communication channels.
As Don Moynihan explains, DOGE’s actions reveal the fundamental lie at its core. The promise of “letting techies make government more efficient” was appealing even to those who understood government’s complexities. Lots of people who weren’t paying close attention thought the idea of DOGE made sense: let’s let some smart techies fix government. But DOGE was never about bringing in technical expertise and efficiency — it’s about systematically eliminating it:
For those who don’t know much about government, the idea of Elon Musk as a serious tech guy who could shake up how the public sector work was appealing. Even people who do know a lot about government were hopeful.
Such hopes now look naive. Musk is not just ignorant about what government does, he chooses to celebrate and make decisions based on that ignorance, defaulting toaccusations of fraudto explain things he does not want to understand. He is not interested in fixing government, but in destroying key parts of government, and that takes no great skill.
Want to understand what actually made government more efficient? Ask Dan Tangherlini, who ran GSA when 18F was created. He spelled it out pretty clearly:
We created 18F while I was GSA Administrator as a way to transform agencies’ ability to develop, improve, and purchase technology that enhanced program performance and efficiency. 18F grew to include the Presidential Innovations Fellows program and was the long-term support for US Digital Service’s (USDS) response and policy work…
18F was popular among the agencies; annoying to the contracting community; and frightening to the contractors and consultants who could charge unsuspecting agencies whatever they could get away with. Small, but mighty, 18F was the OG DOGE, but with a mission to create actual efficiency, and more importantly, effectiveness. These were smart, technical, caring, dedicated, and patriotic public servants. Their dismissal with a late-night email demonstrates that this administration either doesn’t know how to effectively enhance government efficiency, or really doesn’t care.
This is all going exactly according to plan, by the way. Not the plan that was sold to the public — “let’s bring Silicon Valley efficiency to government!” — but the actual plan to effectively destroy the institutions that make the US operate. Because it turns out there’s a really simple way to tell if someone is serious about making government more efficient:
Do they talk to the people already making government more efficient?
Do they look at what’s already working and try to scale it?
Do they respect basic security protocols designed to protect Americans’ data?
If the answer to all of these is “no, but we post a lot of AI-generated memes on social media and post blatantly false data about how much we’re saving” then perhaps efficiency isn’t really the goal.
The punchline here isn’t just that DOGE is incompetent (though it is) or that Musk doesn’t understand government (though he doesn’t). The punchline is that we had actual expert techies making government work better, and they got replaced by people whose main qualification appears to be their willingness to break things and their loyalty to Elon Musk. The burglars aren’t just in the house — they’re livestreaming the robbery and calling it home improvement.
And that’s the real tragedy here: it doesn’t take a rocket scientist — or even a media-propped up faux “rocket-building super-genius” — to make government work better. It just takes competent professionals who care about doing the job right and actually care about the American public. We had them. We fired them. And now we’re all less safe for it.
Look, sometimes you make mistakes. Maybe you send an email to the wrong person. Maybe you accidentally buy the wrong kind of pasta sauce at the grocery store. Maybe you accidentally dismantle critical global health infrastructure. These things happen! At least, that’s what Elon Musk wants us to believe.
At yesterday’s first official Musk/Trump administration cabinet meeting, Elon decided to share a cute little anecdote about his DOGE team’s approach to governing. Just a fun little story about how they “accidentally canceled” Ebola prevention efforts. What a knee slapper!
Elon Musk: "We will make mistakes. We won't be perfect … so for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was ebola prevention."
Here’s Musk’s exact quote, which deserves to be read in full because, well, you’ll see:
We will make mistakes. We won’t be perfect. But when we make mistakes, we’ll fix it very quickly. So, for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola prevention. [nervous chuckle] I think we all want Ebola prevention. So we restored Ebola prevention immediately and there was no interruption.
The only problem is that almost everything here is nonsense… well, except for the part about canceling the program on Ebola prevention. Musk absolutely did that. And some other terrible stuff as well. But the fixing the mistake part? That doesn’t appear to have actually happened. Oopsie!
[Nervous chuckle intensifies]
The Real Impact of “Accidental” Cuts
To be clear, this one scenario actually offers a really good case study in how dangerously short-sighted the Musk/DOGE efforts are, in which they have no clue what they’re doing, are slashing and burning, and figuring they can just “fix it very quickly after” when things go wrong.
Except, that’s often not how this works, and the things they’re doing are creating not just lasting damage, but real-time harms that can never be fixed.
So, first of all, they absolutely cut off Ebola prevention and it had real world consequences the day they did, because there was an Ebola outbreak reported in Uganda that very day. As Ebola expert (and survivor!) Dr. Craig Spencer explained, normally the US would send an Ebola expert to Uganda to help with the prevention, which they were unable to do, because Musk and DOGE basically made that impossible. Spencer’s explanation of what happened is maddening (this is just a snippet):
On January 29, Uganda reported an Ebola outbreak. Normally the U.S. would’ve very quickly sent one of our Ebola experts to help the response. But this time, we didn’t. Because we couldn’t. Because this administration wouldn’t let them go right when this outbreak was declared.
And normally the U.S. would’ve helped set up border screening and other measures on the ground.
But this time, we didn’t.
Normally, we would’ve spoke with the WHO about helping end the outbreak.
But this time, we didn’t.
Because CDC staff weren’t even allowed to talk to them.
I’ve been told by a colleague that Uganda tried calling the White House to notify them of the outbreak for 2 days…but no one answered the phone. Two months ago we had amazing experts working on global health security there. Now there appears to be no one to pick up a phone.
Lies About ‘Fixing’ Those Mistakes
It turns out that Elon and DOGE actually fired 90% of the team working on it. Which raises an interesting question: How exactly do you “turn on” Ebola prevention when you’ve fired all the people who… you know… prevent Ebola?
“There have been no efforts to ‘turn on’ anything in prevention” of Ebola and other diseases, said Nidhi Bouri, who served as a senior USAID official during the Biden administration and oversaw the agency’s response to health-care outbreaks.
[….]
Bouri said her former USAID team of 60 people working on disease-response had been cut to about six staffers as of earlier this week. She calledthe recent USAID response to Uganda’s Ebola outbreak a “one-off,” far diminished from “the full suite” of activities that the agency historically would mount, such as ramping up efforts to monitor whether the disease had spread to neighboring countries.
“The full spectrum — the investments in disease surveillance, the investments in what we mobilize … moving commodities, supporting lab workers — that capacity is now a tenth of what it was,” Bouri said.
Furthermore, contrary to Elon’s claim, it appears that the funds for Ebola prevention have not resumed at all:
Other current and former USAID officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations, agreed with Bouri’s assessment.
“There was a waiver for Ebola, but USAID funds have never been back online,” said a current official. “USAID has been frozen: staff and money.”
“If there was a need to respond to Ebola, it would be a disaster assistance response team, or DART,” said one former official. “There is no longer a capability to send a DART or support one from Washington. Many of those people are contractors who were let go at the very beginning.”
This should be terrifying. Even if you’re so myopic that you think “America First” means not doing any foreign aid work (and boy, is that a discussion for another day), surely you can recognize that preventing foreign outbreaks of deadly diseases helps protect Americans at home as well. Right? Right???
A Pattern of Destruction
And the Ebola example is just one example.
There have been multiple reports of how the DOGE team halted funding for PEPFAR, which is the “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” started by George W. Bush that has been credited with saving over 26 million lives and limiting the spread of AIDS globally. But DOGE stopped the program.
In Africa, thousands of U.S.-funded health workers have been laid off and clinics have closed, restricting access to HIV testing and treatment. African health officials and experts have pleaded for PEPFAR to resume, fearing services that have become a key part of the health care system will be stripped in a way that sets countries back decades.
And even though Marco Rubio has promoted PEPFAR and claimed that he signed a limited waiver to keep some (not all) of it funded… reports are that the DOGE team has still blocked any PEPFAR funding from going through. As the AP reports:
“…aid groups say they know of no payments getting through for that or any program.”
And even though a court ordered USAID to continue its congressionally mandated funding efforts two weeks ago, the Musk/Trump administration has refused to do so. Yesterday, after the judge made it clear that they were walking into a contempt of court situation, the DOJ ran to the Supreme Court, which put a temporary pause on the order, giving the Court a couple more days to evaluate.
Meanwhile, people are dying. Right now. Today. While Elon and his DOGE crew chuckle about their “accidental” mistakes (all easily preventable if they hadn’t fired actual experts or just… asked people to explain what was happening), and then claimed they “immediately” fixed things they didn’t actually fix.
And we could easily go on. I mean, last week they “accidentally” fired all the experts working to prevent avian flu and then were scrambling to try to find them to rehire them. Because nothing says “competent governance” and “efficiency” quite like firing your bird flu experts in the middle of a bird flu outbreak, and then struggling to find the fired experts in order to beg them to come back.
It seems like everywhere you look, these kinds of “accidental” mistakes are being made, and they’re not being rectified.
But Elon and the DOGE crew think it’s all just a laugh.
It’s Not Just The Incompetence, It’s The Indifference
Here’s the thing about all of this: None of it had to happen. None of these “accidents” were inevitable. Even if you wanted to cut actual waste, fraud, and abuse (and who doesn’t?), there are ways to do that without, you know, accidentally dismantling global disease prevention infrastructure.
But there’s no interest from Musk or DOGE in figuring any of that out. Zero. Zilch. Nada. There’s not even a pretense of concern about the irreversible damage being done.
Not only do they have a total lack of intellectual curiosity to learn about the institutions and systems they’re destroying, there’s not even one bit of concern about the very real damage that has been done and can’t be fixed, even if they actually were turning back on the funding (which, again, it appears they’re not).
There are a million stories to be covering these days about all this, but this is a tragedy of epic proportions. And the only acknowledgment of it is a little giggle from Elon, in which he admits to just one part of the error, but falsely states they corrected it. Because apparently that’s where we are now: treating global health infrastructure like it’s a Twitter feature that can be rolled back with a quick deployment.
The real tragedy isn’t just the destruction of vital programs — it’s that lives are being treated as acceptable collateral damage in an ideological experiment, based off of a myth. Musk, DOGE, and the Project 2025 crew are completely bought into the false belief that federal government employees do nothing useful, that they don’t work, and almost all foreign aid is wasted.
When global health infrastructure built over decades is dismantled overnight, it can’t simply be restored with a presidential waiver or a tweet. What’s being lost here isn’t just money or bureaucracy, but institutional knowledge, relationships, and capacity that took years to build. And Musk shows no signs of learning this lesson at all. To him, it remains a joke and a meme to tweet. As people die.
Look, when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post a decade ago, people worried that a billionaire owner might interfere with the paper’s editorial independence. For years, those fears seemed overblown — Bezos appeared content to let journalists do journalism while he focused on more pressing matters (like building rockets and not paying taxes). But it turns out the worriers were right, just early.
In the last few months, Bezos has made it increasingly clear that the Washington Post now exists primarily as a vehicle for expressing Bezos’ opinions, not anyone else’s. (To be clear, he has every right to do this — it’s his paper! — though it’s a bit rich to claim this somehow builds “trust” in journalism.)
The first indication of this editorial interference was Bezos’ decision to block the WaPo from endorsing Kamala Harris before the election. Bezos later claimed that this was necessary to bring back “trust” in journalism, totally missing that the real way to destroy trust in journalism is… to have billionaires stepping in and interfering with the journalism.
But that was just the appetizer. The main course of billionaire meddling arrived in an email Bezos sent to all employees:
I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision. We’ll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.
I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.
Jeff
Let’s enjoy the rich irony of this ridiculous email together, shall we?
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
First off, this sounds like the late night bong-fueled thoughts of a college kid who just discovered Ayn Rand, not a 61 year old ultra billionaire who should recognize that the world contains more nuance and complexities than “personal liberties and free markets, good; everything else, bad.”
Look, I’m sympathetic to the broad strokes here. Techdirt’s whole ethos is built around personal liberties and free markets. But there’s an important difference: we recognize these concepts as complex systems that require careful calibration, not simple catchphrases to be wielded like rhetorical clubs. And — much more importantly — we’ve spent years documenting how the loudest champions of “personal liberty and free markets” often use those very words while systematically dismantling actual liberties and enabling good old-fashioned crony capitalism.
The billionaire freedom paradox works something like this: Elon Musk, who has clearly appointed himself America’s shadow president, has spent the last almost three years falsely claiming that he is all about bringing back the “personal liberty” of free speech… while actually doing a tremendous amount of work to suppress and stifle the speech of those who challenge him.
And it’s not just an Elon thing. Consider Rupert Murdoch, who for decades positioned himself as the world’s most prominent champion of free market capitalism. Right up until his own businesses started losing in that free market. Then, suddenly, the invisible hand didn’t seem so wise anymore, and he demanded corporate welfare in the form of special taxes on the companies beating him at his own game. (Funny how that works.)
We see this pattern so often it might as well be a law of nature: the volume of someone’s “personal liberty” rhetoric is inversely proportional to their actual respect for others’ liberties. Call it the Billionaire’s First Law of Freedom. Hell, if Bezos was all about “personal liberties,” why is he blocking the opinion team from having the “personal liberty” to write about things Bezos disagrees with?
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.
This argument might sound familiar to media watchers. It’s essentially the same logic the NY Times used when killing its public editor role: “Why have internal accountability when the internet exists?” (A question that answers itself, really.) In both cases, these newspapers fundamentally misunderstand both their own role and how the internet actually works.
Here’s the thing: The Washington Post’s Opinion pages don’t derive their value from being yet another place to read opinions (we have plenty of those, thanks). They matter because of decades of hard-won institutional credibility and editorial infrastructure. When something appears in the Washington Post, it carries weight precisely because it’s gone through that process, because there’s at least a general sense of an institutional commitment to certain standards.
Now, has this system sometimes failed? Absolutely. The WaPo Opinion section has published its share of terrible takes over the years. (Boy, have they ever.) But Bezos’ announcement doesn’t even pretend to address quality control or editorial standards. Instead, it just declares which opinions are allowed: specifically, the ones Jeff likes. It’s less “building trust in journalism” and more “building an extremely expensive personal blog.”
And, in doing so, it simultaneously undermines the long-held institutional credibility that provided so much value to the Washington Post in the first place.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
Paraphrasing: “And therefore, I am taking away that freedom from my staff, and the opinion writers they bring in to make sure that the Washington Post no longer has creativity, invention, or prosperity.”
I mean, seriously. Read that again. It’s like declaring yourself Champion of Democracy by abolishing elections (I dread how long until this analogy comes true).
As for David Shipley’s resignation (after being stripped of his own “personal liberties,” naturally), the message couldn’t be clearer: The next Opinion editor’s job description might as well read “Must be willing to serve as Jeff Bezos’ ideological ventriloquist dummy.”
Again, he is absolutely allowed to do this, as it is his property. But it’s a major shift in the way people think of the Washington Post and what they will expect from it. And, whether or not they trust it.
I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.
Ah yes, the famously underserved “free markets and personal liberties” opinion market. A genre about as neglected as superhero movies in Hollywood, or AI companies in venture capital portfolios.
What Bezos really means is that he’s upset that the WaPo Opinion pages has, on occasion, called out the nonsense and excesses of the billionaire class, and the institutional failures to curb crony capitalism. And he’s sort of right — most serious publications tend to engage with these ideas as complex policy matters rather than using them as rhetorical sledgehammers to promote whatever simplistic goal the billionaire class wants this week.
Let’s codify what we might call The Ultra Billionaire’s Guide to Freedom™:
“Free markets” means I’m free to make as much money as possible
“Personal liberty” means I’m personally at liberty to do whatever I want
If you disagree with points 1 or 2, see point 2 again
If you try to stop me from exercising points 1 or 2, your personal liberties suddenly become theoretical constructs worthy of philosophical debate (or just outright suppression, if time is short) rather than actual rights
(Note: This guide is subject to change without notice, especially if the free market starts producing outcomes the billionaire doesn’t like.)
The Washington Post Opinion section has effectively been transformed from a forum for diverse viewpoints into Jeff’s Personal Newsletter About Freedom. Multiple WaPo journalists have already recognized this and called it out. While the opinion side and news side traditionally maintain separate territories, several news-side reporters have made it clear that any similar encroachment on their turf will trigger a mass exodus. (A personal liberty they still retain, at least for now.)
When Bezos first dipped his toe into editorial interference by blocking the Harris endorsement, over 300,000 WaPo subscribers voted with their wallets and cancelled their subscriptions. (The free market at work, you might say.) If you’re one of those ex-subscribers looking for a publication that still believes in actual journalistic independence — and not just as a marketing slogan to whitewash billionaire guilt — feel free to check out the many ways you can support Techdirt.
And, Jeff, you’re free to donate as well, but we won’t change our editorial policies for anyone.
How do you win the global AI race? If you asked Elon Musk or his supporters in the Trump administration, they’d probably talk about deregulation, or getting government out of the way, or maybe something about GPU clusters and massive power consumption. What they probably wouldn’t mention is USAID, the US government’s primary foreign aid agency. And yet, it turns out that killing USAID might be one of the most effective ways to lose the AI race to China.
Many people in the AI world believed that having Donald Trump in the White House, along with Elon Musk (who owns an AI company) and surrounded by other supporters who are big on AI, like Marc Andreessen and David Sacks (who has been appointed AI czar, despite having little experience with AI), would mean a huge boost for US AI.
The irony here is rich: while Musk’s xAI and other American AI companies are desperately seeking new markets and training data, his crusade against USAID is systematically dismantling one of America’s most powerful tools for securing both. As Kat Duffy explains in a compelling Foreign Policy essay, killing USAID may have just kneecapped America’s AI ambitions. The connection? USAID has been America’s secret weapon in opening up and maintaining crucial global markets:
The United States’ untapped superpower in the AI race is not the so-called innovation economy, or an unregulated market. Those have been leveraged. Rather, it is the sheer scale of the U.S. government’s global presence, and how that could be used to turbocharge America’s global leadership in the AI race.
Moreover, the ability to build markets—not just individual AI models—will determine which nation’s technology dominates globally. Supporting the early and successful deployment of basic, useful AI systems across global markets will be key to protecting market entry opportunities for American AI technologies for decades to come.
The United States’ sturdy global presence provides a ready-made distribution network for AI innovation and adoption, particularly in critical sectors such as global health, food security, and climate resilience—areas where AI can drive immediate and transformative change.
This isn’t just about general market access — it’s specifically critical for AI development:
Broad reach also ensures that the United States’ scale is being used to benefit broader U.S. private sector interests. AI incumbents and Big Tech can hire local offices, lawyers, and lobbyists to support their expansion into new markets (and the new sources of data they offer for model training). Key benefits of the U.S. government’s scale accrue to “Little Tech.” The country’s start-ups and innovators are better equipped to balance the scales when taxpayer investments do the heavy lifting of building awareness of U.S. business, developing trust with local governments, and supporting broad private-public partnerships that facilitate rapid scaling.
While U.S. foreign assistance was not designed to support the expansion of these emerging technologies, it will be far faster to optimize for such expansion over this existing infrastructure. Financing structures, legal registrations, banking agreements, compliance protocols, training programs, public-private partnerships, growth strategies, and expert staff: These mechanics are core to foreign assistance implementation, and they could be adapted with relative speed to support AI deployment across markets. Notably, 11 of the United States’ top 15 export markets have been the recipients of U.S.foreign assistance fundingto support their development.
While Musk is busy dismantling USAID in the name of efficiency, China is eagerly moving to fill the void. And not because they’re feeling particularly charitable. No, they’ve figured out something that seems to have escaped Musk’s first-principles thinking: development aid is actually a pretty clever way to build a global tech advantage.
Chinese President Xi Jinping understands that assignment. For more than a decade, the Chinese government has demonstrated how deeply it appreciates the competitive advantage that global presence confers in the digital age. Between 2013 and 2022, China invested $679 billion in infrastructure projects through its Belt and Road Initiative across nearly 150 countries. These investments have not only bolstered China’s global influence but also created dependencies with long-term strategic implications.
In particular, China’s Digital Silk Road initiative has invested billions in 5G, fiber-optic cables, and data centers across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Those investments, notably, have also created unsustainable debt in many recipient nations, giving China greater influence over local decisions.
As a result, many governments around the world are less than eager to lean on Chinese development support. But in a vacuum of U.S. offerings—and with limited domestic capacity to grow absent foreign support—they may see no alternative.
The supreme irony here is that Musk — who has admitted to getting things wrong while continuing to spread completely false claims about USAID — is actively undermining his own AI company’s future market opportunities. It’s a masterclass in the dangers of oversimplified thinking masquerading as strategic vision.
You see this pattern a lot with the Musk and DOGE crew. They love talking about “first principles thinking,” which sounds very sophisticated and scientific. But here’s the thing about first principles: they’re only useful if you actually understand the system you’re analyzing. What we’re getting instead is what you might call “first impressions thinking” — taking whatever pops into your head after scrolling ExTwitter for five minutes and declaring it a fundamental truth of the universe. What we’re seeing is the dangerous oversimplification of intricate global relationships, amplified by an echo chamber of ExTwitter 4chan-brained yes-men who mistake contrarianism for insight.
Here’s the thing about winning technology races: Sometimes the winning strategy isn’t actually about the technology at all. China seems to understand this. They’re out there building relationships, creating dependencies, establishing presence — all the boring infrastructural stuff that doesn’t get you viral tweets or machine learning breakthroughs, but can get you actual market access and, eventually, dominance.
Meanwhile, Musk and his allies are playing a different game entirely. They’ve convinced themselves that government programs like USAID are just inefficient bureaucracy getting in the way of American innovation. It’s a view that plays well on ExTwitter, where everything can be reduced to a spicy meme about government waste and crying woke libs. But in the real world — you know, the one where actual AI companies need access to actual markets and actual data — it turns out that having a global network of diplomatic and economic relationships is kind of important.
The dumbest part is that this isn’t even a particularly complicated insight. It’s the sort of thing you might figure out by, say, looking at how America became a technology superpower in the first place. But that would require actually studying history instead of just retweeting ChudLord69. And it would require admitting that sometimes government programs actually serve a purpose beyond providing material for outrage posts.
So here we are, watching in real time as America’s AI ambitions get kneecapped by the very people claiming to champion them. It’s like a masterclass in unintended consequences, except the students are too busy tweeting “government bad” memes to notice they’re failing the course.
The tragedy isn’t just that we’re probably going to lose this particular race. It’s that by the time Musk and his allies figure out what went wrong, they’ll have already dismantled the very infrastructure they needed to win it. But hey, at least they’ll have their memes and tweets.
California taxpayers are now on the hook for $345,576 in legal fees to… Elon Musk. Why? Because Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta ignored warnings about the obvious Constitutional problems with AB 587, their social media “transparency” law. The law, which Google and Meta actually supported (knowing full well that they could comply while competitors would struggle), has now been partially struck down — exactly as we predicted back in 2022.
While positioned as a transparency bill (who could be against that?), the reality is that it would create a huge hassle for smaller companies, give instructions to malicious actors, and make it harder for content moderation to work well. And, it would effectively enable the California Governor/AG to demand certain types of content moderation.
Look, here’s the thing about content moderation: Companies make editorial decisions all the time about what content to allow, what to remove, what to promote, what to bury. (This is basically their job!) The government generally stays out of these decisions because, well, the First Amendment.
And yet California decided it would be fine to demand that social media companies explain exactly how they make these decisions. Not just in general terms, mind you, but with detailed data about how often they take down posts about “extremism” or “disinformation” or “hate speech.” And also revealing how many people saw that (very loosely defined!) content.
Think about how absurd this would be in any other context. Imagine California passing a law requiring the LA Times to file quarterly reports detailing every story they killed in editorial meetings, with specific statistics about how many articles about “misinformation” they chose not to run. Or demanding the San Francisco Chronicle explain exactly how many letters to the editor about “foreign political interference” they rejected. The First Amendment violation would be so obvious that newspapers’ lawyers would probably hurt themselves rushing to file the lawsuit.
But somehow, when it comes to social media, California convinced itself this was fine. (Narrator: It wasn’t fine.)
Now California has agreed to settle most of the case, conceding two crucial points: the core reporting requirements were unconstitutional, and California taxpayers need to cover Musk’s legal bills. The stipulated agreement makes clear just how thoroughly the state’s position collapsed:
IT IS HEREBY DECLARED that subdivisions (a)(3), (a)(4)(A), and (a)(5) of California Business and Professions Code section 22677 violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution facially and as applied to Plaintiff.
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Defendant, as defined, shall be permanently enjoined from enforcing subdivisions (a)(3), (a)(4)(A), and (a)(5) of California Business and Professions Code section 22677. Defendant shall also be permanently enjoined from enforcing Section 22678 insofar as that section applies to violations of subdivisions (a)(3), (a)(4)(A), and (a)(5) of California Business and Professions Code section 22677.
[….]
It is ORDERED that Plaintiff shall recover from Defendant the amount of $345,576 in full compensation for the attorneys’ fees and costs incurred by Plaintiff in connection with this action and the related preliminary injunction appeal.
The invalidated sections of the law would have required social media companies to define nebulous terms like “hate speech,” “extremism,” and “disinformation,” then provide detailed reports about how they enforced these categories. Companies would have had to reveal not just their moderation practices, but specific data about content flagging, enforcement actions, and user exposure to this content.
Let’s be clear: this outcome was entirely predictable. California’s leadership wasted time and resources pushing through a law that was constitutionally dubious from the start. Now they’re spending taxpayer money to pay legal fees to the world’s wealthiest man — all because they wouldn’t listen to basic First Amendment concerns.
So here’s a modest proposal for Governor Newsom and AG Bonta: next time we warn you about constitutional problems with your tech regulation plans, maybe take those warnings seriously? It’ll save everyone time and money — and bonus, you won’t have to cut checks to Elon Musk.
In a stunning display of government overreach, the UK has effectively forced Apple to disable its iCloud encryption for British users. Earlier this month, we wrote about the UK wielding the Investigatory Powers Act — aka “The Snooper’s Charter” — to demand Apple create a backdoor in its iCloud encryption for all users globally. Despite Apple’s long-standing warnings that it would rather exit the UK market than compromise encryption, the UK government doubled down.
The ensuing public outcry and warnings of “serious consequences” from US politicians fell on deaf ears. While the government’s exact demands remain secret (because of course they do), Apple’s response speaks volumes: they’re shutting down iCloud encryption for UK users entirely rather than create a global backdoor.
Apple disabled its most secure data storage offering for new customers in Britain on Friday rather than comply with a secret government order that would have allowed police and intelligence agencies to access the encrypted content.
That sounds like the UK isn’t backing down.
This is a terrible result for everyone, making Apple users globally (but especially in the UK) more vulnerable. Law enforcement’s tired narrative frames this as a trade-off between privacy and safety, but that’s dangerously wrong. Encryption isn’t just about privacy — it’s a fundamental security mechanism that protects against identity theft, financial fraud, corporate espionage and much more. This move effectively dismantles both privacy and safety, not because law enforcement lacks investigative tools, but because they’re really just lazy and demanding a “convenient” backdoor that inevitably creates new security risks.
While this compromise gives UK law enforcement their coveted access to British users’ iCloud data, it creates a dangerous precedent and leaves user data vulnerable to bad actors ranging from cybercriminals to hostile nation-states. Even worse, this “solution” likely falls short of the government’s reported demands for global backdoor access — suggesting this might just be round one of a longer fight.
Had Apple complied with the U.K.’s original demands, they would have been required to create a backdoor not just for users in the U.K., but for people around the world, regardless of where they were or what citizenship they had. As we’ve saidtimeandtime again,any backdoor built for the governmentputs everyone at greater risk of hacking, identity theft, and fraud.
This blanket, worldwide demand put Apple in an untenable position. Apple has long claimed it wouldn’tcreate a backdoor, and in filings to the U.K. government in 2023, the companyspecifically raised the possibility of disabling featureslike Advanced Data Protection as an alternative. Apple’s decision to disable the feature for U.K. users could well be the only reasonable response at this point, but it leaves those people at the mercy of bad actors and deprives them of a key privacy-preserving technology. The U.K. has chosen to make its own citizens less safe and less free.
Mike Salem, UK country associate for the Consumer Choice Center, called on opposition parties to voice their discontent and demand the government outlines its reasoning.
“The UK government has set a precedent, and cast a new reputation that underscores the erosion of personal liberties and privacy in a digital age where these values are needed more than ever,” he said.
“This marks a very sad day for the basic principle of consumer privacy in the 21st century, depriving users of the tools that leave UK citizens exposed to governments, criminals and malicious hackers. The fact this has been done without debate, oversight or advance warning to UK Apple users is extremely concerning,” Salem said.
David Ruiz, senior privacy advocate at Malwarebytes, described the news as a “disaster” for the UK and one with potential global consequences.
“To demand access to the world’s data is such a brazen, imperialist manoeuvre that I’m surprised it hasn’t come from the US. This may embolden other countries, particularly those in the Five Eyes, to make a similar demand of Apple,” he argued.
Others have pointed out that if Apple had caved to the UK’s stupid demand, they would have almost immediately faced identical demands from other countries, including Russia, Turkey, Iran… you name it.
It is difficult to think of a more shortsighted move than what the UK has done here. It has put its own citizenry at greater risk, while threatening some of the basic fundamentals of private storage.
It’s good that Apple is taking a stand, but it feels like this is just one battle in a war that is far from over.
On Monday, those two stories converged. Martin put out a bizarre tweet:
If you’re unable to read the image embedded in the tweet, it reads:
As President Trumps’ lawyers, we are proud to fight to protect his leadership as our President and we are vigilant in standing against entities like the AP that refuse to put America first.
There are so many problems in so few words. First of all, there’s the grammatical error. Saying that he’s “President Trumps’ lawyers” suggests there are multiple President Trumps that he works for.
But the more alarming issue is Martin’s fundamental misunderstanding — or deliberate misrepresentation — of his role. As US Attorney, he serves not as the President’s personal counsel, but as a representative of the American people, bound by oath to defend the Constitution rather than any individual officeholder. This is so obvious and so blatant, that even Community Notes dinged Martin for this:
His tweet isn’t just grammatically incorrect — it’s constitutionally incoherent. By explicitly threatening the AP for “refusing to put America first,” Martin has essentially provided written confirmation that the Justice Department intends to use its power to punish protected speech. Even while his office defends White House officials in this case, their mandate remains defending the Constitution — not “protecting the leadership” or targeting news organizations for their editorial choices.
McFadden said the AP had not proven harm requiring an immediate restraining order. But he cautioned the White House that the law wasn’t on its side in barring AP over continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico, not simply the “Gulf of America” as Trump decreed in an executive order.
“It seems pretty clearly viewpoint discrimination,” McFadden told Brian Hudak, a government attorney.
And, in case you’re wondering, Judge McFadden is a Trump appointee. And he seems to recognize how clearly this violates the First Amendment:
Later, though, in an exchange with Hudak, he said “The White House has accepted the correspondents’ association to be the referee here, and has just discriminated against one organization. That does seem problematic.”
Martin’s reckless tweets have now effectively sandbagged his own Justice Department colleagues defending the case. But perhaps that hardly matters when Trump himself continues to broadcast the retaliatory nature of his actions, declaring that “We’re going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America” and dismissing the AP as “radical left lunatics.”
The irony here is impossible to ignore. While self-proclaimed free speech warriors spent months breathlessly parsing the “Twitter Files” and amplifying unproven claims about Biden administration “censorship,” we now have senior government officials openly declaring — on social media, no less — their intent to punish a news organization for its editorial choices. The same voices that detected shadowy government censorship in every content moderation decision have fallen conspicuously silent when faced with explicit, documented proof of First Amendment violations. It seems their concerns about government overreach were somewhat… selective.
Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us. When your primary concern is scoring partisan points rather than protecting constitutional principles, it’s easy to overlook even the most blatant First Amendment violations — as long as they’re coming from your team. But the Constitution doesn’t care about partisan affiliations, and neither should those who claim to defend it.
Here was a fun surprise last night. John Oliver just delivered what might be the most accessible and accurate mainstream takedown of content moderation myths we’ve seen yet. The latest episode of “Last Week Tonight” tackled content moderation head-on, while systematically dismantling Mark Zuckerberg’s increasingly dubious justifications for Meta’s policy changes. In this era where most mainstream coverage of content moderation is a total mess, Oliver somehow manages to both be hilarious and (surprisingly) get basically everything right about this impossibly thorny issue.
It’s worth watching, if only to see someone explain in 30 minutes what we’ve been trying to hammer home for years. (And no, I’m not just saying that because he mentions Masnick’s Impossibility Theorem — though that certainly doesn’t hurt.)
The segment hits on several key points:
First, there’s what you might call the fundamentals of content moderation (or “why the internet isn’t just porn and diet pills 101”):
Section 230 made it possible to moderate content online. Without it, websites would basically have two choices: let everything in (hello, spam!) or shut everything down. Neither is great for business, or users, or… well, anyone really.
Content moderation is an intractable issue. This isn’t just my opinion — it’s mathematics. Every platform that allows user content either moderates or dies trying. There’s no third option. (Unless you count “becoming a wasteland of porn and diet pill ads” as an option, which, fair enough, some do.)
The dirty secret is that social media companies have actually put a fair bit of effort into this problem. They’ve drawn lines, redrawn them, hired thousands of moderators, built AI systems, and… people still hate where those lines end up. Because of course they do. That’s the “impossible” part of my theorem.
Then, he debunks the false claims of political manipulation:
Oliver points out how MAGA Republicans insisting that content moderation is some sort of vast left-wing conspiracy targeting conservatives turns out to be complete nonsense.
He also does an excellent job debunking the misleading narrative around “Hunter Biden laptop” story. As we’ve written, that story has been blown totally out of proportion. The narrative says it was suppressed. It wasn’t. The narrative says the details were damning. It wasn’t that either. What it was, mainly, was a masterclass in how to turn routine content moderation decisions into political theater. And Oliver shows that clearly.
Then there’s Zuck’s latest performance piece about how the Biden administration supposedly forced him to censor content. Oliver absolutely nails why this claim is ridiculous. (Pro tip: When the government “pressures” you to do something and you just… tell them no and nothing happens in response, that’s not exactly censorship.)
And then the kicker: Oliver highlights (as we have multiple times) that even the very conservative Supreme Court has said these claims are nonsense. Though I suppose when reality conflicts with your preferred narrative, you can always just pretend the Supreme Court doesn’t exist… or that Amy Coney Barrett is too woke.
And here’s where Oliver really sticks the landing, showing where all of this is heading:
Remember all those “simple fixes” politicians keep proposing for Section 230? Oliver explains how every single one would basically hand the government (and specifically, the Musk/Trump administration) a shiny new tool to silence speech they dislike. Because nothing says “free speech” quite like giving the government more power to control online speech, right?
Finally, Oliver exposes the Zuckerberg two-step: Zuck loves to brag about how he stood up to the Biden administration’s requests, but conveniently leaves out the part where he completely rolled over for Trump’s actual threats. (You know it’s bad when Trump himself is bragging about how effectively he bullied Zuck, which Oliver points out, shows that it doesn’t take a genius to realize what really happened.)
In the end, what Oliver has given us is basically a greatest hits album of Techdirt’s content moderation coverage from the last few years, except with better production values and more jokes about Mark Zuckerberg’s new look. And the finale? A pitch-perfect “advertisement” for Facebook’s new content moderation philosophy that can be summed up in two words: Fuck It.
