Grant Gould's Techdirt Profile

Grant Gould

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  • Jul 14, 2026 @ 07:47am

    The one wildcard is that RFKj is polling better than any other member of the administration as well as most Republican senators. I don't think the admin planned to be held hostage to this doofus, but they can't really fire him or force him to follow a plan. I certainly don't think "pick a fight with Tylenol" was on Trump's todo list at any point, rather he got boxed in to having to say something rfklike. So this may be less "the plan all along" and more "shit where are the brakes on this thing?"

  • Jun 29, 2026 @ 06:40pm

    Edge case: Sites run by minors

    In the current world of ActivityPub and ATProto, and of numerous server implementations for those, it's pretty easy to set up a new social media site. And from watching my kid and their friends habits, most of these kids want small social media experiences with a close social group (e.g. discord). So it seems like a logical result of these bans will be groups of kids running their own small social media sites and federating in to one of the larger federated networks. You could set this up cheaply in a few hours with an ActivityPub site, for example, and there are hosting services that don't enforce the specifically American age cutoffs or require credit cards (e.g. because they are shady af and deal in crypto). So would these users be obliged to ban themselves from their own sites, or would the sites categorically escape the ban by their small size (how does federation count users?), or something in between? It seems hard to know, and not really considered in e.g. the Massachusetts legislation.

  • Apr 28, 2026 @ 01:32pm

    Backdoors ahoy

    Well heck, I guess I now have to assume that my eeros have US government backdoors in them. sigh.

  • Apr 20, 2026 @ 11:44am

    Well, it doesn't have to be bribes, give them credit, it might be backdoors. No need to do bribes when you can just log in to anyone's network and start mitm'ing their bank accounts. But it's probably both.

  • Aug 29, 2024 @ 03:32pm

    NETWORK EFFECT, YOU STUPID FUCK, HOW DO YOU FIX THAT?
    I believe that the ancient wisdom on this matter is traditionally spelled, "turn the fuck around, walk the fuck away." Do your bit.

  • Jul 01, 2024 @ 10:35am

    Since copyright notice-and-takedown exists, and likewise as to csam and so forth, ... probably not.