Mike Masnick 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (23098)

• On the post: Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source?

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2026 @ 06:46pm

  The users keep saying no, the devs keep saying no for the most part

  This is not my experience at all. Especially among devs.

• On the post: The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Are Built On A Scientific Premise That Experts Keep Telling Us Is Wrong

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2026 @ 12:20pm

  I feel like I’m missing something here. Isn’t 230 about platforms being content neutral?

  You are missing something. 230 is about the exact, literal opposite of that. It was passed in response to the Stratton Oakmont case that, if it stood, would have required sites to be neutral. The literal ENTIRE point of 230 was to tell sites "you don't need to be neutral."

  What Meta and Alphabet do is curate what you see.

  Yes.

  They decide what the algorithm surfaces to you.

  Yes. Those are both 1st Amendment protected editorial activity.

  That’s not content neutral.

  So fucking what?

  Again, maybe I’m misunderstanding

  Yes, you are. Read: https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/ https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/23/yes-section-230-should-apply-equally-to-algorithmic-recommendations/ https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/26/everyone-cheering-the-social-media-addiction-verdicts-against-meta-should-understand-what-theyre-actually-cheering-for/

• On the post: Weeks After Denouncing Government Censorship On Rogan, Zuckerberg Texted Elon Musk Offering To Take Down Content For DOGE

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2026 @ 03:26pm

  It just literally means the plaintiffs (in this case, states) were not the injured party.

  Dude. Dude. Duuuuuuuuude. Yes, the states were not injured. Because THEY COULD SHOW NO INJURY. First the court (in an opinion written by one of your justices) says that the states themselves failed to show any censorship:

  There is therefore no evidence to support the States’ allegation that Facebook restricted the state representative pursuant to the CDC-influenced policy.

  See that? That's one of five times that ACB highlighted "no evidence." But, more to the point, the states weren't the only plaintiffs. And none of the other plaintiffs showed any evidence either! THAT IS WHY THEY LOST ON STANDING while in the Vullo case there was a unanimous finding of a 1st Amendment violation. Because the NRA COULD show actual coercive censorship attempts by the gov't. It's that simple, no matter how much you deny it. THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE in the Missouri case. And THAT is why they lost on standing.

• On the post: Weeks After Denouncing Government Censorship On Rogan, Zuckerberg Texted Elon Musk Offering To Take Down Content For DOGE

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2026 @ 03:19pm

  Literally the only precedent is that it’s harder to get standing, particularly for the states on behalf of users.

  No. The precedent is that YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO SHOW COERCION to win a First Amendment argument. And it's not hard because we know that THE SAME DAY they heard this case they also heard Vullo and came down 9-0 that that WAS government censorship. It's easy to win if you can show the coercion. Vullo showed that. Murthy showed that if you just wave your hands without evidence, you're shito ut of luck. You're wrong, jackass. Meanwhile, it's true that neither of us are lawyers, but only one of us keeps getting called to present to judges, members of Congress, and the media about how the law works. Call me when you do.

• On the post: Weeks After Denouncing Government Censorship On Rogan, Zuckerberg Texted Elon Musk Offering To Take Down Content For DOGE

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2026 @ 03:16pm

  You misunderstanding what Ilya is saying is fucking hilarious and once again shows you should never open your mouth on these issues. You're so fucking stupid. It is true that there was no proactive decision that says "everything they did was legal." But... there was the court saying "we see no evidence of illegality, and you would need to show that to have standing." It's true that absence of evidence does not definitively say that no censorship happened. Indeed, I agree. Throughout the entirety of the case I explicitly called out where there could be concerns of the government going over the line. But the failure to get standing in this case showed DEFINITIVELY that THESE PLAINTIFFS FAILED TO SHOW ANY EVIDENCE THAT ROSE TO A LEVEL OF CENSORSHIP. Fucking dipshit.

• On the post: Weeks After Denouncing Government Censorship On Rogan, Zuckerberg Texted Elon Musk Offering To Take Down Content For DOGE

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2026 @ 03:12pm

  Not anyone with a law degree

  Dude. EVERYONE with a law degree (which you don't have). I spend basically every day with lawyers. Not a single one thinks your claims make sense. Because they don't.

  It literally does not matter, you fuccking moron. No legal decisions were made about the case beyond standing.

  IT TOTALLY MATTERS which is why others keep citing the case. Answer the fucking question, dude: why wasn't there standing?

  Here’s an actual lawyer (not you) explaining what that means.

  You mean the post where Ilya says "social media platforms have a First Amendment right to make content moderation decisions." Again showing that you're full of shit?

• On the post: Weeks After Denouncing Government Censorship On Rogan, Zuckerberg Texted Elon Musk Offering To Take Down Content For DOGE

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2026 @ 10:17am

  It does not matter, at all. There was no ruling based on merit. No legal determination, no precedent.

  There was a legal determination: that there was no standing. And there absolutely was precedent that came from that, which is why the case is regularly cited now. If it wasn't a precedent it wouldn't be so widely cited. But, of course, you're not a lawyer. You're not a legal analyst. Your an engineer who is in the MAGA cult and will lie lie lie all day long in support of your god king. Fucking pathetic.

• On the post: Weeks After Denouncing Government Censorship On Rogan, Zuckerberg Texted Elon Musk Offering To Take Down Content For DOGE

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2026 @ 10:15am

  Everyone is free to read the case, my analysis, and yours. Not a SINGLE person with any sense of how this works thinks you're correct. You should just stop before you embarrass yourself further. WHY WAS THERE A LACK OF STANDING, dude? WHY? Why do you pretend that doesn't matter. That's the entire fucking case.

• On the post: Weeks After Denouncing Government Censorship On Rogan, Zuckerberg Texted Elon Musk Offering To Take Down Content For DOGE

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2026 @ 10:14am

  Nothing was legally determined, and your semantic dissembling is not interesting.

  I mean, this is just so blatantly false as to be laughable. What was legally determined was the plaintiffs had no standing. What you ignore is why they had no standing, and the reason, as was clearly stated by the majority decision was that there was no evidence presented that supported their claims. I don't know why you keep pretending otherwise.

• On the post: Weeks After Denouncing Government Censorship On Rogan, Zuckerberg Texted Elon Musk Offering To Take Down Content For DOGE

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 31 Mar, 2026 @ 09:31pm

  Many, many people, including both myself and multiple lawyers have explained this to you (you're an engineer who knows fuck all about the law, but is very confidently wrong): you're wrong. You're embarrassingly wrong. You ignore WHY the court said there was no standing. But as the opinion states very, very, very clearly: there was NO EVIDENCE of any coercive action by the government. That WAS what the Supreme Court found, which is why they told the lower courts there was no standing. They also pointed out that the findings of the lower courts were "clearly erroneous." It was a clear and total loss. You're just the sorest fucking loser on the planet. Your side lost the fucking case, dipshit.

• On the post: AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2026 @ 10:21pm

  but I guess you have a cheap and almost functional AI proofreader now?

  It is so weird how quickly people dismiss incredibly powerful tools by pretending they're crappy retreads. When I first wrote about my task management tool that is an incredible productivity booster, some people mocked it "oh you built a crappy spreadsheet." Now you retort "a cheap and almost functional AI proofreader." It's almost as if you're bragging about your unwillingness to understand what kinds of tools are being built.

• On the post: AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2026 @ 10:19pm

  I honestly see learning how to use coding agents as a similar kind of skill. I haven't done any programming in almost 30 years, but I've learned so much more about coding in the last few months, it's insane. That's because I have my coding agent explain to me, in great detail, what it wants to do and why. I put into some of the instruction files that it should always explain it's thinking, offer alternatives, and explain pros and cons of different approaches. SO I'm learning a ton about various frameworks, languages, databases, and more. I have such a better understanding of modern programming than I did just a few months ago.

• On the post: AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2026 @ 12:04am

  Lol. I am not a VC. I'm not rich. I'm certainly not a tech oligarch. I've invested no money in Bluesky (I don't even have money to invest in Bluesky). I am on the board, which notably is not an AI company. And, of course, Bluesky users famously tend to dislike AI. So if Bluesky biases me... shouldn't it bias me the other way? And, look, you're free to have an opinion that I have "zero idea what I'm on about" but, given that you made blatantly false statements about me in your opening, I kinda feel differently. Also, I spent thousands of words explaining myself, which I think is pretty strongly backed up. You wrote a barely legible half sentence full of factual errors. I think I'm closer to knowing what I'm talking about than you do.

• On the post: AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2026 @ 11:59pm

  If you feel bad, remove the reference

  But, it's an expression of how I feel. You would prefer I lie about how I feel? I never suggested he endorsed it. I explained my perspective of what these tools made me feel. I'm not going to lie because someone got upset.

• On the post: AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2026 @ 09:35pm

  You sure about that? We’ve done it many times. We screamed at browser makers until that adopted web standards.

  A feature change is not killing a tech.

  We mocked NFTs until they died.

  NFTs never had any real utility.

  Public disapproval matters, and the public hates AI right now, for very good reasons.

  Now you're conflating the various parts of AI. The public hates slop. The public hates tools that take them away from human connection. The public hates AI being forced into products where they don't want it. And I agree with all that and don't think the companies doing that will think it's that good a strategy long term. But the number of people voluntarily signing up to use these tools is massive. The growth in actual usage, not driven by people forcing it on them, is massive. People are finding value in the tools. I worry that they're mainly flocking to the more problematic companies to do so but that's why I'm making this plea, like Rick in the video above, to explore other models that you can fully control yourself.

  Sometimes the public is right.

  The public keeps using this stuff. In droves. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/nov/state-generative-ai-adoption-2025

• On the post: AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2026 @ 09:28pm

  Again, I honestly don't understand this position at all. It's so incredibly defeatist and pointless. You want to give up? Give up, but don't drag down the people actually working to build better systems and proving you can.

  Google have set AI summary as the default for search and have recently patented technology for using AI to completely rewrite and create facsimiles of pages they deem not up to snuff.

  Yup, and at every point we've decried that kind of slop and forcing AI into places where people don't want. At no point and in no way do I support such things. Absolutely every use of AI that I rely on and that I talk about is where I use it entirely by choice and I am the one in control. So you're complaining about something different, and you seem upset that my discussion isn't covered by your complaint... so you just... complain?

  We are watching fresh barriers to the web as it was be erected on a daily basis, and whatever you think open source AI will achieve, it will not, it’s just openwashing a technology that will only ever be a for profit fencing off of the commons, on creative works on a scale the media you rail against could only dream of.

  Again, I have spoken out against the dangerous aspects of this, but the whole point of this discussion is to show people there's a better way so they don't have to go down that path. And your answer is... what? Don't show that there's a better way? Don't show that there are ways to take back control and... what? Hope the tech goes away? Because, dude, the tech isn't going away. This isn't NFTs.

  You are not most people. Spend some time looking at what non techies do when they use the internet, speak to normal people, they are not buzzing about open source saving anything, they don’t know how to get these things and likely never will because those gates are closing and you and other columnists here are more focussed on telling people not to yell and try to stop it. You don’t like the present, none of us do, but the future your embracing will be so much worse.

  Yes, I admit that I'm a half step ahead and that I'm willing to tinker and play around with this stuff, but that's WHY I'm talking about it. It's WHY I'm trying to inspire more people to start thinking about how they can use the tech to their advantage, rather than just being upset about how others are trying to force it on you. Literally yesterday I spent an hour and a half with a very skeptical friend who feels similarly to you about AI, but who also remembered a simple app she had used many years ago. So we sat down in a cafe and tried to rebuild that app. The point I'm trying to make is that for people who want to build a better internet that doesn't rely on internet giants, there is such an open opportunity right now. And your response is "but the internet giants are bad." No fucking shit, dude. That's why I'm talking about ways to get outside of those silos and not have to rely on them any more. I don't see how that's a "worse" future. It seems way better. I know it's way better because I'm already there.

• On the post: AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2026 @ 01:14pm

  I'm not. What makes you assume that? I've mostly been getting support from people on the open web.

• On the post: AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2026 @ 02:07am

  Share your experience of how AI can be democratizing if used correctly. That journey would be a powerful lesson in how to make the tool work for you rather than the other way around.

  I thought that's what I was doing with this post!

• On the post: AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 25 Mar, 2026 @ 09:56pm

  There’s been several articles here recently that seem to desperately grasp at the slivers of good while wholly ignoring all the bad that comes with supporting these companies and their fancy search engines being sold to rubes as “intelligence”.

  I don't think it's fair to say that any of the article "wholly ignore" the bad. All of them talk about it and grapple with it (as does this article) and we've also written many articles about the bad. We focus on reporting both the good and the bad, so yes, if you believe their can be no good then we're not the site for you.

• On the post: AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

  

  Mike Masnick ( profile ), 25 Mar, 2026 @ 09:54pm

  but let’s take a look at what AI tools have done to the actual open web today.

  I agree with most of your complaints (though I will note that Techdirt itself is not walled off, and while we deal with crawlers, we've found it to be manageable), which is why I think it is so important to take back control. But this is also why I included the bit about atproto in there (sure, ring bell), because I think getting things off of the systems controlled by Zuck & Musk & such people matters a lot. We can't "scream this is bad" our way back to a better internet. We have to make the tools work for us in ways in which individuals are in control, not billionaires making decisions for us. I agree with what you're saying about many of the current downsides of generative AI tools. That's part of the reason I'm trying to show a better way to use the tools, in which we can take more control over our own digital lives rather than relying on companies who need to "number goes up" every 3 months. I really do think it's central to getting people out of digital silos controlled by the worst people.

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