In 2015, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) introduced a bill that would make it a federal crime to engage in what is generically called “revenge porn.” I say generically because “revenge” alludes to a specific motive, usually that of a disgruntled ex-boyfriend who decides to get back at a former girlfriend by distributing intimate or sexually explicit images of her online. ...
Immediately after the 2016 election, many Americans discovered just how much fake news they were sharing via social media. And for about ten minutes, the term fake news had a specific and literal meaning; it referred to fabricated stories made to look like news, and which serve either as clickbait to generate ad revenue or as mischief to fan the ...
Not long after I wrote a post suggesting there is little difference between naive human engagement and bot engagement on policy issues, a couple of things happened. One was the publication of a story by Max Read in New York Magazine reporting that a substantial (though hardly surprising) amount of material and people on the internet are fake. The other ...
In a recent post on Techdirt, Mike Masnick calls columnist Nicholas Kristof a hypocrite based on a narrative Masnick just plain made up. On December 12, Kristof published a brief column in The New York Times with a picture of a 12-year-old girl who is starving to death as a victim of the US-backed, Saudi-Arabian war in Yemen. The girl ...
Silicon Valley may have done ‘bare minimum’ to help Russia investigation, Senate Intel Committee told … That headline from CNN, and which was echoed in several news stories that began appearing late Monday, will elicit no surprise among my friends and colleagues working in IP law, privacy, publicity rights, security, and various other matters of justice in the digital marketplace. ...
