Mike Masnick
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mmasnick.bsky.social
Mike Masnick
@mmasnick.bsky.social
200K followers 1.5K following 25K posts
Techdirt guy. Writes about social media, copyright, free speech, content moderation, civil liberties and stuff like that. Once wrote a paper that may have helped inspire this service & now I'm on its board: https://bit.ly/protocolnotplatform
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mmasnick.bsky.social
It's possible I spend too much time listening to podcasts.
An image from Pocket Casts showing I listened to 100,743 minutes of podcasts (so far!) in 2025.
December 18, 2025 at 6:59 AM
mmasnick.bsky.social
I find these lawsuits to be exhausting. I don't see how one can even remotely blame the platform for situations like this. Yes, the story is tragic, and I've talked a lot about the issues of sextortion. But, blaming the platform? Just seems silly. Very Steve Dallas.
Part of a Bloom County comic strip where the lawyer Steve Dallas talks about who he should sue on behalf of his client who was "attacked by actor Sean Penn" for being photographed in public. Dallas goes through a bunch of options before deciding to sue the Nikolta Camera company: "Yes! A major corporation with gobs of liquid cash. It was criminally negligent in not putting stickers on their cameras which read, "Warning: physical injury may result from photographing pschopathic hollywood hotheads."
December 17, 2025 at 10:09 PM
mmasnick.bsky.social
We're a couple of weeks into our fundraising campaign, where you can get our first Techdirt challenge coin, celebrating 30 years of Section 230. This is becoming more important than ever as 230 is under attack. Just yesterday a bill was released that would kill 230

rtb.techdirt.com/products/fri...
Techdirt needs your support! An image of the front and back of our challenge coin. One side has the Techdirt logo and the other says 230 x 30. Get the inaugural Techdirt Commemorative Coin celebrating 30 years of Section 230 when you back us with $100 or more.
December 17, 2025 at 5:48 PM
mmasnick.bsky.social
This Laura Loomer? I sense a double standard.
Charlie Kirk’s death will not be in vain. I will be spending my night making everyone I find online who celebrates his death Famous, so prepare to have your whole future professional aspirations ruined if you are sick enough to celebrate his death. I’m going to make you wish you never opened your mouth. These people need to be condemned in society and there must NEVER be a place for these people to gather without facing the shame of their behavior.
December 15, 2025 at 11:08 PM
mmasnick.bsky.social
Tyler Cowen interviewed Sam Altman... and what a weird thing to bring up. "They read Twitter less" as if it's a condemnation?
ALTMAN: One thing that’s different is that cycle times are much longer. The capital is more intense. The cost of screen up is higher, so I like to spend more time getting to know the people before saying, “Okay, you’re just going to do this, and I’ll trust that it’ll work out.” Otherwise the theory is the same. You try to find good, effective, fast-moving people. Get clear on what the goal is and just let them go do it. COWEN: I visited Nvidia earlier this year. They were great. They were great to me. They’re super smart, but it just felt so different from walking the floor of OpenAI. I’m sure you’ve been to Nvidia. People read Twitter less. At least on the surface, they’re less weird. What is that intangible difference in the hardware world that one has to grasp to do well in it? ALTMAN: Look, I don’t know if this is going to turn out to be a good sign or a bad sign, but our chip team feels more like the OpenAI research team than a chip company. I think it might work out phenomenally well.
December 15, 2025 at 6:20 PM
mmasnick.bsky.social
Is it a good sign when your official product home page has this on it:
Broken YouTube embed: This video has been removed for violating YouTube's Terms of Service
December 15, 2025 at 12:59 AM
mmasnick.bsky.social
This has been explored in a few cases, including the 9th Circuit in Barnes v. Yahoo, in which the court clearly says Yahoo receives Section 230 protections BECAUSE IT IS ACTING AS A PUBLISHER. Acting as a publisher is what the 230 protections apply to!

law.justia.com/cases/federa...
In otherwords, the duty that Barnes claims Yahoo violated derivesfrom Yahoo’s conduct as a publisher—the steps it allegedlytook, but later supposedly abandoned, to de-publish the offen-sive profiles. It is because such conduct is publishing conductthat we have insisted that section 230 protects from liability“any activity that can be boiled down to deciding whether to5324BARNES v. YAHOO!, INC.
December 13, 2025 at 11:13 PM
mmasnick.bsky.social
Not trying to call out Tony & Devin here, but they are (somewhat confidently) reinforcing a very common, but exactly wrong myth about Section 230 and being a "publisher." Let's use this as an opportunity to do some educating around Section 230 and the idea of being "a publisher."
Bluesky thread starting off with Rose Wang talking about Bluesky: Anyone can publish new ideas even when centralized institutions don't support those ideas. Bluesky really is the printing press, a publisher, and a network of other independent publishers all at once. I've seen @rude1.blacksky.team use a similar analogy in the past and I think it's apt! Reply from "Tony": So Bluesky is a publisher? Are you sure about that? Reply from Devin: This could be incredible evidence at a future congressional hearing lol Tony: Funny way to announce it. Still, brave of them to go all in on that. 👍 Rose: It’s an analogy 🙄 Devin: I mean surely Section 230 means something to you folks and this is a pretty dangerous analogy to make with regards to that. But I suppose y'all do you.
December 13, 2025 at 11:13 PM
mmasnick.bsky.social
Even UNICEF is like "yo, Australia, this social media ban for kids is a terrible fucking idea."

www.unicef.org/press-releas...
“Social media is not a luxury – for many children, especially those who are isolated or marginalised, it is a lifeline providing access to learning, connection, play, and self-expression. What’s more, many children and young people will still access social media, whether through workarounds, shared devices, or turning to less regulated platforms, ultimately making it harder to protect them.
December 13, 2025 at 6:26 AM
mmasnick.bsky.social
This evening was middle school entrepreneur fair. Kid & friends started a business selling spicy tortilla chips. Very spicy. At the last minute they decided to also sell water. And then a gift from the heavens: school watermain broke so the water fountains were out. They cleaned up on water sales.
Sign for spicy tortilla chips Hand written sign: Water $1/bottle. Water Fountain Broken
December 13, 2025 at 5:51 AM
mmasnick.bsky.social
I love the fact that the AI editing tool I use gives me full control over the system prompt (and not just the regular prompt) so I can add a universal suggestion like the following:
don't suggest changing "fucked up" to "messed up." if I write "fucked up" i mean "fucked up."
December 12, 2025 at 6:47 AM
mmasnick.bsky.social
Gotta love the spammer who leaves in the ChatGPT response saying that it's coming up with a "professional, non-spammy" spam (which our spam filter correctly caught as spam).
Subject: Inquiry About Posting or Advertising on Techdirt Comments: Got it ✔ — here is a **professional, non-spammy message** you can send through the Techdirt contact form to ask **how to post / advertise / publish content** for your company. --- Hello Techdirt Team, I hope you are doing well. I am reaching out to understand how I can publish content or promote my company through Techdirt. I would like to know whether Techdirt offers any options for:
December 10, 2025 at 3:56 AM
mmasnick.bsky.social
Literally a week ago Musk said that falsely labeling people as Nazis "should be treated as incitement to murder." And here he is (falsely) labeling the EU as Nazis.
Elon Musk tweeting: "Falsely labeling non-violent people as “fascist” or “Nazi” should be treated as incitement to murder"
December 8, 2025 at 5:35 AM
mmasnick.bsky.social
This is the conversation that made the chuds claim that she (who has platformed a ton of maga chuds over the years) is "extremely left-wing." The first post was in response to Hegseth bombing another boat.
A conversation between Joe Lonsdale and Claire Lehmann. Lehmann starts out by calling out Pete Hegseth bombing another boat saying: This is really grotesque. (And look I get it that sometimes hard men need to do ugly things. But if you're going to do this, don't broadcast it, & don't brag about it. FFS) Lonsdale responds: She’s just wrong. Leftist schoolmarm leaders cause violence and evil in our civilization. Sinking narco boats publicly helps deter others. As does hanging repeat violent criminals. Killing bad guys is DoW job. He should brag more. Masculine truth: bold, virtuous men deter evil. If I’m in charge later, we won’t just have a three strikes law. We will quickly try and hang men after three violent crimes. And yes, we will do it in public to deter others. Our society needs balance. It’s time to bring back masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable. Lehmann responds to that: There’s a lot of people who advocate for the public execution of CEOs and billionaires— am not sure this is something you would want to normalise.
December 8, 2025 at 4:01 AM
mmasnick.bsky.social
Last week, kid misheard my wife refer to "carrot muffins" and thought she said "taro pie." (If you say it fast enough you can kinda hear why). So... wife decided to make a taro pie (yes, with fresh taro). It's quite good (which is what happens when you add enough sugar to anything).
Photo of a taro pie A slice of taro pie...
December 8, 2025 at 12:29 AM
mmasnick.bsky.social
Lots of people have been passing around this somewhat concerning Alex Karp video, but it reminds me that two years ago the NYTimes published a piece he wrote about how AI was going to create weapons based on... the dumbest correlation ever. Nuclear tests over time compared to parameters used in ML
A side by side chart of nuclear tests per year form 1945 to 1965 and the number of parameters used in machine learning systems from 2006 to 2023. They both go up and to the right but otherwise have fuck all to do with one another.
December 7, 2025 at 11:06 PM
mmasnick.bsky.social
Wanted to go for a hike today, but the air quality sucked. Checking Purple Air we saw that AQ was better up on Skyline, so drove up there and... this is the view looking at Silicon Valley. Bit foggy down there.
View from a top a hill. There are trees and shrubs as you head down the hill and then... the entire valley is just filled with fog until way off in the distance some hills on the other side of the Bay.
December 7, 2025 at 10:30 PM
mmasnick.bsky.social
Quite the shift from "I think if you do something bad you should die" immediately to "as they say in the Bible..."
Ms. Villalba said the second strike was also justified, and she does not believe the United States is indiscriminately targeting boats. “They should have done that strike regardless,” she said. “Every human being does have value, but if you’re caught up in something that’s very detrimental to society, I think that you should die.” She compared these strikes to a story in the Bible, when Jesus healed someone on a Sunday, contradicting religious rules that forbid work on that day. Some laws are worth breaking for the betterment of mankind, she said, just like the biblical story was trying to show.
December 6, 2025 at 9:27 PM
mmasnick.bsky.social
Hmm. NY Times popup saying "support independent journalism."

I... do not think of the NY Times as being "independent journalism" which implies smaller, outside the mainstream. The NYT is the most mainstream of mainstream news orgs.
Support independent journalism with a subscription. Enjoy unlimited access for $6.25 $1/week for your first six months.
December 6, 2025 at 9:22 PM
mmasnick.bsky.social
Discord is doing a "wrapped" kinda thing now. Apparently I'm in the top 10% of Discord message senders? But it has a page talking about the person I share the most time with and suggested a message for me to send them, which would be... extremely inappropriate as it's someone who works for me.
Send a special message Every time I hear a ping, I always hope it's from you
December 5, 2025 at 5:01 AM
mmasnick.bsky.social
I found my intro to econ book from 1992. And you can say I'm "just wrong" and that I've "misremembered econ class" but... I dunno, man. Maybe don't be so rude.
Marginal utility refers to the extra utility a consumer receives from the consumption of an extra unit of some good. The price of this good has units equal to dollars per unit of the good. Therefore, the ratio of the marginal utility of a good to its price represents the utility the consumer receives by consuming an extra dollar's worth of the good. If the utility a consumer receives by spending a dollar on one good exceeds the utility derived from spending a dollar on another, rationality dictates that the good providing more utility for a dollar's expenditure be purchased.
December 4, 2025 at 6:36 AM
mmasnick.bsky.social
So we came up with this idea of the commemorative coin, which (I'm biased, but!) looks really cool. rtb.techdirt.com/products/fri...
an image of a very very cool looking metal coin saying "Techdirt Insider 2026" with our logo on one side, and Protecting the web since 1996: Section 230x30" on the reverse side.
December 3, 2025 at 5:49 PM
mmasnick.bsky.social
For those willing to support us at $100 or more, we're offering the very first (hopefully of many annual ones to come) Techdirt commemorative coin (yes, a real, physical coin). This first one, for 2026, is celebrating 30 years of Section 230.
Techdirt Needs Your SUpport! Shows an image of a very very cool looking metal coin saying "Techdirt Insider 2026" with our logo on one side, and Protecting the web since 1996: Section 230x30" on the reverse side. Get the inaugural Techdirt Commemorative Coin celebrating 30 Years of Section 230 when you back us with $100 or more!
December 3, 2025 at 5:49 PM
mmasnick.bsky.social
Excuse me, what? Your "cloud of consciousness"?
Olivia Nuzzi answers your questions. Do you feel like the rise of substack has had any impact on the memoir genre? - Gutes I like when people write and I like when people read and I am not overly precious about where or how or why or when they do those things. Why did you write this book on your phone? What were the benefits of this? - Tamzin I always write on my phone. It is an extension of the cloud of my consciousness. I find that sitting down to write is an impediment, because sitting still is often an impediment for me, and it’s easier to work with my idiosyncrasies instead of against them. I like to write while hiking in the day or pacing around my house at night; I notice a lot around me and I can record it fluidly in real time.
December 2, 2025 at 8:34 PM
mmasnick.bsky.social
This is unrelated to the actual story, but to claim Byrne is the "founder of Bed, Bath & Beyond" is nonsense. Byrne invested in the company that became Overstock (with him as CEO), which bought the name Bed, Bath & Beyond from the bankrupt retailer 4 years *after* Byrne left Overstock
Among those, the president promoted a clip from far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who platformed the “WILD” claim about Obama and Biden from Bed, Bath and Beyond founder Patrick Byrne.
December 2, 2025 at 7:44 PM