politics – Techdirt (original) (raw)

We Have All Become Too Comfortable With Corruption

from the seems-bad dept

For years, we’ve written about the concept of “soft corruption,” which is the idea that there are certain actions that may not mean the full definition of corrupt practices in the legal sense, but are so obviously corrupt that they make people more cynical towards those who claim to represent our interests in the government.

Lately, of course, it feels like the corruption is becoming more and more blatant. But there’s something telling about how soft corruption works: it operates by creating an atmosphere where everyone implicitly understands the game, but no one says it out loud. Though, apparently, that may be changing. Teddy Schleifer got a fascinating quote from Wall Street investor (and LimeWire founder… and RFK Jr. anti-vax funder) Mark Gorton, who was one of Andrew Cuomo’s biggest donors in his complete flop of a New York City mayoral run/comeback from disgrace:

If you can’t read the screenshot, it reads:

As donors try to assess their next moves in the mayoral race, one of the biggest donors to Andrew Cuomo’s super PAC, the investor Mark Gorton, said he is likely to back Mamdani. That is because of the support that Mamdani had gotten from Brad Lander, who Gorton said he ranked first. “I feel like people misunderstood my $250,000 for Cuomo for real enthusiasm,” Gorton said in an interview. “It was basically, ‘Oh, looks like Cuomo is coming back. We don’t want to be shut out. Let’s try and get on his good side.’ That’s kind of how things work with Cuomo. It’s sad political pragmatism. I wish we lived in a world where those sort of things were not useful things to do.”

Read that again. “That’s kind of how things work with Cuomo.” A quarter-million dollar donation, described casually as protection money to avoid being “shut out” by a politician with a reputation for vindictive retaliation against those who cross him. And Gorton’s matter-of-fact tone suggests this isn’t scandalous—it’s just Wednesday in American politics.

This is notable on multiple levels, starting with the fact that one of Cuomo’s biggest donors didn’t even rank Cuomo first on the ranked-choice ballot. But, the real story is the honest admission from Gorton that the only reason he felt he needed to cough up a quarter of a million dollars to Cuomo was to stay in his good graces.

This is soft corruption in its purest form: not a quid pro quo, not a bag of cash, just the quiet understanding that those who don’t pay tribute risk being frozen out when decisions get made.

What makes Gorton’s admission so damning isn’t just what it says about Cuomo—it’s what it reveals about how normalized this has become. We’re not talking about some back-room deal or smoking-gun evidence. We’re talking about a major political donor casually explaining, to a reporter, that a $250,000 contribution was essentially protection money. The fact that he’s comfortable saying this publicly suggests that everyone already knows this is how the game works.

Of course, in this case, it may have also contributed to Cuomo’s loss to Zohran Mamdani. Even as some people remained critical or cautious of Mamdani’s policy proposals, he came across as real and earnestly wanting to help actual people in New York, whereas Andrew Cuomo came across as… Andrew Fucking Cuomo, deeply cynical and a career political opportunist with no fundamental principles or beliefs beyond the pursuit of power.

This kind of soft corruption creates a feedback loop that undermines democratic governance in ways that are harder to prosecute but just as destructive as outright bribery. When wealthy donors make contributions not because they believe in a candidate but because they fear retaliation, it distorts the entire political process. Politicians learn that intimidation works better than persuasion. Donors learn that access requires tribute. And the public learns that their representatives answer to whoever can afford the protection money.

It’s also worth noting how this normalizes the harder (and even more blatant) corruption we’re seeing at the federal level. When “stay on his good side” donations become routine political pragmatism, it’s a shorter leap to the kind of brazen pay-to-play schemes we’re witnessing with Trump’s corporate deal approval power and Meta’s $25 million protection payment. The soft corruption creates the cultural infrastructure that makes the hard corruption possible.

But, really, the main takeaway from this is that we’ve become so inured to the corruption all around us that major political donors can casually describe protection rackets to reporters without expecting any blowback.

When the quiet part gets said out loud—and nobody seems particularly surprised—we’ve crossed a line. We’ve moved from a system where corruption hides in shadows to one where it operates in plain sight, confident that we’ve all accepted it as just how things work.

The real question isn’t whether we’ll slide into a system where corruption operates openly—we’re already there. Trump’s presidency has made it clear that the “soft” and “hard” corruption aren’t sequential phases but parallel systems. While Gorton was cutting checks to stay in Cuomo’s good graces, Trump was openly selling access, handing out get out of jail free cards to those who help him, and now requiring corporate executives to kiss his ring for deal approvals.

What Gorton’s casual admission reveals isn’t a warning about where we might be headed—it’s evidence of how thoroughly we’ve normalized the foundation that makes brazen kleptocracy possible. When protection rackets become “sad political pragmatism” that donors discuss matter-of-factly with reporters, we’ve already crossed every meaningful line.

The question now is whether we have any capacity left to recognize that this isn’t normal, isn’t inevitable, and isn’t something we have to accept. Because once we’ve shrugged our way through both the soft corruption and the hard corruption, what’s left to protect?

Filed Under: andrew cuomo, corruption, mark gorton, nyc, politics, protection rackets, soft corruption, zohran mamdani

Techdirt Podcast Episode 413: Ron Wyden On Chutzpah

from the guts-and-gusto dept

If you’re a Techdirt reader, you’re probably familiar with Senator Ron Wyden. In January, he released his new book It Takes Chutzpah, offering up a call for political boldness that feels even more relevant with every day that passes. This week, Senator Wyden joins Mike on the podcast to talk about the book and the political moment we find ourselves in.

You can also download this episode directly in MP3 format.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Filed Under: podcast, politics, ron wyden

Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not)

from the it's-the-only-real-story dept

While political reporters are still doing their view-from-nowhere “Democrats say this, Republicans say that” dance, tech and legal journalists have been watching an unfortunately recognizable plan unfold — a playbook we’re all too familiar with. We’ve seen how technology can be wielded to consolidate power, how institutional guardrails can be circumvented through technical and legal workarounds, and how smoke and mirrors claims about “innovation” can mask old-fashioned power grabs. It’s a playbook we watched Musk perfect at Twitter, and now we’re seeing it deployed on a national scale.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a few people reach out about our coverage these days. Most have been very supportive of what we’ve been covering (in fact, people have been strongly encouraging us to keep it up), but a few asked questions regarding what Techdirt is focused on these days, and how much we were leaning into covering “politics.”

When the very institutions that made American innovation possible are being systematically dismantled, it’s not a “political” story anymore. It’s a story about whether the environment that enabled all the other stories we cover will continue to exist.

We’ve always covered the intersection of technology, innovation, and policy (27+ years and counting). Sometimes that meant writing about patents or copyright, sometimes about content moderation, sometimes about privacy. But what happens when the fundamental systems that make all of those conversations possible start breaking down? When the people dismantling those systems aren’t even pretending to replace them with something better?

But there’s more to it than that.

It’s difficult to explain how much it matters that we’ve seen this movie before. (Well, technically, we’ve seen the beta version — what’s happening now is way more troubling.) When you’ve spent years watching how some tech bros break the rules in pursuit of personal and economic power at the expense of safety and user protections, all while wrapping themselves in the flag of “innovation,” you get pretty good at spotting the pattern.

Take two recent stories that perfectly illustrate the difference in coverage. First, there’s the TikTok ban. Political reporters focused on which party would benefit from the ban, and who would get credit for being “tough on China” — the usual horse-race nonsense. Tech and law reporters, meanwhile, were highlighting how the legislation would actually weaken security protections and create dangerous precedents for government intervention in private companies. (Not to mention how it would undermine decades of US work promoting an open internet.)

Or take what’s happening at the FCC right now. The traditional media keeps repeating the claims that Brendan Carr is a “free speech warrior,” because that’s what Donald Trump called him. But if you’ve been covering tech policy for a while, you know full well that Carr isn’t actually a believer in free speech. Quite the opposite.

Carr made it clear he wants to be America’s top censor, but cleverly wrapped it in misleading language about free speech. Inexperienced political reporters just repeated those misleading claims. Then he started doing exactly what he promised: going after companies whose speech he seemed to feel was too supportive of Democrats. And now some of those same media companies who failed to cover Carr accurately are falling in line, caving to threats from the administration.

This is the kind of thing tech and law reporters spot immediately, because we’ve seen this all play out before. When someone talks about “free speech” while actively working to control speech, that’s not a contradiction or a mistake — it’s the point. It’s about consolidating power while wrapping it in the language of freedom as a shield to fool the gullible and the lazy.

This is why it’s been the tech and legal press that have been putting in the work, getting the scoops, and highlighting what’s actually going on, rather than just regurgitation administration propaganda without context or analysis (which hasn’t stopped the administration from punishing them).

Connecting these dots is basically what we do here at Techdirt.

One of the craziest bits about covering the systematic dismantling of democracy is this: the people doing the dismantling frequently tell you exactly what they’re going to do. They’re almost proud of it. They just wrap it in language that makes it sound like the opposite. (Remember when Musk said he was buying Twitter to protect free speech? And then banned journalists and sued researchers for calling out his nonsense? Same playbook.)

Good reporters can parse that. Bad reporters fail at it time and time again.

But what’s happening now is even more extreme and more terrifying. Something that even experts in democratic collapse didn’t see coming. Normally when democracies fall apart, there’s also a playbook. A series of predictable steps involving the military, or the courts, or sometimes both.

But what’s happening in the US right now is some sort of weird hybrid of the kind of power grabs we’ve seen in the tech industry, combined with a more traditional collapse of democratic institutions.

The destruction is far more systematic and dangerous than many seem to realize. Even Steven Levitsky, the author of How Democracies Die — who has literally written the book on how democracies collapse — admits the speed and scope of America’s institutional collapse has exceeded his worst predictions. And his analysis points to something we’ve been specifically warning about: the unprecedented concentration of political, economic, and technological power in the hands of Elon Musk and his circle of loyal hatchet men as they dismantle democratic guardrails.

We’re pretty screwed. A couple of things are a little worse than I anticipated. One is that while we knew the Republicans would not put up many obstacles, they have been even weaker than I thought. That the Congress is basically shutting itself down in the wake of the executive branch usurping its power is also really stunning. The Republican abdication has been worse than I expected, and I thought it would be bad.

The second thing I didn’t anticipate was the role of Musk. I don’t think anybody quite could have anticipated it. That article drew on 20 years of research on competitive authoritarian regimes elsewhere in the world. The kinds of stuff we predicted, a lot of which has come to pass, are strategies that have been carried out in literally dozens of other cases. But Musk is pretty new. This is something that I don’t really have a model to understand. There’s a sort of technological frontier element to this that’s a little frightening. We don’t know what he’s going to do with data. And frankly, at least in democracies, I’ve never seen a concentration of political, economic, and media power as vast as this.

This is why tech journalism’s perspective is so crucial right now. We’ve spent decades documenting how technology and entrepreneurship can either strengthen or undermine democratic institutions. We understand the dangers of concentrated power in the digital age. And we’ve watched in real-time as tech leaders who once championed innovation and openness now actively work to consolidate control and dismantle the very systems that enabled their success.

I know that some folks in the comments will whine that this is “political” or that it’s an overreaction. And it is true that there have been times in the past when people have overreacted to things happening in DC.

This is not one of those times.

If you do not recognize that mass destruction of fundamental concepts of democracy and the US Constitution happening right now, you are either willfully ignorant or just plain stupid. I can’t put it any clearer than that.

This isn’t about politics — it’s about the systematic dismantling of the very infrastructure that made American innovation possible. For those in the tech industry who supported this administration thinking it would mean less regulation or more “business friendly” policies: you’ve catastrophically misread the situation (which many people tried to warn you about). While overregulation (which, let’s face it, we didn’t really have) can be bad, it’s nothing compared to the destruction of the stable institutional framework that allowed American innovation to thrive in the first place.

There’s something important to understand about innovation. It doesn’t actually happen in a vacuum. The reason Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley wasn’t because a bunch of genius inventors happened to like California weather. It was because of a complex web of institutions that made innovation possible: courts that would enforce contracts (but not non-competes, allowing ideas to spread quickly and freely across industries), universities that shared research, a financial system that could fund new ideas, and laws that let people actually try those ideas out. And surrounding it all: a fairly stable economy, stability in global markets and (more recently) a strong belief in a global open internet.

And now we’re watching Musk, Trump, and their allies destroy these foundations. They operate under the dangerous delusion of the “great man” theory of innovation — the false belief that revolutionary changes come solely from lone geniuses, rather than from the complex interplay of open systems, diverse perspectives, and stable institutions that actually drives progress.

The reality has always been much messier. Innovation happens when lots of different people can try lots of different ideas. When information flows freely. When someone can start a company without worrying that the government will investigate them for criticizing an oligarch. When diverse perspectives can actually contribute to the conversation. You know — all the things that are currently under attack.

But you need a stable economy and stable infrastructure to make that work. And you need an openness to ideas and collaboration and (gasp) diversity to actually getting the most out of people.

There are, of course, other stories happening in the world. And it has been frustrating that we haven’t been able to cover some of the stories we’d normally cover. I have about 700 tabs currently open, many of which contain stories I’d like to write about, some of which might seem closer to traditional Techdirt subject matter.

But right now, the story that matters most is how the dismantling of American institutions threatens everything else we cover. When the fundamental structures that enable innovation, protect civil liberties, and foster open dialogue are under attack, every other tech policy story becomes secondary.

What we’re witnessing isn’t just another political cycle or policy debate — it’s an organized effort to destroy the very systems that have made American innovation possible. Whether this is by design, or by incompetence, doesn’t much matter (though it’s likely a combination of both). Unlike typical policy fights where we can disagree on the details while working within the system, this attack aims to demolish the system itself.

Remember all those tech CEOs who thought they could control Trump? All those VCs who figured they could profit from chaos? All those business leaders who decided that “woke institutions” were a bigger threat than authoritarian power grabs? They’re learning a very expensive lesson about the difference between creative destruction and just plain destruction.

We’re going to keep covering this story because, frankly, it’s the only story that matters right now, and one that not everyone manages to see clearly. The political press may not understand what’s happening (or may be too afraid to say it out loud), but those of us who’ve spent decades studying how technology and power interact? We see it and we can’t look away.

So, here’s the bottom line: when WaPo’s opinion pages are being gutted and tech CEOs are seeking pre-approval from authoritarians, the line between “tech coverage” and “saving democracy” has basically disappeared. It’s all the same thing.

We’re going to keep doing this work because someone has to. Because understanding how technology and power interact isn’t just an academic exercise anymore — it’s about whether we’ll have an innovation economy left when this is all over.

If you think this kind of coverage matters — if you believe we need voices willing to connect these dots and call out these threats — then help us keep doing it. You can become a Friend of Techdirt, support us on Patreon, grab some merch, or even back our card game (while it’s still available for pre-order…)

The future of American innovation isn’t just another story we cover. It’s the story. And we’re going to keep telling it, whether the powers that be like it or not.

Filed Under: authoritarianism, coup, coverage, donald trump, elon musk, innovation, institutions, journalism, politics, techdirt

A Coup Is In Progress In America

from the wake-up dept

A coup is underway in the United States, and we must stop pretending otherwise. The signs are unmistakable and accelerating: in just the past 48 hours, Elon Musk’s DOGE commission has seized control of Treasury payment systems and gained unauthorized access to classified USAID materials, while security officials who followed protocols were removed. Career civil servants across agencies are being systematically purged for having followed legal requirements during previous administrations. The president openly declares he won’t enforce laws he dislikes, while Congress watches in complicit silence. This isn’t happening through tanks in the streets or soldiers at government buildings—it’s occurring through the systematic dismantling of constitutional governance and its replacement with a system of personal loyalty to private interests. Those who resist are being removed, while those who enable this transformation are being rewarded with unprecedented control over government functions. The time for euphemisms and careful hedging has passed. We are watching, in real time, the conversion of constitutional democracy into something darker and more dangerous. To pretend otherwise isn’t prudence—it’s complicity.

I understand why many Americans are hesitant to accept what’s happening—acknowledging the reality of a coup in progress is frightening. But we must confront the facts before us with clear eyes: Donald Trump and Elon Musk are systematically seizing control of the federal government’s machinery through plainly illegal means. They are violating civil service protections established by law, shuttering congressionally mandated agencies without authority, and subjecting career public servants to ideological purges.

When security officials are removed for following classification protocols, when private citizens gain unauthorized access to Treasury payment systems, when civil servants are punished for having participated in legally required training—these aren’t isolated incidents or normal policy changes. They represent the coordinated dismantling of constitutional governance and its replacement with a system of personal loyalty.

The machinery of government—the actual systems and institutions through which public authority flows—is being captured by private interests operating outside constitutional constraints. This is precisely what the Civil Service Reform Act was designed to prevent. These aren’t abstract concerns about democratic norms—these are concrete violations of specific laws designed to prevent exactly this kind of authoritarian capture of government functions.

This is an emergency, and it demands emergency response from every American with power or influence. The window for effective resistance narrows with each passing day. History will judge harshly those who had the capacity to resist but chose instead to wait and see how things develop. The time to act is now, before the mechanisms that would allow effective resistance are completely dismantled.

The American Constitution represents more than just a system of government—it embodies humanity’s greatest experiment in self-governance through reason and law rather than force and will. When the Founders established our constitutional republic, they created something unprecedented: a government bound by law rather than personal authority, where power flows through democratic institutions rather than individual whim. This inheritance, paid for with the blood of patriots from Lexington to Normandy, gave birth to the very idea of modern liberal democracy.

Now we watch as this precious inheritance is being systematically subjugated to the personal authority of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The constitutional firebreaks designed to prevent the concentration of power—checks and balances, civil service protections, congressional oversight—are being dismantled not through revolution but through a calculated strategy of institutional capture. When private citizens gain control of Treasury systems, when security officials are removed for following classification protocols, when Congress abandons its constitutional duties, we’re witnessing the subordination of constitutional governance to personal power.

This isn’t just another political crisis—it’s an existential threat to the constitutional order that has secured human liberty for over two centuries. Every American who understands the value of this inheritance has a duty to resist its destruction. The Constitution doesn’t defend itself—it requires citizens willing to stand for the principles of democratic governance against those who would replace the rule of law with the rule of men.

There is a fundamental difference between partisan policy debates and what we’re witnessing now. When Republicans pass legislation on immigration, when they reform tax policy, when they push back against progressive cultural initiatives—this is the normal, healthy function of democratic governance. Elections have consequences, and the party in power has every right to advance its policy agenda through legal channels.

But what’s happening now exists in a different category entirely. When private citizens gain unauthorized access to Treasury payment systems, when security officials are removed for following classification protocols, when congressionally established agencies are illegally shuttered—these aren’t policy changes. They represent the systematic dismantling of the constitutional framework that makes policy debates possible in the first place.

Consider the profound difference: Opposing Democratic policies on taxation or immigration is legitimate political disagreement. Refusing to execute laws passed by Congress, removing civil servants for following legal requirements, and allowing private citizens to seize control of government functions represents an attack on constitutional governance itself. The former is about what policies we should have; the latter is about whether we’ll maintain a system where policy debates matter at all.

To conservatives who value our constitutional inheritance: This isn’t about advancing Republican policies or opposing Democratic ones. It’s about whether we’ll preserve the constitutional system that allows these debates to occur through democratic processes rather than personal decree. When we replace professional civil service with personal loyalty systems, when we ignore congressional mandates, when we allow private interests to seize control of government functions—we’re not winning political battles, we’re destroying the arena where those battles are meant to occur.

The voices of history echo through our present crisis with devastating clarity. Each American who gave their life to preserve constitutional democracy—from the blood-soaked fields of Gettysburg to the beaches of Normandy—did so with the faith that future generations would guard the precious gift of self-governance. They died not just to defeat specific enemies, but to ensure that government of the people, by the people, for the people would not perish from the earth.

Now, as we watch the systematic dismantling of constitutional governance—as private citizens seize control of government functions, as career civil servants are purged for following the law, as Congress abandons its duties—these sacrifices demand action from every American who understands what’s at stake. The transformation happening before our eyes—from a government bound by law to one bound by personal loyalty—is precisely what generations of Americans gave their lives to prevent.

This isn’t about partisan politics or policy preferences. This is about preserving the constitutional inheritance that makes American democracy possible at all. When we see security officials removed for protecting classified information, when we watch congressionally established agencies illegally shuttered, when we witness the machinery of government being captured by private interests—we’re seeing the unraveling of everything our fallen heroes died to protect.

The dead speak to us now with urgent clarity: The time for comfortable illusions has passed. Every American who values constitutional democracy must act to preserve it. Not tomorrow, not after the next election, but now—while the mechanisms for democratic resistance still exist. Our ancestors paid for our freedom with their blood. We dishonor their sacrifice if we surrender it through inaction.

Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus. Republished here with permission.

Filed Under: congress, constitutional crisis, coup, democracy, donald trump, elon musk, politics

How The Cowardice Of The LA Times And Washington Post Highlights The Danger Of The Link Taxes They Demand, And Their Hypocrisy

from the we-won’t-and-we’ll-make-it-so-you-can’t-either dept

As Mike and others have pointed out, the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post have utterly failed the public. While it is of course their right to endorse, or not endorse, anyone they choose, the refusal to provide any such endorsement in an election with such high stakes abandons the important role the press plays in helping ensure that the electorate is as informed as it needs to be to make its self-governance choices. They join the outlets like the New York Times, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and others who have also pulled their punches in headlines and articles about the racist threats being made in the course of the presidential campaign, or inaccurately paint a false coherence between the candidates in their headlines and articles, and in doing so kept the public from understanding what is at stake. The First Amendment protects the press so that it can be free to perform that critical role of informing the public of what it needs to know. A press that instead chooses to be silent is of no more use than a press that can’t speak.

The issue here is not that the LA Times and Washington Post could not muster opinions (in fact, one could argue that its silence is actually expressing one). The issue is more how they’ve mischaracterized endorsements as some sort of superfluous expression of preference and not a meaningful synthesis of the crucial reporting it has done. In other words, despite their protests, the endorsement is supposed to be reporting, a handy packaging of its coverage for readers to conveniently review before voting.

If it turns out that the publication can draw a conclusion no better than a low-information voter, when it, as press, should have the most information of all, then it can no longer be trusted as a useful source of it. While both the LA Times and Washington Post have still produced some helpful political reporting, their editorial reluctance to embrace their own coverage makes one wonder what else they have held back that the public really needed to know about before heading to the ballot box. Especially when it seems the Times in particular also nixed the week-long series of Trump-focused articles it had been planning, which would have culminated in the editorial against him – the absence of that reporting too raises the strong suspicion that other relevant reporting has also been suppressed.

This crucial educative role that the press plays to inform public discourse so necessary for democracy to successfully function is now going unserved by the publications who have now abdicated that important job. Which is, of course, their choice: it is their choice in whether and how to exercise the editorial discretion of what to cover and what to conclude. The press freedom the First Amendment protects includes the freedom to be absolutely awful in one’s reporting decisions. No law could constitutionally demand anything otherwise and still leave that essential press freedom intact.

But if these incumbent outlets are not going to do it, then someone else will need to. The problem we are faced with is that not only are these publications refusing to play this critical democracy-defending role, but they are also actively trying to prevent anyone else from doing it. Because that’s the upshot to all the “link taxes” they and organizations they support keep lobbying for.

As we’ve discussed many times, link taxes destroy journalism by making that journalism much more difficult to find. The link sharing people are now able to freely do on social media and such would now require permission, which would necessarily deter it. The idea behind link taxes it would raise revenue if people had to pay for the permission needed to link to their articles. But all such a law would be sure to do is cut media outlets off from their audiences by deliberately cutting off a main way they get linked to them.

While the goal of the policy, to support journalism, may be noble, the intention cannot redeem such a counterproductive policy when its inevitable effect will be the exact opposite. It is, in short, a dumb idea. But if link taxes are imposed it will be a dumb idea everyone has to live with, no matter how much it hurts them. And it will hurt plenty. Because even if it manages to generate some money, the only outlets likely to ever see any of it would be the big incumbents – the same ones currently failing us. Smaller outlets, by being smaller, would be unlikely to benefit – compulsory licensing schemes such as this one rarely return much to the longtail of supposed “beneficiaries.” Yet for those smaller outlets keen to build audiences and then monetize that attention in ways most appropriate for it, these link tax schemes will be crippling obstacles, preventing their work from even getting seen and leaving them now without either revenue or audience. Which will make it impossible for them to survive and carry the reporting baton that the larger outlets have now dropped. Which therefore means that the public will still have to go without the reporting it needs, because the bigger outlets aren’t doing it and the smaller ones now can’t.

Laws that impose regulatory schemes like these are of dubious constitutionality, especially in how they directly interfere with the operation of the press by suppressing these smaller outlets. But what is perhaps most alarming here is the utter hypocrisy of these incumbent outlets to claim link taxes are needed to “save” journalism while not actually doing the journalism that needs saving, yet demanding a regulatory scheme that would effectively silence anyone interested in doing better.

If they wonder why journalism is struggling, then the thing they need to do is look in the mirror. The way to save journalism is to actually practice journalism. No link tax is going to make the LA Times or Washington Post play the role they have chosen not to play anymore. But they will make it so that no one else can play it either. And that’s no way to save journalism; that’s how you kill it for good.

And with it the democracy that depends on it.

Filed Under: cjpa, endorsements, jcpa, journalism, link taxes, politics
Companies: la times, washington post

Chris Rufo Is Exploiting The Fact That Academic Plagiarism Norms Are Absurd

from the fix-plagiarism-by-fixing-the-norms dept

Let’s be honest, Christopher Rufo is the ratfucking king. While I don’t agree with him about anything, when it comes to dirty tricks, nobody does it half as good as him, he’s the best. Whenever Rufo releases a new report, the “woke” tremble, and pray he’s targeting someone else.

Rufo’s current crusade is focused on academic plagiarism. About a year ago, he started accusing prominent progressive academics – mostly Black women – of plagiarizing parts of their scholarship. His method was brilliantly simple, essentially just comparing the academic’s work to their sources and highlighting the similarities. Lo and behold, a lot of academics appear to copy banal observations and statements of fact without using quotation marks or attributing them to a source.

Anyway, Rufo gets results. His report accusing Harvard President Claudine Gay of plagiarizing parts of her 1998 dissertation, among other works, helped precipitate her resignation. And his recent report accusing Vice President Kamala Harris of plagiarizing parts of her book 2009 Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer from press releases and Wikipedia, among other sources, was immediately picked up by the New York Times.

The genius of Rufo’s grift is that he’s right, at least according to his targets and their supporters. Academics universally define plagiarism as copying words or ideas without proper attribution, and they’ve gradually convinced just about everyone else to accept their definition, including journalists. What’s more, they’ve made plagiarism the academy’s only capital crime, punishable by expulsion or worse. Just ask any student hauled into the academic star chamber called an “honor council.”

The only problem is that academics and journalists alike are massive hypocrites, who enforce their own plagiarism norms against themselves almost entirely in the breach, and even then only reluctantly. When students plagiarize, there’s no excuse, but somehow when academics plagiarize there are always mitigating factors, even though you’d think academics are far better situated to avoid plagiarism than their students.

I’ll be blunt. The copying Rufo identified is absolutely plagiarism, as academics and journalists define it. Students are punished on the regular for doing exactly the same thing. And if it’s wrong for students, it has to be wrong for their professors as well. The wrongness of copying without attribution can’t depend on who’s doing the copying.

But why is plagiarism wrong?

Gay, Harris, and the other academics targeted by Rufo copied expressions notable only for their banality. If that’s plagiarism, then plagiarism is a joke. Press releases and Wikipedia were created to be copied. Nobody cares about attribution, because it just doesn’t matter. In fact, there’s no reason to attribute most of the facts and ideas used in a scholarly work, unless attribution will help the reader. And that goes for professors and students alike. No one should suffer for violating pointless plagiarism norms.

Unfortunately, just about everyone is deeply invested in the moral legitimacy of plagiarism norms, especially academics and journalists. It’s incredibly hard for people to question the moral justification of plagiarism norms, let alone whether they should be enforced. Everyone just assumes that plagiarism is wrong, so plagiarists should be punished.

Give me a break. All of the plagiarism Rufo identifies is remarkable only for its banality. For years, no one noticed the copying, because no one cared about it. And they were right not to care, because it didn’t matter. We should just extend the same grace to students, where it matters even less. A student copied, so what? If they copied well, they learned a skill academics and others use all the time. And if they copied poorly, their grade will reflect it. No need for further punishment.

Rufo’s brand of fugazi is brilliant, because academics are incapable of seeing their own bullshit, let alone seeing through it. When you come for the king, you’d better not miss. Unfortunately, Rufo’s academic opponents couldn’t hit a barn door. If they want to beat Rufo’s plagiarism charges, they have to embrace them.

The obvious solution is to tell scholars – and everyone else! – to provide quotations and citations only when they’re actually helpful to readers. If academics want to win the war with Rufo, they’ll have to abandon plagiarism norms, in order to save them.

Brian L. Frye is the Spears-Gilbert Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky.

Filed Under: christopher rufo, citations, claudine gay, copying, kamala harris, plagiarism, politics, ratfucking

Newsom’s Unconstitutional AI Bills Draw First Amendment Lawsuit Within Minutes Of Signing

from the stop-passing-shit-bills dept

I do not understand why California Governor Gavin Newsom thinks he has to be the Democratic equivalent of Texas Governor Greg Abbott or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, signing obviously unconstitutional laws for the sake of winning culture war arguments.

It’s really shameful. It’s cheap political pandering, while disrespecting the rights of everyone he’s supposed to represent.

Newsom and his Attorney General, Rob Bonta, keep losing First Amendment lawsuits challenging the bad internet laws he keeps signing (even if Newsom pretends he won them). And he’s wasting California taxpayer money fighting losing battles while engaging in petty political stunts.

The latest are a pair of obviously unconstitutional AI bills, AB 2655 and AB 2839, about AI and deepfakes (and possibly AB 2355, which might be slightly more defensible, but not much). While much of the media coverage has been about SB 1047, an equally bad bill Newsom seems unlikely to sign, the California legislature spent this session coming up with a ton of awful and unconstitutional ideas.

The specifics of the laws here place limits on “election-related deepfakes.” This gets a bit trickier from a First Amendment standpoint because of two things pushing in opposite directions. The first is that election-related political speech is definitely considered some of the most well-protected, most untouchable speech under the First Amendment.

A big reason why we have that First Amendment is that the founders wanted to encourage a vigorous and sometimes contentious debate on the issues and our leaders. For that reason, I think courts will pretty clearly toss out these laws as unconstitutional.

The one thing pushing back on this is there is that there is one area where courts have granted states more leeway in saying certain election-related information is not protected: when it’s lies about actual voting, such as where voting will be, when and how. There was a recent paper looking at some of these restrictions.

But the problem is that the laws Newsom just signed are not, in any way, limited in that manner. AB 2839 bans the sharing of some election-related deepfakes around election time.

AB 2655 then requires “a large online platform” to block political deepfakes around election time. Notably, it exempts broadcast TV, newspapers, magazines, and vaguely defined “satire or parody” content, which increases the list of reasons it’s clearly unconstitutional. Similar laws are thrown out for being “underinclusive” in not covering other similar content, since that proves that the government’s action here is not necessary.

Of course, that “satire or parody” exception just means everyone sharing these videos will claim they’re satire or parody. Any lawsuits would then be fought over whether or not they’re satire or parody, and that’s something judges shouldn’t be deciding.

AB 2355 requires political ads to disclose if they used AI. This is… kinda meaningless? As digital creation tools increasingly will use AI in the background for all sorts of things (fix the lighting! adjust the cloud cover!) this gets kind of silly.

Gavin Newsom tweeted about how he would use these laws to force Elon to remove a stupid, obvious deepfake he had posted of Kamala Harris, as if playing up that this is an unconstitutional stunt.

Look, I get that Newsom isn’t big on the First Amendment. But tweeting out that you signed a bill to make sure a specific piece of content gets removed from social media is pretty much waving a giant red flag that says “HEY, I’M HERE VIOLATING THE FIRST AMENDMENT, LOOK AT ME, WHEEEEEEEE!!!”

Anyway, within probably minutes of Newsom signing the bill into law, the first lawsuit challenging 2655 and 2839 was filed. It’s by Christopher Kohls, who created the video that Elon shared, and which Newsom directly called out as one that he intended to forcibly remove. As expected, Kohl claims his video (which is, I assure you, very, very stupid) is a “parody.”

On July 26, 2024, Kohls posted a video parodying candidate Kamala Harris’s first presidential campaign ad. The humorous YouTube video (“the July 26 video”) is labeled “parody” and acknowledges “Sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated.”

The July 26 video features AI-generated cuts of a voice sounding like Vice President Harris narrating why she should be President. In the video “Harris” announces she is the “Democrat candidate for President because Joe Biden”—her prior running mate, current boss, and the President—“finally exposed his senility at the” infamous presidential debate with former President Trump on June 27, 2024. The video’s voiceover closely resembles Harris’s voice and the production itself mirrors the aesthetic of a real campaign ad—using clips from Harris’s own campaign videos—but the comedic effect of the video becomes increasingly clear with over-the-top assertions parodying political talking points about Harris and her mannerisms. “She” claims to have been “selected because [she is] the ultimate diversity hire and a person of color, so if you criticize anything [she] say[s], you’re both sexist and racist.” The “Harris” narrator claims that “exploring the significance of the insignificant is in itself significant,” before the video cuts to a clip of the real Harris making similarly incomprehensible remarks about “significance.”

Kohls, who is ideologically opposed to Harris’ political agenda, created this content to comment about Harris’s candidacy in humorous fashion

So here’s the thing. If Newsom had kept his mouth shut, California AG Rob Bonta could have turned around and said Kohls has no standing to sue here, because the video is clearly a parody and the law exempts parody videos. But Newsom, wanting to be a slick social media culture warrior, opened his trap and told the world that the intent of this law was to remove videos exactly like Kohls’ stupid video.

And as stupid as I think Kohls’ video is, and as pathetic as it is that Elon would retweet it, the lawsuit is correct on this:

Political speech like Kohls’ is protected by the First Amendment

I don’t think the lawsuit is particularly well done. It’s a bit sloppy, and the arguments are not as strong as they might otherwise be. I think there could be better filings challenging these laws, but this law seems so blatantly unconstitutional that even a poorly argued case should be able to win.

Yes, this is equally as bad as the awful laws being passed in Florida and Texas (and to some extent New York). It’s kind of incredible how these four states (two strongly Republican, two strongly Democrat) just keep passing the worst, most obviously unconstitutional internet/speech laws, and thinking that just because partisan idiots cheer them on it must be fine.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, ab 2355, ab 2655, ab 2839, ai, california, chirstopher kohls, deepfake videos, deepfakes, elections, elon musk, free speech, gavin newsom, misinformation, moral panic, parody, politics, rob bonta
Companies: twitter, x

Zuckerberg Vows To Stop Apologizing To Bad Faith Politicians, Right After Doing Just That

from the yeah,-sure,-whatever dept

Two weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg apologized for something he didn’t actually do to appease a bad faith actor demanding he take responsibility for something that didn’t happen. This week, he’s claiming that he’s done falsely apologizing to bad faith actors demanding accountability for things he’s not responsible for.

Pardon me, but I think I’ll wait for some actual evidence of this before I take it on faith that he’s a changed man.

There were plenty of times over the last decade that Mark Zuckerberg seemed both unwilling and unable to speak up about how content moderation / trust & safety actually worked. He was so easily battered down by bad faith political actors into issuing pointless apologies that it became a sort of common occurrence. Politicians began to realize they could capitalize on this kind of theater to their own benefit.

Over the course of that decade, there were many times when Zuck could have come out and more clearly explained the reality of these things: content moderation is impossible to do well at scale, mistakes will always be made, and some people will always disagree with some of our choices. As such, there are times that people will have reasonable criticisms of decisions the company has made, or policies it has chosen to prioritize, but it’s got nothing to do with bad faith, or partisan politics, or the woke mind virus, or anything like that at all.

It just has to do with the nature of content moderation at scale. There are many malicious actors out there, many calls are subjective in nature, and operationalizing rules across tens of thousands of content moderators to protect the health and safety of users on a site is going to be fraught with decisions people disagree with.

Zuckerberg could have taken that stance at basically any point in the last decade. He could have tried to share some of the nuances and trade-offs inherent in these choices. Yet, each and every time, he seemed to fold and play politics.

So, there’s one side of me that thinks his recent appearance on some podcast in which he suggests he’s done apologizing and now focused on being more open and honest is nice to hear.

The founder of Facebook has spent a lot of time apologizing for Facebook’s content moderation issues. But when reflecting on the biggest mistakes of his career, Zuckerberg said his largest one was a “political miscalculation” that he described as a “20-year mistake.” Specifically, he said, he’d taken too much ownership for problems allegedly out of Facebook’s control.

“Some of the things they were asserting that we were doing or were responsible for, I don’t actually think we were,” said Zuckerberg. “When it’s a political problem… there are people operating in good faith who are identifying a problem and want something to be fixed, and there are people who are just looking for someone to blame.”

Of course, that would be a hell of a lot more compelling if, literally two weeks ago, Zuckerberg hadn’t sent a totally spineless and craven apology for things that didn’t even happen to one of the most bad faith “just looking for someone else to blame” actors around: Jim Jordan.

So it’s a little difficult to believe that Zuck has actually turned over a new leaf regarding political posturing, caving, and apologizing for things he wasn’t actually responsible for. It just looks like he’s shifted which bad faith actors he’s willing to cave to.

The problem in all of this is that there are (obviously!) plenty of things that social media companies and their CEOs could do better to provide a better overall environment. And there are (obviously!) plenty of things that social media companies and their CEOs could do better to explain and educate the public about the realities of social media, trust & safety, and society itself.

There are all sorts of problems that are pinned on social media that are really society-level problems that governments have failed to deal with going back centuries. A real leader would strive to highlight the differences between the things that are societal level problems and platform level problems. A real leader would highlight ways in which society should be attacking some of those problems, and where and how social media platforms could assist.

But Zuckerberg isn’t doing any of that. He’s groveling before bad faith actors… and pretending that he’s done doing so. Mainly because those very same bad faith actors keep insisting (in a bad faith way) that Zuck’s previous apologies were because of other bad faith actors conspiring with Zuck to silence certain voices. Except that didn’t happen.

So forgive me for being a bit cynical in believing that Zuck is “done” apologizing or “done” caving to bad faith actors. The claim he’s making here appears to be explicitly about now caving to a new and different batch of bad faith actors.

Filed Under: apologies, bad faith actors, content moderation, jim jordan, mark zuckerberg, politics, trade offs
Companies: meta

Techdirt Podcast Episode 401: How Fact Checking Fails

from the paved-with-good-intentions dept

There’s been plenty of conversation over the past decade about how unprepared the mainstream media was for the shifts that have happened in politics and political discourse, especially when it comes to finding… well… the truth. As we move towards the 2024 election, the challenges of reporting and fact checking are once again in the spotlight, and this week we’re joined by NYU Journalism Professor and Jay Rosen to talk about the state of modern journalism, and how fact checking so often fails.

You can also download this episode directly in MP3 format.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Filed Under: fact checking, jay rosen, journalism, podcast, politics

Vivek Ramaswamy Buys Pointless Buzzfeed Stake So He Can Pretend He’s ‘Fixing Journalism’

from the puffery-and-performance dept

Fri, May 31st 2024 05:30am - Karl Bode

We’ve noted repeatedly how the primary problem with U.S. media and journalism often isn’t the actual journalists, or even the sloppy automation being used to cut corners; it’s the terrible, trust fund brunchlords that fail upwards into positions of power. The kind of owners and managers who, through malice or sheer incompetence, turn the outlets they oversee into either outright propaganda mills (Newsweek), or money-burning, purposeless mush (Vice, Buzzfeed, The Messenger, etc., etc.)

Very often these collapses are framed with the narrative that doing journalism online somehow simply can’t be profitable; something quickly disproven every time a group of journalists go off to start their own media venture without a useless executive getting outsized compensation and setting money on fire (see: 404 Media and countless other successful worker-owned journalistic ventures).

Of course these kinds of real journalistic outlets still have to scrap and fight for every nickel. At the same time, there’s just an unlimited amount of money available if you want to participate in the right wing grievance propaganda engagement economy, telling white young males that all of their very worst instincts are correct (see: Rogan, Taibbi, Rufo, Greenwald, Tracey, Tate, Peterson, etc. etc. etc. etc.).

One key player in this far right delusion farm, failed Presidential opportunist Vivek Ramaswamy, recently tried to ramp up his own make believe efforts to “fix journalism.” He did so by purchasing an 8 percent stake in what’s left of Buzzfeed after it basically gave up on trying to do journalism last year.

Ramaswamy’s demands are silly toddler gibberish, demanding that the outlet pivot to video, and hire such intellectual heavyweights as Tucker Carlson and Aaron Rodgers:

“Mr. Ramaswamy is pushing BuzzFeed to add three new members to its board of directors, to hone its focus on audio and video content and to embrace “greater diversity of thought,” according to a copy of his letter shared with The New York Times.”

By “greater diversity of thought,” he means pushing facts-optional right wing grievance porn and propaganda pretending to be journalism, in a bid to further distract the public from issues of substance, and fill American heads with pudding.

But it sounds like Ramaswamy couldn’t even do that successfully. For one thing, Buzzfeed simply isn’t relevant as a news company any longer. Gone is the real journalism peppered between cutesy listicles, replaced mostly with mindless engagement bullshit. For another, Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti (and affiliates) still hold 96 percent of the Class B stock, giving them 50 times voting rights of Ramaswamy.

So as Elizabeth Lopatto at The Verge notes, Ramaswamy is either trying to goose and then sell his stock, or is engaging in a hollow and performative PR exercise where he can pretend that he’s “fixing liberal media.” Or both. The entire venture is utterly purposeless and meaningless:

“You’ve picked Buzzfeed because the shares are cheap, and because you have a grudge against a historically liberal outlet. It doesn’t matter that Buzzfeed News no longer exists — you’re still mad that it famously published the Steele dossier and you want to replace a once-respected, Pulitzer-winning brand with a half-assed “creators” plan starring Tucker Carlson and Aaron Rodgers. Really piss on your enemies’ graves, right, babe?”

While Ramaswamy’s bid is purely decorative, it, of course, was treated as a very serious effort to “fix journalism” by other pseudo-news outlets like the NY Post, The Hill, and Fox Business. It’s part of the broader right wing delusion that the real problem with U.S. journalism isn’t that it’s improperly financed and broadly mismanaged by raging incompetents, but that it’s not dedicated enough to coddling wealth and power. Or telling terrible, ignorant people exactly what they want to hear.

Of course none of this is any dumber than what happens in the U.S. media sector every day, as the Vice bankruptcy or the $50 million dollar Messenger implosion so aptly illustrated. U.S. journalism isn’t just dying, the corpses of what remains are being abused by terrible, wealthy puppeteers with no ideas and nothing of substance to contribute (see the postmortem abuse of Newsweek or Sports Illustrated), and in that sense Vivek fits right in.

Filed Under: disinformation, journalism, media, misinformation, politics, propaganda, vivek ramaswamy
Companies: buzzfeed