Techdirt Gear: New Masks, Old Favorites

from the face-it dept

Face masks are now available in the Techdirt store on Threadless »

We've had some requests for this, and now it begins: we're adding face masks as an option for all our gear in the Techdirt store on Threadless. Not just that, we've expanded the Threadless line with our ever-popular Takedown gear and the much-anticipated return of our most successful design ever: Nerd Harder.

All the face masks are available in two versions (premium and standard) as well as youth sizes. And of course, the designs are also available on a wide variety of other products including t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, buttons, and more! Check out the Techdirt store on Threadless and order yours today.

Filed Under: face masks, nerd harder, ok landlord, takedown, techdirt, techdirt gear

This Is My 50,000th Techdirt Post, And I'm Busy Working On 50,001

from the milestones dept

So here's a bit of a fun milestone. This blog post will be my 50,000th blog post on Techdirt, which is kind of insane when you think about it. I noticed last year that I was approaching that number and have checked back periodically to see where I was. Last month I realized I was 100 posts away, and have been watching the counter move along until now, the 50,000th post on the site.

For what it's worth, the Guinness World Records folks still claim that the world record for "most prolific professional blogger" was Darren Murph and his measly 17,212 posts for Engadget in 2010. By that time I already had over 30,000 posts, but apparently Guinness is not too concerned about accuracy. In 2014, I had reached out to Guinness just to suggest that their record there was wrong, but rather than investigating the matter themselves, they sent me a huge form to apply for my own record, which would involve a ton of work to "document" all my posts, and, honestly, who the hell has time for that, when there are more blog posts to write.

Anyway, just for fun, I thought I'd link back to some other "milestone" posts, starting with my very first post, which was actually a copy of an email newsletter I sent out in August of 1997. For the first few years, it really was mostly just a newsletter, and I'd take the emails and post them to the website as well. The first "real" blog post to the site came on March 12, 1999, and was about E*Trade launching a corporate venture fund. Exciting stuff, I know. The 10,000th post came on January 2nd of 2003, discussing how American kids weren't texting as much as kids elsewhere (of course, back then we called it "wireless messaging" because "texting" hadn't been invented yet in the old times). The reasoning? More use of instant messaging on computers at home as compared to in other countries (and less use of public transportation). I'd imagine crappy phones had a role as well.

The 25,000th post was in November of 2006 and was about banks acting surprised that insiders were a big data breach threat -- again, not the most exciting of Techdirt fare, but I don't make the rules. I just write the posts. Anyway, given that I got to 25,000 posts by 2006, it's pretty clear that my prolific nature has slowed quite a bit in my later years. Those first 25,000 or so came in about 7 years, and it took another 14 to get the next 25,000 posts. I'm going to have to pick up the pace to get to 100,000 posts.

At least I know I have more than 17,212.

Anyway, a special thanks to everyone who has visited Techdirt over the years, whether you've read all 50,000 of my posts, or this is your first one. It's been quite a journey, and it wouldn't have happened if no one ever read anything I wrote...

Filed Under: 50000, posts, records, techdirt

Techdirt In The Time Of Covid-19

from the stay-home-people dept

First off, I hope that everyone reading this, and their friends, families, loved ones, etc, are staying safe -- and I urge you to stay safe as well, which means staying home as much as possible. I did want to at least put up a post noting that these are unique and unprecedented times, and I honestly have no idea what this will mean for Techdirt over the next few weeks or months. We may very well be posting less. I don't know if our posting focus will change. I have some posts on the way that touch on the pandemic situation, and plenty that don't, and while I want to continue covering other things, it feels like we're in a moment where pretty much the only thing that is going to matter for the near future is how we deal with the pandemic.

We will try to continue on in the same way we always have done, but I don't know what that will actually look like.

While the team here is already effectively remote, and you might think that means we should be able to carry on as usual (or even moreso, since we're all pretty much limited in going out and about), I think that's an impossible request as well. Many people are now also dealing with watching children or parents or other relatives, all the time, and that obviously takes time, attention and energy. At the same time, all of us are watching the news and are concerned about what this means for our own health, the health of our loved ones, and the health of everyone else around the globe. It's a frightening and uncertain time -- and that, by itself, makes less than ideal working conditions for anyone. These are not times when I expect anyone, myself included, to be as productive as normal.

So, I at least wanted to put up a note that says, more or less, I have no idea what will be happening at Techdirt over the next few weeks and months. We have a new project that we were excited to launch before the end of the month -- and that may still happen, or we may put it off. I don't know how many posts we'll have or what topics they'll be on. I don't know if anyone will feel like recording podcasts, or if I'll feel like recording podcasts. I just don't know.

I know that lots of people are now concerned about their own jobs and their own financial position, and I hope that everything works out okay for everyone. I will note, also, that we've already heard from some of our own sponsors and backers, who have put off decisions on sponsorship. Also, a decent part of our revenue last year, and in our planning for this year, was for live events, all of which have now been put on indefinite hiatus -- meaning that if you're not in dire financial straits due to everything else, and are in a position to do so, we'd truly appreciate the support to make sure that we can keep going through these trying times. If you want the most direct way of supporting us, it's to do direct donations via this page, but the general support page lists many different ways to support us, some of which get you nice things in response, beyond the warm feeling of helping Techdirt continue.

But, the most important point of all: please, everyone, stay safe out there.

Filed Under: covid-19, techdirt

Techdirt 2019: The Stats.

from the closing-the-books-on-2019 dept

Every year, a few days after New Year's Day, we post some stats about traffic and comments from the previous year (we do it a few days after New Year's to make sure that we actually have complete data for the year -- and also, because it takes a bit of time to go through all the data, and other work needs to be done as well). For reference, you can see our previous such posts: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010. We still use Google Analytics for traffic data, mainly because it's the easiest to use, even though it is increasingly not the most accurate, in part because many of our readers (*cough* including me) will often block Google Analytics from recording our traffic. As we've discussed in the past, most "traffic" numbers are complete garbage, a fact that most people like to ignore because it benefits themselves. However, here we are only using the traffic stats for comparative or relative purposes, rather than absolute purposes -- which seems much more reasonable (i.e., we'll note which stories got the most traffic, but not detail how much traffic, since we're positive that number is inaccurate or misleading).

Once again, let's start with where people are coming from. The top of this list is basically always almost exactly identical. The vast majority of our traffic is from the US, with 67% (it's always between 67% and 70%). Number two, as always, is the UK, though this year it jumped up to 6.65% from 5.5%, and Canada remains third at 4.41%. India had jumped to 4th place (from 5th) last year, and it remains in 4th place again with 2.8% of our traffic. Australia is still in 5th with 2.2%. The next five are still the same: Finland, Germany, France, Netherlands, and Sweden, though Finland jumped over Germany to go from 7th to 6th. We noted that last year was Finland's first in the top 10, and this year it bumped up another spot. Not sure why we're moderately big in Finland, but it's cool by me.

At a continental level, the Americas represent 74% of our traffic (98.5% of that is North America), Europe 17%, Asia 7%, Oceania is 3% and Africa is 1%. Interesting to think about as we consider whether we can even continue to serve European traffic following the various anti-internet laws they've been passing over there. Overall, Google says we had visitors from 237 countries last year, down one from 238 last year, but up one from 236 the year before. Among countries that have become much more censorial, we notice our traffic has dropped precipitously. We used to get a fair amount of traffic from Russia but it's now barely a blip. We get more traffic from Austria and Denmark than Russia nowadays. We get about the equivalent amount of traffic from China as we get from Russia (i.e., not very much). In Asia, most of our traffic comes from India and the Philippines (with some Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Pakistan as well). Turkey? We get basically the same amount of traffic as we get from Russia and China. It's almost uncanny that we get nearly the identical traffic amounts from each of those countries.

Sometimes it's fun to explore the bottom of the list, which tends to be dominated by single visits from random islands in the South Pacific and various countries in Africa -- but not sure it actually tells us very much useful. It's interesting to see a growing number of visits from Cuba, a country whose internet access still remains very, very limited. We're back down to no visits from North Korea, after it sent us 2 visits the previous year.

In terms of technology, it's worth noting that Chrome, while still dominant, has dropped in the level of dominance. Last year it represented 49% of all visits to the site (same as the previous year), but this year it's dropped to 45.8%, with Safari jumping up to 21.5% from 17%. Firefox has dropped from 10% to 6%, which makes me sad as a Firefox user. In news that I'm sure is frustrating to Microsoft (and surprising to everyone), we still get 4% of traffic from Internet Explorer and less than 2% from Microsoft Edge. Most of the other browser traffic is various mobile browsers, so we'll breakdown operating system traffic next. 32% of our traffic comes from Windows-based computers, 28% from Android devices and 27% from iOS devices. Only 10% comes from Macintosh computers, which surprises me. 3% of our traffic is from Linux-based machines. Slightly less than 1% comes from Chrome OS. Oh, and 0.03% from Blackberry, 0.02% from "Windows Phone" and 0.01% from Playstation 4. Wow.

In terms of service providers, it's a little difficult to tell, because Google Analytics records the same ISP in many different ways (i.e., there's "Comcast Cable Communications LLC" which is listed separately from "Comcast" and "Comcast IP Services" and "Comcast Cable Communications Inc."). I'm sure there's a reason for all those different names, and I'm also assuming it's due to some lame rent seeking activity. So, my rough estimates are that about 10% of our traffic is carried by Comcast, around 7% by Charter, 6% by AT&T and Verizon each, and then lots of other smaller players.

Mobile traffic continues to grow by leaps and bounds. We finally (finally, finally, finally) made our site responsive to make mobile browsing better, and so our mobile traffic numbers shot up. Last year it was 39% of our traffic. This year it was 55% of traffic (wow!). Looking purely at mobile traffic, the fight between Android and iOS remains pretty close. 50% of mobile visits are Android and 49% are iOS. The iPhone obviously was the most dominant device, followed by the iPad. When you get into Android devices, we see variations on Samsung phones leading the pack, with the S8, S9, S9+, Galaxy Note 8 and Galaxy Note 9 all making the leader boards. The only two devices that weren't from Apple or Samsung were the Google Pixel 2 XL and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5A. Going further down the list, we see more variations on the Google Pixels and Samsung devices. Eventually, pretty far down the list we start to see some Motorolas and some OnePluses. Much further down the list there are some LG devices. An Amazon Fire (?!?) and even a fair number of visits from an Essential Phone (?!?!?!?).

For the last few years we've highlighted the following chart of where our traffic comes from:

As we say every year, unlike nearly every other site out there, we do not focus on gaming social media for traffic, and truly wish to get as much "direct" traffic as possible, because that's how you build loyalty. So it makes me happy to see direct traffic remains our biggest source at over 40% and social is just around 12.5%. This may be naive. Basically every other site seems to focus on getting as much social traffic as possible, and it is, certainly a channel for generating traffic. But it's also fickle and leaves you completely at the whim of whatever recommendation algorithm those companies have designed and I'd rather focus on creating good content than worrying about some third party algorithm I have no control over (same goes for search traffic, for what it's worth).

Within social traffic, we get the most from Twitter, followed by Reddit, Facebook, HackerNews, Quora and then YouTube. Google obviously drives most of the search traffic followed by Bing and then DuckDuckGo (which is pretty close behind Bing). As always, many of the top search terms are clearly people using search as a navigation tool, as they just are variations on "techdirt" or "tech dirt." Some of the other top search terms that took people to Techdirt are surprising. There's "baby shark" coming in at the top, and also "UCF professor Richard Quinn." Not sure why people are searching on him, but the top result is our 2010 story on him, and his accusations against his students for cheating (and how he dealt with them). I don't know if he did something new this year that made a bunch of people search for him. Some other top search terms are perhaps less surprising: there are searches for copyright troll "Higbee & Associates" (many of which seem to be from people who received demand letters from Higbee) as well as Backpage and everyone's favorite SLAPP suit filing coal boss, Bob Murray.

And now it's time for the lists:

Top Ten Stories, by unique pageviews, on Techdirt for 2019:

1. Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps For $60 After Years Of Battling Comcast
2. AT&T Execs Think It's Really Funny They Misled Consumers About 5G Availability
3. The FTC's Settlement With Equifax Is Such A Joke, The FTC Is Now Begging You Not To Ask For A Cash Settlement
4. Former Hotel Exec Gets Elected To Congress, Decides First Order Of Business Is To Destroy Airbnb
5. ACLU Asks CBP Why It's Threatening US Citizens With Arrest For Refusing Invasive Device Searches
6. Voting Machine Makers Claim The Names Of The Entities That Own Them Are Trade Secrets
7. Ironically, Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy
8. Verizon's New 'Unlimited' Data Plans Still Have Very Real, Problematic Limits
9. AT&T Loses Another 1.36 Million Pay TV Subscribers Thanks To Relentless Price Hikes
10. How My High School Destroyed An Immigrant Kid's Life Because He Drew The School's Mascot

Once again, a pretty good mix of stories. I'm particularly happy to see that last story make the list, because I'm still angry about what my own high school did the previous year in destroying a kid's life. I'm not entirely sure how this came about but the 11th story on the list was actually a story from 2010 about professor who thinks students should be able to reuse their own papers for other classes. Number 12 on the list, for what it's worth, was about copyright troll Richard Liebowitz.

2019's Top Ten Stories, by comment volume:

1. Content Moderation At Scale Remains Impossible: Vaccines Edition 1635 Comments
2. The Ellen Show Issues Copyright Takedown On Transformative Video Commenting On Her Friendship With President Bush 376 Comments
3. EU Puts An End To The Open Internet: Link Taxes And Filters Approved By Just 5 Votes 358 Comments
4. Strike 3 Gets Another Judge To Remind It That IP Addresses Aren't Infringers 341 Comments
5. Cop Peforming A Welfare Check Kills Woman By Shooting Her Through Her Own Backyard Window 320 Comments
6. Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center 308 Comments
7. US Newspapers Now Salivating Over Bringing A Google Snippet Tax Stateside 303 Comments
8. Our Legal Dispute With Shiva Ayyadurai Is Now Over 297 Comments
9. LAPD Infiltrated An Anti-Fascist Protest Group Because The First Amendment Is Apparently Just A Suggestion 286 Comments
10. Article 13 Was Purposefully Designed To Be Awful For The Internet; EU Moves Forward With It Anyway 282 Comments

Yet again, it appears that there is no overlap between the most commented stories and the most trafficked stories. Pretty much since the beginning of this list, we've highlighted this point, but many people still think that comments and traffic are equivalent. Anyway, you, uh, might notice that the top of the list here is a bit more than well, any of the other stories. That thread is fairly epic, but by "epic" I mean full of utter nonsense from at least one, and possibly more very, very stubborn, but very, very ignorant people concerning the topic at hand. That thread has also continued pretty much non-stop since that post went up, including more comments in the past few days. I would recommend not adding to it, but I imagine this post may unfortunately give that thread another boost.

And, with that, let's do the individual community leader boards.

2019 Top Commenters, by comment volume:

1. Stephen T. Stone: 3988 comments
2. PaulT: 3082 comments
3. That One Guy: 2536 comments
4. Scary Devil Monastery: 1658 comments
5. Thad: 1597 comments
6. Gary: 1596 comments
7. Toom1275: 1332 comments
8. bhull242: 1176 comments
9. Wendy Cockcroft: 1044 comments
10. ECA: 999 comments

A fair bit of new names on the list this year and a lot more comments. For example, 10th place on this year's list would have been 6th place on last years. Also, PaulT's reign at the top didn't last long. After years of being near the top of the list, and after years of That One Guy being at the top of the list, both were pushed down a notch by Stephen T. Stone who came in just short of 4,000 comments. Damn. PaulT and That One Guy both actually significantly increased their comments from last year, but Stephen could not be stopped. New entrants to this year's list include Scary Devil Monastery, Gary, bhull242 and Wendy Cockcroft -- all of whom have been avid commenters.

Top 10 Most Insightful Commenters, based on how many times they got the light bulb icon: Parentheses shows what percentage of their comments got the lightbulb

1. Stephen T. Stone: 1047 comments (26%)
2. That One Guy: 668 comments (26%)
3. PaulT: 529 comments (17%)
4. Thad: 304 comments (19%)
5. Gary: 223 comments (15%)
6. James Burkhardt: 180 comments (39%)
7. bhull242: 150 comments (13%)
8. Mike Masnick: 133 comments (25%)
9. Toom1275: 118 comments (9%)
10. Anonymous Anonymous Coward: 108 (14%)

Once again, Stephen T. Stone has swooped in to take the top spot by a wide margin. Impressive. Last year, we noted that James Burkhardt jumped onto the list as a first timer and had the highest percentage of insightful comments with 24% of his comments reaching that level. This year both Stephen and That One Guy got to 26%, but James lapped them by getting an astounding 39% of his comments deemed insightful. Nice going James and please keep it up.

Top 10 Funniest Commenters, based on how many times they got the LOL icon: Parentheses shows what percentage of their comments got the LOL icon

1. Stephen T. Stone: 118 comments (3%)
2. Thad: 68 comments (4%)
3. That One Guy: 52 comments (2%)
4. Gary: 51 comments (3%)
5. Toom1275: 38 comments (3%)
6. Norahc: 24 comments (9%)
7. Mason Wheeler: 21 comments (3%)
8. Anonymous Anonymous Coward: 20 comments (3%)
9. That Anonymous Coward: 17 comments (3%)
10. Bamboo Harvester: 14 comments (2%)

As we've noted the past few years, it's definitely more difficult to get the "funny icon" than the insightful one, though that may just be a statement on the times we live in. Stephen retains his leadership spot as last year he topped this board as well -- but that also means that Stephen took a clean sweep of all three comment categories. Way to go, Stephen. The other standout on this list is Norahc, who had the highest percentage, by far, of comments deemed to be funny. Excellent job and do keep it up.

And, with that, the 2019 books are closed and let's get moving on the 2020 comments. I'm sure there will be plenty to comment about.

Filed Under: 2019, techdirt, the stats

New Gear By Techdirt: Home Cooking Is Killing Restaurants And Free Speech Pro Tip Are Now Available As Posters!

from the put-em-on-your-wall dept

Get your Home Cooking and Free Speech Pro Tip posters from
our store on Teespring!

Back when we originally introduced these two designs as t-shirts and other apparel, we had quite a few requests for posters. Unfortunately it wasn't an option with our print-on-demand service at the time — but now it is! So today we're launching posters for Home Cooking Is Killing Restaurants and Free Speech Pro Tip, alongside a relaunch of all the previously-available items.

The posters are available in two sizes: 18x24 and 24x36. Plus, you can get the designs as t-shirts, hoodies, mugs and stickers. And don't forget about our recently-launched Fourth Emojiment gear (also available as a poster!) and all the other designs in our store on Teespring.

Filed Under: fire in a crowded theater, gear, home cooking, posters, t-shirts, techdirt

New Gear By Techdirt: The Fourth Emojiment (And The First One Too!)

from the the-right-of-the-people... dept

Get your Fourth Emojiment gear from
our store on Teespring »

You asked for it, so here it is! When we launched our original line of First Emojiment gear, plenty of people asked when we'd get to some other amendments. Well, the next choice was obvious, so today we're launching Fourth Emojiment t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and — for the first time — posters and pillows!

And the First Emojiment is still available, with new products! In addition to the t-shirts, hoodies, mugs and stickers that were previously available, you can now get posters and pillows from the First Emojiment line on Teespring.

Both designs are based on the Twemoji icon set, licensed under CC-BY 4.0.

Over the next little while we're going to be expanding more of our existing designs to include new products, so keep an eye on the Techdirt Gear store on Teespring and let us know what you'd like to see next.

Get your First Emojiment gear from our store on Teespring »

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 4th amendment, gear, techdirt

Some Small But Important Techdirt Updates

from the without-further-ado dept

A couple months ago, we launched the beta test of a revamped version of Techdirt with some key new features, most importantly a responsive design for a better experience on phones and other devices. As we noted, it wasn't about diving into a big redesign, but incrementally improving the blog, for a variety of reasons.

Today, we're coming out of beta and turning on the new version of Techdirt for all users!

Apart from some small adjustments to the layout and sizing, very little has changed if you're viewing the site on a desktop or laptop screen — but if you're on a mobile device, you'll see we've changed everything to fit naturally on any size of screen. We're not blazing any trails here: this is something we've needed to do for quite a while now, and we're excited to finally launch it.

If you want to know more about the strategy behind the changes and a few details on the implementation, check out our post announcing the beta. And if you have feedback on the updated site, let us know via our contact form or on Twitter!

Filed Under: redesign, responsive, techdirt

Dear Senators Portman & Blumenthal: What Should Blogs Do If SESTA Passes?

from the how-do-we-stay-on-the-right-side-of-the-law dept

So we've spent some time talking about why SESTA is such a bad bill even in its updated form (which fixes just a tiny sliver of the overall problems). And we may have some more soon about other problems with the language in the bill, but for now I want to make this even more real and ask Congress -- and SESTA authors Senators Rob Portman and Richard Blumenthal, specifically, what they think bloggers, independent journalists, citizen journalists and anyone who hosts comments on their site should do if SESTA passes. Because all these sites are platforms protected by Section 230 of the CEA and, as SESTA is written, parts of it are so unclear that it could introduce significant legal liability, or at least uncertainty over whether or not they're liable for the comments readers post on their sites and articles.

One thing we've heard over and over again from SESTA supporters is that the bill won't have any impact on most sites because (they claim) "no one accidentally facilitates sex trafficking." We wonder how they can be so certain. Ignoring, for the moment, that all sorts of important speech can be branded as speech related to trafficking, even for speech we all agree is problematic, it is not clear what the Congressional authors of the bill, and SESTA's staunchest advocates, think smaller sites, like ours, should do to ensure that none of that content ever sneaks through and ends up in our comment sections. To use us as an example: we're a small site, with a small team and limited resources. But we do allow comments on our posts, because we think community is an important aspect of a modern media site -- and we get a lot of comments, to the point that it is literally impossible for us to review every single comment on the site. We also, obviously, get a fair number of spam comments, and have put in place spam filters. The spam filters are pretty good, but they will make a few Type I and Type II errors at times (i.e., accidentally holding a legit comment and accidentally letting through a spam comment).

The number of comments (spam and not spam) vary day by day, but it's not uncommon to deal with on the order of 2000 comments or so (both spam and not spam) on a daily basis. We cannot read through all of them. And at least some of the spam may be advertising questionable and illegal behavior -- potentially sex trafficking. Here's an example that I found in our spam filter. The title of the spam reads "hot chinese women" but the text of the comment links to a site advertising "columbian girls" and while we've redacted part of the URL (we don't want to promote them at all), as you can see, part of the domain involves "love." Most of the text is nonsense garbage which is just designed to get through a spam filter (thankfully, in this case, it did not work):

Is this comment "facilitating sex trafficking" under federal law? I certainly hope not. But it's possible that the links in that spam go to a site that facilitates sex trafficking. And, while this comment was caught in our spam filter, what if it had gotten through? Do we now have "knowledge" that Techdirt, via its open comments, "assisted, supported, or facilitated" a violation of sex trafficking law? I would still argue that we don't, because we had no knowledge of that particular comment, and if we had seen it sneak through the spam filters, we clearly would have flagged it as spam and taken it off the site. But... the standard in the bill is not at all clear. Even worse: could this very post -- in which I'm explaining to Congress the uncertainty created by its own bill -- be used as evidence of me showing "knowledge" that sometimes spammers try to post these kinds of comments on our site? Is that enough to pass the hurdle in the bill to suggest I now have the requisite "knowledge" to potentially be both civilly and criminally liable? That would be a patently ridiculous outcome, but that, alone, represents some of the key problems of the bill as written.

Indeed, my concerns about merely asking Congress what sites like ours should do, demonstrate the automatic chilling effect in the bill. The chilling effect is happening now, before the bill is even passed.

I would hope that most rational people would say that we should not be liable just because some spammer is possibly clever enough to get a comment like this around our spam filters. But... as the bill is worded now, I am left wondering how do I avoid such liability? There are no clear safe harbors that tell me what steps to take to avoid such liability. Are we required to use a spam filter? What if none are perfect enough? Is the only way I can protect Techdirt be to kill the comment section and all the benefits a comment section enables? Can Senators Rob Portman and Richard Blumenthal tell me what to do? After all, during the hearing on this bill, when Blumenthal was told about its effect on smaller, independent sites, he insisted that such sites were "outliers" who "should be prosecuted." Is that what Blumenthal really thinks? A blog with a spam filter that is not 100% accurate should be prosecuted? If that's not what he thinks, then shouldn't the law he helped write make it clear for bloggers like me that merely allowing comments should not expose us to liability? Do small sites like Techdirt need to get pre-approval by the Internet Association who endorsed the bill to know if we'd be ok? Or, more likely, should sites like ours now need to go spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on lawyers to get an opinion that won't actually stop any potential lawsuit?

I am sure that many supporters of SESTA will argue that this is an extreme scenario. They will say, "Oh, come on, no one is going to go after you for a spam comment." I hope that's true! But, under the language of the bill, it's unclear. And that's the problem. We've certainly seen (repeatedly) that when someone wants to attack a site, they will use whatever laws they can find on the books. To make matters worse, SESTA also allows state Attorneys General to bring both civil and criminal suits. We've certainly upset some state Attorneys General in the past. Would a vindictive one use this opportunity to stifle Techdirt and shut it down? I, again, hope not, but we're living in an age where apparently it's considered okay for politicians to use their bully pulpits to threaten legal action against opponents, including the press.

There may be ways to improve SESTA -- but many of the ideas on the table also have potential serious negative consequences. We should be engaged in a careful discussion about those consequences and the costs and benefits of various approaches. There needs to be a clear explanation for how sites like ours can avoid these risks. But that's not what's happening. Small sites don't have the resources of a Facebook or a Google. They can't just spend thousands of dollars on lawyers to figure out how to navigate this new vague language, which wouldn't even guarantee that they won't get in trouble just because, say, a spam filter isn't good enough.

SESTA isn't just a bad bill because it won't do anything to stop trafficking (the trafficking will continue). It leaves smaller sites, such as ours, completely in the lurch over what our own level of risk is. So, a plea to Congress -- and Senators Portman and Blumenthal specifically: if you are going to move forward on this bill at least fix it so that sites like ours know what to do to stay on the right side of the law.

Filed Under: cda 230, comments, intermediary liability, richard blumenthal, rob portman, sesta, spam, techdirt

Limited Edition Anniversary Gear: The First Techdirt Logo!

from the the-old-look dept

The current Techdirt logo has remained the same for quite some time, but extra-long-time readers might remember that there have actually been two other logos before this one. The very first one was created by Techdirt friend Audris and used until early 1999, and all that remains of it today is one small old JPEG with a lot of compression artifacts:

Today, in celebration of Techdirt's 20th anniversary, we've done our best to reproduce the original logo (with a few minor tweaks) and now we're offering it up on limited edition t-shirts, hoodies and stickers from Teespring:

Filed Under: gear, techdirt

Techdirt Turns Twenty!

from the wasn't-expecting-that dept

We more or less broke the news of this with yesterday's podcast, but Techdirt turns 20 years old today if you trace it back to its true origins. It was, initially, an email newsletter I wrote up to send to other students at Cornell's MBA program and (more realistically) a way to bolster my resume to help me get a job in the tech industry. And, damn, did it ever get me a job -- just not the one that I expected. After a few years as a hobby, in which it grew and grew and grew, Techdirt became my full-time job, and it's been that way ever since. I can't believe that it's gone on for 20 years.

What I do remember was staying up late on that Saturday, August 23rd, twenty years ago, crafting the very first newsletter. Initially, it was supposed to be an email newsletter on the intersection of technology and business, based on Danny O'Brien's brilliant NTK newsletter (which was much more pure tech, and much funnier) -- though I'm only just now realizing that NTK had only begun a few months earlier. In my head, at the time, NTK was an established giant in the space and I was just some kid. Danny eventually discovered my newsletter and was quite kind about it (though, when I finally met him in person many years later, he jokingly pretended to wind up to punch me for copying him). I, unfortunately, can't find it now, but I believe Danny's initial response to me was something along the lines of "don't worry: the only IP we believe in stands for 'Internet Protocol'." But, knowing Danny, I'm sure what he actually said was much wittier.

Techdirt has obviously grown and changed and grown and changed some more over the years (we certainly didn't focus nearly so much on legal and policy issues at first). And a huge part of what's driven the success of Techdirt has been the community here. We didn't always have a huge community, but it's always been supportive and educational. The community around Techdirt has challenged me, educated me, and inspired me over and over and over again. I've met (both virtually and in real life) so many amazing and wonderful people that I likely never would have met without Techdirt. And, it still excites me every single day. I have no idea what I would have done if I hadn't started Techdirt on a whim 20 years ago, but I can't imagine how it could possibly have resulted in a life as fulfilling as the one I've had, even through various challenges along the way.

If you want to know more about the history, please go listen to yesterday's podcast, which was a fun discussion about those early days and how the site changed over time. However, I did want to thank all of you reading this, who are a part of the larger Techdirt community for being around, for sharing stories, for giving us feedback, for participating, for commenting, and for just reading what we put out. And because it's so often the community here that is more interesting and knowledgeable than the writers here, I'm curious -- to anyone reading this, let us know in the comments: when did you discover Techdirt, and how?

Filed Under: 20 years, anniversary, techdirt