Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Was Ordered To Release Some Of His Emails With Elon Musk. Most Are Blacked Out. This story was originally published by the Texas Tribune and the Texas Newsroom and co-published with ProPublica. Republished under the Texas Tribune’s republish feature. Months after fighting to keep secret the emails exchanged between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s companies, state officials released nearly 1,400 pages to The Texas Newsroom. The records, however, reveal little about the […] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/08/texas-gov-greg-abbott-was-ordered-to-release-some-of-his-emails-with-elon-musk-most-are-blacked-out/

ACIP Decides More Newborns Do Need To Catch Hepatitis B The fucking maniacs did it. We talked yesterday about how newborn vaccinations for hepatitis B were on the agenda for this latest meeting at ACIP, the CDC’s immunization advisory panel. You likely know all this already, but RFK Jr. fired all ACIP panel members earlier this year, replacing them with hand-picked anti-vaxxer quack-jobs who are […] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/05/acip-decides-more-newborns-do-need-to-catch-hepatitis-b/

It’s Almost Time! The Public Domain Game Jam Starts This Week As we announced a few weeks ago, it’s nearly time for the latest installment in our series of public domain game jams, Gaming Like It’s 1930! It’s an extra special jam this year as we begin a brand new decade of works entering the public domain, and as always it will begin on New Year’s […] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/28/its-almost-time-the-public-domain-game-jam-starts-this-week/

This Week In Techdirt History: December 21st – 27th Five Years Ago This week in 2020, Congress sold out to Hollywood yet again by sneaking the CASE Act and a felony streaming bill into the funding omnibus, with the former introducing absolutely insane damages especially when compared to COVID stimulus money. Meanwhile, we looked at the issues with a new COVID bill that included […] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/27/this-week-in-techdirt-history-december-21st-27th/

Techdirt Doesn’t Annoy You Into Paying, And That’s Worth Paying For We’re a few weeks into our end of year crowdfunding campaign—donate $100 or more (check out that $230 option!) and we’ll send you our first commemorative challenge coin celebrating 30 years of Section 230. I’ve already laid out why our coverage matters, why we’re not selling out (because we’re not like Bari Weiss), and why […] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/26/techdirt-doesnt-annoy-you-into-paying-and-thats-worth-paying-for/

10 (Not So) Hidden Dangers of Age Verification It’s nearly the end of 2025, and half of the US and the UK now require you to upload your ID or scan your face to watch “sexual content.” A handful of states and Australia now have various requirements to verify your age before you can create a social media account. Age-verification laws may sound straightforward to some: protect young people online by […] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/24/10-not-so-hidden-dangers-of-age-verification/

UK Law Enforcement Pushed Hard To Maintain Access To Deeply Flawed Facial Recognition Tech While each iteration presents a chance to improve, there are some very real reasons why facial recognition tech will do a bit of stagnating. And that reason is the biggest market for this tech: law enforcement agencies. In 2019, the US National Institute for Science and Technology studied 189 different facial recognition algorithms. The results […] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/24/uk-law-enforcement-pushed-hard-to-maintain-access-to-deeply-flawed-facial-recognition-tech/

LG Forces TV Owners To Use Microsoft ‘AI’ Copilot App You Can’t Uninstall And Nobody Asked For If your product is even a third as innovative and useful as you claim it is, you shouldn’t have to go around trying a little too hard to convince people. The product’s usefulness should speak for itself. And you definitely shouldn’t be forcing people to use products they’ve repeatedly told you they don’t actually appreciate […] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/24/lg-forces-tv-owners-to-use-microsoft-ai-copilot-app-you-cant-uninstall-and-nobody-asked-for/

Google Built Its Empire Scraping The Web. Now It’s Suing To Stop Others From Scraping Google Last week, Google filed suit against SerpApi, a scraping company that helps businesses pull data from Google search results. The lawsuit claims SerpApi violated DMCA Section 1201 by circumventing Google’s “technological protection measures” to access search results—and the copyrighted content within them—without permission. There’s just one problem with this theory: Google built its entire business […] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/24/google-built-its-empire-scraping-the-web-now-its-suing-to-stop-others-from-scraping-google/

Daily Deal: The JavaScript DOM Game Developer Bundle The JavaScript DOM Game Developer Bundle has 8 courses to help you master coding fundamentals. Courses cover JavaScript DOM, Coding, HTML 5 Canvas, and more. You’ll learn how to create your own fun, interactive games. It’s on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from […] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/24/daily-deal-the-javascript-dom-game-developer-bundle-7/

MAGA Legislators Want To Add Mercenaries To Trump’s Perverse Take On The ‘War On Drugs’ Yeah, the economy sucks and trade-war tariff agendas are only making things worse. But as Trump promised/threatened during a recent national address from the White House, things are turning around, even if you (MAGA voters especially) are too stupid to see it. It looks like the first growth market to see a significant increase might […] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/24/maga-legislators-want-to-add-mercenaries-to-trumps-perverse-take-on-the-war-on-drugs/

Larry Ellison Is Very Excited To Destroy What’s Left Of CNN, Sweetens The Pot For Hostile Warner Takeover We’ve noted how right wing billionaire Larry Ellison, as part of his attempt to control the entirety of media, had launched a $108 billion hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers backed by Saudi cash. Larry, as we’ve seen with CBS and his interest in TikTok, is trying to convert what’s left of U.S. media into a giant safe space […] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/24/larry-ellison-is-very-excited-to-destroy-whats-left-of-cnn-sweetens-the-pot-for-hostile-warner-takeover/