This Week In Techdirt History: December 28th – January 3rd

from the new-year(s) dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2020-2021, we published a series of posts on Trump’s Presidential Commission On Law enforcement, starting with a look at its tone that everyone but cops are to blame for the terrible state of policing,followed by its repeated calls for anti-encryption legislation, and its conclusion that doing the same things that haven’t worked for years will reduce violent crime. Simultaneously occurring, a coalition of internet companies outside the realm of “big tech” raised their voices about the importance of Section 230 just as Oracle was gleefully taking credit for attacks on 230 and on Google, and we wrote about the perennial myth that Section 230 is some kind of “subsidy” for tech companies.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2015-2016, Mark Zuckerberg was trying to convince everyone that Facebook’s international expansion was about connecting the world, while simultaneously quietly starting to block news links in Australia. We also covered how copyright trolls were getting smarter and more aggressive, and pointed out that the internet needs net neutrality. we discussed the problem with trying to regulate algorithms.