from the because-i-got-section-230 dept

The internet has been rightfully enjoying videos from the defamation trial against Afroman, a musician known for his humorous songs including “Because I got high.” The lawsuit involves songs he wrote about a 2022 raid police conducted on his house, which was based on flimsy evidence. The songs justifiably mock the officers involved. Mike Masnick wrote a recap of the case here, which is worth reading for many reasons, but the songs and Afroman’s testimony are true highlights. 

After the raid, Afroman released his songs on YouTube and they went viral initially on TikTok, both massive platforms for users to share their speech and that of other users. The officers who raided his home, seeking to silence someone making fun of them, sued Afroman for defamation, emotional distress, and other causes in 2023. 

Spoiler: Afroman won. The songs are not defamatory. But we didn’t know that for sure until a jury told us so this week. For three years, from the moment the lawsuit was filed until the jury issued its verdict, the songs were allegedly defamatory. And their continued “publication” ran the risk of liability.

So why could we still see the songs on YouTube, TikTok, Bluesky, and whatever other online platforms where we first encountered them? One big reason is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. 

Section 230 says that interactive computer service providers, like online platforms, cannot be treated as the publisher or speaker of information content provided by other information content providers. That means that YouTube could not be liable for the content of Afroman’s songs, even if they were defamatory. That’s the balance Section 230 strikes. Under 230, there is still accountability for the speaker, but online platforms are not liable for their users’ illegal speech.

By and large this balance has been incredibly beneficial to free expression online, supporting speech about everything from the profoundly consequential (#MeToo and Black Lives Matter) to the somewhat silly (a song about a cop who got distracted from a raid by a delicious looking “Lemon Pound Cake”). But now, members of Congress like Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Dick Durbin want to repeal or replace Section 230 without much of a plan for what comes next. 

On March 18, Daphne Keller, a professor of law at Stanford and expert in intermediary liability laws around the world, testified before the Senate Commerce Committee. She tried to explain to the Senators that Section 230 may not be perfect, but it’s still better than any of the options she has seen. To understand why Daphne’s right, let’s think about what Afroman’s case might have looked like without Section 230. The moment Afroman was allowed to distribute his songs about the raid on YouTube, the company could have been liable for any potentially illegal speech they contained. That means YouTube probably also would have been a co-defendant in the cops’ suit. At the scale many online platforms operate at, these kinds of accusations of defamation and lawsuits related to user posts would happen hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times a day.

That’s a lot of litigation.

Staring down the barrel of that many potential lawsuits every day, no reasonable platform would have allowed Afroman’s speech to stay up. The moment an accusation of illegality surfaced, a platform acting reasonably would likely take the speech down. And to be clear, we have evidence that this is how they would react: That’s the incentive structure currently in place under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA creates a notice and takedown system for alleged copyright violations and evidence suggests that improper takedown requests are common and, even with the safeguards for speech built into that law, result in over-censorship. Replicating a version of the DMCA for all content on the internet writ large would likely produce the same overcensorship result. At a minimum, the platforms certainly wouldn’t allow their algorithms to recommend posts linking to the defamatory songs, effectively “shadowbanning” them, which is probably one of the main ways many people came across the songs to begin with.

The upshot is: Section 230 created the conditions that allowed us to hear Afroman’s songs, and allowed platforms to recommend them, even while their status was in legal limbo. 

There are millions of similar situations, large and small, every day where Section 230 ensures that online platforms do not have to try to make context-specific legal judgment calls. Section 230 may not be perfect. No law is. But it’s the best and most effective protection for free expression online we have, allowing online services to simply let their users speak. Congress should be very cautious about changing it, let alone eliminating it altogether.

Kate Ruane is the Director of the Free Expression Program and the Center for Democracy & Technology, where she advocates for the protection of free speech and human rights in the digital age.

Filed Under: afroman, defamation, intermiediaries, section 230

Soft plastics are notorious for jamming sorting machines, slipping through processing lines, and wreaking havoc on the environment. They’re also not accepted in most municipal curbside recycling programs.

Facilities for recycling these types of plastic exist, but getting waste to these locations clean and free of what some call “wishful recycling” items (compostable cups, plastic utensils) is such a challenge that the majority of soft plastics, even the bags recycled at the front of grocery stores, end up in the trash. The SPC is what Arbouzov calls a “pre-recycling device,” designed to simplify this stream and deliver plastic that’s contained, traceable, and more likely to make it through the system.

I tried to envision how the blocks would turn into patio furniture, as advertised, but didn’t learn exactly how until months later, when Arbouzov sent me a video of the blocks at their final destination—a facility in Frankfort, Indiana, that specializes in processing polyethylene and polypropylene films. The blocks get shredded into crumbles resembling, at least on video, handfuls of wet newspaper, which are then compressed into composite decking, chairs, garden edging, and more.

“The full cycle from mailing a block to it entering recycling processing typically takes a few weeks,” Arbouzov said, “depending on shipping time and batching schedules.” Right now, the Frankfort location is the only facility processing the blocks, but Arbouzov said he hopes this is only temporary.

“Our goal is to shift more of this processing closer to where the material is generated, so blocks can move in bulk through regional recycling infrastructure rather than through mail-based logistics,” he said. “The mail-back system is essentially a bridge that allows the material to be captured today while that larger infrastructure develops.”

Recycling, Rewired

I found that my household of three was able to produce a block every couple of weeks, which quickly outpaced the provided supply of mailers. As the blocks started piling up on the floor of my office, I found myself wishing the SPC made something useful for consumers. Spoons, straws, 3D-printing filament … anything that could be used at home.

However, a 2023 Greenpeace report found that recycling plastic can actually make it even more toxic than it already is—heating it can not only cause existing chemicals to escape into the air and water supply, but even create new ones, like benzene. Would I want this in my house? Does recycled plastic actually belong in a circular economy? I asked Arbouzov what he thought.

Plenty of old handhelds spend their retirement gathering dust in a box somewhere, and this Game Boy Advance was no exception. Abandoned, completely dead, and sporting a screen that had burned out from years of neglect, it was not an obvious candidate for a comeback. Odd Tinkering took it apart piece by piece anyway, worked through every problem methodically, and brought it back to life with a handful of modern upgrades that breathe new life into the hardware without losing any of what made it special in the first place.

From the start it was completely dead, just a dark screen and no response when you tried to power it on. Some thorough cleaning got the electricity flowing again, and original Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles loaded up without complaint. GBA games were a different story though, refusing to run no matter what. The small mode detection switch inside the cartridge slot got a good wipe, which seemed like it should have done the trick, but the games still wouldn’t cooperate. The real culprit turned out to be oxidation sitting on the pins of the main chip. One more cleaning session and the problem disappeared entirely, with the system reading every cartridge thrown at it without a single issue.

The screen was in rough shape, covered in dark blotches from years of burn in. New polarizing film cleared that up, though the display was still noticeably dim by modern standards, so an IPS panel went in next and solved the brightness issue immediately. Colors are vivid and the viewing angles are excellent, exactly what you want from a handheld you are actually going to use. The upgraded screen meant the original shell no longer fit, so the team scanned it with a 3D scanner and printed a new one in resin, a deep blue that nods to the classic aesthetic while hiding the modern hardware inside. The fit is perfect, with no gaps or wobble anywhere.

The toolkit was refreshingly basic, a set of screwdrivers for disassembly, a soldering iron and desoldering tool for any stubborn connections, and hydrogen peroxide with UV light to lift the yellowing from the plastic. No specialty equipment, no secret techniques, just a clean and methodical process from the first screw to the last.

The Tycoon2FA phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform that Europol and partners disrupted on March 4 has already returned to previously observed activity levels.

Microsoft led the technical disruption, which involved seizing 330 domains part of Tycoon2FA’s backbone infrastructure that included control panels and phishing pages used in attacks.

However, the disruption caused by the law enforcement was short-lived, as CrowdStrike noticed the cybercrime service return to normal operational volumes within days.

“Falcon Complete observed a short-term decrease in the volume of Tycoon2FA campaign activity following the takedown, with daily volumes on March 4 and March 5, 2026, reducing to 25% of pre-disruption levels,” reads CrowdStrike’s report.

“However, this volume subsequently returned to pre-disruption levels, with daily levels of cloud compromise active remediations returning to early 2026 levels.”

First documented by Sekoia roughly two years ago, Tycoon2FA appeared online as a PhaaS platform dedicated to targeting Microsoft 365 and Gmail accounts, featuring adversary-in-the-middle mechanisms that enable bypassing two-factor authentication (2FA) protections.

A month later, Trustwave reported that Tycoon2FA’s operators were actively improving the platform, adding new, advanced features, and enticing more cybercriminals to purchase access.

Tycoon2FA is a significant actor on the phishing scene, with Microsoft reporting that it generated 30 million phishing emails per month, accounting for 62% of all emails blocked by the tech giant.

According to CrowdStrike, Tycoon2FA is back in business using largely unchanged techniques, tactics, and procedures (TTPs), and supported a diverse set of illegal activities, like business email compromise (BEC), email thread hijacking, cloud account takeovers, and malicious SharePoint links.

After the disruption action, Tycoon2FA has been used in malicious email campaigns that relied on malicious URLs and shortener services, legitimate platforms such as presentation tools, where redirection mechanisms are abused, and also compromised domains.

Interestingly, some of the old infrastructure remained active, indicating that the disruption was incomplete, while new phishing domains and IP addresses were registered quickly following the law enforcement operation.

Regarding the observed post-compromise activity, this includes the creation of inbox rules, hidden folders for fraud emails, and preparation for BEC operations.

Ultimately, CrowdStrike comments that, without arrests or physical seizures, it’s easy for cybercriminals to recover and replace the impacted infrastructure. As long as the demand from the phishing ecosystem is high, the motive for PhaaS platform operators remains unchanged.

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The Kubernetes community retired Ingress NGINX this month after years of under-resourcing. The migration scramble it triggered is now consolidating around one open source beneficiary, and Traefik Labs announced that convergence at KubeCon today.

For years, the kubernetes/ingress-nginx project ran on borrowed time. Maintained largely by one or two volunteers working evenings and weekends, it had accumulated technical debt that the community couldn’t sustainably address.

In November 2025, Kubernetes SIG Network made it official: ingress NGINX would retire in March 2026. No more releases, no more bug fixes, no more security patches. The Kubernetes Steering Committee followed up in January 2026 with language that left little interpretive room: organisations remaining on ingress NGINX after retirement “are vulnerable to attack.”

Ingress NGINX was not a minor component. Depending on the analysis, between 41 and 50 percent of internet-facing Kubernetes clusters used it. It shipped as the default ingress controller in RKE2 (SUSE’s enterprise Kubernetes distribution), IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, and Alibaba ACK, among others.

The retirement deadline created a near-simultaneous migration event across the industry, and at KubeCon CloudNativeCon Europe in London today, Traefik Labs announced the outcome of that scramble: IBM Cloud, Nutanix, OVHcloud, SUSE, TIBCO, and additional platform vendors have each independently selected Traefik Proxy as their replacement.

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The technical case for Traefik’s selection rests primarily on compatibility. Most ingress controllers require teams to rewrite their Ingress resources when migrating away from ingress NGINX, because each controller interprets annotations differently. Traefik built a specific NGINX Provider that translates ingress NGINX annotations into Traefik configuration at runtime, meaning teams can swap the controller without modifying a single Ingress resource.

The company claims coverage of more than 90 percent of annotations actively used in real migrations, a figure it arrived at by instrumenting migration tooling and analysing actual annotation usage patterns rather than attempting to support every annotation in the specification.

The vendor quotes collected in the announcement reflect the range of use cases these platforms cover. Nutanix’s Dan Ciruli noted that K3s has used Traefik as its default ingress controller for years, and that the retirement “validates the decision we made years ago.”

SUSE’s Peter Smails confirmed that Traefik will become the default in RKE2 starting with v1.36, replacing ingress NGINX as the distribution default. OVHcloud’s Jacques Murez positioned the choice around Gateway API readiness. TIBCO’s Devu Heda described Traefik as already powering ingress for both customer deployments and TIBCO’s own SaaS control plane infrastructure.

This last point matters for how Traefik Labs frames its commercial opportunity. The company’s open source product, Traefik Proxy, is MIT-licensed and accounts for the migration wave being announced today. But Traefik Labs is also selling Traefik Hub, an enterprise platform that adds API Gateway, AI Gateway, MCP Gateway, and API lifecycle management on top of Traefik Proxy, deployable via a single Helm chart upgrade.

The ingress NGINX retirement is, from the company’s perspective, not just a migration event but an entry point: engineering teams that are already updating their networking layer are positioned to evaluate whether to extend that investment into API management.

Traefik Proxy has 3.4 billion Docker Hub downloads and 62,000 GitHub stars, making it one of the most widely deployed open source networking projects in cloud-native infrastructure. Traefik Labs was founded in 2016 by Emile Vauge, who now serves as CTO, with Sudeep Goswami appointed CEO in February 2024.

The company is headquartered in both France and the United States. It has raised $11.1 million across two funding rounds, with Balderton Capital, Kima Ventures, and Elaia among its backers, a relatively modest capital base for a company whose open source software sits in front of a substantial fraction of the world’s containerised production workloads.

Jay Leno climbed into the cab of a Tesla Semi, settled into the center seat, and eased the truck forward with a fully loaded trailer in tow, right there on the tarmac outside his garage. The 500 mile range variant, and by all accounts it felt planted and composed from the moment it started moving, even with another Semi trailing behind it.

The drive was as smooth as you could ask, with no clunks or pauses during gear changes. Three motors pushing all of that torque straight to the rear axles, and the vehicle performed like a dream, with no difficulty or drama. Leno commented on how normal the center driving position felt after he was settled in, despite the fact that the cab does taper in little as you go up for optimal airflow. He just glided through several easy curves and straight stretches, and the cabin was quiet enough for normal conversation.

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Dan Priestley, Director of Semi Truck Engineering at Tesla, rode along and walked Leno through some of the finer details as they drove. The front axle does the heavy lifting during hard pulls and climbs before stepping back at highway speeds to reduce drag and conserve energy, a smart piece of engineering that keeps efficiency high without any unnecessary mechanical overhead. Leno put his foot down more than once and the response was immediate, yet the ride stayed completely composed throughout. Braking on the downhill sections was handled almost entirely by regeneration, keeping the air brakes quiet the whole way down.

Weight is central to how the Semi stacks up against its diesel competition. The Long Range model comes in at around 23,000 pounds curb weight with a gross rating of 82,000 pounds, helped along by a federal allowance that lets electric Class 8 trucks run up to 2,000 pounds heavier than conventional diesel rigs to account for the battery mass. That gives it enough headroom to hit its advertised 500 mile range with a competitive payload on board, though that payload does fall somewhat short of the 70,000 pound figure that diesel tractors can typically manage once trailer weight is factored in.

The long range pack covers 500 miles, while the shorter 325 mile variant drops a battery module to shed weight and tighten the turning circle to something closer to a passenger car. Charging peaks at 1.2 megawatts and gets the truck back to 60 percent in around half an hour, which lines up neatly with the rest breaks drivers are already taking. Priestley mentioned a projected million mile battery life built around the same 4680 cells Tesla uses across its lineup, and the Semi has already racked up more than 13 million miles in real world fleet use to back that claim up.

After several years where didn’t hear much from Denon’s Home speaker series, the Japanese brand has whipped up a brand new range, and it’s got Dolby Atmos support across the entire range.

The range is made up of the Home 200, Home 400, and Home 600; which sort of but not quite replace the previous models. The Denon Home 150, Home 250 and Home 350 haven’t been wiped from existence, but they’ll be bundled in their own group, dubbed the Home 1.0.

You’ll be able to operate the Home 1.0 and Home 2.0 systems through the same app, unlike some rivals who decided to cordon off their older products from their more recent models (cough, Sonos, cough).

You’ll be able to play music to the old and new speakers within the same Denon HEOS ecosystem, though of course you won’t be able to stereo pair models across generations. You can, however, pair the speakers with the Denon Home 550 Soundbar to create a surround system.

In fact, the you can use a sole Home 600 speaker, which can split the audio signal into left and right channels to create the sense of two rear speakers.

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Almost the same price across all speakers

Pricing for the new models is as follows

• Denon Home 200 — $399 | £299 | €349
• Denon Home 400 — $599 | £449 | €499
• Denon Home 600 — $799 | £599 | €699

Which is better than expected given that it’s been almost seven years since the Home 1.0 launched, and the prices are still relatively in a similar ballpark.

The Home 400 is the same price (in the UK at least) as the Home 250, and it’s the same case for the Home 350. The Home 200 is the one where the price has shot up, from £219 to £299. These aren’t necessarily equivalent devices with the Home 200 featuring virtual Dolby Atmos support.

New look, new sound

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The new Denon Home series share a “unified design and performance philosophy” that Denon says is built for modern living. There’s a choice of Stone of Charcoal finishes (we do like the Stone look), with physical controls used (depending on the device, they’re either on the side or top surface); and there’s support for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB-C audio, aux-in.

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What ties the experience together is Denon’s HEOS app, through which you can connect up to 64 HEOS products (AV receivers, mini systems, etc) across 32 zones in your home. High-resolution audio support is provided from Tidal, Amazon Music and Qobuz; while you can stream audio with Spotify Connect as well.

We’ve heard the new speakers in the flesh and they sounded good, with an emphasis on rich, warm sound, decent bass thump and a wide soundstage. We also heard how they play with Dolby Atmos music, the soundstage stretching quite high with the Home 600 to create a sound bigger than the speaker itself.

It remains to be seen how well this new era of Denon’s Home speakers with Sonos set to release new speakers in 2026, and Bluesound releasing more models. But you can find out for yourself how good the Denon Home 2.0 serie is, as they’re on sale now from Denon and authorised retailers.

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If the Sonos app saga still has you down, Denon has three new multi-room speakers that give you some fresh alternatives. The company’s Home 200, Home 400 and Home 600 offer audio flexibility with other HEOS-enabled products. These new devices were also designed so that they blend in with home decor better than most speakers, coming in stone and charcoal color options for that purpose. As you progress up in number, the speakers not only get physically larger, but their sonic output is also more robust.

The Denon Home 200 houses three drivers and three amplifiers for “natural, room-filling sound” in a compact speaker. More specifically, you get two 0.98-inch tweeters and a single 4-inch woofer. The Home 200 looks a kind of like the Sonos Move 2, although Denon’s new compact unit isn’t portable. However, you can use a pair of them for a stereo setup, or connect two 200s to Denon’s Home Sound Bar 550 and Home Subwoofer for a 5.1 home theater system.

Next up is the Home 400, which carries two 0.75-inch tweeters, two 4.5-inch woofers and six amplifiers, in addition to two 1-inch up-firing drivers. Here, Denon says you can expect “a wide, airy soundstage” that provides room-filling audio coverage. What’s more, those upward-facing drivers project sound overhead, so there’s a greater sense of dimensionality and immersion here.

The Home 600 is the largest speaker in the new trio, with dual 6.5-inch woofers alongside two tweeters, two midrange units and two up-firing drivers. Denon explains that this configuration offers “deep, authoritative bass” that provides more depth in your tunes than other two models.

All three of the new Home speakers have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth USB-C and aux connectivity with the wireless streaming powered by Denon’s HEOS tech. As such, you can connect these Home speakers with up to 64 other HEOS devices — including A/V receivers and Denon’s new DP-500BT turntable — and arrange your audio gear in up to 32 different zones. You’ll have access to tunes from Tidal, Amazon Music HD and Qobuz in the HEOS app, and all three new Home speakers support Dolby Atmos Music where available.

The Home 200, Home 400 and Home 600 speakers are available today for $399, $599 and $799 respectively. They’re available from Denon directly or other authorized retailers.