As the very first nontheatrical Star Trek feature (one that’s debuting almost a decade after Star Trek Beyond), Star Trek: Section 31 seems like the sort of project that could have easily felt too “made for TV” to tell a satisfying story that does its characters justice. But Section 31 is firing on just about all of its cylinders, and even though Discovery is behind us at this point, the movie charts an exciting new course for Star Trek’s potential future.
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Star Trek: Section 31 is firing on all cylinders
Michelle Yeoh was an icon long before Star Trek: Discovery, but her performance as Captain Philippa Georgiou was part of what reenergized her career and put her on track to win a much-deserved Oscar in 2023. Though Discovery changed after Yeoh’s exit in season 3, there was hope that Georgiou’s story might continue on when news first broke about CBS being interested in another spinoff series with her as its centerpiece. Because of delays related to the covid-19 pandemic, Paramount Plus’ Star Trek: Section 31 from director Olatunde Osunsanmi was reworked into a movie rather than a show — a move that gelled with Discovery executive producer Alex Kurtzman’s optimistic vision for further explorations into this era of the franchise.
You don’t really need to have seen Discovery to dive into Section 31. But it definitely helps to know a bit about how, after the original Philippa Georgiou’s death in season 1, her alternate-universe counterpart took her place and brought an entirely different kind of energy to the USS Discovery. While the Prime universe’s Georgiou was a compassionate leader who believed in the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet’s mission to peacefully explore the galaxy, her Mirror universe double was a ruthless tyrant who embodied the fascism of the Terran Empire.
By the end of Discovery’s first season, it was clear that Emperor Georgiou was turning a new leaf and sticking around to become part of Section 31, a covert team of operatives tasked with missions that run counter to Starfleet’s professed beliefs. Georgiou and the rest of Section 31 frequently returned in Discovery’s subsequent seasons as morally dubious allies / foils to the show’s heroes. But Star Trek: Section 31 explains how exactly Georgiou was convinced to join Starfleet’s clandestine team of lethal space spies.
Most of Section 31 takes place in Georgiou’s present, where she has become the owner of a seedy nightclub (which is also a spaceship) parked somewhere beyond Starfleet’s jurisdiction. But the movie opens in the past when young Georgiou (Miku Martineau) was one of the many Terran children locked in a battle royale meant to decide who would become the Empire’s next leader.
Other than her fellow contestant San (James Hiroyuki Liao / James Huang in flashbacks), no one understands the pain that defined Georgiou’s adolescence. And while adult Georgiou has come a long way since her days of ruling the Terran Empire with an iron fist, she is still haunted by her memories of San and the things she did in her quest for power. Digging a bit deeper into Georgiou’s backstory is one of the ways Section 31 sets itself up to work as both a continuation of threads from Discovery and a jumping-off point for this era of Star Trek. It gives you a taste of the darkness that made her such a compelling Discovery villain and the internal turmoil that lent itself to her eventual antihero turn. But it also helps you understand why Section 31 agent Alok (Omari Hardwick) comes looking to recruit Georgiou to his team for a top-secret mission that could use her special skills.
For all of the thorny philosophical questions about Starfleet and Star Trek’s core ideals that Section 31 (the organization) raises, there is a comedic lightheartedness to the film’s presentation of Alok’s team. Like Georgiou, Shapeshifter Quasi (Sam Richardson), ersatz Vulcan Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok), and telepath Melle (Humberly González) each have unique talents and iffy principles that make them perfect for doing Starfleet’s off-the-books dirty work. But the goofy way they clash with exoskeleton pilot Zeph (Robert Kazinsky) and human Starfleet officer Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl) often makes this iteration of Section 31 feel more like a Guardians-style group of ragtag misfits than an elite squad of wetworks soldiers.
That energy serves Section 31 fairly well as it lays out the high-stakes heist Alok needs Georgiou’s expertise to pull off. There’s a bioweapons engineer who has cooked up something so dangerous that Starfleet (unofficially) sees killing him as an acceptable measure if it means Section 31 can secure his creation. But the movie’s tendency to err on the comedic side makes it feel a little awkward in moments when it tries to get serious about Georgiou’s personal demons and what Section 31’s existence really says about Star Trek’s framing of the Federation as a utopian society.
Image: Jan Thijs / Paramount Plus
Yeoh is clearly having a ball chewing every bit of scenery she can get her hands on as Section 31 plucks Georgiou out of her club — a place that looks like a glitzy fusion between The Fifth Element’s Fhloston Paradise and Star Wars’ Galactic Senate — and drops her into the proverbial deep end. At times, the movie’s blend of humor and flashy action sequences that result in a few Section 31 members’ deaths makes it seem like Paramount wants this to play like Star Trek’s answer to Warner Bros.’ Suicide Squad franchise.
It’s a fun vibe that gives the entire cast a chance to ham things up, but whenever Section 31 slows down to zoom in on Georgiou’s inner turmoil, you can sense how much more substance there could have been to these characters if they were fleshed out over the course of a series.
To its credit, Star Trek: Section 31 doesn’t entirely feel like a movie cobbled together from scrapped TV show ideas. It works as a standalone story and leaves its surviving characters with a new status quo that feels primed for more exploration in future projects. With so many newer Star Trek shows having recently been canceled, it’s easy to imagine Paramount looking at its Section 31 feature as an experiment to see how interested viewers might be in seeing Georgiou mix it up from week to week.
This trial run feels like a success because of the way Star Trek: Section 31 leaves you wanting more, and while a full-on follow-up series might not be in the cards, it could very well be the beginning of a new era of streaming surprisingly fun Star Trek features.
Star Trek: Section 31 hits Paramount Plus on January 24th.
Technology
Pocketpair follows Palworld’s success with new indie publishing label
“Pocketpair Publishing provides comprehensive support for game development through funding, development assistance, and publishing for indie game developers and small studios,” Pocketpair wrote in its press release.
We don’t even have to wait long for the company’s first game. Pocketpair Publishing has teamed up with Tales of Kenzera: Zau developer Surgent Studios to produce its next title, a horror game slated for release later this year. Surgent Studios was founded by video game voice performer and on-screen actor Abubakar Salim. After launching Tales of Kenzera, an afro-futuristic metroidvania, the company was forced to furlough its games division due to lack of funding — a common occurrence that’s become endemic over the last two years.
The indie game space has not been insulated from the effects of the layoff crisis that’s plagued the game industry. The big publishers, from which smaller indie outfits typically receive funding, are tightening their belts, choosing to either keep their cash or only dole it out to projects they believe are sure to make money. And even the publishers known for supporting quality indie games, like Annapurna Games, are having a hard time staying in operation.
However, Pocketpair Publishing joins a group of new companies that have entered the indie games space via non-traditional means. In 2022, YouTube video game critic and content creator videogamedunkey, created his own publishing company Bigmode which published its first game, Animal Well, to critical acclaim last year. Also last year, Innersloth, developers of the wildly-popular murder mystery multiplayer game Among Us, established Outersloth, which is an indie game fund rather than a traditional publisher. Like Outersloth and Bigmode, Pocketpair Publishing is seeking to parlay its commercial success into an avenue for more indie games like Palworld to get made.
“Game development comes with many challenges,” said Pocketpair Publishing head John Buckley. “But we want to ease that process as much as possible and provide an environment where creators can pursue their dreams.”
Technology
Spacetech Voyager is aiming for a multi-billion valuation IPO
Voyager Technologies has filed its confidential paperwork to go public, according to multiple media reports. The defense and space company has raised over $215 million from investors like Afterburner Capital and Balerion Space Ventures, according to PitchBook. The Denver-based company will likely be valued between $2 billion and $3 billion, and Morgan Stanley and Latham & Watkins are expected to lead the IPO, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The company, founded in 2019, has a wide set of offerings, from propulsion technologies for defense purposes to building in-space infrastructure. Voyager has also forged powerful partnerships in the industry, linking up with Palantir to integrate Palantir’s AI into Voyager’s offerings.
Technology
The Samsung Galaxy S25 is getting a new storage option, but I wish it went further
Our Samsung Galaxy Unpacked live coverage may have wrapped up, but we’re still feeling the excitement of seeing the new Samsung Galaxy S25, S25 Plus, S25 Ultra, and all-new S25 Edge revealed unto the world.
The new flagship Galaxy lineup brings with it a handful of upgrades for each of the three models, with increased RAM, new AI tools, and the blazing-fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset.
One of the upgrades that caught my eye during the livestream was the announcement of a new storage tier for the baseline S25, which now comes in a 512GB storage option in addition to the existing 128GB and 256GB variants – but, for some reason, not in the US.
The 512GB storage tier was previously limited to the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus and S24 Ultra. But this small change gives UK and Australia-based customers a lot more flexibility when it comes to finding the right sizing and storage capacity for them.
The S25 Plus measures 6.7 inches diagonally, so getting more storage previously meant picking up a rather large phone. Keen photographers, gamers, or long-term users who prefer a smaller Galaxy phone now have the option of carrying around half a terabyte of storage in the form of the 6.2-inch S25.
At £959 / AU$1,599, I actually think this high capacity handset is very reasonably priced. It certainly undercuts the 512GB model of the iPhone 16, which comes in at a hefty $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,949. Overall, a very pro-consumer choice – good job, Samsung.
However, part of me thinks Samsung could have gone a little further with this year’s baseline Galaxy flagship when it comes to storage. Though it may seem crazy to say to those of us who can remember the days of 16GB being the default, I think we’re getting close to the logical end of the 128GB default.
With generative AI offering new ways to create different types of content, and phone makers continuing to focus on high-resolution mobile photography, users have more ways to fill up their storage than ever before. This, combined with the deflation of component prices over time should, in my opinion, spell the end of 128GB flagships sooner rather than later.
Though still enough space for light to medium users, the baseline S25’s 128GB storage option now sticks out like a sore thumb in the company’s lineup. I’d love to have seen Samsung push forward and break this standard before it becomes noticeably outdated.
Of the ‘big three’ phone makers – Apple, Samsung, and Google – Samsung is especially renowned for fitting its phones with high-spec components. A higher standard storage would’ve given the S25 an edge over the Pixel 9 and iPhone 16, both of which sport 128GB as standard and both of which won’t be upgraded until much later in the year.
Still, I’m happy with the lineup we’ve got – as mentioned, this is one of the most competitively priced baseline flagships on the market, and if raising the standard storage tier would incur a price hike then perhaps keeping it steady was the right move. And those who pre-order an S25-series phone get a storage upgrade on the house anyway, doubling your storage for no extra cost.
Our Samsung Galaxy Unpacked live blog is winding down, but for a rundown of the events be sure to check out our Samsung Galaxy Unpacked recap. And for our initial impressions of the new Galaxy phones, be sure to check out our hands-on Samsung Galaxy S25 review, hands-on Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus review, and hands-on Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review.
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The Proud Boys Are Plotting a Comeback. And They Want Revenge
Though they mobilized in a few instances in support of Trump ahead of the 2024 election, it was, overall, fairly lackluster, especially compared to 2020. This drove speculation that the gang was on its last legs.
Then, on Monday, as Trump was taking the oath of office, more than 100 uniformed Proud Boys marched through the streets of Washington, DC, led by their south-Florida chapter.
It was a striking scene—one that seemed intended to send a clear message: “We’re back.”
Ever since January 6, 2021, DC has been perceived by the far right as a no-go zone for Trump supporters of all stripes. But on Monday the Proud Boys chanted “Whose streets—our streets.” They received a hero’s welcome by other Trump supporters in the crowd, as seen on video recorded by freelance journalist Ford Fischer.
On Tuesday, as bureaucratic snafus delayed the release of about a dozen January 6-ers from the DC jail, protesters gathered outside. Among them were at least four uniformed Proud Boys. Though three of them had their faces covered, they milled around with what appeared to be zero concern about stigma from others present. Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes, whose 18-year sentence for seditious conspiracy was commuted by Trump, also appeared outside the jail—having walked free from a federal prison in Maryland the previous night.
One of the Proud Boys present spoke at the impromptu rally outside of the jail, identifying himself as “Harry Fox.” (This was the same name that other Proud Boys had given to reporters on Inauguration Day.)
“Donald Trump is back, baby. He is back, and he is stronger than ever,” he said over the microphone. “I’m so proud of what the American citizens did that day,” he added, referring to January 6, “for standing up finally after decades of being abused and oppressed by an authoritarian regime.”
He ended his speech with the Proud Boys slogan: “I am a Western chauvinist, and I will not apologize for creating the modern world.” The crowd cheered.
Tarrio, in his phone call to Jones on Tuesday, made it clear that he views the role of the Proud Boys as being no different to what it was four years ago—he sees them as the foot soldiers and the muscle of the GOP. “I think the future of the club will be what it’s always been,” said Tarrio. “A group of men that love America, get around and drink beer, and protect Trump supporters from being assaulted … We will defend ourselves and Trump supporters from being assaulted for their political views.”
He suggested that he feels vindicated by Trump’s election victory and decision to pardon almost everyone involved in the January 6 riot. “We went through hell, and I’m gonna tell you: It was worth it,” Tarrio told Jones. “What we stood for and what those guys stood for is what we’ve been fighting for, is what we saw yesterday on the inauguration stage … I can’t tell you it’s been easy. But I will tell you it’s been worth it.”
Technology
CNN is building a new streaming service nearly three years after killing its last one
CNN is developing a new streaming service — and it sounds a lot like the one it shut down nearly three years ago. In an internal memo shared with The Verge, CNN CEO Mark Thompson says the service will give viewers the ability “to stream news programming from us on any device they choose” as part of a broader restructuring plan.
CNN jumped on the streaming bandwagon in 2022 with the launch of CNN Plus, a short-lived service that shut down after just one month. Thompson doesn’t say whether the new service will mirror the content on its linear channel, or if it will stick to original programming, similar to CNN Plus.
“It’s early days but we’ve already established that there’s immense demand for it not just in America but across much of the world,” Thompson wrote. “We’ll have more to say about this new digital product in the coming months, including content plans and how we will work with our existing and future distribution partners to bring this to market.”
Along with the new streaming service, Thompson’s memo also said Alex MacCallum, CNN’s executive vice president for digital products and services, will announce the company’s “first lifestyle-oriented digital product” and a “major pivot to digital video.”
As part of these changes, CNN will lay off six percent of jobs, making up around 200 employees. Thompson says the company “doesn’t expect total headcount to fall much this year” because of a $70 million investment from CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, The Hollywood Reporter says.
Technology
Passbolt raises $8M for its open source password manager for teams
Password managers have become commonplace at this point. But businesses often have different needs than consumers. Teams, after all, often have to share credentials to access resources, all while IT and security teams need ways to control who has access to them. Passbolt, which is announcing an $8 million seed round Thursday, aims to become the de facto password manager for small and midsize businesses, with ambitions to serve enterprise customers in the long run.
The Passbolt team, led by its France-born CEO Kevin Muller, argues that most organizations are not served well by what he argues are more consumer-oriented tools like Bitwarden or 1Password. “You look at Bitwarden, for example, or even 1Password, what they are doing is they have, at one end, a simple password management for the workforce, and then they built a secret manager — or they purchased a secret manager — for the DevOps teams, and then they build something else for authentication,” Muller said. “So it’s quite fragmented. And one of the problems is that these tools, most of the time, cannot talk to each other. They are very much standalone.”
Muller previously founded e-learning platform Click on French and ran a web development consultancy in India. He founded Passbolt in 2017, together with Remy Bertot and Cédric Alfonsi, after previously prototyping the opens source community edition for a few years.
The service is based, in part, on Keepass, the popular open source password manager, but as Muller stressed, KeePass was never built for them. KeePass itself is already widely popular with technical teams, but it essentially creates a single static file where credentials are securely stored, he noted. This can easily be shared among team members, but because of that, there is no way to easily control who has access to it and there is no way to audit access (or revoke it), among other things.
“What we wanted was more collaboration, more security, and more control,” Muller said. “With control I mean: How do we install it behind our firewall on a server that we manage? How do we have it interoperable? How do we share passwords, secrets, and all types of credentials granularly?”
Over the course of the last few years, the team added features like native desktop apps, password expiry and rotations, a tool for getting two-factor authentication codes, and role-based access controls for using Passbolt’s own user interface. One of the next features on the horizon is support for managing passkeys.
In the long run, the Passbolt team would also like to challenge the more enterprise-centric Privileged Access Management (PAM) services like CyberArk, Muller told me.
Today, Passbolt offers a free community edition that users can self-host, as well as a self-hosted Pro edition ($49/month for 10 seats) with additional features like LDAP provisioning, single-sign-on support, activity logs, and more. Like so many other open source projects, Passbolt also offers a hosted solution (starting at $54 per month for 10 seats.
About 38,000 teams use the free version, with 2,000 paying for Passbolt’s services. The majority of users (75%) opt to self-host.
As Muller stressed, the code is regularly audited, and Passbolt is SOC2 Type II certified.
Passbolt, which is based in Luxembourg and currently has about 30 employees, actually reached profitability in the summer of 2024. But the team still decided to raise in order to capitalize on the current growth and to keep up with feature requests from its users.
The company’s Series A round was led by Netherlands-based Airbridge Equity Partners. Existing investors Expon Capital’s Digital Tech Fund, ScaleFund, Seeder, Dedicated, Bondi Capital, Carricha Capital, and LBAN also participated, along with angel investors like Christophe Bianco (co-founder of Excellium Services) and Xavier Buck (co-founder of Datacenter Luxembourg).
“Legacy password managers like KeePass or Bitwarden and Privileged Access Management solutions such as CyberArk fall short for today’s cross-functional, distributed and agile teams,” said Rick van Boekel, managing partner at Airbridge Equity Partners. “Passbolt’s organic traction across various industries confirms the demand for a more collaborative, enterprise-grade solution, and their impressive SaaS metrics prove that Passbolt users are delighted with the solution offered.”
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Your Personal Note-Taking Assistant Is Just $39.99 for Life
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‘He’s got a lot of work to do’: Severance actor Tramell Tillman teases what lies in store for Seth Milchick in season 2 of the hit Apple TV show
- Severance star Tramell Tillman has teased what’s in store for Seth Milchick in season 2
- This season’s premiere revealed that Milchick had been installed as the Severed Floor’s new boss
- Tramell says his character “doesn’t know if he’s ready” to fill predecessor Harmony Cobel’s boots
Severance actor Tramell Tillman has teased what we can expect to see as part of Seth Milchick’s season 2 arc.
Speaking to me around one month before Severance season 2‘s debut on January 17, Tillman hinted that the Apple show’s next chapter will be a high-stakes affair for his character.
Major spoilers immediately follow for Severance season 1’s finale and this season’s premiere. Turn back now if you’re not caught up.
In the first episode of the hit Apple TV Plus series’ sophomore outing, it was revealed that Milchick had been promoted by Lumon Industries in the supposed five-month gap between season 1’s ending and this season’s opening entry. Indeed, after Harmony Cobel was ousted as Severed Floor manager last season, Milchick has been installed as her replacement, so he’s now overseeing the division that Mark and other members of the Macrodata Refinement (MDR) team work in. You can remind yourself what else happened in this season’s first installment via our Severance season 2 episode 1 recap.
But I digress. Last season, the charming but menacing Milchick had Cobel to hide behind if anything went wrong on his watch. Now that he’s the Severed Floor’s new boss, though, the buck stops with him – and that, according to Tillman, will present numerous challenges to his authority and skillset. Oh, and likely drive up his stress levels significantly.
“He’s got a lot of work to do,” Tillman mused. “You know, he’s been thrust into this position very rapidly. At the end of season 1, there’s no Severed Floor manager, so I’m the only one left [that Lumon can turn to]. Seth has been tapped to step in so, as great a mentor as Harmony has been to him, Seth has to take up the reins and we’ll see how he deals with that.
“The stakes are incredibly high. This new position of leadership is a foreign one to him, and I think there’s a part of him that doesn’t know if he’s ready. So, we’ll see if he rises to the occasion.”
If you’ve only just found out that Severance‘s latest season is out now on one of the world’s best streaming services, you’ll want to read all about it in my Severance season 2 guide, especially with episode 2 releasing tomorrow (January 24). Alternatively, read my Severance season 2 review for some clues about the mystery-thriller’s next few chapters, or check out more of my coverage in the articles linked below.
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Technology
The Global Far Right Is Celebrating Trump’s New World Order
In the first 48 hours of President Donald Trump’s second term in office, he has taken action on virtually every single culture war topic that has excited his base for the last 12 months, including the signing of dozens of executive orders targeting immigrants, gender expression, the environment, and DEI policies.
Trump has also pardoned or commuted the sentence of every single person that took part in the violent insurrection on the Capitol in 2021. Meanwhile, his close ally Elon Musk has invigorated an even more extreme wing of Trump’s supporters, by making a Nazi-like salute on stage—twice—in front of thousands of people in DC and millions watching on TV.
Trump’s actions have generated a lot of excitement among the far-right in the US. They’ve also been hailed as a blueprint by an adoring fanbase of far-right lawmakers, extremist influencers, and white supremacist groups across the globe. And those people and organizations now believe that Trump’s actions should not only be copied, but taken to the next level.
“It is more than just a political success,” Martin Sellner, the far-right activist and leader of the Identitarian Movement of Austria, wrote on his Telegram channel. “It is a metapolitical victory: the end of wokeness and trans ideology, stopping illegal immigration and many other ideas have been normalized in society.”
“These extremists think that this is the way to go, that their countries need to take a lesson from what Trump is proposing, and they need to not get weak about it, and not let woke activists get in their way, because everybody knows that the right thing to do is get rid of the immigrants,” Wendy Via, the CEO of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, tells WIRED.
Sellner, who once communicated with the Christchurch massacre shooter, is best known for popularizing the white nationalist concept of “remigration,” the idea to ethnically cleanse western nations of all non-white citizens. That extremist ideology has gained traction among other far-right groups in Europe, including Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Freedom Party of Austria. Trump even promoted “remigration” in September.
Now, Sellner believes that Trump’s return to the Oval Office signals a moment to take his agenda mainstream.
“By pushing further into the realm of the ‘unspeakable’ we move out of the defensive and truly shift the Overton Window to the right for the first time,” Sellner wrote. “Even if you think Trumpism goes far enough, you should support the radical flank.”
Sellner is not alone in Europe. Across the continent, far-right figures praised Trump’s actions on migration and gender, and called for leaders in their own countries to follow suit.
In France, the Generation Identity group, the youth wing of the far-right Identitarian movement, wrote on Telegram: “Remigration in full swing. Identitarianism has won ideologically, it will only take time for this victory to be reflected in the material world.”
In Ireland, Keith Woods, the far-right influencer and ally of US white supremacist Nick Fuentes, shared a clip of Musk’s Nazi-like salute with the caption: “Ok maybe woke really is dead.” Irish UFC fighter Conor McGregor, who has aligned himself with Ireland’s far-right community in recent years, was in the Capitol for the inauguration and met with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. McGregor praised Trump’s immigration policies, and wrote on Instagram, “Ireland and its human trafficking racket needs absolute dismantling! It is a breach of our security and our sovereignty. For me it is A NATIONAL EMERGENCY.” (McGregor has recently said that he is considering running for president in Ireland, which is a symbolic role without any real power.)
Technology
Meta’s MAGA heel turn is about much more than Trump
On today’s episode of Decoder, we’re diving into an especially messy set of ideas. It’s been a chaotic couple of weeks for big tech companies as the second Trump administration kicks off an unprecedented era of how we think about who controls the internet. Meta’s changed its rules to openly allow more slurs and hate speech on its platforms, TikTok was banned and sort of unbanned, and a bunch of tech CEOs attended the second Trump inauguration.
There’s a major collision, or maybe merger, happening right now between billionaire power and state power and everyone who uses tech to communicate — so, basically everyone — meaning everyone is also kind of stuck in the middle.
I invited Kate Klonick, a lawyer as well as an associate professor at St. John’s University School of Law, to try and help me work through the different ways the Trump administration is handling companies like Meta and TikTok — and the very concept of free speech online. As you might have guessed, there are a lot of inconsistencies. But the one thing that unites all of this mess is just how big these companies are and how they’ve drafted the Trump administration into some big geopolitical battles.
Kate just returned to the US after more than a year in Europe studying how those countries are thinking about the internet, and she’s got a lot of thoughts about how these geopolitical conflicts are shaping the present and future of online speech and the internet itself. And these fights are having a real impact on how regular people experience these platforms.
Just a few weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg made a big announcement about shifting content moderation on Meta platforms — he’s getting rid of fact-checking in favor of crowdsourced community notes, and his new terms of service allow a whole lot of bigoted and transphobic content that used to be at least nominally against the rules.
You can read this as a MAGA heel turn from Zuck, and certainly his new haircut suggests a man approaching middle age grasping to reclaim the confidence of youth. But these moves are also international in scope: the EU’s Digital Services Act imposes some potentially very heavy and expensive regulations on social media platforms, and if Trump likes Zuckerberg and Facebook enough, maybe he’ll go fight Europe on Meta’s behalf.
We don’t need to guess at this — this is very much what Zuckerberg himself is saying he wants out of Trump. Pretty bluntly, Zuckerberg is trading transphobia for a new kind of trade war.
This kind of wheeling and dealing is going to define how tech companies handle Trump 2.0 — here at The Verge, we’re calling it gangster tech regulation, and there’s a lot to unpack. There’s also, bluntly, the Trumpiness of it all — a theory of power that is entirely focused on outcomes and doesn’t pay any attention to the legitimacy or fairness of the process that arrives at those outcomes, which creates huge opportunities for open corruption and, well, dictator shit.
That’s what we’ve seen this week with the TikTok ban, which is another victim of the geopolitical war for control of speech on the internet. Congress passed a law that banned TikTok unless the app was divested of Chinese control, but Trump has simply decided to ignore that law for political gain, even though ignoring the law carries such huge penalties that Apple and Google aren’t taking the risk of having TikTok back on their app stores.
Now, Trump is saying he’ll force a sale and that he wants the US government to own 50 percent of TikTok, an idea so problematic that Kate and I found it hard to even list all the First Amendment issues it would cause.
If you’d like to read more about the stories and topics we discussed in this episode, check out the links below:
- Welcome to the era of gangster tech regulation | The Verge
- Trump signs order refusing to enforce TikTok ban for 75 days | The Verge
- Inside Zuckerberg’s sprint to remake Meta for the Trump era | The New York Times
- The internet’s future is looking bleaker by the day | Wired
- Meta is highlighting a splintering global approach to online speech | The Verge
- Mark Zuckerberg lies about content moderation to Joe Rogan’s face | The Verge
- Meta’s ‘tipping point’ is about aligning with power | The Washington Post
- Meta is preparing for an autocratic future | Tech Policy Press
- Meta surrenders to the right on speech | Platformer
- We’re all trying to find the guy who did this | The Atlantic
Decoder with Nilay Patel /
A podcast from The Verge about big ideas and other problems.
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The old and New Edition cast comes together to perform You’re Not My Kind of Girl.
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Sports8 years ago
Ethical Hacker: “I’ll Show You Why Google Has Just Shut Down Their Quantum Chip”
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Business8 years ago
Uber and Lyft are finally available in all of New York State
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Entertainment8 years ago
Disney’s live-action Aladdin finally finds its stars
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Sports8 years ago
Steph Curry finally got the contract he deserves from the Warriors
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Entertainment8 years ago
Mod turns ‘Counter-Strike’ into a ‘Tekken’ clone with fighting chickens
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Fashion8 years ago
Your comprehensive guide to this fall’s biggest trends
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