Mike Masnick

Mike Masnick
Masnick at an awards event hosted by Public Knowledge in 2012
Born
Michael Masnick

(1974-12-08) December 8, 1974
United States
OccupationEditor
Known for

Michael Masnick (born December 8, 1974)[1] is an American editor and entrepreneur. He is the CEO and founder of Techdirt, a weblog.[2]

He coined the term "Streisand effect" on the Techdirt blog in January 2005 and was interviewed about it three years later on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.[3]

In 2010-2012, Masnick played an important role in the SOPA-PIPA debates, "propell[ing] Techdirt into the single most important professional media site over the entire period, overshadowing the more established media."[4]

In a 2019 essay titled "Protocols, Not Platforms", Masnick observed that social media platforms were in a "crisis" of content moderation, being accused both of being too lenient on hate speech and misinformation, and of stifling free speech.[5][6] Masnick proposed that this could be addressed by developing protocols that allow individual users to filter content according to "their own tolerances for different types of speech."[5][6] The essay inspired Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to launch the Bluesky research initiative, which later became a social media startup of its own.[6] In August 2024, Masnick joined the board of Bluesky.[7]

References

  1. ^ Masnick, Mike (2008-10-21). "The Uneasy Balance Between Wikipedia And Truth". Techdirt. Retrieved 2024-04-20.
  2. ^ Hill, Kashmir (2023-07-29). "An Internet Veteran's Guide to Not Being Scared of Technology". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-04-20.
  3. ^ Robert Siegel (February 29, 2008). "The Streisand Effect' Snags Effort to Hide Documents". All Things Considered. National Public Radio. The episode is the latest example of a phenomenon known as the "Streisand Effect." Robert Siegel talks with Mike Masnick, CEO of Techdirt Inc., who coined the term.
  4. ^ Benkler, Yochai; Roberts, Hal; Faris, Robert; Solow-Niederman, Alicia; Etling, Bruce (2013). "Social Mobilization and the Networked Public Sphere: Mapping the SOPA-PIPA Debate". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2295953. ISSN 1556-5068.
  5. ^ a b Chayka, Kyle (2025-04-07). "Bluesky's Quest to Build Nontoxic Social Media". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2025-09-27.
  6. ^ a b c Masnick, Mike (2025-08-21). "Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech". Knight First Amendment Institute. Retrieved 2025-09-28.
  7. ^ Perez, Sarah (2024-08-06). "Bluesky adds Techdirt founder Mike Masnick to its board". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2024-08-11.
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