A Non-Existent ‘Stranger Things’ Secret Episode Briefly Broke Netflix
from the adjust-your-tinfoil-anntenae dept
The story of Netflix these past several years has been a fairly consistent one, told primarily across a few main pillars. The company has begun hitting subscriber adoption issues as it raised prices, raised them some more, and then raised them even further, all as the company attempts to gobble up more live content, largely sports streaming, all while experiencing occasional service failures with the backend not being able to keep up with the usership. It’s a strange confluence of events, with Netflix clearly attempting to build up more content, particularly live content, all while not having enough beef behind the platform to support peak usage despite consistently raising prices.
But it’s one thing to occasionally experience usage disruption in the middle of a massive live event, such as the Mike Tyson fight from a few months ago. It’s an entirely new level of embarrassing when content that doesn’t exist causes service disruption, as just happened briefly this past week.
If you have no idea what “Conformity Gate” is, I’m both jealous and curious how you ducked it. Netflix recently aired the series finale of Stranger Things. It got mixed reviews, but a very vocal crowd had major problems with it and explained it all away with the idea that it was a fake ending (I won’t go into details, it’s all out there for you to find if you like) and that a secret new ending episode would be dropped on January 7th. While Netflix was mostly silent on this theory that exploded throughout social media and the internet, the show’s stars and creators were fairly vocal about how the theory wasn’t true. Enough people didn’t belive them, however, such that on January 7th the platform briefly had trouble keeping up with the number of people attempting to log in and find this non-existent episode.
Netflix experienced a service disruption on January 7, 2026, at around 8 p.m. ET, which coincided with the time fans anticipated a secret ninth episode of Stranger Things 5 dubbed “Conformity Gate.”
The theory, widely circulated on platforms like TikTok and Reddit, falsely claimed that the finale released on December 31 was a decoy and that a real ending would be revealed in a surprise episode. “Netflix crashed after many fans thought a secret final episode of ‘Stranger Things’ was dropping tonight,” posted Culture Crave on X (formerly Twitter). Pop Base confirmed, “Netflix crashed as ‘Stranger Things’ fans anticipated a secret ninth episode of the final season. Nothing dropped.”
Again, we have a confluence of failures here that all contributed to this. Netflix clearly didn’t invest enough of its price-hike money into its platform to be able to handle peak load generally for situations like this. The platform also didn’t do nearly enough to temper the public’s expectations as speculation and this Conformity Gate conspiracy theory ran wild. Netflix did finally put some messaging out with a vague confirmation that all of the series episodes were currently live for streaming. That obviously wasn’t enough.
Was this a huge deal? Probably not. Was it a prolonged outage? Not really. But it’s an event that exposed where Netflix has placed its priorities when it comes to its streaming platform and how it has spent the millions of extra dollars it has raked in through price hike after price hike.
And if the company really wants to expand into more and more live streaming events, it’s not a great sign that a non-event could crash the platform like this.
Filed Under: conformity gate, expectations, stranger things
Companies: netflix
Kristi Noem: ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Says ICE Can Legally Thwart Congressional Oversight
from the we-serve-no-one-but-ourselves dept
Whatever the stated reasons for doing this, we all know what this really is: another effort from the Trump regime to put as much distance between it and accountability.
Even before DHS head Kristi Noem decided it’s now suddenly legal to force congressional oversight to notify ICE of impending inspections, her agency was making public statements claiming it was going to start arresting visiting congressional reps for obstruction if they failed to comply with ICE’s unlawful refusals to provide access to detention centers.
Those assertions were followed almost immediately by ICE doing exactly what Noem and other officials promised: a middle finger to the law and its oversight. The following months brought more reports of ICE denying access to members of Congress, as well as other attempted arrests or threats of obstruction prosecutions.
Then it got quiet for a bit as ICE did other, far more awful things all around the nation, often while accompanied by CBP and Border Patrol officers, if not members of the US military. But now that ICE has once again lets its murderous impulses get the better of it, Kristi Noem is now pretending she has the legal authority to demand prior notice for detention facility inspections.
A day after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem quietly ordered new restrictions on congressional visits to immigration detention facilities.
That order, put into effect Thursday by the Trump administration and revealed in court late Saturday, forces lawmakers to seek a week’s advance notice before conducting oversight visits to ICE facilities. That new policy appears to explain a conflict that unfolded Saturday, when three House Democrats from Minnesota were denied entry to a detention facility in the Whipple federal building in Minneapolis.
The order [PDF] isn’t actually an order. It’s just a memo saying Kristi Noem wants this to happen and thinks she has the legal authority to make it stick. Here’s the opening of the memo, which pretends ICE has been suffering such an onslaught of protests, this is the only way to make sure it remains intact in the future.
In June 2025, following significant and sometimes violent incidents at ICE facilities, I directed that requests by Members of Congress to visit an ICE facility be submitted at least seven days in advance of the visit. DHS also determined that because ICE field offices, including holding facilities, are not detention facilities, they are not subject to the same requirements as detention facilities. On December 17, 2025, in Neguse v. ICE, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia stayed this guidance, concluding that DHS’s policy is inconsistent with Section 527(b) of the Department’s appropriation.
First, no request needs to be made. Second, no request is legally subject to the DHS’s arbitrary seven-day waiting period. Third, the memo explicitly admits its policy is illegal under current law and court precedent.
Here’s where the memo gets particularly Trumpian:
I disagree with this decision, but as even the district court explicitly acknowledged, funds deriving from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) “are not subject to Section 527’s limitations.” Accordingly, effective immediately, and to ensure compliance with this court order, I am issuing this new policy.
There it is: Kristi Noem saying she’s going to start demanding seven-day’s notice because “I disagree with this decision.” It’s also a very selective quoting of the order by the DC Court, which made it clear that (1) DHS couldn’t pretend ICE field offices were subject to the same oversight inspection rules, and (2) that even though additional funding from the Big Beautiful Big might be exempt from Section 527’s oversight provisions, there was nothing on the record indicating this additional funding was being used to solely to fund detention centers. That means the funding is intermingled with funds covered by Section 527, which means ICE can’t claim its facilities are exempt from that funding’s requirements.
The end around Kristi Noem proposes is this: that any visits by congressional oversight should be logged so they any ICE expenses during these inspections are taken from the Big Beautiful Bill funding, rather than ICE’s regular budget. It’s a meaningless distinction, since it’s just ICE securing funds after the fact to justify the seven-day lead time demand. It’s a budget being reverse-engineered for the sole purpose of thwarting accountability efforts.
And because it’s just a dodge meant to head off future litigation and congressional action, it is of course couched in the us vs. them language this administration is so fond of:
The basis for this policy is that advance notice is necessary to ensure adequate protection for Members of Congress, Congressional staff, detainees, and ICE employees alike. Unannounced visits require pulling ICE officers away from their normal duties. Moreover, there is an increasing trend of replacing legitimate government oversight activities with circus-like publicity stunts, all of which creates a chaotic environment with heightened emotions.
This is the Trump regime cliché: anything it doesn’t like is just a “stunt” being pulled by the people it considers to be its political inferiors, if not inferior human beings. The Trump administration is nothing but a string of political stunts, punctuated occasionally by illegal actions and acts of unjustified violence. There’s no irony being lost here. This is a post-irony presidency. This is hypocrisy at scale, perpetrated by people who are leaning into this hypocrisy as hard as they can because they honestly don’t care what anyone thinks as long as they’re able to get what they want.
Filed Under: authoritarian bullshit, detention centers, dhs, ice, kristi noem, mass deportation, oversight, trump administration
I Support The Protests
from the and-you-should-too dept
I support the protests.
I want to say this out loud. I support them.
If you support the protests, you should tell everyone you know that you support them.
Some of us have jobs, commitments, health conditions, or other circumstances that prevent us from marching with our fellow citizens in the streets. But for those of us who cannot march out of love for our country and to protect our fellow citizens from the criminal bullies who have stolen our federal government, we must feel free to tell everyone that we support the marchers.
Tell your boss at work. Tell your coworkers. Tell your neighbors. Tell your family. Let everyone know you support the marchers.
This does not make you a radical. It makes you part of the human race.
The marchers are defending constitutional government. They’re defending the rule of law. They’re defending your rights and mine. They’re standing up to criminals who wage unconstitutional war, who shoot citizens in the streets, who violate every principle this country was founded on.
Supporting them isn’t extreme. Silence is extreme. Silence is collaboration. Silence is choosing the side of the criminals.
You don’t have to march to matter. You don’t have to risk arrest to resist. You just have to stop pretending neutrality is an option when your government is killing people.
Say it: I support the protests.
Say it to everyone. Say it at work. Say it at home. Say it to strangers.
This is how majorities recognize they’re majorities. This is how isolated people realize they’re not alone. This is how the criminals learn there are more of us than there are of them.
I support the protests. So should you. And you should say so.
Out loud. To everyone.
That’s not radicalism. That’s citizenship.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, free speech, protests, renee nicole good, speak up
Following Murder Of Renee Good By ICE Officers, ICE Blocks Congressional Reps From Its Detention Facility
from the rule-of-law-party-at-it-again dept
ICE killed a US citizen in broad daylight for the apparent crime of not being sufficiently intimidated when surrounded by ICE officers. Renee Good was shot by ICE officer Jonathan Ross, who selectively leaked his recording to a right-wing news outlet in apparent hopes of shoring up the administration’s swiftly crumbling narrative.
The wagons are circling even tighter — a metaphor that ICE has made extremely apt now that it’s just the extension of the administration’s xenophobic id: an invading force that’s meant to rid America of anyone not sufficiently white enough to “deserve” to live in the United States.
It’s back on its old bullshit, continuing to pretend it’s not legally obligated to allow members of Congress to tour its detention facilities. DHS and ICE have claimed (without legal support) that they need advance notice, citing unspecified “security” concerns of the “national” variety. The government continues to place obstacles in the path of congressional representatives who are engaged in acts that are supported by law and legal precedent: oversight of ICE operations.
To be sure, there are plenty of reasons ICE doesn’t want congressional reps touring its detention facilities. First and foremost, ICE doesn’t seem all that interested in treating its indefinite detainees humanely. Even when confronted by courts about these constitutional deficiencies, ICE has flat out refused to comply with court orders demanding a full accounting of detainee conditions. Not only that, but visiting reps are more likely than not to come across the occasional US citizen who’s being denied their rights while ICE decides whether or not to believe the citizenship documents it’s been provided.
Last December, the DC Circuit Appeals Court ruled against ICE, upholding Congress’s right to inspect immigration detention facilities. Not that it matters to ICE and other federal components (and it’s pretty much all of them) involved in Trump’s mass deportation program. And I’m sure the DHS will just pretend that ruling has no bearing on its recent obstruction efforts in Minneapolis, Minnesota, even though the federal law it’s violating is effective everywhere in the nation — not just in places where the government has been successfully sued.
Here’s how things look in Minneapolis, one of the more recent targets of Trump’s vindictive, anti-Democratic party wrath:
Three Democratic members of Congress from Minnesota, including House representative Ilhan Omar, were blocked from entering an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center located near Minneapolis on Saturday morning.
[…]
During a press briefing, Omar explained that they were initially allowed inside the facility but were soon told to leave. “Shortly after we were let in, two officials came in and said that they received the message that we were no longer allowed to be in the building and that they were rescinding our invitation to come in and declining any further access to the building,” she said.
First of all, Congress has a right to perform unannounced inspections. No one needs an “invitation.” Since congressional reps don’t need an invitation, ICE doesn’t have the option of “rescinding” something it never had the right to offer in the first place.
Following that by kicking out the people who oversee your work and vote on your budget is so fucked up that it boggles the mind. It’s like a tenant evicting a landlord. Things just don’t work that way and these reps should have called ICE’s bluff and bore witness to any efforts made by officers to restrict access and/or force these representatives to leave the building. So, while it’s nice to have this flouting of the law on the record, the end result looks like a missed opportunity to further expose the administration’s utter disrespect for the rule of law.
At least we have whatever the hell this is to take with us from this secondhand experience:
Omar and her colleagues said they were informed the reason for the denial of access was because the facility’s funding came through the Big Beautiful Bill Act, and that this funding source was being used to justify restricting their visit.
Do what now?
ICE is claiming that because the facility was funded with federal funds derived from a federal budget bill members of the federal government who voted for (or against) this funding bill were not allowed on the premises. Never mind the thing I said about evicting the landlord. There’s nothing in the common vernacular that’s analogous to this bizarre assertion by the government.
Unfortunately, the party in power will make sure violating the law remains the status quo. Court orders are being ignored and violated regularly by federal agencies and officers. And the Democratic party still seems unwilling to deploy some of its more nuclear options, either out of fear of failure or a fear of jeopardizing their own political futures. But we’re well past the point of considering these tactics to be optional. If they’re not willing to sacrifice themselves to save a nation, they’re in the wrong business.
Filed Under: angie craig, dhs, ice, ilhan omar, kelly morrison, mass deportation, minneapolis, minnesota, trump administration
Daily Deal: The 2026 Canva Bundle
from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept
The 2026 Canva Bundle has six courses to help you learn about graphic design. From logo design to business cards to branding to bulk content creation, these courses have you covered. It’s on sale for $20.
Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.
Filed Under: daily deal
Tom Homan: If Democrats Don’t Stop Calling Us Murderers, We’re Just Going To Be Forced To Keep Murdering You
from the the-abuser's-lament dept
The murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE officer Jonathan Ross has certainly created quite the divide between the reality-based majority of the population who doesn’t want masked unaccountable federal law enforcement goons invading cities they have no business being in and shooting people for saying “dude, I’m not mad at you” and trying to drive away… and the fantasy-land MAGA folks who are bending over backwards to justify the murder.
Late last week the video from Ross’s phone was released (why Ross was filming Good is a whole separate issue, but shows how Homeland Security is much more focused on producing memes, not doing actual law enforcement), which MAGA cultists pretended exonerated Ross. It did no such thing. It made him look way, way worse.
He deliberately placed himself in front of the vehicle. He walked around the car filming Good and her partner. As can be clearly seen in the video, Good turned steering wheel of her car all the way to the right such that the car was not heading towards Ross and could not hit him. And he shot her three times anyway, once through the windshield and twice through the open driver-side window. Even if you could (and you can’t) argue the first should was potentially justified if he thought the car was coming towards him, the fact that he easily stepped aside and then continued firing shows that it was not justified at all.
And, of course, his first words after murdering a woman in broad daylight in the middle of the street was: “fucking bitch.”
So her last words: “Dude, I’m not mad at you.” His first words after murdering her: “fucking bitch.”
And then, of course, there’s what was discussed last week: how the MAGA faithful immediately began lying and claiming she was a “domestic terrorist” with multiple people trying to twist the story to claim she somehow “deserved” this.
One of the leaders of the goons, “border czar” Tom Homan, (who appears to have gotten away with taking $50,000 in a paper bag from federal officials pretending to be business owners seeking favors from Donald Trump) went on Meet the Press on Sunday and talked about how Democrats need to stop calling ICE murderers or they’ll have no choice but to murder again:
The transcript is as ridiculous as it is chilling:
We gotta stop the hateful rhetoric. Saying this officer is a murderer is dangerous. It’s just ridiculous. It’s gonna infuriate people more which means there’s gonna be more incidents like this, because the hateful rhetoric is not only continuing, it’s gonna be double down or triple down.
It’s the classic abuser’s lament: if you didn’t want me to hit you, why were you so mean to me.
First of all, the ones ramping up the “hateful rhetoric” have been the MAGA faithful. They’re the ones spreading baseless conspiracy theories, insisting that Good was a “domestic terrorist” or a “paid agitator.” This is the same thing Homan, Gregory Bongino, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and Donald Trump have been doing for months, encouraging ICE to see the public as enemies to be fought, not a public they are supposed to be protecting.
Second, if federal agents are so fragile that people calling them names means they’re going to murder people, they shouldn’t be federal agents at all. They shouldn’t be allowed to handle firearms, frankly.
This is textbook authoritarian blame-shifting: create the conditions for violence through dehumanizing rhetoric, then blame the victims when violence inevitably occurs. And it’s not just Homan. The entire MAGA ecosystem is working overtime to justify this murder and preemptively excuse the next one.
Case in point: Fox News columnist Dave Marcus, who wrote this weekend that “wine moms” protesting ICE’s occupations, invasions, and law breaking is somehow a criminal conspiracy of “wine moms.”
Say what?
Marcus’s piece is transparently absurd—he’s claiming that citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to criticize federal agents constitute a criminal conspiracy—but he gives away the real game a few paragraphs in. Good and these other “wine moms'” actual “crime” wasn’t obstructing justice. It was mocking ICE agents in a manner that hurt their feelings:
The video of Good and her partner heckling and, let’s be honest, goading ICE officers with an obnoxious smugness that makes most people’s skin crawl, is just one of many.
It’s difficult to think of something more “obnoxiously smug” than a Fox News columnist insisting that after an ICE agent murdered a woman in broad daylight for protesting ICE’s actions… we should blame protesting women.
We see these self-important White women doing it in video after video after video, taunting cops, insulting journalists or even bystanders, often with a weird and disturbing glee.
The inclusion of “journalists” in that list is also telling in multiple ways. First off, the MAGA world is way more famous for “insulting journalists.” Hell, it’s part of Trump’s daily activities to insult and taunt journalists. I can’t find any example of Marcus complaining about that. But it sounds like if wine moms make fun of him for his journalism, well, that just means they deserve to be shot in the face?
But, more to the point: obnoxious smugness, heckling, and even goading federal officers is textbook First Amendment-protected speech. Criticizing government officials, even obnoxiously, is perhaps the core function of the First Amendment. Marcus seems to have confused “speech that annoys federal agents” with “criminal conspiracy.” And he’s using his own confusion to justify murder.
All of this, of course, is coming straight from the top. Late yesterday, Donald Trump told the press gaggle on his plane that murdering Good was acceptable because “the woman and her friend were highly disrespectful to law enforcement” and that “law enforcement should not be in a position where they have to put up with this stuff.”
Yes, he is literally justifying murder by his personal police force by claiming that being “highly disrespectful” (i.e., engaging in First Amendment-protected speech) makes the use of deadly force “necessary.”
Also note how Trump himself reveals that all the retconning nonsense by his MAGA faithful that the shooting had nothing to do with how Good spoke to Ross was all pretext. This was always about whether or not you kiss the boot in front of you. If you don’t—if you are “highly disrespectful”—Trump and his cronies think they can shoot you. And if you complain about it, they can shoot more people.
The state sponsored murders of wine moms will continue until morale improves.
You can see how fragile and pathetic these men are. They are so desperate to subjugate and suppress people who disagree with them politically. They seemed to think that once they were in power, the public would love and admire them for their power. Instead, the vast majority of Americans see them for what they are: pathetic, insecure man-babies in way over their heads.
So, now their only recourse is to ramp up the threats. To say that if you actually call out their criminal actions, such as murder, for what they are, they’ll just be forced to murder more critics and protestors.
They will never take responsibility for their own actions. They will never reflect on their own culpability. Because to reflect would require admitting what everyone already knows: they have no argument. They have no legal justification. They have no constitutional authority for what they’re doing.
All they have is the authoritarian’s playbook: dehumanize your critics, commit violence, blame the victims, and threaten more violence if the criticism doesn’t stop. It’s the logic of every tinpot dictator in history, now being deployed by federal law enforcement on American streets.
There is no question that they’ll murder again. Homan has already promised they will. And it’s why we need to keep exercising our First Amendment rights to speak out against this authoritarian nonsense, rather than capitulating and letting them win.
Filed Under: abuse, dave marcus, dhs, donald trump, ice, murder, renee nicole good, tom homan
Microsoft CEO Laments Criticism Of “AI Slop,” Causing The Whole Internet To Double Down On Criticism Of “Microslop”
from the have-you-considered-no-longer-being-terrible dept
We’ve noted more than a few times how Microsoft’s use of AI in journalism has been an embarrassing mess. Microsoft’s steadily deteriorating MSN websites have been criticized for years for the lazy use of AI slop, resulting in numerous false headlines, fake stories, and low-quality engagement trash. Like Google and others, the pursuit of impossible scale has made quality and usefulness an afterthought.
Microsoft’s also been broadly criticized elsewhere when it comes to its rushed adoption of AI, whether it’s the privacy implications of the company’s Windows 11 “recall” feature, or forcing the install of Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant on smart TV owners who never wanted it and can’t uninstall it. Microsoft also adores forcing copilot integration into Windows 11 in ways, again, nobody asked for and often can’t disable.
Copilot may very well be useful to some people; but like most tech companies, Microsoft’s rushed, ham-fisted adoption has been a bit of a tone-deaf mess. And it actively undermines the stuff that LLMs can actually accomplish. This is before you get to the environmental impact of AI, or its quickly-expanding, guardrail-optional use in global military imperialism at the hands of insane autocrats.
This all recently resulted in some fairly significant backlash for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella recently shared a fairly innocuous end-of-year post at LinkedIn.
Most of the short post isn’t really all that interesting or incorrect; he notes that AI is stumbling through a phase where we’re beginning to sort between “spectacle” and “substance,” something that’s likely to result in a big bubble pop this year due the chasm between real-world usefulness and broad tech company misrepresentation of AI (he doesn’t really acknowledge that latter part, of course).
Where Nadella got into trouble was apparently this part, where he fairly innocuously laments the rising criticism of “AI slop.” It was first highlighted by Windows Central:
“We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication,” Nadella laments, emphasizing hopes that society will become more accepting of AI, or what Nadella describes as “cognitive amplifier tools.” “…and develop a new equilibrium in terms of our “theory of the mind” that accounts for humans being equipped with these new cognitive amplifier tools as we relate to each other.”
Nadella’s problem here is he dismissively puts the onus on the consumer when it comes to “getting beyond” concerns about AI slop. That dodges any responsibility for the very rich people and companies dictating the entire trajectory of AI to start using it more responsibly.
They aren’t so far; most wealthy tech leaders see AI largely as a way to undermine labor and create a giant lazy badly-automated ouroboros of shallow clickbait garbage that shits out ad engagement cash with very low lift. Often these efforts redirect money away from human artists and journalists and creators into the pockets of some very sleazy people operating with clearly zero ethical guardrails.
The press aggregation machine (much of it ironically now badly automated) latched on to Nadella’s demand that people stop calling it AI slop, immediately resulting in people doubling down on AI slop criticism in a way that made “Microslop” trend across the internet.
Automation, broadly, certainly has its uses and is, generally, not going away. The backlash to AI is, in many ways, tethered tightly and unavoidably to a growing disdain for wealth disparity at the hands of the authoritarian-simping extraction class keen on eliminating literally all ethical oversight of industry.
A great way for billionaires like Nadella to diffuse this growing animosity about their rushed, clumsy, non-transparent, integration of language learning models into everything (whether you like it or not) in ways that aren’t ethical or useful is to, you know, stop doing that. Another great step might be to stop kissing the ass of authoritarians who are actively destroying democracy, civil rights, and the rule of law?
It sounds like many people might be willing to get over AI slop once the billionaires in charge of its development, trajectory, and implementation stop doubling down on AI slop, and stop being tone deaf, irresponsible assholes.
Filed Under: ai, ai slop, automation, billionaires, journalism, llms, msn, satya nadella
Companies: microsoft
No comments:
Post a Comment