Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the speak-up dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is E. Zachary Knight, responding to our post about Google moderating our post about content moderation with his own experience:

Yeah, Google Ads' automated moderation tools are garbage. Just a few months ago, they blocked all ads on my site because according to them we were committing copyright infringement. I tried appealing but was denied instantly every single time. I tried removing a few embedded Youtube videos, one of which was copyright claimed by Warner Bros, but that was not the issue. Finally, after no help at all from Google on this, I found out that they considered me linking directly to the mp3 of my own podcast was what they considered copyright infringement. The only way to fix the issue was to remove all links to, again, my own podcast.

In second place, we've got Michael with a response to the latest social media regulatory mess in Germany:

Facebook, Google, and Twitter are actually loving this.

They can afford to navigate this mess. Nobody else can. Germany has handed them a massive gift - no startups can complete. Sure, Germany may eventually make it impossible, but until that happens, it has really just made it impossible for anyone else.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Lebron Paul 2020 about the Louisiana police using a hoax antifa list, taking special note of where the list proliferated:

Uum, question...

"The hoax was promoted on Neo-Nazi websites like Stormfront"

Soooo... how'd these cops come across this document? Asking for a friend

Next, it's Stephen T. Stone with some thoughts on Nintendo's war on ROM sites:

Did crushing Napster help the RIAA push the genie of illicit MP3 filesharing back in the bottle? How about the MPAA putting “watermarks” on DVD screeners? Denuvo has a few stories to tell you about its DRM, and I believe they all end with, “And then it was cracked, too.” Nintendo could literally sue every ROM site out of existence *right now* and it could still not prevent the sharing of ROMs.

So long as the Internet exists, people will find a way to share files that corporations have a much harder time stopping. So long as human nature is what it is, filesharing will be a hydra: Cut off one head and two more shall take its place. Nintendo can kill ROM sites; it cannot kill both human nature and technological protocols. If your personal dogma tells you otherwise, you might want to reëxamine those beliefs.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Capt ICE Enforcer responding to the ninth circuit declining to review the monkey selfie case:

Oh no, now the monkeys have no reason to take pictures. Why, Oh Why!

In second place, it's John Roddy wondering about the insane attorneys fees award in the Comic Con trademark dust-up:

Sooooo, if I embrace the power of puns and start referring to this case as a literal "comic CON", can they sue me for trademark infringement as well?

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with a response from the sarcastically-named I Agree! to the assertion that Germany's social media regulation problems are indicative of all regulation of everything, everywhere:

Exactly. Take for the example, the regulations (i.e. laws) against killing people. They started off as a well meaning attempt to protect the innocent, but now I can't even go and kill the people that obviously need killing. Bah!

And finally, we've got one more anonymous thought about the ironic AdSense moderation of our post about the impossibility of good moderation:

Rule number 1 of content moderation

Don't talk about content moderation

That's all for this week, folks!

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team