Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the "the-discourse" dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is PaulT responding to a comment that offered a partial defense of ICE with a reminder about human rights:

"On the other hand, they are breaking the law and know that"

For a lot of immigrants, this is the better choice. Break the law or face certain death/rape/starvation? You'd be a lawbreaker too.

"They are also not US Citizens with the guaranteed protection of the Constitution"

If you think that you need the protection of the US constitution to get basic human rights, that says more about you than the people in the cells.

In second place, we've got That One Guy who pushed back a bit on one of our recent examples of content moderation fails:

Of all the times not to include the 'If you can't read/see the tweet it says' bit...

The 'offending' tweet in question:

'If gay people are a mistake, they're a mistake I've made hundreds of millions of times, which proves I'm incompetent and shouldn't be relied upon for anything.'

"And it's not difficult to see how a random content moderation employee would skim a tweet like the one flagged above, not recognize the context, the fact that it's an attempt at satire, and flag it as a problem."

No, it really is hard to see how someone could read that and not realize it was satire/humor. The only way it could have been more obvious is if they opened it with 'THIS IS SATIRE' in bold.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment that expands on the first place winner above, since that left out other important point:

Even if it were, the Constitution is mostly a series of statements about what the government must, can, and cannot do. Rarely does citizenship enter into it.

The portions of the Bill of Rights that say that the government cannot do what they're currently doing (the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments, from what I can see) do not qualify their statements: 5 protects a "person," 6 protects "the accused," 7 and 8 merely state what the Government is not allowed to do under any circumstances.

Next, we've got a comment from Cory Doctorow, who dropped by to underline his call for interoperability in tech:

Not forced interop...adversarial interop

To be clear, I'm not (merely) advocating for forced interop (that is, some kind of API mandate), I'm ALSO advocating for an absolute legal defense for "adversarial interop" that would apply to claims under patent, anti-circumvention, tortious interference, EULA/CFAA violations, etc:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Anonymous Anonymous Coward, who aimed to resolve the question of whether Democrats or Republicans are correct in their hatred of CDA 230:

They're both wrong

Independents blame CDA 230 for causing Republicans and Democrats.

In second place, we've got radix who is understandably less than sanguine about Google's new Stadia service:

10 Google half-asses a new service
20 Few people use it
30 Google cancels the service that few people were using
40 goto 10

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with Stephen T. Stone's simple reaction to Tom Brady's trademark shenanigans:

Now I see why Donald Trump likes the guy: They’re both morons.

And finally, we've head to our post about the court that decided planning to get a warrant was as good as having one. One commenter suggested maybe this "planning to" thing could work as a defense in court too, but this anonymous commenter had a better idea:

Don't even let the situation get that far.

'I swear, officer. I was planning on slowing down before I got in range of your radar.'

That's all for this week, folks!

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  1. icon
    ECA (profile), 16 Jun 2019 @ 12:47pm

    http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/
    This is the Whole thing..NOT PARTS..

    Lets just Suggest..That this is What/how a gov. May be run and that ALL people must control their OWN gov.. But seldom are allowed.

    Rules and controls are put into place, but in the Backdoors and Backend, It seems that they are erased. removed so that THINGS can happen.
    Which is very interesting, as if we as workers were allowed to do this, to a company, WE WOULD be fired/taken to court and JAILED.
    Allot of things happend in the past, that MADE certain controls required. But for some odd/stupid reason either those responsible have forgotten, or they are STUPID and dont understand WHY..
    This is as bad as IP/Copyright lawyers (that dont know the law very well) running around sending threat letters(that we read about) or getting the courts to have a hearing, FOR NOTHING..
    And we Wonder why the Court system is breaking down and takes Months/years to get into..

    that all men are created equal,
    Nice statement, its even in the bible.(I think)

    Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
    Which is to SAY, we are responsible for the idiots we elect..The GOV. isnt supposed to make laws that ARE NOT generally acknowledged BY THE PEOPLE...FOR THE PEOPLE.

    it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
    And If we WANT, we can CHANGE the gov. WE CAN demand they FIX things..

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 16 Jun 2019 @ 1:26pm

    Google cancels a service even if millions of people use it everyday,
    google is mainly a search engine / ad network it hangs on to youtube
    because it gets alot of ad revenue ,
    And it has billions of users .
    I don,t think you can make a youtube account
    , without also making a gmail account.
    Maybe everyone who works at google has a 100meg connection with data no caps .
    meanwhile most ordinary people in the usa have 1 choice of isp ,
    And can only use about 500 gig of data per month without going over their data cap.

    google stadia looks like the 1200 dollar iphone,
    A good product for the upper class rich consumer ,
    Google will cancel a service with a million users if it cant be used to show ads or it is not getting enough new users .
    Or its not bringing in enough revenue.

    You cant fine me officer i was planning to renew my car insurance next
    week,
    that hash in my car is legal,
    i was planning to get a medical cert from a doctor in the future .
    Ignore the broken car lights ,officer
    i was planning to get em fixed someday in the future .

    i,m sorry i got your daughter pregnant i was planning to buy
    condoms before i met her at midnight at the hotel bar.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 16 Jun 2019 @ 2:58pm

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-constitutional-rights-do-undocumented-immigrants-have

    Und ocumented immigrants residing in the U.S. have Constitutional protections.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 16 Jun 2019 @ 6:24pm

    Glancing at the Insider Chat and Ars Technica I suspect that one article from Techdirt is going to reel in plenty of insightful/funny votes, and a heaping dose of Schadenfreude.

    John Smith, out_of_the_blue and Hamilton have bemoaned the demise of John Steele.

    Monday's posts aren't out yet and I can already feel the smackdowns are going to be epic.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Bruce C., 16 Jun 2019 @ 8:21pm

    "On the other hand, they are breaking the law and know that"

    A couple of thoughts:
    1) So fine them 20 bucks per count and let them go back to their business, like Comcast.
    2) At this point, most of the detainees are claiming refugee status, which means they haven't broken the law. They're allowed to apply for asylum at the border. Detaining asylum claimants in concentration camps is new.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    That One Guy (profile), 16 Jun 2019 @ 8:28pm

    Re: "On the other hand, they are breaking the law and know that"

    Nah, if you're going to go with the Comcast standard the fine would have to be less than they made from their actions. Since they haven't made a profit that means they can't be fined anything.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 16 Jun 2019 @ 11:18pm

    Re:

    There's so much that blue and Herrick could have simply avoided if they simply learned to fuck off.

    horse with no name was probably the most infamous iteration of The Anti-Mike. Supporting Prenda Law would do that for your reputation, but he doubled down by not only posting moaning diatribes in defense of copyright, he insulted FightCopyrightTrolls for having the gall to criticize Hansmeier etc. while anonymous.

    The later pseudonyms horse used - Just Sayin', Whatever and MyNameHere - never did reach the same level of notoriety, but Whatever was another barrel of fun for using a copyrighted image of the AMC Ramblers Club for his logo, which he didn't hold the usage rights to. MyNameHere ran a close third for pulling off one of the biggest "just to be clear, I'm breaking up with YOU" hissy fits at the end of 2017, swearing that he would never be back.

    Which didn't end, of course. To be fair his current "John Smith" phase was holding up pretty nicely, and would have held up as some anonymous concerned pro-copyright citizen. Then he had to go on at length about Section 230 and all the rape and murder and arson it inspired, topping it all off with stalker-worthy criticism of Masnick's family because... because he could?

    Hell, even out_of_the_blue today could have painted himself as another "overly concerned citizen" speaking in defense of a "dead" troll... if he didn't shit himself whenever Dark Helmet showed up, and linked to a 8-year-old thread that showed how much of an idiot he was.

    Techdirt's coverage of Hansmeier's sentencing, as you've noted, is going to be epic. I think we can expect Herrick to fluff it up to 300 comments like he did on the Shiva Ayyadurai failure article.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    PixyMisa (profile), 17 Jun 2019 @ 12:47am

    Winner Makes No Sense

    "They are also not US Citizens with the guaranteed protection of the Constitution" "If you think that you need the protection of the US constitution to get basic human rights, that says more about you than the people in the cells." If we grant PaulT's premise, they are fleeing their own countries for the US to gain the protection of the US Constitution precisely because they are denied basic human rights in their own countries. His argument is self-defeating. And morally vapid.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Jun 2019 @ 3:18am

    Re: Winner Makes No Sense

    What guaranteed human right in this world won't put you in a cell for entering a country illegally? Some governments will try you as a spy before a tribunal and execute you without two fucks of care.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Jun 2019 @ 5:28am

    Re: Re: Winner Makes No Sense

    Again I know you xenophobes love your Big Lies but repeat after me. Entering as a refugee is not illegal.

    The some countries appeal is utterly shit too. Some countries once engaged in human sacrifice to make the sun rise. Should we start doing that too or is that restricted to when you want an excuse to justify being a shit country?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. icon
    Stephen T. Stone (profile), 17 Jun 2019 @ 6:16am

    Entering as a refugee is not illegal.

    Try telling that to Trump and his voting base. See how far that gets you with a “Second Amendment remedies” kind of crowd.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. icon
    Toom1275 (profile), 17 Jun 2019 @ 8:25am

    Re: Winner Makes No Sense
    Speak for yourself.

    To those of us with functioning reading comprehension, Paul's rebuttal is morally and logically sound.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. icon
    Thad (profile), 17 Jun 2019 @ 8:26am

    Re: Winner Makes No Sense

    Huh?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  14. icon
    Toom1275 (profile), 17 Jun 2019 @ 8:27am

    Re:

    Markdown y u do dis?
    "speak for yourself" was on a separate line and shouldn't have become part of the quote. Oh well.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  15. identicon
    David, 17 Jun 2019 @ 11:11am

    Somehow this is funny.

    "On the other hand, they are breaking the law and know that"
    When they Europeans replaced the indigenous Americans, they did it with drugs (alcohol), violence, guns, rape and murder and ignoring the laws of the incumbent.

    And now look what they complain about.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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