Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the some-people-say dept

This week, our first place winner is an anonymous comment summing up how there are no good guys in the Epic/Apple showdown:

Epic is railing against the very thing they recently started doing: Forcing their customers to use their own store (and launcher) to run their products. It's not exactly the same since the games they sell are their own products but it's not all that dissimilar. There were outcries of antitrust when they did that, too.

I do hope Epic is able to at least force Apple and Google to allow alternative app stores to be installed on devices where users can go to purchase apps from outside Apple/Google's walled gardens. They're unlikely to be much better than sideloading random apps but they'll at least be convenient and the alternative stores will have a vested interest in keeping their offerings clean.

Fuck Apple and Google but also fuck Epic. They're all a bunch of greedy assholes.

In second place, it's That One Guy with a simple observation about Trump's attacks on TikTok:

What a coincidence...

Funny how the company only became a massive national security concern worthy of not one but two(so far) blatant abuses of power in the form of EO's after a bunch of kids used it to punk him.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with PaulT responding to some thoughts about Australia's proposed rules about Google changing its algorithms:

"Doesn't this mean that Google can't enact algorithm changes to take down/suppress speech"

Google can't take speech down (unless it's hosted on Google Cloud). They can only stop pointing people to where it's located.

Which is where they reveal their hand here. They know that newspapers depend on Google traffic to survive online, so they don't want to lose any of that - Google have already shown they have no problem cutting a country off completely if the media try and charge them for the traffic they send them. But, they also need to pretend they're the only reason they can no longer make money offline. Any honest organisation would already have their robots.txt file uploaded.

"Of course this (probably) wouldn't effect specific instances of 'bad content', but it would mean they couldn't be innovative with search results in general very fast."

It basically means that Google will be legally prohibited to reacting to attempts to game the SEO system and siphon traffic away from newspapers and toward scammers. They would be legally unable to deal with any scam for a full month. That should be fun to watch.

Next, it's Rocky with a simple response to the perennial, unconsidered assertion that private companies have replaced the public square:

Name just one commercial platform that has replaced the public forum.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is That One Guy with a quick response to someone complaining about supposed hypocrisy on executive orders from the left:

'Curse those fictional 'left wingers' in my head!'

Please be considerate to other posters and clean up your strawman after you're done with it.

In second place, it's an anonymous commenter with a question about the portion of Australia's planned Google rules that require the company to tell media businesses "how they can gain access" to data about Google products:

So here's a question... is Google actually required to provide said access, or just tell them how they can gain it?

Murdock corp: Tell us how!

Google: Become a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with DannyB responding to the attempt by telcos to tell the FCC that broadband caps are "popular":

While it may be true that Broadband Caps are very popular, they are still less popular than Death.

When looking at the numbers alone, Death is the all time most popular single thing in human history! (it is appointed unto man once to die. Heb 9:27)

While Taxes are also extremely popular, they are second to Death, but somewhat higher in popularity than Poverty or Slavery.

While vast numbers of people have chosen ISPs that have broadband caps, thus proving the popularity of broadband caps, some of them then discover they have the problem that they cannot wear both their Broadband Cap and their MAGA cap at the same time.

Finally, it's Toom1275 with a thought about the phrase "confused critic of Section 230":

...But you repeat yourself.

That's all for this week, folks!

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