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 Stephen T. Stone doing the one of the only things you can still do when the feds continue to fail in their quest to find the dreaded antifa — be sarcastic about it:
Wow, it’s almost as if antifascism is an ideology instead of an organized hierarchial group and the biggest domestic terrorism threat in the United States comes from right-wing groups such as anti-government militias~. Imagine that~.
In second place, we've got a double winner from Thad that also took second place over on the funny side. It's a response to the usually-reliable claim that Republicans aren't stupid, but rather know their claims are bullshit:
Are you sure? Because I find it very easy to believe that Donald Trump Jr. really is just that stupid.
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous response to the insistence that Google is a monopoly:
But a monopoly in what? In mobile phone stuff, maybe—can one realistically use non-Apple mobile phones without a Google account? They have about 80% of the market last I checked, and I've heard that some apps won't work without the proprietary Google services available. But saying their search engine is anticompetitive is perplexing.
The first Google result for "search engine" is "17 Great Search Engines You Can Use Instead of Google"; then a couple of German results for some reason, then Startpage and a Wikipedia page. Google have paid Apple and others for promotion, but it's super easy to switch to a bunch of others. I can't think of many things with less lock-in than search engines. (I switched from Altavista to Google after using it once, then to DuckDuckGo when Google started banning anonymous access. Didn't take a minute to update the bookmark.) Barr using this as an example of anticompetitive behavior can be seen as a shibboleth of a low-quality lawsuit and/or Barr's unfamiliarity with the market.
Next, it's Stephen T. Stone with a simple question about the claim that social media networks are desperate to silence conservatives:
Then why doesn’t Twitter get rid of those conservatives? Twitter has that right. The conservatives can go to Parler and build their little shitpile there; they have no legal right to force Twitter into hosting speech.
(Answer: Twitter, like Facebook, is bending over backwards to be nice to conservatives so the service doesn’t appear “biased”. An account that reposts Trump’s tweets verbatim would get [and has been] suspended/banned for saying the same exact thing as Trump. How is that not “special treatment” for conservatives?)
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is David with a response to Stephen's first-place insightful comment above:
Man, you sound like a brain-washed radical leftist (checks notes) DHS homeland threat assessment.
We've already had the second-place double winner, so we'll move straight on to the editor's choice with Zonker responding to the DOJ's argument that the generic use of "Google" as a word is evidence of a monopoly:
I keep getting Comcasted every time I call customer support about my cable service.
I'm also sick and tired of being Verizoned every time I hit the limit on my unlimited phone plan.
Finally, it's Rocky with a simple question for someone spreading some supposedly-censored news:
Wow! How did you even hear about that if it was censored?
That's all for this week, folks!
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Typo on the second place winner there, that one's Thad's, not mine.
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Oops. Fixed.
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You don't want to take credit for it? That's some Confucian honesty you have there!
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Eh, if I place on the insightful and/or funny list I want it to be because I earned it, not due to a simple mistake in identity.
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Conservatives are complaining because some websites block or remove hate speech, qa non
Bullshit conspiracy theory's, racist content or block users who post such extreme content
Meanwhile they can post almost anything on 4chan or Conservative websites
They want twiitter to host All Their content
regardless if its good bad or hateful and harmful
American websites have the right to remove or moderate bad content spam and anything
that's off topic
I would not expect a local church website
to host content that insults Latino s or black Americans and is spreading weird conspiracy theory's about Bill Gates and covid vaccines
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It begs repeating, again and again...
...that Thad's line of "Wow, it’s almost as if antifascism is an ideology instead of an organized hierarchial group..." is among the most tragic sarcasm possible.
Because the fact that there are people trying to make anti-fascist ideology appear evil means that the US has a non-insignificant proportion of it's citizenry being bona fide fascists.
I'd advocate searching youtube for "Let's talk about the danger of being moderate". The man brings to the table the concept that the most dangerous person of all isn't the monster in the KKK wanting to lynch black men or the Proud Boy threatening to gun down liberal voters.
The most dangerous person to democracy is the vast majority of moderate people who keep treating the monsters as a side to be compromised with. The true "moderate" position to open racism, misogyny or bigotry is "No, HELL No!".
The US "moderate" position has instead become "let's meet them halfway and be bipartisan"
And that has the current US citizenry openly debating issues which would have the members of the Greatest Generation reaching for their sidearms. And wondering how come the US suddenly looks so much like Germany in their day.
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i’m sorry whose line is it
🙃
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Re: Re: Re: place on the insightful and/or funny list
"because I earned it, not due to a simple mistake in identity."
Nice to see how honesty plays out. Do unto others, etc.
To quote Old Mugwump, 10 Feb 2017 @ 1:48pm
I can't stand people who claim credit for the work of others
Just ordered 2 shirts and the coffee mug.
There is a special place in hell for people like Shiva Ayyadurai who claim credit for the work of others.
I personally used email before he claims to have invented it. (Yeah, I'm not "old" mugwump for nothing.)
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170209/13555136678/some-new-techdirt-t-shirts-hoodies- more.shtml
It's almost like we all need to help each other out at the moment for some reason.
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Re: It begs repeating, again and again...
And frankly, antifascism is not even an ideology, like round-earthism is not a geological school. Fascism is an ideology. Rejecting that ideology as a bad idea, even in resonance with others, does not constitute an ideology in itself. There just are too few unifying aspects covered by antifascism to make it an ideology rather than, at best, an idea.
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It is if it encompasses more than a mere “rejection” of fascism. Antifascism often means more than simply trying to depose a fascist from a position of power, after all. People who subscribe to antifascist ideologies actively fighting against not only fascists in power, but the ideologies and conditions that led to them getting power in the first place. For an antifascist, fighting against racism can be as important as — and maybe more important than — fighting a fascist president who uses racism as a springboard for getting into office.
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My bad! Not sure how I mixed that up.
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Whoops. My bad. Editing the above. 😅
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Re: It begs repeating, again and again...
[EDIT]
That'd be Stephen T. Stone's line. Mea Maxima Culpa. Many apologies.
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