Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the dialoguing dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is CSMcDonald, who raised a specific issue with Marco Rubio's comparison of speech he doesn't like to pollution:

As a FL resident....

I would just like to single out this sentence as being particularly amusing given the state of the environment in Florida:
"No policymaker would allow a company to dump toxic waste into a river upstream of a thriving town he is charged with governing."

Hi Marco, are you familiar with the red tides and algae blooms caused by runoffs from the farming industry into Lake Okeechobee and then flowing down the rivers to flow into the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean causing havoc to the various water based businesses in the towns that rely on them?

Or the current situation in Bradenton with a phosphate dumping pond threatening to overflow causing the evacuation of local residents a couple of weeks ago?

Which politicians have been in charge of this state and allowing these industries free and unregulated power to do whatever they want again?

In second place, it's Keroberos with some thoughts on the constant lies about Section 230:

I've come to the realization that the problem that they have with social media is that all their lies are almost immediately called out. They've never had to deal with that before. Mainstream media has usually bent over backwards to not call them out on their lies due to the risk of being cut off.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with another response to Marco Rubio, this time from That One Guy offering an additional level of criticism beyond the post:

Symptom of a much wider problem

Hear that (again) corporations, republicans don't want you interfering with politics and consider your contributions no different than toxic waste so honor their wishes and stop giving them money, can't have you 'polluting' their campaigns after all.

"But he seems to think he has to play up this nonsense if he wants to win elections these days. And, thus the real issue here is not "woke" corporations. It's authoritarian attacks on free speech like Rubio's."

That's part of the issue sure, the bigger issue I'd say is that he expects that it will be a successful tactic, that authoritarianism and cracking down on free speech is a good look for the people who will be voting to keep him in office, because if that's not the case then he'd be trivial to replace come the next election he runs but if his assumption is correct then that means there are a lot of people in his state/party for whom those are positive traits, which is just a wee bit more concerning as it means that any anti-free speech and anti-free market authoritarian will have no problem being elected when running for position in that party.

Next, it's an anonymous response to Senator Bill Hagerty saying that anyone upset with moderation choices should be able to sue:

What a lovely catch22, especially as no moderation is a moderation choice, so the only way to win is not to allow comments. Why does he not just call it the shutting down the Internet bill?

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous response to our post that included the Newegg-pioneered history of fighting back against patent trolls:

Missed opportunity?

Newegg should have patented the strategy of attacking back on patent trolls.

In second place, it's Blake C. Stacey on our post about the theme park exception that Disney managed to get carved out in Florida's social media law, suggesting an improvement to our "Infinite Scroll Coaster" joke:

You missed the opportunity to go with "Scrollercoaster". :-)

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with Eric and one more response to Senator Hagerty:

Ughh - can't post on hagerty's website

What the hell...Bill Hagerty is not giving me the ability to post 'Bill Hagerty is a tool' on his team hagerty website! And he calls himself a free speech proponent...

Finally, it's another comment about Florida's theme park exemption, this time from justok in the form of an idea:

So, there's plans to make the TechDirt Greenhouse into a real thing?

That's all for this week, folks!

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