Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the speak-and-spell dept

This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to our post about Dartmouth's insane paranoia over cheating, and the resultant surveillance scandal. In first place, it's That One Guy with a comment about the fact that the college appeared to be hiding its due process policies:

Nothing says 'We're on the right side of this issue and students can trust that they will be treated fairly if they come here' like trying to hide your own campus policies while pressuring students to 'admit' to cheating based upon evidence not provided to them to refute.

In second place, it's an anonymous commenter questioning why certain things count as "cheating" to begin with:

I never understood the point of memorizing formulas. Being able to recite the quadratic formula from memory doesn't mean I'm better at solving an equation.

The ability to use the knowledge properly is what needs to be tested, not simply checking to see if you can regurgitate the text.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with another anonymous comment, responding to the notion that pharma patents are important because the drug companies "take all the risks":

No. Pharma does not take "all the risks" (what risks?), and regularly makes use of publicly-funded (or otherwise not funded by pharma) research and data, then locks up not only the end product, but also previously publicly available information and data resulting from their trials. This is all bullshit and allowing it is an unconscionable and unfair subsidy to these companies. Further, they have an avenue to extend patents unfairly by otherwise pointlessly tweaking a formula or process, which somehow keeps the original process locked up.

Seriously, for real?

Next, it's Stephen T. Stone with an important addition to our frequently-made point about how the powerful abuse content moderation tools to suppress the vulnerable:

And sometimes not on purpose. When adult-oriented content (e.g., porn) gets driven from platforms, LGBTQ people are inevitably hit first and hardest by such bans because of preëxisting biases about LGBTQ content — namely, that such content is inherently sexual/adult-oriented.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is UhHuh with a comment about the latest bad Section 230 reform bill and how its requirement for publicly available reports interacts with its other requirements:

That website better have a top-notch consumer protection policy....

In second place, it's That One Guy deploying a portion of a favorite joke in response to the simple question of exactly which "conservative" views are supposedly being censored around the web:

Oh, you know...

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from JMT about the bogey man of "left-wing fascism":

Nearly as bad as Christian Satanism but not quite as bad as vegan cannibalism...

Next, it's Baron von Robber with a reaction to the news about Trump's DOJ targeting journalists to protect his reputation:

Trump projects so hard, he could run 6 movies simultaneously at a drive-in.

That's all for this week, folks!

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