Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the you-said-it dept
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is PaulT on our post about a bizarre Washington Post opinion piece defending Florida's content moderation law, responding to parts of the op-ed and parts of our post:
"the removal of Project Veritas’s James O’Keefe from Twitter provide more than enough proof to justify the reaction."
A guy famous for lying in order to dishonestly manipulate political races is proof of a reaction? OK, but I'm not sure the thing you meant to prove is the thing you proved..
"O'Keefe was banned because Twitter claimed he was artifically amplifying his tweets"
Oh, and he was banned for attacking the platform hosting him and not for the other content of his posts? OK...
"You can't just say -- as Olsen does -- that because there are regulations on broadcast TV and radio, that there's no problem with applying similar rules to totally private systems that don't rely on public spectrum."
Well, you can say that, but it would be hoped that more people understand the completely stupid idea of doing so.
In second place, it's Stephen T. Stone with a comment on our post about Iowa prosecutors attempting to jail an activist for sharing documents with journalists:
To everyone who thinks moderation is censorship:
No, this situation is attempted censorship. Hell, it might even be a successful attempt — after all, if Viet Tran knows he has police and prosecutors watching him closely after his humiliating-to-the-state victory in court, he might think twice before sharing any documents in the future if he has the absolute legal right to share those documents.
Y’all want to talk about censorship? Here’s your opportunity. But know that you won’t be taken even the least bit seriously if you conflate this situation — this attempt at using governmental power as a way to shut someone up — with Twitter banning someone for posting, say, anti-queer slurs.
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with another comment from PaulT, this time in response to someone seeking "an honest argument against Section 230":
We can only hope that day will come. I, for one, can't wait for the day where I have a reasonable argument to get my teeth into as to why innocent bystanders should be held accountable for things that happened on their property without their prior knowledge, rather than the endless whining of losers who refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions...
Next, it's dan8mx responding to the claim that calling it "compelled speech" when social media companies are forced to host content is "unconvincing":
Social media companies don't want to host this stuff, but the government is telling them they have to.
I guess the "question" is: how is that not compelled speech?
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Bobvious with a comment about Trump's many bankruptcies:
And you can read all about them in Chapter 11 of his upcoming autobiography.
In second place, it's radix with a comment about Trump shutting down his blog:
This one only lost money for one month! Great success! One of the best Trump ventures of all time!
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with smbryant and a comment about repair monopolies turning farmers into activists — though it was actually two comments that are here compressed into one:
You'd think they'd be a little more careful...
...before they pissed off a bunch of people who already have pitchforks close to hand
Finally, it's an anonymous comment about the Trump blog shutdown:
Trump should sue himself for anti-Trump bias.
That's all for this week, folks!
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Fun thing to note in re: my comment — practically none of the usual suspects who whine about 230 and “censorship” (read: moderation) ever comment on articles about actual government censorship. Even when I give them the chance to air their grievances about the censorship they so thoroughly decry elsewhere, they don’t speak up. It’s almost as if their incessant whining about “censorship” would be rendered null and void when compared to actual instances of censorship. Imagine that~.
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Re:
It's almost enough to make you think that the real objection isn't censorship but consequences and the utter audacity of people and platforms applying the latter to them and theirs...
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Re:
Almost as if the trolls are disingenuous assholes who will use any argument that suits them in the moment, completely devoid of context or consistency...
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Re: Re:
The three comments above make my head explode for the people who will never get this themselves.
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Re: Re: Re:
https://youtu.be/PJP-Ilw_xaY?t=23
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For many, it will have been the usual hypocrisy where the thing that was bad when others did it is suddenly OK when their side does it. I'm actually surprised some of them didn't try to defend the prosecution.
But because nobody did, and the article already said all that needed to be said about anti-censorship in this case, there genuinely seemed little need to debate it any further IMO. A simple "I agree" would've been pointlessly uninteresting.
But since you brought it up, lesser censorship doesn't automatically become "null and void" because there is something worse. Government threats influence much moderation decisions directly and indirectly, and it doesn't get a pass just because they use a go-between to do the dirty work.
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[wanking motion]
Aside from laws and statutes that require the removal of illegal speech (e.g., CSAM), please provide examples of clear and direct threats from the United States government — at any level — that have influenced the moderation decisions of any social media service within the United States.
I’ll wait.
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Speaking of funny
A special shoutout to That Anonymous Coward and their comment about the Stanford Butthurt Society. I thought this was hilarious
"Boo hoo hoo cancel culture!!!
Its only Cancel Culture if it comes from the Canncelle region of France, otherwise its just sparkling consequences."
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210602/13495346917/stanford-federalist-socie ty-tries-to-cancel-law-student-satirical-email-about-josh-hawley.shtml#c143
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Re: Speaking of funny
I actually had texted a clipped screenshot of that to several people. It was indeed a good quip in an otherwise good comment.
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Re: Speaking of funny
It deserves to be a t-shirt
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