Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the thus-spake dept
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is PaulT with a response to a complaint about vaccinations:
You're free to avoid doing something you dislike, as you are free to avoid wearing clothes, or paying taxes. It's just that you might get rejected by the rest of the society you wish to participate in if you don't want to abide by the rules of doing so.
Also, https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/09/how_vaccination_helped_win_the_revolutionary_war.html
In second place, it's James Burkhardt with a response to an... imperfect comparison of Charter's false debt collection practices to other debt collectors:
I feel like a Credit Card company offering to allow you to pay off your balance and regain access to credit (and possibly clearing your credit report of the genuine delinquency) is a very different story than an internet company trying to drum up business by committing mail fraud.
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with another comment from James Burkhardt rebutting a bad comparison — this time between Section 230 reform and other kinds of liability:
Vehicle manufacturers are not liable for the use a car is put to. Nor are they required to sell cars to anyone who walks on the lot. They are only responsible for failures caused by their own actions. Section 230 replicates that level of liability.
Credit cards banks are not liable for the misuse of the credit card, only their own malfeasance. Section 230 Replicates this level of liability
Thank you for higlighting that section 230 does not provide special immunity.
Next, That One Guy with a comment about the Missouri governor's absurd response to exposing private information in HTML:
'That took care of them, now why does my foot hurt so much?'
'If you aren't made aware of the problem it doesn't exist' seems to be the motto for far too many people in positions of authority, with the corollary of 'If you shoot the current messenger giving you bad news that reduces the odds that another one will show up'.
The state was caught with it's pants down and rather than admit they screwed up they decided on the absolute worst response, to punish the people who notified them of the problem and desperately try to shift the blame to them.
Not only is this stupid in the short term as it leaves the governor and state looking all sorts of boneheaded and pathetic but it just massively screwed them over long-term as no sane white-hat, security researcher or journalist is likely make use of the 'official channels' from this point on such that the first the Missouri government is likely to know about future hacks or security breaches/holes is after they've either been exploited or made public anonymously, leaving the affected agencies to do damage control after the fact.
Probably the only silver lining of this whole mess is the response to the governor's statements as my oh my is that idiot getting roasted for his stupidity on twitter, with just so many people pointing out what an idiot he is and how the 'we got hacked!' claim is nothing more than CYOA garbage.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is yet another comment from James Burkhardt, this time responding to some tiresome complaints from a tiresome commenter:
I can't imagine why a spam filter would deem the guy posting 9 times in 6 minutes "spam".
In second place, it's an anonymous comment (quoting a classic) along similar lines:
Sir, this is an Arby's.
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with nasch responding to the suggestion that "Section 230 could use a lemon law":
You are already free to return your social media accounts for a full refund of the entire purchase price.
And finally, it's an anonymous comment responding to our astonishment at the Missouri governor calling in the Highway Patrol:
Highway Patrol is clearly appropriate in this case as the offense took place on the information superhighway!
That's all for this week, folks!
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Reader Comments
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Kiling the messanger?
Why not.
We want everyone to be stupid.
All the nice people int he world trying to live by the rules, and telling them they have a problem, In the right way, and they get persecuted.
Why do we keep electing the idiots to office?
Anyone think its time we Dump the TV, and the promises?
Time to get things on paper. Time to sort OPINION from truths not told. Keeping in the dark over what they are doing, even when we see it happening.
The Governor, saying its going to cost $50 million? is only cause thats how much it will cost After he gets his cut?
Are we slaves to incompetents? or WE the incompetents?
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I guess i should post sleep deprived more often! I am humbled you all thought so highly of my commentary.
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So millions of americans are now hackers as you can go to any browser and view the HTML code of any website, but than many many Politicans are in a race to show how stupid and ignorant they are . It's like saying anyone who shares a joint with a friend is a drug dealer
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There’s an error on the link to James Burkhardt‘s comment.
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Personal favorite comment
IMHO, I think this comment deserves a shout-out.
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Re:
Had to happen eventually, as you are one of the folks who regularly post high-quality comments.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a fairly high ratio of high-quality comments at this site. (For weird and limited values of "unfortunately.)
Get some sleep.
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Re: Personal favorite comment
good catch
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Re: Re:
I did. tried to anyway, the dog loves t push out of bed
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Re: Personal favorite comment
Thanks to XcOM987 for promoting this to First Word, https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211014/17171747751/journalists-st-louis-discover-state-agency-is -revealing-teacher-social-security-numbers-governors-vows-to-prosecute-journalists.shtml#c497
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Re:
In this case it would be more like someone sharing a picture of a joint and then being labeled a drug dealer because of it.
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Re: Re: Personal favorite comment
Thanks!
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Re: Kiling the messanger?
Nobody remembers the Evil Overlord List.
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Re:
To be clear, since I had 3 comments, the error appears in the editor's choice insightful comment.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211004/11400447697/why-section-230-reform-effectively-m eans-section-230-repeal.shtml#c122
Should be the link, but the article points to another Techdirt post entirely.
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Re: Re: Re:
Dogs will do that. Interesting people, dogs.
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Re: Re: Kiling the messanger?
A canary would be better,,, at least a crow.
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(Just a side note: please make your links consistent, ideally not using the enforced "threaded=false" links. They are quite bad when quoting reply-type comments in particular.)
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
think we could get one elected? I know there is a goat in office.
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