Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

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from the social-contact dept

This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to one particular comment from Australia’s treasurer about the country forcing Google and Facebook to pay news organizations for sending them traffic, which he described as something that will “help to create a level playing field”. Anonymous Anonymous Coward took first place with a baffled refutation:

It’s our game, we make the rules, till Google quits that is.

If they want a level playing field, wouldn’t all the players need to be playing the same game? Google doesn’t write news articles, the media organizations do. The media organizations don’t run search engines, Google does. Those seem like different games to me. It’s more like cricket and croquet.

I am not sure why Facebook is even in the conversation except they have a lot of money and apparently some of their users post things about subjects that also wind up on media organizations sites. Does Facebook actually post snippets from media organizations? Or is it that users post snippets? If the latter is the case, how is that Facebook’s fiscal responsibility?

And an anonymous commenter took second place with a simple prediction:

No, it will force Google to pull out of Australia and bankrupt Australian news orgs for lack of traffic.

There must be something in the air down under. Their politicians seem outright stupid.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with Richard M, who had a response to the claim that there’s some wisdom in the government censoring COVID-19 messaging to avoid “panic”:

There is a huge difference between creating panic and following the science rather than politics.

Political leaders who hide the truth from its citizens never do it for the good of those citizens. It is always for the good of the political leaders who are lying and hiding the truth.

Every single decision Trump has made during this outbreak has been politically motivated rather than what is good for the country. That is poorly motivated and there really is no honest way to spin this as “Trump has been making decisions based on what is good for the country”.

The sad thing is that he has completely miscalculated the political and economic side of things. Nobody (or at least very few) are blaming Trump for the virus coming to America. It is his response that is the problem.

If instead of trying to downplay, ignore, and hide what was happening he had attacked it like South Korea both the political and economic outcome would have been much better. If we had numbers anything like SK or Germany his approval rating would be extremely high right now compared to what he now has which is low and getting lower.

However he responded exactly like he would do when running his companies, hiding the bad information as long as he could hoping he would be able to fix the problem before it became public. This is what he has done his whole life though to be fair he is not the only businessman to work this way, he has a lot of company when it comes to that mindset.

The problem is that this a horrible way to run a country in general and especially one in our current situation. It is the exact opposite of what he should be doing which has killed tens of thousands of people with many more deaths on the way.

Next, we’ve got hij pointing out one of the big holes in Ajit Pai’s implication that killing net neutrality made it possible to keep the internet alive during the pandemic:

No mention about access?

Mr. Pai is conveniently ignoring the students who were sent home but are struggling to keep up with their classes because they lack access to broadband. Students who cannot get access at home have been forced to go to public places and expose themselves and their families. Students should not be forced to rely on Chik Fil A to complete their school work.

https://www.ajc.com/blog/get-schooled/rural-students-without-doing-school-work-chick-fil-parki ng-lot/n4Fu1cVrDHghJnPUxxijjO/

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is wshuff, who rightfully wasn’t going to let the story of former NASCAR boss Brian France suing a parody twitter account pass without noting the coincidental name of the defendant:

It is at least nice to finally see John Steele on the right side of a lawsuit.

In second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone whose wish has more or less come true regarding China’s government accusing Twitter (which is banned in the country) of disrespecting free speech:

Can we nominate the statement from the Chinese Embassy for a Funniest Comment of the Week award?

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous comment defending the “net neutrality saved the internet” crowd:

not coincidence at all!

The facts advocates of net neutrality don’t want you to know:

–Net neutrality causes mutations that increase the risks of 17 separate forms of cancer or carcinoma.

–Net neutrality exacerbates global warming. Seas (and most lakes larger than 146 km sq.) would be boiling for 3 months out of every year, most of Florida would be rendered uninhabitable, and fall fashion lines would suffer significant sales drops, leading to unemployed marketers in major cities (and unemployed 6-cent-per-hour sweatshop sweatshirt factories in tropical countries). Atlantic City would become a tourist attraction.

–Net neutrality is one of four preconditions for the rise of Chthulhu; the other three conditions are imminent in isolated communities across the U.S.; and there are already 17 communities where two conditions are simultaneously present.

–Net neutrality could force Mickey Mouse and Rapsody in Blue into the public domain. Creative artists everywhere would contract tuberculosis and die starving in the streets. People who couldn’t read both words and music would be locked out of performing gigs and forced to seek careers in politics.

But science is hard, and people don’t want to hear the truth, so they just read those blogs that whinge on and on about how many legs is good or bad. It’s enough to make you want to take up basketweaving or flintknapping as a career.

And finally, it’s Wyrm with a comment about the Canadian publishing group that wants its own Google tax:

Google: “No problem, we can pay you. 1 cent per link? 1 dollar per link? 100 dollars per link? No problem. However, you should expect the number of links to be zero. Have a nice day.”

That’s all for this week, folks!