Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the the-commentariat dept
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is PaulT with a comment about just one of the many problematic details about the DoNotPay “AI lawyer”:
“Josh added a clause to the TOS prohibiting users from testing the website prior to using it in a live dispute.”
Because if there’s anything a software developer will tell you, it’s shove everything into production, no need for test/QA environments!
Sadly, that’s not completely sarcastic, I’ve known devs who did that. Note the past tense there…
In second place, it’s Terry with a comment on our post about how the Friedman doctrine of exclusively serving shareholder interests ruins everything:
Enshittification
There’s a traditional tale that sums it up. Think killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. The actual story perfectly describes the process described in the articles.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from That Anonymous Coward about the dumb attack on Gigi Sohn that tries to shame her for being on the EFF’s board:
Someone please get a list of all the Baptists in Congress.
I want to launch an expose about how they support a group that covered up child abuse for decades…
scary thing is mine is way more true than theirs.
Next, it’s That One Guy with a comment about Elon Musk pulling down a documentary at the behest of India’s government:
Well that’s awkward…
Gotta love the contrast with the Twitter Files ‘scandal’. There the government merely notifying the platform of potential TOS violations was spun as a heinous attack on free speech, and yet now Twitter is folding like wet cardboard and taking down speech at a government’s behest.
Given the difference in response it would seem that if the FBI had actually ordered accounts to be pulled that would have been the proper response and spiked that part of the ‘scandal’ since after all it’s not like a platform can or should fight back against such demands, so I guess from now on the FBI or other government agencies shouldn’t nudge Twitter in the direction of TOS violations they should just tell Twitter to pull any account they don’t like and that’ll nicely solve the problem.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Stephen T. Stone passing along a Twitter joke in response to the GOP whining about DirecTV kicking Newsmax off its lineup:
Cool, I get to use this again.
Conservatives: LET THE FREE MARKET DECIDE
Free market: decides
Conservatives: this is outRAGEOUS(All credit to Twitter user @nhbaptiste.)
In second place, it’s Rico R. with another comment about the attack on Gigi Sohn:
Congratulations, Fox “News”!
Before these “news” organizations reported that Gigi Sohn is on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, I had no idea that was the case. Now, I want Sohn confirmed to the FCC even more! That was your intent, right?
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from Thad invoking a famous movie monologue in response to the unequivocal smackdown that Trump’s lawyers received from the court over their claims that Hillary Clinton rigged the election:
The judge continued, “I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
Finally, it’s Dan Izzo with one more comment about DoNotPay:
Well if I’m ever sued I definitely want DoNotPay repping the other guy.
That’s all for this week, folks!
Comments on “Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt”
Thad definitely earned his spot here.
I was hoping Thad would win both Insightful and Funny this week. That being said, he won editor’s choice for funny, so I’m happy with the results.
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Anything in particular, or am I just insightful in general?
Either way, thanks for the praise. I have my moments.
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Just the comment this week, as it was such a perfect reference.
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E14n starts even earlier than you think. Instead of people building stable, sustainable businesses that will throw off a steady profit for their owners, the Shark Tank / VC mentality has taken over, with people looking to create lottery tickets, hoping that they will be able to quickly sell out for millions. No one cares about the product, least of all about its quality – that’s just an afterthought to prime the lottery pump. That’s what happens when the wrong kind of capitalists become folk heroes.
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I hate to break this to you, bigot, but all capitalism is like that. I mean, look at the wages for the lowest-paid laborers in a given corporation—the laborers whose work is essential for the day-to-day operations of a business—then compare those numbers to the salaries of corporate executives.
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I hate to break this to you, Communist, but if the laborers want to get together and build a company themselves (and share the risk of failure too) why don’t they do that? It’s not against the law for the workers to own the means of production, after all.
Oh, and while we’re here, people like Viktor Orbán and Ron DeSantis succeed because they have learned to ignore, abd even embrace, being called bigots, x-ists, and x-phobes by their woke ideological opponents. It’s the people who grovel before the woke, issuing useless apologies in their struggle sessions, who get destroyed. The woke can never be appeased, only fought.
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I hate to break this to you, but worker-owned companies are indeed a thing
Your embrace of dictators (like Orban) and wannabe dictators (like DeSantis) is telling that you hold democracy and even republicanism in contempt.
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Maybe it has to do with the fact that they don’t have access to the same kind of capital as someone with inherited wealth—or someone who failed upwards into a seven-figure job by being lucky enough to be in the right places at the right times (and being immoral enough to abandon the proletariat for the bourgeoisie rather than stand with the exploited against those exploiting them).
That said: Worker-owned co-ops are a thing. They’re not as plentiful as they should be, but they do exist even in this bitch of a capitalist country.
Yes, yes, you’re fine with the trans-exterminationist rhetoric of fascists. Tell me something: When they inevitably go after all queer people instead of merely the small subset of queer people that you don’t mind seeing killed, will you still be treating them as great men, or will you actually be horrified at their sociopathy?
Because men like Orban and DeSantis—and yes, Donald Trump—are sociopaths. Their one desire is power above all else. They will do anything they must to obtain that power, even if it means sacrificing people—figuratively or literally—to wear the crown. Once they have it, they’ll do anything to keep it (which, again, includes sacrificing people one way or another). You extol these men for being defiant in the face of labels such as “bigot”, but their bigotry and their sociopathy and their willingness to defend their worst impulses and beliefs as being “necessary” to “restore” some imagined fantasy past—a “better time” where everything was sunshines and white picket fences and no Repugnant Cultural Others around to bother the “good” people of the country—will one day become too much for even you to bear. When that day comes, will you stand and count yourself amongst their critics, or—as would be expected of a submissive fascist bitch like you—will you stay silent and let them do as they please so long as they don’t go after you?
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“Everything I don’t like is Communist.”
Every right wing bigot ever
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“abandon the proletariat for the bourgeoisie” — Stone, a post or two above this one.
So, yeah, I just called him a Communist because I don’t like him. TD commenters really outdo themselves sometimes.
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At least you finally had the balls to admit it. 😁
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Well, of course I don’t like you. My only interactions with you are correcting your errors. Why would I like you?
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Remind me, you pissant queerphobe: Whose comments keep getting hidden because of all the rank bigotry and the sneering about how said bigotry is objectively correct? Because from where I sit, I’m not the one who still refuses to condemn a blatantly anti-queer act of mass murder without tossing in some transphobia as a “fuck you” to the people who were killed only for daring to exist as openly queer.
But sure, call me a communist if it makes you feel better. (For the record, I’d probably identify as a democratic socialist if I sat down and really worked out my shit in that regard.) Just remember: When the predator class eventually comes for your face, don’t expect me to pity you.
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Right now, the “predator class” has come for the woke ideologues in Scotland who wanted to put male rapists in women’s prisons. I like my chances so far, and I’ll take JKR over willfully blind woke ideologues any day.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/29/europe-scotlang-country-male-violent-felons-transgender-womens-prisons-rape/
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Celebrate your transphobia now, Hyman. But you and your hateful brethren will never win your war on queer people. You may want to make peace with the fact that we’re here, we’re queer, and people like you killing us still won’t make us go away.
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Exactly. Everybody knows that trans rapists don’t exist. They’re not nearly toxic masculine enough to do so.
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woke ideologues
Cool I’ll just make another donation to trans youth. Pretty soon I’m going to start having to make them in batches.
Re: Re: Re:5
…said nobody not on hallucinogens, ever.
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“My only interactions with you are correcting your errors.”
Is that one of your opinions that are so popular, no one but you know what they actually are?
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Do you mean Roger Stone? Or Sharon Stone? or maybe Oliver Stone? Because if you mean Stephen T. Stone that’s an out-of-context quote which you clearly don’t understand. I mean, let me translate it for you: “abandon the working class for the upper class”. See, doesn’t sound so Marxist, now does it?
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“TD commenters really outdo themselves sometimes.”
I agree bro, you really are a piece of shit that someone stepped in then ground into a nice carpet.
Re: Re: Re:2 'We must sieze the means of communication for our good!'
Which is all sorts of funny given how many of them seem downright eager to break out the hammer and sickle as soon as a private company tells them and/or their ideas that they’re not as popular or welcome as they think they are.
Re: Do tell you busted ass hyman
What were those so popular you almost got banned from here opinions again?
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It’s so funny!
https://google.com/
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Why do you hate to break that to me (not that I didn’t already know)? Break it to Stone. He’s the one who seems to think that laborers are helpless.
As for democracy, to the woke, it’s only democracy if the right people win. Both Orbán and DeSantis were elected by huge majorities.
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It’s also trivially easy to get people to vote against their own interests. All it takes is a little lying, a dash of information control, and a shit ton of fearmongering.
And nation-states that AREN’T the USA do it ALL THE TIME. Hell, Fox News and a good chunk of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire IS built on what I exactly just said.
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Laborers aren’t helpless. But their situation can’t improve without sacrifice—progress always comes at a cost—and most laborers would prefer to keep getting paid so they don’t become homeless because this country’s social safety net has holes so big that most everyone falls through them.
I guess all those people who stormed the U.S. Capitol were all “woke”, then, since they were fighting to have the man who lost the 2020 presidential election installed into the Oval Office for a second term that he didn’t earn and wasn’t legally entitled to serve. Curious. 🤔
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You straight scum have had it too good for too long. What is a man but a futa without tits? You’re nothing but walking wallets and sperm banks who will become obsolete in the long run. You know this, and that’s why the existence of a gender spectrum fucking terrifies you.
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You can flag my comments all you want, Hyman. All that tells me is you’re afraid. You’re afraid of the day when you’ll be nothing more than an obsolete sperm donor.
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The really pathetic thing you busted ass hyman, is that you actually think one of these days someone is going to be fooled by you, despite it having never occurred so far.
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That’s right, beat up on Hyman. Shame that straight cis conservative into the ground, that’ll show him!
I’ve been trying for years to get my boss to adopt detailed design documentation, slower development, and proper testing. Does that mean I’m not a software developer?
It’s never RICO.
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Ken “Popehat” White? Is that you?