Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the as-they-say dept
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment simply highlighting one of the details in the story about Elon Musk threatening to give away NPR’s Twitter account:
In an email sent at 2:19 a.m. EST after the story was originally published, Musk wrote a message without any text in the body but with this subject line: “You suck.”
(That’s real, BTW; it’s the last line in the NPR article linked in the story. Just thought I’d clarify since it’s increasingly difficult to tell the difference between satire and Musk’s actual behavior.)
In second place, it’s an anonymous reply to a complaint about social media censorship, reiterating the point that everyone should really know by now:
Kicking assholes off a social media platform is not censorship, it’s kicking an asshole off a social media platform.
Just because you are the asshole that got kicked off Twitter, doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of other social media sites that will accept assholes.
To wit: Truth Social — Why don’t you go there to spew your hate garbage.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with HegemonicDistortion and another comment about Musk’s NPR threat:
That should help with Twitter’s advertiser woes. “Do what we want or we’ll give your brand account to someone else” is just the thing companies like to see to build trust and inspire confidence.
Next, it’s Thad again with a reply to a comment trotting out the old “both sides of the political spectrum are exactly the same” complaint:
You can stop saying “both sides” and acting like it makes you deep, dude. The New York Times may be hiring, but they’re not doing it through the Techdirt comments.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Danny J and a quick response to Musk v. NPR:
Distrust is a kind of trust.
In second place, it’s Thad yet again, this time responding to Utah’s anti-porn law with a classic ol’ joke:
Why should you take two Mormons on your camping trip?
Because if you only take one, he’ll drink all your beer and smoke all your cigarettes.
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got a little two-part riff from that same post. First, it’s Bobson Dugnutt with a prediction:
It’s going to spread
Next, the Iowa and Nebraska legislatures are going to prohibit their farmers from watching CornHub all day.
Then, an anonymous commenter stepped in to reply with a counterargument:
Naw, John Deere’s got that covered already.
That’s all for this week, folks!
Comments on “Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt”
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Banning a person rather than their individual statements is always censorship.
Banning individual statements that violate decorum is moderation. Banning individual statements out of disagreement with their viewpoint is censorship.
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Moderating the output of persistent assholes post-by-post doesn’t scale.
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That may be so, but it doesn’t change the validity of what I said. It is easier to redline an entire neighborhood than to check individual creditworthiness, but doing so is still redlining.
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…said nobody literate, ever.
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”
Banning a person rather than their individual statements is always censorship.
Banning individual statements that violate decorum is moderation. Banning individual statements out of disagreement with their viewpoint is censorship.
”
So? You seem to believe that censorship by a business entity is always an unmitigated evil.
Brick and mortar stores ban disruptive and abusive customers (and have them arrested for trespassing) all the time. Using your terminology, that’s censorship too. Where is the famed conservative respect for property rights when the rights are related to social media?
You are also perpetuating the myth that masses of people are censored solely based on their viewpoint. There are ways to express controversial viewpoints without resorting to derogatory or abusive language. Which is why your post is still up here.
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Censorship is the silencing of opinions based on viewpoint. Whether censorship is evil is in the eye of the beholder. Presumably the censors don’t think of themselves as evil, and presumably there is an audience that welcomes the censorship.
The two problems of censorship are, one, that it impedes the freedom of those who wish to speak and hear the banned viewpoints, and two, that those banned viewpoints might be true. In a society that has freedom of speech as a foundational value, censorship, even by private entities, should be discouraged.
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“CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW…”
ALso, why do you hate private property laws, Hyman? Does CASTLE DOCTRINE scare you because it means people have the right to VIOLENTLY kick you out?
Private entities attempting to play censor via SLAPP notwithstanding (and the only way corporations and private individuals MAY censor), anyone who wants to or has to learn about “banned” viewpoints can simply, I dunno, read about them ELSEWHERE.
Free expression does not mean FREE REACH.
Also, as it keeps turning out, there is a good reason why society does not want to hear about your idiotic Reddit screeds. Which, by the way, you may do s by writing your own blog.
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As usual, the people on TechDirt who love censorship want to hide behind the 1st Amendment. But censorship is the act of the censor, silencing opinions based on their viewpoint on platforms the censor controls. The ability for the silenced to speak elsewhere is irrelevant. The legality and constitutionality of the censorship is irrelevant.
Private entities may censor as they wish. But in a society that has free speech as a foundational value, they should choose not to do that, and if they do anyway, they should be encouraged, criticized, shamed, or bought to get them to voluntarily change their behavior.
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lmao your copypastas are even more useless and pathetic than I am
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Free speech was never a foundational value of this country. Still isn’t. We’re just lucky the First Amendment is a thing, and that the laws which violate it are kept to a minimum.
Re: Re: Re:4 'Free speech' doesn't include dibs on my livingroom to speak from
I mean I’d argue that it is hence the whole first amendment thing, just not the fictional version of ‘free speech’ they want/want to frame it as that includes being able to say whatever you want wherever you want even if the property owner doesn’t want you there.
Re: my living room, my rules
Not necessarily. If I own the living room, web site, or bar, it is my property. I am free to say that I do not want Yankee fans, revenge porn defenders, and nazis, respectively, in these places.
It is not censorship in the classic sense, the unwelcome are free to go to someone else’s living room to spout their love for their favored AL team. They need only avoid trespassing on my property, real virtual or leased as the case may be.
Have you a plausible-sounding argument that I should be obliged to host speech with which I would not care to be associated?
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You are not obliged to host any speech at all.
Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing opinions based on viewpoint on platforms the censor controls. The ability of the silenced to speak elsewhere is irrelevant.
The prevalent and wrong viewpoint on TechDirt seems to be that they love to silence viewpoints with which they disagree, but they don’t want that silencing to be called censorship. A corollary of that error is that they like to construe being urged not to censor as being forced not to censor, so that they can hide behind the legalism of the 1st Amendment to (correctly) say that they cannot be so forced.
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Hyman.
You have not been silenced.
I can read and, sadly, comment on your borderline idiotic, Reddit-level bullshit you pass for an explanation.
Outside of the circular definition, the ability to speak OUTSIDE of the disallowed place is RELEVANT. In order for Mike to actually censor you, he’d have to sue you to stop spreading slander.
Hasn’t happened yet, to all of our dismay.
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Wrong, they signal that the speaker has gone outside the community limits, and if the speaker does that often enough some people will flag them on sight. You have made yourself unpopular by repeatedly stating your viewpoint even in thread where it is not a topic of discussion, and you keep trying to blame the consequences of that on others when in truth you only have yourself to blame for making yourself so unpopular that you have become flag on sight of you repetitious comments.
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Being censored and being told you are not welcome on or asked to leave private property, are two entirely different concepts.
That you are too fucking stupid to know the difference is a you problem.
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Just because we don’t want to hear you prattle on about your problems with the existence of trans people doesn’t mean you’ve been “silenced” or “censored”. It means we’re telling you “fuck off” and showing you the door. If you can’t handle the fact that your desire to argue about whether trans people deserve a place in society gets you a “fuck off” from the owner of this website, that’s your fuckin’ problem, son. Solve it yourself—preferably by leaving this site, you obsessed-wtih-children’s-genitals freak.
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Still struggling with the fact that other people have free speech rights, including the right to freedom of association, huh?
Someone telling you they don’t want to associate with you is not a violation of your free speech rights or censorship. Telling them they have to host you against their wishes, however, is a violation of their rights.
I know that the more butthurt people on this issue often haven’t mentally progressed past adolescence or developed empathy yet, but you’re going to struggle with these issues until you have.
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Hyman.
You have been told repeatedly to fuck off.
You have also admitted you have been banned from various other places for what appears to be the same shit you pulled.
You also have admitted that you will continue to harass us until either we ignore you (impossible, since there’s always a gullible idiot who will take your word as fact) or the owner of the site files a personal protection order against your harassing ass.
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The owner of the site generally allows my posts to appear even under my own name, so he does not seem to want to literally ban me, just harass me enough so that I leave “voluntarily”.
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Dude, you came here first and started ranting about trans people. The owner of the site is allowed to tell you “get the fuck off my property” until you leave. Hell, if anyone is doing any harassing in this scenario, it’s you—because you’re the one who refuses to leave when you’re told to fuck off.
Then again, you seem to have as much of an obsession with dismantling property rights in the name of “free speech” as you do with trans children’s genitals, so…yeah…
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Added to the list of your delusions is the delusion that Mike monitors and approves every post. Why should he waste the time necessary to purge your posts when you can easily repose as an anonymous user?
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stay angry straight boy trash