Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the so-sayeth dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment on our post comparing Twitter’s alleged help for democrats to Murdoch’s real help for Trump:

On top of “every accusation, a confession” being a thing, what Republicans do when they make these accusations is create a worldview where Democrats must be doing the things they’re being accused of. That’s the only way Republicans can justify doing the things they most want to do⁠—which is to say, everything they accuse Dems of doing and everything they think they must do to stop Dems from doing the things Dems aren’t doing.

Sad thing is, this approach is how you end up with people living in Emotional Support Realities where trans people are indoctrinating children into a sexual ideology and non-Christians are trying to drive Christians out of public life. With nothing but imaginary enemies and overblown grievances, these people have no problems but “the world is changing in ways that don’t make me more powerful and privileged” and no solutions but “I have to destroy everyone who doesn’t agree with me”.

In second place, it’s an anonymous piece-by-piece response to a comment that raised several complaints about laws surrounding online harassment:

They do not cover cross-state jurisdiction or if a victim is harassed by someone overseas – so jurisdiction is a major issue

And you’d better hope it stays that way, because then China, North Korea, etc can start suing the US for making content they disagree with available on a global scale. Jurisdiction has always been an important thing because it stops litigious nutjobs like you from steamrolling their way through civil society because your genitalia weren’t stimulated enough.

They do not cover doxing, mob harassment (like Kiwifarms), or adequately deal with the wide variety of harms of online stalking

You realize that other countries that don’t have Section 230 also have all of the above, right? And those countries don’t order the destruction of forums for stalking.

Lawsuits must be filed using real name

This is a standard of law and not something that Section 230 is responsible for putting in place. For someone who bitches about people abusing anonymity to shitpost about other people, you seem to have absolutely no problem with anonymous people filing multiple frivolous lawsuits and having no protection against that.

enabling the cyberstalkers who realize the legal system cannot protect victims adequately

Or to use your own points as evidence against you, the lawsuit that took down Kiwifarms succeeded despite the fact that Section 230 exists.

Because the fact is that Section 230 is not a shield against illegal activity, it’s a shield against being sued as collateral damage. In the same way that SOPA wasn’t needed to take down Megaupload, or FOSTA wasn’t needed to take down Backpage.

Every time you insist that a law is needed, or a protection must be removed, to achieve the end goals you want, it sure is funny how all of those goals end up getting met without any of the legal changes you demanded.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, it’s another comment from Stephen T. Stone, this time about Fox News and bias in journalism:

To be fair, no news outlet is bias-free because no one can separate bias from journalism. Someone must decide what to distill out of the mass of available data, what facts to check, how much context to include (and explain), and how much needs to be left out for time and space. If you want to read a few paragraphs that sum up a 65-page legal ruling, someone must choose what to include and what to leave out.

But even if journalism can’t be unbiased, it can still be good or bad. Good journalism reports the facts even if those facts say one side is irredeemably awful and/or full of shit. Bad journalism pretends both sides are equally valid. False neutrality is propaganda.

Next, it’s PaulT with a comment about Musk’s surprisingly good new Twitter DMCA policy:

It’s only “good” if equally and neutrally applied. Given Musk’s track record, I somehow doubt that this policy itself won’t be abused to refuse takedowns from people “abusing” the process to take down something he agrees with, but somehow always being honoured when it’s right-wing outlet trying to get something removed. Let’s see how this goes, but given all of the other issues with the site this will likely only be a small blip worthy of interest no matter which way it goes.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is another comment from the same post. This time it’s Strawb responding to a not-quite-winning joke about Musk only doing something good by slipping on a banana peel:

And he’d still never attribute any sort of credit to the banana peel.

In second place, it’s a response from Brain to a comment accusing Techdirt of “ensuring” the internet is a certain way:

For some time I have dreamed of taking over the world, possibly you could instruct me in how TD accomplished this incredible task you claim to have occurred.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous comment about Musk’s vision of trust and safety:

I have figured out Elon’s plan, he is out to destroy 8kun by getting its users to move over to twitter.

Finally, it’s an anonymous comment about Arkansas and its push to age-verify kids online, but not for jobs in meat processing plants:

I’m starting to sense something about these Republicans, but I can’t put my finger on what it actually is…

That’s all for this week, folks!