The Most Popular Posts Of 2013 So Far

from the checking-in... dept

Since this week is a “short week” and many people are on vacation anyway, we decided not to ask anyone to do their “favorite posts of the week.” Conveniently, this is also the first weekend after the halfway point of 2013, so I thought it might be fun to see which stories from the first half of the year generated the most traffic.

  1. Redditor Points Out The Flaws In SimCity’s Online-Only DRM, Gets Banned By EA For His Troubles: This post got a ton of attention, and resulted in EA claiming that it was all a “glitch” in the system, though not everyone believed that to be the case. EA seems to have a way of doing things that tends to just make everything worse.
  2. Oh Look, Rep. Mike Rogers Wife Stands To Benefit Greatly From CISPA Passing…: This was a big story for a key reason: Rogers has been adamant about getting CISPA passed, but this conflict of interest had been previously undisclosed.
  3. If Your Cable Company Were Honest, This Is What Its Commercial Would Look Like: Note: people do not like their cable companies. They hate them almost as much as they hate EA.
  4. NSA Whistleblower Ed Snowden: From My Desk I Could Wiretap Anyone: You, A Federal Judge Or The President Of The US: You knew at least one NSA surveillance post had to be in this list. This one is still controversial. Some people insist that Snowden was exaggerating or lying, but other released documents suggest that there’s support for what he’s claiming.
  5. White House Makes It Impossible For The Blind To Sign Petition Supporting Copyright Treaty For The Blind: A bit of a technological faux pas on the part of the White House. Of course, now that the treaty has been signed, we’ll see if the US will actually ratify it.
  6. FBI Admits That Obeying The Constitution Just Takes Too Much Time: As we just had the “Restore the 4th” effort, this one seems appropriate to be on the list.
  7. PETA Goes After Assassin’s Creed For Its Depiction Of Whaling; Ubisoft Responds With A Heaping Dose Of Sarcasm: Hey look, an article about a big video gaming company, where they’re not the ones doing something crazy. Don’t get that very often.
  8. NSA: If Your Data Is Encrypted, You Might Be Evil, So We’ll Keep It Until We’re Sure: Yes, the NSA is collecting your data and assuming the worst.
  9. Don’t Let Patents Kill 3D Printing: Hopefully speaks for itself.
  10. Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion: What did I say earlier about people hating their cable companies? Yeah, that.

There you go: a nice variety of stories that have been popular over the last six months or so. We’ll be working hard to write more stuff you enjoy going forward as well.


Rate this comment as insightful
Rate this comment as funny
You have rated this comment as insightful
You have rated this comment as funny
Flag this comment as abusive/trolling/spam
You have flagged this comment
The first word has already been claimed
The last word has already been claimed
Insightful Lightbulb icon Funny Laughing icon Abusive/trolling/spam Flag icon Insightful badge Lightbulb icon Funny badge Laughing icon Comments icon

Comments on “The Most Popular Posts Of 2013 So Far”

Subscribe: RSS Leave a comment
27 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

and the Rogers family want to continue making twats of themselves by insisting that Snowden is a traitor so hopefully everyone will forget about the wife getting a kickback from her ‘former’ company and he can continue in his governmental role, lying his arse off just to keep the surveillance program continuing

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Subject

“Here’s something interesting. You know what subject is not covered in any of Techdirt’s most popular stories?

Piracy.

More evidence of how the “pro-piracy” accusation is a big, fat lie.”

I’m not surprised articles about your crimes weren’t among the most discussed. I wouldn’t be comfortable or eager to discuss it if I were you either.

That One Guy (profile) says:

Re: Re: Subject

And yet here you are, projecting the guilt over your crimes onto everyone else, vainly attempting to shift the blame away from you so you don’t have to accept responsibility for your actions.

Unless of course you have some proof that everyone you are accusing is in fact breaking the law…

Yeah, didn’t think so.

Here, go over the following article, and then go see a shrink, your accusation without evidence ‘debate tactic’ is either pretty much a perfect case of psychological projection, or ad hom, neither of which are healthy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

That One Guy (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Subject

Oh I know there are posters here who share your stance, but other than those very few who admit to doing so(most of which seem to go off the rational of ‘if they’re going to treat me like a criminal no matter what, I might as well do what I’m being accused of’), a blanket ‘you disagree with me therefor you must be a criminal arguing from self-interest’ statement is either ad hom or projection.

ottermaton (profile) says:

Re: Re: Subject

I’m not surprised articles about your crimes weren’t among the most discussed. I wouldn’t be comfortable or eager to discuss it if I were you either.

Interesting observation, particularly because “most discussed” has zilch to do with the metric used to select these articles:

… which stories from the first half of the year generated the most traffic.

Know what that means? It means these stories were the most read. Maybe you should try it sometime.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Subject

Here’s something interesting. You know what subject is not covered in any of Techdirt’s most popular stories?

Piracy.

More evidence of how the “pro-piracy” accusation is a big, fat lie.

LOL! Wow, Karl. I know logic isn’t your best suit, but this is just stupid. Mike could be the biggest proponent of piracy in the world, yet his top ten posts traffic-wise could be about topics other than piracy. Your logic, or lack thereof, is so stupid it hurts. No wonder the brain trust of Techdirtbags marked it as “insightful.” This place is fucking hilarious. I swear the bulk of Mike’s Army are a bunch of pirate douchebags living in their parents’ basement downloading all the copyrighted stuff they can. Why does Mike cater to these idiots? What a waste. I’d burn that Ivy League diploma. Second in his class so he can write blog posts for idiots.

Gwiz (profile) says:

Re: Re: Subject

I swear the bulk of Mike’s Army are a bunch of pirate douchebags living in their parents’ basement downloading all the copyrighted stuff they can.

You are wrong.

Current Techdirt demographics:

– 77% over age 24
– 72% with college education
– 42% earn over 50k/yr (indicates professionals)

Source: http://www.quantcast.com/techdirt.com

Karl (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Subject

Current Techdirt demographics:

That’s quite interesting. Most of it is pretty much what I expected, except for one bit of trivia: there are over twice as many Techdirt readers with graduated degrees than there are readers without any college degree.

I knew the Techdirt readership was smart, but I didn’t know they were that smart.

Anonymous Coward says:

Cable companies are outrageously priced in the US. I’m doing everything I can to keep my bill under $50 a month for internet and basic cable TV. Internet can barely keep up with streaming a single 720p YouTube video…

I think everything Snowden said about wiretapping everybody from his desk, is true.

All the NSA seems to do is store separate data bases for AT&T, Google, Microsoft, and Verizon; then do metadata query searches (email address, phone number). NSA has decades worth of records on us all. They never delete anything. (65 MegaWatt Utah Datacenter)

The Orwellian world we live in is only going to get worse. At least it seems that way with how few people seem to care about privacy.

I can’t wait till the drones start flying around 24/7. That’s the next one I’m waiting for.

Add Your Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here

Comment Options:

Make this the or (get credits or sign in to see balance) what's this?

What's this?

Techdirt community members with Techdirt Credits can spotlight a comment as either the "First Word" or "Last Word" on a particular comment thread. Credits can be purchased at the Techdirt Insider Shop »

Follow Techdirt

Techdirt Daily Newsletter

Ctrl-Alt-Speech

A weekly news podcast from
Mike Masnick & Ben Whitelaw

Subscribe now to Ctrl-Alt-Speech »
Techdirt Deals
Techdirt Insider Discord
The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...
Loading...