Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the louder-for-those-in-the-back dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment responding to someone who framed the debate over Section 230 as a contest between the free speech rights of citizens and corporations:

Citizens have never had the right to force a corporation to carry their words. Indeed the newspapers and traditional publishers place even more restriction on what they will publish that Internet sites that allow user generated content.

Your problem is that people do not want to listen to you, so you want the government to force them to listen. You will not succeed in that, as people will find other ways of communicating where they can avoid the likes of you.

In second place, it’s Bloof with some thoughts on the controversy over the social media blocks of the NY Post story about Hunter Biden:

Fortunately conservatives have Parler and Gab where they can share misinformation to their hearts content… Oh wait, they don’t want that, they want an audience for their lies and they know normal people aren’t super keen on going places where hate flows free.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got an anonymous commenter once again clarifying an important point about that incident:

Twitter DID NOT BLOCK A MAJOR NEWSPAPER ARTICLE! The article in question was easily available by, you know, goin to the ny post site and reading it!

Next, we’ve got That One Guy raising a good counterpoint to our criticism that Twitter’s block played into the narrative of “anti-conservative bias”:

‘You looked at me funny, anti-conservative bias!’

Not saying Twitter didn’t screw this one up, but to be fair these days having rules at all that are applied to ‘conservatives’ is seen as evidence of ‘anti-conservative’ bias so they were basically in a lose/lose situation, where they either let the story fester on their platform and spread freely, in which case they get called out for allowing bullshit, or they do anything to hinder it, in which case the perpetual ‘victims’ scream about how persecuted they are again.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Thad responding to a particular sentence from our coverage of the controversial block — “NY Post released a story that[…]’s hot garbage”:

But you repeat yourself.

In second place, it’s PaulT responding to a commenter who seems really, really angry about open source:

I always love it when ignorant dickheads use open protocols via their open source browser to navigate to a website built on an open source database, web server on an open source operating system to talk shit about how open source is useless.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with Hieronymous Cowherd‘s comment on that same post, which was about how the pandemic-driven explosion of distributed teams working from home follows a route charted by decades of such organization in the open source development community:

Is this finally a case of

Herd Community?

Finally, we’ve got Uriel-238 offering some free advice for the FBI task force in Portland:

The Antifa Hierarchy

Well I could have told them the Antifa is the active arm of the Deep State.

This should be easy for the FBI: They capture someone and ask them if they harbor anti-fascist sentiments If the answer is yes, their subject is clearly Antifa.

Other signs can be: They own a white van or a black duffel bag.

These are all signs they are from Antifa or the Black Bloc.

Unlike other insurgency groups, Antifa is a monolithic unilateral front, kinda like the Swedish Borg. When a member of Antifa joins he or she get a decoder ring, an indoctrination video and an easy-to-memorize manual that explains the whole hierarchy from the bottom-most goon to the Taco Grande Supreme Commander of the Upper Echelon.

The reason the FBI has not yet been able to infiltrate Antifa and acquire their own copy of these materials is this: The video is super effective.

In fact, the Antifa indoctrination video may be too effective, and capable of bringing down entire established institutions. If an FBI special agent passed it on to other agents or analysts, they too might become radicalized and join the burgeoning ranks of Antifa!

The White House has suggested as much, that the Comey directed FBI has been subverted, hence its antagonism to the Trump presidency and the current administration of the DHS, as shown by the uncovered Strzok/Page texts.

One should always be on the lookout for Antifa sleeper agents who can be anyone in the walks of the United States.

Aside from the flagging devices above (white van, black duffel bag) Antifa sleepers will also purport and flaunt an extreme Protestant Evangelical Christian identity and lifestyle. Watch for the words Jesus is my co-pilot, a phrase Antifa use to signal their presence to each other. If one person says it, and another person responds positively or reaffirms the sentiment, this is likely two antifa sleepers connecting in order to collaborate on future sorties.

See something? Say something! Report all sightings to the DHS anonymous tip line at 1-866-347-2423 or call your local precinct.

That’s all for this week, folks!