This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is David with a comment about the murder of Renee Good by ICE:

Kristi Noem is right about one thing:

It was an act of domestic terrorism.

Indeed. And that is the main purpose of ICE as it is currently being deployed.

In second place, it’s That One Guy with a comment about culpability for Trump’s actions:

An entire congress and military worth of collaborators

As horrible as Trump is never forget…

The republican controlled congress could have stopped him at any time but chose not to.

The US military could have responded to his orders to bomb boats on nothing but a declaration of guilt, finish off the survivors the one time there were any, and invade another country and kidnap it’s leader but chose not to.

Trump is responsible for a whole slew of horrible things but without a lot of people in the government and military backing him up the amount of damage he could do would be drastically lower, meaning they share just as much if not more responsibility for what has, is, and will happen as he does.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Thad about the fear of impeaching Trump and getting President Vance:

Vance is just as evil as Trump and not as stupid (low bar), but nobody likes him. He doesn’t have Trump’s cult. He wouldn’t be able to wield stochastic terrorism as effectively as Trump does. And in the hypothetical event that Trump’s been successfully removed from office, that means Senate Republicans are finally done being a rubber stamp for him, a guy who was extremely popular with their supporters, so I wouldn’t expect them to be a rubber stamp for Vance, a guy who isn’t.

All that said, I have a hard time believing that’s going to happen. They didn’t support his impeachment after he tried to have them murdered; I don’t think there’s anything that will make them support it. I think the likelier path toward President Vance is that Trump dies in office. I’m not talking about violence; I’m saying look at that motherfucker, he looks like he could keel over any day.

Next, it’s MrWilson with a comment about the ridiculous proposal from Arizona to study “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and the broad definition it uses:

Not only can that broad definition apply to his base, but it also can apply to authentic reactions to Trump’s actually inhumane cruelty and greed, such that it’s a rational response that a moral person would experience, and not derangement at all. Which is why the derangement smear is such bullshit.

Pretending someone is irrational if they don’t like a person who is intentionally hurting others is derangement. And it’s not like Trump’s cruelty is in dispute. His base loves that he is cruel (to other people). “This is what I voted for,” as they remind us when people get kidnapped and sent to torture camps.

But it’s just another cognitive dissonance stance that they wear proudly. He’s both absurdly cruel and you’re crazy for getting upset that he’s absurdly cruel.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous comment about New York’s law requiring websites to post warnings about social media addiction:

Techdirt is way too addictive to my taste.
See you in court Mike.

In second place, it’s Pixelation with a comment about Hilton Hotels:

Hey Hilton, you are providing the wrong kind of ICE. We want only the other kind in your hotels.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got a pair of jokes about journalists reporting LLM generations as “admissions” and “apologies”. First up is tanj with one comparison:

I asked my Magic 8 Ball to comment on this and it responded “Outlook not so good”.
Fortunately, I use Thunderbird.

Finally, it’s an anonymous commenter with a not-dissimilar joke:

It’s an apology in the same sense that a speak-and-spell can get married by saying “I do”.

That’s all for this week, folks!

Five Years Ago

This week in 2021, 60 Minutes aired some pure misleading moral panic about Section 230, while Parler (remember Parler?) was desperately seeking attention by pretending it didn’t need Section 230, and Ajit Pai grew a last-minute backbone and refused to move forward with Trump’s 230 attack. Lawmakers were complaining about Comcast’s expanded usage caps while AT&T was bringing its own caps back after temporarily suspending them due to COVID. But surely the most notable event was the January 6th attack on the Capitol building, which we wrote about at length and which also led to Twitter’s decision to ban Donald Trump from the platform.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2016, Homeland Security admitted that it seized a hip-hop blog for five years despite no evidence of infringement, the Authors Guild predictably asked the Supreme Court to overturn the fair use ruling on Google Books, and the US Copyright Office was asking for public comments on the DMCA’s notice and takedown procedures. Richard Prince was finally sued (again) for copyright infringement over his “Instagram” art piece, while a skeptical judge gave PETA a second chance to make its nutty argument about copyright in the infamous monkey selfie. And we wrote about how the TPP was explicitly tossing out public interest in favor of corporate interests.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2011, the new congressional leadership was prioritizing the investigation of Wikileaks, an anonymous Senator killed the Senate’s proposed whistleblower protection law, and we debunked the myth that Wikileaks was putting lives in danger in Zimbabwe. As for those domain seizures that Homeland Security would later quietly reverse course on, at this point they were still clamming up about their obvious errors while we wrote about how much those legal and technical errors mattered and how it appeared they invented a non-existent rule about criminal contributory infringement. Also, this was the week a new report argued that Andrew Wakefield’s infamous study linking vaccines to autism was not just a mistake, but an outright fraud.

For the past month, we’ve been running our fundraising drive to support Techdirt’s reporting as we move into this new year — a year we believe is going to need our uncompromising coverage more than ever. Now that drive is coming to a close: today is the last day that you can get your hands on our very first Techdirt Commemorative Coin, celebrating 30 years of Section 230, by supporting us with $100 or more.

Throughout the month, we’ve published a series of posts on why we think our coverage matters and deserves your support:

• This Is What You’re Funding When You Support Techdirt: a round-up of some of our most important recent posts on critical issues, as examples of why we think our coverage is essential.
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We’ve been extremely pleased with the response to our fundraising drive so far, and we want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has stepped up to make a donation. We can’t wait to get these coins minted and into your hands. For those of you who haven’t secured one yet, once again: today’s the last day. Head on over and make your donation before it’s too late!

It’s that time again! Instead of our usual look at the top comments of the week, it’s time to celebrate the most highly voted comments of the year at Techdirt. As usual we’ll be looking at the top three winners in the Insightful and Funny categories, as well as some outliers that rose to the leaderboard of votes in both categories combined. Normally I also link to the weekly winners for those who are interested, but since I’m writing this a bit early and commenting has been very slow this week, we’re going to skip that and get right into the main event.

The Most Insightful Comments Of 2025

For our most insightful comment of the year, we head all the way back to January when Trump’s Department of Education rolled back its anti-book-ban guidance and invited more censorship in schools. An anonymous comment rose to the top by offering up the message students should be taking from this:

Remember, kids. If a government is trying this hard to ban books, you should damn well be interested in finding out what those books actually say!

For second place, we move forward a bit to March, when we published our tentpole post explaining why the horrifying state of US politics means Techdirt is now a democracy blog. One commenter asked for recommendations of other sites doing similar work, and Thad racked up the votes by providing some advice:

Wired has been pretty much head of the pack at covering Musk’s government takeover.

ProPublica might be the best national news outlet in the country at this point. It’s independent and donation-supported.

404 Media is owned and operated by journalists who were laid off from Motherboard; they’re doing good work in the same tech-oriented vein as Techdirt and Wired.

You may also want to look into supporting your local paper and your local PBS affiliate. And maybe your local NPR station? I kinda got burned out on mine by one too many “let’s go to a diner and talk to Trump supporters to see if they’re still Trump supporters” Cletus safari, but they’re still better than the for-profit news media.

Finally, for third place, we jump back to January again, and the story of a Milwaukee meteorologist who was fired the day after criticizing Elon Musk’s on-stage Nazi salute. Maura had some personal thoughts on the incident and the excuses people were making for the world’s richest far-right troll:

I hate that Elon Musk’s fans are using his autism diagnosis to excuse his behavior. I’m on the autism spectrum. Like Musk, I have autism 1 (formerly Asperger’s syndrome), and like Musk, I struggle with the non verbal, implicit communication primates use to learn complex social behavior. My issues are thus: autism or not, Musk is keenly aware of the political climate. There is no way he did not or could not understand that such a gesture would be extremely controversial. Second, plenty of smart autistic people have self stimulatory behaviors that can involve movements and gestures ( I point at things with my whole hand with my ring finger bent), and if Musk’s stimming truly looks like Nazi salutes (🙄), it’s on him to explain that or change the way it appears. Autism should definitely be a mitigating factor when it comes to consequences, but having autism isn’t an excuse to act like a jackass or to make people uncomfortable. The world needs to be accepting of autistic people, but autistic people (ESPECIALLY those of us w/o intellectual disabilities) also need to be good citizens, and understand that the rights to community life come with responsibilities to others… except if they’re billionaires, I guess.

Now, on to the other side of things…

The Funniest Comments Of 2025

Let’s face it, this wasn’t the funniest year. The funny things that did happen were rather overshadowed by America’s slide into authoritarianism and the incredible harm being done to people every day. Nevertheless, commenters came through with a banger here and there, starting with our first place funny comment of the year. Back in March, when the DOGE debacle was being tossed around in the courts, an anonymous commenter rose to the top by coining a new appellation:

Stop calling them the doge crew. They’re twitler youth.

For second place we jump one month earlier to February, and Trump’s absurd renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Another anonymous commenter offered up an observation about the administration’s values:

Curious how only in this one instance the Trump Administration is upset about deadnaming.

To round things out with third place, we have yet another anonymous comment (that’s right, they dominated the funny leaderboard this year!) from that very same post about renaming the Gulf. This time, it’s a comment venting some understandable frustration with a healthy dose of sarcasm:

I couldn’t be happier!

So many Magaheads who are complaining about Latin Americans with an 8th grade education taking their jobs are saying this is what will really solve the immigration issue, grocery costs, inflation, the price of gas, stimulate oil drilling, end the war in Ukraine, get all the hostages freed, and send a clear message to our foes and allies alike that we’re a serious country. (Not to mention grow the GDP by 2% every 5 minutes, cut the deficit by $30 trillion, turn North Korea and Gaza into popular tourist destinations, and eliminate all those damn electric cars.)

Who knew it was so simple?

America, that’s who! An example for the world on how being simple can demand such respect!

And now, to wrap things up…

The Outliers

The aforementioned first place winner on the funny side was also the second place winner for combined votes for both categories, but the other two of the top three on this leaderboard made it there without cracking the top three of either category individually. In first place for combined votes, it’s another comment from Thad, this time about the Supreme Court’s April ruling that the administration can’t just human-traffick people to foreign prisons (though they weren’t sure how to stop them):

Wow, I never realized that Thomas, Alito, and all three of Trump’s appointees were Marxists.

Then, in third place for combined votes, we’ve got a comment from TheHangNail about Trump’s very incorrect claim in March that boycotting Tesla is illegal:

Up is Down

Wait, it was ok to boycott Bud Light because a trans person was shown drinking one for 30 seconds but boycotting a company because its CEO is systematically destroying our civic structure is not ok?

Maybe we need to get as many trans people as possible to video themselves driving Teslas. It will, at the very least, confuse the heck out of the right.

And with that, we close the books on 2025! Thanks again to our amazing community here for always keeping the comments flowing, and making sure there’s plenty of great content for both our weekly and yearly posts. I can’t wait to see the discussion that happens in 2026.

Five Years Ago

This week in 2020-2021, we published a series of posts on Trump’s Presidential Commission On Law Enforcement, starting with a look at its tone that everyone but cops are to blame for the terrible state of policing, followed by its repeated calls for anti-encryption legislation, and its conclusion that doing the same things that haven’t worked for years will reduce violent crime. Meanwhile, a coalition of internet companies outside the realm of “big tech” raised their voices about the importance of Section 230, just as Oracle was gleefully taking credit for attacks on 230 and on Google, and we wrote about the perennial myth that Section 230 is some kind of “subsidy” for tech companies.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2015-2016, Mark Zuckerberg was trying to spin opposition to Facebook’s Free Basics program as hatred of the poor, Senator Richard Burr was saying some very confused and wrong things about encryption, and 50 Cent filed a stupid, hypocritical lawsuit over another rapper’s mixtape. Another NSL challenge was made public, and the court decided the government could keep the gag order in place indefinitely, while one of Congress’s biggest defenders of NSA surveillance was suddenly aghast that the NSA may have spied on him. We also wrote about the forgotten danger of the TPP’s stronger trade secrets protections, and how the DMCA has delivered us into the hands of the proprietary internet of disconnected things.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2010-2011, we wrote about Wikileaks, intermediary chokepoints, and the “dissent tax”. We also looked at permission culture and the automated diminishment of fair use, and reiterated why cocktails neither need nor deserve copyright protection. NBC Universal and the MPAA got New York City to run some “anti-piracy” propaganda, Gibson got an injunction over PaperJamz that ordered retailers to stop selling them, and RapidShare hired a big DC lobbying firm to convince politicians that the RIAA and MPAA were lying about it. Also, just for fun, we took a look at some predictions for the year that had been published 80 years prior.

At the beginning of the month, we kicked off a fundraising drive to help sustain the independent, uncompromising coverage that we always try to offer at Techdirt. We also decided to try a new experiment that we hope to turn into an annual tradition: offering up a limited edition commemorative coin for our biggest supporters. Since 2026 also happens to be the 30th birthday of Section 230, a law we write about a whole lot around here, we figured that would be a great milestone to mark with this inaugural coin!

Now we’re reaching the end of our fundraiser, and time is running out. If you want to get your hands on the coin, you can make a donation of $100 or more by Monday, January 5th. Shortly after that we’ll be minting the coins and sending them out, after which they’ll never be available again — so if you don’t want to miss out, don’t delay!

As you hopefully know by now, we are once again hosting our annual game jam celebrating the works that enter the public domain in 2026, a.k.a. today! This year, that means we enter a new decade, as works originally published in 1930 finally exit copyright protection and become free to remix, repurpose, and build on. Gaming Like It’s 1930! begins today and runs until the end of the month, and we’re calling on designers of all stripes to help us show why a robust and growing public domain is so valuable and important.

You can sign up on the game jam page on Itch, read the full rules, and get some ideas about works you might use (but we encourage you to go looking for other hidden gems too!) As usual, we’ll be giving away prizes in six different categories. For extra inspiration, you can have a look at last year’s winners and our series of winner spotlight posts that take a look at each year’s winning entries in more detail.

We’re always astounded by the creativity on display in these jams, and I’m sure this year will be no different. 2026 has now begun, so it’s time to get designing!

As we announced a few weeks ago, it’s nearly time for the latest installment in our series of public domain game jams, Gaming Like It’s 1930! It’s an extra special jam this year as we begin a brand new decade of works entering the public domain, and as always it will begin on New Year’s Day (a.k.a. Public Domain Day, a.k.a. this Thursday!) and run until the end of January.

Head on over to the game jam page on Itch to sign up and read the full rules. There are also some ideas there for works that you could draw on, but we encourage you to go do some digging of your own, especially if you want to compete for the Best Deep Cut prize (personally, I suggest searching the Internet Archive for things dated 1930 to find some truly unexpected treasures). For extra inspiration, you can have a look at last year’s winners and our series of winner spotlight posts that take a look at each year’s winning entries in more detail.

Get ready, get set, and (in a few days) go!

Five Years Ago

This week in 2020, Congress sold out to Hollywood yet again by sneaking the CASE Act and a felony streaming bill into the funding omnibus, with the former introducing absolutely insane damages especially when compared to COVID stimulus money. Meanwhile, we looked at the issues with a new COVID bill that included billions to shore up broadband access, Trump finally went through with his threat to veto the NDAA, and Senator Tillis unveiled a massive plan to reshape the internet even more to Hollywood’s liking. Plus, Ron Wyden and Chris Cox felt it was time to yet again dispel some misconceptions about Section 230.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2015, we hoped (though not that much) that the government’s panic over the Juniper backdoor would make them realize the problems with backdoors, while Senator Cotton was slamming Tim Cook for protecting user privacy with encryption with an assist from Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, and we dedicated an episode of the podcast to asking how much surveillance is acceptable. India told Facebook to shut down its controversial zero rating “Free Basics” program, while the FCC responded to Comcast’s latest assault on net neutrality with nothing more than a sheepish letter. And a New Zealand judge ruled that Kim Dotcom was eligible for extradition in an opinion that showed an unfortunate willingness to ignore context.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2010, a closer look at the “evidence” Homeland Security used to seize domain names showed that it included songs voluntarily sent to sites by record labels, followed by the discovery of even more and bigger mistakes. The US ambassador to the UN was waxing about the extreme importance of patents and copyrights, the Harvard Crimson newspaper was getting a lot of things wrong about copyright in supporting a bad MPAA proposal, a Berkeley law professor explained how copying an entire article can still be fair use, and we debunked the myth that ISPs are profiting from “piracy”. Meanwhile, Apple joined the list of companies turning on Wikileaks, and we asked if those companies would do the same to the New York Times for its own investigative reporting.

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment about Trump announcing all the things he’s going to spend his tariff tax revenue on:

Behold, the Party of Fiscal Responsibility Corruptibility!

In second place, it’s Thad with a comment about what’s going on with AI:

Also, the problem isn’t that AI costs too much, it’s that people fucking don’t want it.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with one more comment from Thad, this time about the media’s reporting on Trump’s unhinged rant about Rob Reiner:

I used to say the news media were stenographers.

Now I wish they were stenographers. At least stenographers would accurately report Trump’s words.

Our news media are reputation managers: they sanewash Trump’s incoherence and cruelty to make them sound rational and respectable.

Next, it’s Kinetic Gothic with another comment on said rant:

Trump is proving my first rule of TDS.

People who accuse someone of suffering from TDS will invariably be more unhinged than the person they’re accusing.

Over on the funny side, it’s another slow week for comments (actually pretty slow on both sides, which I chock up to the holiday season!) so once again we’ll forego the editor’s choice and just highlight the two comments that barely cracked the threshold for a funny badge. In first place, it’s zerosignal with a comment about the rhetoric around ICE ramping up activity in Minneapolis:

I went downtown to a Timberwolves game recently, and was murdered TWICE! Once on my way to dinner before the game, and once after the game walking to Ramp B.

In second place, it’s an anonymous comment about the role of an ad agency that makes gambling ads in Australia’s social media ban, in response to a comment about “playing with loaded dice”:

You can still load those dice over a VPN.

That’s all for this week, folks!