Stephen T. Stone 's Techdirt Comments

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• On the post: Amid The Measles Outbreak, HHS Cuts 1/8th Of Workforce

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2025 @ 08:37am

  Who ever could have foreseen that putting an anti-vaxxer nutbag in charge of responding to health crises on the national level would result in denigrating the actual science in favor of quack ‘cures’?

  Anti-vaxxers. 🙃

• On the post: Amid The Measles Outbreak, HHS Cuts 1/8th Of Workforce

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2025 @ 08:32am

  we’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstated, because we’ll make mistakes

  “We have to cut most of our workforce to save money, but we’ll have to hire some of you back because we’re too fucking stupid to actually make cuts to our budget that are based on things like ‘facts’ and ‘planning’ and ‘thinking about future public health nightmares’.” Literally the dumbest motherfuckers in charge of every lever of power in the federal government, led by the dumbest man to ever be elected president and a similarly stupid unelected “special employee” who is both a co-president in all but name and a campaign official who thinks bribing voters is a good idea.

• On the post: Trump’s FCC ‘Investigates’ Disney For Not Being Racist And Sexist Enough

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2025 @ 08:25am

  Your right to say objectively wrong bullshit has nothing to do with the fact that your bullshit is objectively wrong.

• On the post: Amid The Measles Outbreak, HHS Cuts 1/8th Of Workforce

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2025 @ 03:11pm

  Nah, dude, the new hotness is lots of Vitamin A and prayers. I hear they call it “The Real American Cure”, brother.

• On the post: Amid The Measles Outbreak, HHS Cuts 1/8th Of Workforce

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2025 @ 11:43am

  What exactly are you looking for?

  Something they can take back to their propaganda mill bosses and say, “Look how much division I sowed! Can I go to the bathroom now?”

• On the post: Amid The Measles Outbreak, HHS Cuts 1/8th Of Workforce

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2025 @ 11:28am

  🥱

• On the post: Trump’s FCC ‘Investigates’ Disney For Not Being Racist And Sexist Enough

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2025 @ 10:17am

  “Reverse racism” also implies that any racism that affects white people⁠—be it real or perceived⁠—is as insidious as the level of racism that white people inflicted upon racial minorities for…oh, let’s say a little over three centuries of American history dating back to the days of the colonies. To a white person who believes “reverse racism” is real, their being denied college admission in favor of an Asian-American person, even if the Asian-American got in on their merits alone and were more qualified than the white person, is⁠—in that white person’s mind⁠—the exact same kind of racism as a white plantation owner beating a slave. Idiots who believe that garbage have to imagine that racial minorities receiving any semblance of equality is the same thing as the majority racial group (i.e., white people) being forced to live under the oppressive rule of “DEI” or whatever. It’s the only way they can believe they’re destined for greatness when their whole-ass lives have been (and always will be) mediocre: They need someone to blame for taking away “the right opportunities”.

• On the post: Trump’s FCC ‘Investigates’ Disney For Not Being Racist And Sexist Enough

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2025 @ 08:21am

  Is there anything else I am wrong about?

  Yes. Your belief that you have anything of value to contribute to any discussion here is wrong.

• On the post: Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2025 @ 08:18am

  Quoting a Bluesky post I saw yesterday:

  Kanshi Ram once said "if you want a man to wake up slowly give him an education, if you want him to wake up right now take away his wallet"

• On the post: Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2025 @ 08:15am

  The sad thing is how any price increases from these tariffs will be permanent even if Trump undoes all of this bullshit.

• On the post: Trump’s FCC ‘Investigates’ Disney For Not Being Racist And Sexist Enough

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2025 @ 05:49am

  “Reverse racism” is real.

  You have to keep telling yourself that because you believe racial minorities, if given the same power and privilege as the racial majority, would inflict upon that majority the same pain and suffering that was inflicted upon those minorities. You’re absolutely wrong about that, but feel free to keep stewing in your wrongness.

• On the post: 230 Protects Users, Not Big Tech

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2025 @ 05:09am

  That isn’t because of 230 though, that’s because of other incentives (notably, the market).

  Interactive web services that moderate very little of the speech that goes through them don’t give a shit about “the market”. If they did, they would moderate more of that speech.

  230 just allows that incentive to kick in, without the disincentive of getting fucked by liability.

  Thank you for restating my point.

  230 doesn’t affect criminal stuff, so that’s a bit of a separate thing.

  It isn’t. 230 creates a shield for interactive web services that protects them from liability for unlawful speech they didn’t make/directly publish. Putting even the tiniest dent in that shield makes it far less effective.

  The reason 230 allows the shortcut is because the site is always protected from liability

  No, it isn’t. 230 is a defense, not a guaranteed right, and that defense can only be raised in a court of law to short-circuit lawsuits that target a service over speech for which the service carries no liability. The plaintiffs in such a lawsuit have the burden of proving the service should hold liability; if they can’t jump that hurdle, that’s their problem. They shouldn’t get to drain a service dry with an expensive and time-consuming lawsuit that has no chance of winning. 230 exists to short-circuit those lawsuits before that outcome can happen.

  that one change you thought could be done without changing it, would probably be fine

  And if you look in the reply right beneath mine in that thread, you’ll see issues raised by that change.

  we’re not getting any well considered change here, so it’s moot. Anything realistically coming out of this is going to be trash.

  And yet, you’ll still support the idea that 230 must somehow be changed to magically make it better, even though there is no change that could be made to 230⁠—including the one you linked to⁠—that wouldn’t tank 230’s effectiveness within the broader context of the U.S. legal system.

  I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to say stuff like “230 protects users not Big Tech” to stop it.

  The point of such phrasing is to remind everyone that 230 isn’t only a(n alleged) “gift to Big Tech” or was made only with “Big Tech” in mind⁠—it also protects smaller companies and even users of services both “Big” and small. Maybe there’s a more elegant way of phrasing it that includes the stuff you’re talking about, sure. But that phrasing isn’t wrong.

• On the post: Anchorage Police Department: AI-Generated Police Reports Don’t Save Time

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2025 @ 02:46pm

  a technology that doesn’t actually understand the inputs it receives, nor understands its own outputs, can’t be relied on to write up police reports?

  To be fair, neither can the cops.

• On the post: Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2025 @ 12:36pm

  This is low-effort even for you, man. Should we get in touch with your bosses and tell them you’re not even trying any more?

• On the post: Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2025 @ 11:31am

  And that’s because he’s illiterate. There is no joke. He’s actually illiterate.

• On the post: Iowa Book Ban Law Again Mostly Dead Following Return Trip To Federal Court

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2025 @ 11:23am

  The law is incredibly broad and has resulted in the removal of hundreds of books from school libraries, including, among others … books designed to help students avoid being victimized by sexual assault

  Remember that this was no accident. One of the reasons numerous conservatives (including and especially religious conservatives) oppose age-appropriate sex education is that it teaches young kids what sexual abuse is⁠—and that they should report anyone who does it to them.

• On the post: Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2025 @ 11:20am

  All he had to do was shut the fuck up and not do anything stupid

  Therein lies the problem: Donald Trump can never shut up and he will always do something stupid.

• On the post: Trump’s FCC ‘Investigates’ Disney For Not Being Racist And Sexist Enough

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2025 @ 09:57am

  As I said earlier:

  They’re the ones who keep whining about how the lead of the Snow White live-action remake ruined the movie because she wasn’t “white enough”.

  I rest my case, Your Honor.

• On the post: Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2025 @ 09:35am

  Reminder: This policy was spearheaded and implemented by a man who thinks nobody says the word “groceries” these days because “it’s an old-fashioned word” and he somehow brought it back into the limelight. Donald Trump is a motherfucking moron. Those who knew this and voted for him anyway because he gave them explicit license to be assholes deserve every last bit of pain his policies will cause them. Time to touch the stove, dickwads.

• On the post: Trump’s FCC ‘Investigates’ Disney For Not Being Racist And Sexist Enough

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2025 @ 09:00am

  Oh my fucking God, can you cool it with the 230 doomerism

  FOR ONE DAY?!

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