Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy deploying an overused (and often abused) quote for, in this case, a very apt purpose - responding to right wing denial about Republicans pushing to censor the internet:

Sure all the evidence shows it's republicans censoring things but...

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
George Orwell, 1984

As for the second place winner, it's also the first place winner on the funny side. The comment is from Strawb, responding to the federal judge who said drag performances are not protected speech because they aren't political" enough:

Ah yes, that all-important, often-overlooked clause of the first amendment: You have the right to free expression(except if your expression isn't very political)".

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment responding to the very incorrect notion that non-binary identities are some sort of brand new, artificial invention:

Clearly you have no interest in history... Or other cultures for that matter.

In no particular order:

• The Hijras of India
• The Akkadian Empire (Of particular note is an story about Ishtar being rescued from the underworld by Asu-shu-namir, who is explicitly stated to be non-binary)
• Related to above, the Assyrians (particularly in relation to the cult of Inanna, whom later merged with other deities to become Ishtar)
• The Faafafine of Samoa (admittedly contentious debate due to western cultures having quite the culture clash in terms of gender ideology)
• Two-Spirit (umbrella term, used by various native American tribes)

In addition, There is scholarly debate as to whether or not the eunuchs were effectively treated as a third gender... For that matter they also debate (starting with the early Christian Theologian Tertullian) whether or not Jesus was an eunuch.

Next, it's an anonymous comment about California's version of FOSTA and the misguided belief that all issues can be solved without collateral damage if the nerds would just nerd harder:

We need a permalink article in the same vein as You're wrong about Section 230' perhaps titled: The Nerd Harder Fallacy."

These bills and the people that cheerlead them suffer from the misapprehension that spam(bots), misinformation, CSAM, sex trafficking, youth mental illnesses and dysmorphias, etc. are really simple problems to solve, but Big Tech refuses to solve them because profits,' and so we need strong laws to force them to deal with it.'

This is why court defeats don't faze them. Court decisions on 1st Amendment grounds or standing issues sound like technicalities, not explanations on why their whole concept is wrong.

Asimov wrote ...an uninformed public tends to confuse scholarship with magicians..."
An XKCD comic was captioned In C[omputer] S[cience] it can be hard to explain the difference between the easy and the virtually impossible." Educating and convincing people that these are actually hard problems is going to be difficult, but is the only hope for the open Internet.

Over on the funny side, we've already had our first place winner above, so we move on to second place and another comment from That One Guy. It's also about the judge denying free speech protections to drag shows:

Any day now...

Well I'm sure the usual talking heads always uncomplaining about liberal judges legislating from the bench' will be swift in their condemnation of this judge as well, I mean this is pretty blatantly a judge applying his own bigotry to suit his desires to squash speech he doesn't like and to hell with the first amendment so I'm sure they'll get right on condemning him for such a glaring abuse of power and attack on the first amendment.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with Nimrod and one more comment on that post:

Dress Codes

Since they've made attire such an issue, I submit that all elected officials should be required to wear oversized wingtip shoes, bright colored wigs and red rubber noses so that everyone is completely aware of exactly who and what they are.

Finally, it's Stephen T. Stone with a response to a commenter fearmongering about overpopulation:

This sounds like something a comic book villain would say before trying to wipe out a significant chunk of human life.

That's all for this week, folks!