Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to our post about Google blocking news sites in California because of bad link tax laws, and specifically in reply to a commenter who suggested the link tax would just be Google giving back" money. In first place, it's an anonymous reply:
What. Any money google earns through ads on their own products is purely from value of googles services. The links the the news sites do not contain the news itself. That's like saying the yellow pages is pizza. And Chinese food. And Mexican.
In case this is not blindly obvious: that's bat shit crazy.
The news sites have their content. And google is only making it easy for people to get to it. If the news sites can't make any money off it: That's like Restaurants blaming the yellow pages for them going out of business.
And in second place, it's Stephen T. Stone making a different version of the point:
Irrelevant. To charge for links is to undercut the basic functionality of the Internet for the sake of profit. Google, Twitter, Facebook, or any other interactive web service or website should have no obligation to pay for the right to link to a newspaper's website.
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with one more comment on that post, this time from another anonymous commenter making a very simple and important point:
Taxes disincentivize the taxed behavior. If you tax links, you're disincentivizing linking. This is not rocket surgery.
Next, it's still another anonymous commenter, this time on our post about the possibility of a TikTok ban, in reply to a commenter trying to shift the burden of proof and demand a debunking" of fears about TikTok:
You can't debunk a concern". People will have a moral panic over whatever they like in service of any number of agendas.
The actual problem, though, is that's all you have: Concern, and claims. Bring evidence of privacy issues unique to TikTok, and/or influence issues caused by TikTok (while not ignoring the First Amendment). Then others can support or debunk your evidence with additional evidence. That's how this works. Make a testable claim, then test it, then show your work and the evidence produced by testing. It is no one else's job to counter things that don't exist, but lucky you, articles like the one above are already doing just that.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is NotTheMomma with a comment about other child safety laws that would block sites:
Come on now, Mike, this will work, look at how prohibition went? Most of these people pushing for this were alive then.
In second place, it's bonk with another comment about TikTok panic, and people comparing it to fentanyl:
I heard from a friend's friend that they had a brother that was so addicted to social media he died. It took the paramedics ten minutes to dislodge the smartphone he had snorted, but he had already perished at that point.
For editor's choice on the funny side, we've got two more anonymous comments. The first is another response to TikTok as fentanyl":
Projection?
... I'm starting to think that the folks in charge are just projecting their own insecurities brought on by years of just believing whatever entity was waving money in their face.
Finally, it's a comment about the rise of chemtrail" legislation:
WHEREAS, it is documented, among those within the pseudoscience of bullshitery, that the Earth is flat, and that the Earth is at the center of the universe.
WHEREAS, the constant Pi is commonly referred to as an irrational number, it will from now on be known as 3.
We have the best science, no one has better science than we do. Did you land on the moon? No? Hahaha
That's all for this week, folks!