Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the say-what dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side Stephen T. Stone breaking down Trump’s astonishing demand that his government should take a cut of a TikTok sale:

He asked for a bribe. He literally asked for whatever company buys TikTok (if that happens) to pay hi?I mean, the Treasury a substantial amount of money from the sale in exchange for the right to buy TikTok in the first place. All the other shit is important, yes, but let?s not ignore the sitting president of the United States asking an American business for a bribe. Because even with the past four years of what-the-fuckery, this is somehow a new low even for Donald Trump.

In second place, it’s That One Guy talking about the ongoing nightmare of qualified immunity for cops:

This? This is why you get protests.

Even when they highlight the many ways the deck is stacked in favor of police and the numerous injustices inflicted by the police against the public they are still bound by the idiots in the US supreme court who’ve never seen a cop they didn’t like, that has got to really annoy the hell out of the judge.

With rulings like this it’s hardly surprising that people have gotten so pissed off with the system and have lost any belief that maybe asking the police to pretty-please stop violating the rights and lives of those around them will work and have instead taken to the street to demand real changes be made, because when even a judge entirely sympathetic to the victim has to admit that the system has tied their hands such that they can do nothing it’s pretty clear that business as usual benefits and protects only those in power.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start with Eldakka offering up a simpler summary of Trump’s TikTok demand:

Trump to Microsoft: “That’s a nice deal you’ve got going on there. Shame if something were to happen to it”

Next, it’s Michael Long with a guess about what could happen next:

Of course, the idiot doesn’t realize that all China needs to do is take his precedent and use it to force Google, Facebook, et al, to sell their Chinese business operations to Chinese companies.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous commenter with an excellent response to the suggestion that content moderation at scale is easy “if you try to block obscene, lewd, or violent speech, instead of opinions”:

What about the obscene, lewd, and violent opinions?

In second place, it’s John Roddy responding to the withdrawal of FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly’s renomination because he suggested Trump’s Section 230 executive order is unconstitutional:

Xzibit A

So the Trump administration just censored someone for no reason other than having a conservative viewpoint about an order that they claimed was specifically to prevent others from censoring anyone for no reason other than having a conservative viewpoint?

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got a pair of short, clever replies to other comments. First, it’s Not THAT AC responding to the question of what it would take to declare Trump braindead:

A brain, for a start.

And finally, it’s an anonymous commenter speculating about another commenter’s allusion to “some place I wouldn’t want to be”:

Earth 2020?

That’s all for this week, folks!