Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the ourselves-alone dept
This week, MrWilson takes both top spots on the insightful side. In first place, it’s a comment about opportunistic ICE arrests:
ICE keeps trying to find more victims to prove the false narrative of how many undocumented immigrants there are in the country, so individual agents probably want to make their own abductions to show dear leader that their jackboots are loyal rather than hand it off to someone else.
In second place, it’s a response to our post about the MAGA GOP warning about communism while taking ownership stakes in private companies:
Another angle is seeing it as just more fascism. The Nazi government in Germany was deep in it with corporations and seized assets and controlled factories and controlled how they did business
Trump isn’t seizing or nationalizing the means of production for the benefit of the people or the workers. He’s getting more power and money for his corruption machine. We’re not seeing all of what’s happening in the background, but you know he’s personally benefiting from these moves.
And when a Democrat gets into the White House, watch for Fox News and GOP politicians to decry the “communism” that Democrats are perpetuating and they’ll ignore Trump’s moves entirely or our local propaganda repeater will stop by to tell us it was legal under Trump and completely different but any Democrats doing 5% of the same thing are dirty commies.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a pair of comments about the federal court ruling that said recommendation algorithms aren’t protected speech. First, it’s Stephen T. Stone with a reply to a commenter who asserted that “the government needs the power to control what companies recommend”:
No. No, it does not. As the article asks, do you really want the Trump administration in control of what content social media services can/will recommend? Because that seems like a surefire way to privilege TRASH speech over all other kinds. But feel free to point out how that wouldn’t be the case!
Next, it’s an anonymous comment about the line in the ruling saying the social media companies had not shown that their feeds constitute fully protected speech:
Uh… Protected speech is assumed. The court needs to fully explain how something is not protected. They have utterly failed to do this so far.
Not that i don’t think plenty of these companies, and plenty of algorithms, pretty much suck to one degree or another. However, one is free to search or refresh or better train how the algorithm serves them, at least to a point. And one is free to leave. One is also free to educate one’s children in media literacy.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is MrWilson yet again, this time with another reply to that same commenter:
Yes, we should definitely embrace fascism to defeat the fascists!
In second place, it’s an anonymous comment from last week’s comments post, in which I lamented that there were no more Star Trek jokes for me to highlight:
Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!
(Though several commenters associated “this far and no further” even more strongly with the iconic final episode of the initial run of Columbo, another greatest-show-of-all-time. Techdirt readers have great taste!)
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from PB&J about MAGA’s fearmongering about communism:
obligatory meme: “If Those Kids Could Read They’d Be Very Upset”
We all know that 50% of Americans don’t know what communism is — like, they literally cannot define it — and another 49% think it means “The Democrats”.
Finally, it’s one more anonymous reaction to the ruling that algorithms aren’t protected speech because they just reflect what people want back to them:
Today I learned that portrait photography is not protected under the Constitution because it is merely a mirror held up to that person.
That’s all for this week, folks!
Comments on “Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt”
To sneak in yet another Star Trek reference: You may test that assumption at your own convenience.
Re: Readers Anonymous
Hello, my name is Bruce. It has been three weeks since I have last eaten a reader. Readers are friends, not food.
Why did a robot eat my comment that mentioned by name two censored portrait artists? Is the robot aiming for irony?
Re: Wherein a robot prohibits discussion of censorship.
It’s hard to discuss censorship when, I reasonably infer, a robot trashes the names of censored artists. With no moderation message. It seems that sometimes, a human eventually finds comments which get that extreme treatment—sometimes not.
In
rot13, the two portrait photographers’ names I mentioned are “Eboreg Znccyrgubecr” and “Fnyyl Znaa”. If I had to guess further, I’d wager the latter triggered the robot. If so, that’s especially problematic; the police raid on the museum was in the news just last year. The timing is not unrelated to why I guess it was probably this.Nothing in my comment could have conceivably triggered the robot, except the bare mention of those two names—plus the title of the latter’s work which triggered the Texas police.
To be clear, I’m taking the time to document this because on today’s Internet, site owners usually don’t even know about the infelicities caused by the automated systems upon which almost everyone relies. I think the readers and authors of this site are all aware of that general problem.
Re: Re:
If your comment got caught in the spamfilter, it’ll likely be let through soon enough. Even I get comments caught in the filter; ain’t no big deal.
Re: Re: Re:
And just to be sure: Robert Mapplethorpe and Sally Mann were the names you mentioned, correct?
Re: Re: Re:2
Hey, how did you get in here?!
-Anonymous Bot
Re: Re: Re:2 Censorship of Portrait Photography
Yes. A+ cryptanalysis. 😉 Thank you.
One of my exceedingly numerous free speech pet peeves is the 1990 criminal trial of Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center and of its director, Dennis Barrie, who faced prison if convicted. Only 36 years later, how many people even realize that that can happen in America? When I saw the “portrait photography” comment in the other thread, I immediately thought of this; I didn’t want to go off on a(nother) tangent there.
The February 2025 police raid and seizure at the Fort Worth Modern Art Museum set off big alarm bells for me—although I admit there have been so many alarms ringing in 2025–2026, I haven’t followed up since I heard (?) the cops backed off. (News?) So, I added that. It pertains to a different species of canary in the free speech coal mine. As the bounds of speech perpetually shrink in this country, I fear for the future of that particular canary.
Oddly enough, I’ve never seen most of the photographs in question. (Oddly enough, the academic stuff I’ve read about them is reticent about reproducing what would be the most important examples.) Like Justice Douglas, I don’t need to see something and judge its content to declare that it’s absolutely protected by the First Amendment. I should find copies and have a look, the better to educate myself about art!
As for the robot, I hope that this information is helpful to others who use strong privacy protections (and maybe to the site, if they see fit to twiddle some knobs):
I’ve been observing the robot’s visible behavior for awhile. Last year, the extreme unreliability of commenting with Tor exit IPs dissuaded me from commenting at all. IIRC, I only got through something like two comments before I stopped trying. I am now using other IPs.
My IPs are probably of lower “reputation” than yours, and I am using a fingerprint-resistant browser. I presume that the robot takes such factors into account, in addition to message content. It is my hypothesis that that’s why you had no problem posting those two names—but my comment with them instantly vanished, even though about four minutes later I was able to post a one-line comment. The one-liner was instantly published, with no moderation. My intervening comment with the “encryption” got a moderation message, and was released a short time later.
Besides the names, I can’t think of anything else that could have triggered it. I do hate the guessing game of, “What is the robot ‘thinking’ when it judges me!?” It’s deeply dehumanizing, and it’s a pandemic plague on the Net nowadays.
Comments which vanish with no moderation message have often shown up later. I guess they probably land in a trash bin outside the moderation queue, where a human may or may not fish them out. This includes the long comment to which you replied, where you said you like me (regret that yet? ;)).
A few comments have permanently vanished. I don’t like to re-attempt. And I never know how long to wait before presuming it’s really gone. I don’t like dealing with this at all, and thus likely will sooner or later stop interacting with any website I do not control.
If my missing comment doesn’t appear, is it proper etiquette to retry? When? There is nothing offensive about it—nothing even remotely approaching anything that a human moderator may reasonably axe. It is friendly, humorous, respectful and congratulatory to the anonymous commenter, not explicit about any censored content, and much shorter than this. I write these in a text editor before pasting them in; I have a verbatim copy.
Re: Re: Re:3
I don’t. Typically, it’ll be a few hours, a day at the most for a filtered comment to go through—especially on the weekends. You really shouldn’t worry so much about it; I’m one of the most prolific commenters here, and I still get snagged by the filter once or twice a week. No one here is trying to silence you intentionally. I mean, you’ve seen that one troll who loves to use ableist slurs. If Mike is willing to let that bullshit through, I doubt he’s going to stop your comments from getting published.
Re: Re: Re:4 Moderation Systems
In point of fact, I’ve had several comments vanish permanently. I replaced one the next day with an altered version; it’s about Trump’s EO #14420, so its importance drove me to semi-retry. The altered version includes an explanation of the absurd unreason I guess for its being blocked. You can see it on this page; the parent comment was community-flagged, wrongly in my opinion, so the direct link will not jump to my hidden reply. (Subject: ‘Trump ordered the enforcement of “religious exemptions”. [second try]’)
In some limited past experience with WordPress-based moderation systems, which this appears to be, I saw a moderation queue and a separate trash bin. When the robotic filter was pretty sure of badness, it threw a comment straight into the trash—not the moderation queue. There was often a flood of robo-posted hormel tasty-meats in the trash, which was auto-deleted its contents after a short time.
The way that the system works here is fully consistent with that. I infer that comments where the system tells me, “Your comment is awaiting moderation.” are in the moderation queue, and insta-vanished comments are in the trash.
I guess that permanently vanished messages may have been missed by a human. Not intentionally discarded by a human. I guess?
I hate all of these systems. I hate to deal with them. I hate having to guess what I did “wrong” to upset the robot. It’s dehumanizing and degrading to be judged by a robot (!). Yes, the human time and effort that I take to write something is worth too much to see it eaten by a robot; I care not to cast pearls before swine, never mind robots! Yes, I am too good for that treatment; it’s called self-respect!
These systems have driven me to retreat from interacting with the Internet. I only started to comment because my own website is not set up, and I’m fired with such wrath about Trump that I need to comment publicly somewhere before my head explodes.
I understand that site owners with open comments need their robots to fend off the insane flood of robo-posted hormel tasty-meats. I understand. That doesn’t make me enjoy being human collateral damage—nor ultimately to accept it. I frankly do not understand why anyone accepts this state of affairs.
As for the my guesswork here: From what I have gathered, most people who work on building moderation robots are direly ignorant about the complicated legalities pertaining to unclothed under-18 images. I’m guessing that perhaps, some stuff about S–ly M–n got shoved into an “AI” training set of “bad stuff to block”—perhaps when there was that news last year?—and then, I mentioned her name with a slightly dirty IP and unfingerprintable browser… It’s a wild guess, but what else am I to guess? I do hate playing guessing games with systems which are intentionally opaque to the human serfs being judged by an almighty robot.
Re: Re: Re:5
Not in my experience. I’ve had comments caught in the filter that didn’t show up with the “your comment is awaiting moderation” message—like I’d never posted a comment at all—and they’ve shown up several hours later, presumably because Mike or whoever handles comment moderation decided to let it through. If your comments were being held back intentionally, the best guesses I have for that is because (A) you’re a relatively new commenter, (B) you post even longer comments than I do, or (C) someone is mistaking your posts for unhinged right-wing screeds or some shit because…well, have you ever met a succinct crank?
I’d suggest emailing Mike about this if you’re truly worried about having your comments blocked. But I really wouldn’t put too much thought behind it. I doubt there’s any sinister motive behind any of this.
Re: Re: Re:6 Overblocking by Automated Systems
I thought this was clear, but I should say it explicitly: I am not accusing any humans here of sinister motives. I lack at this time substantial evidence that any humans here are intentionally blocking my comments, and of their motives. Even though I believe in at least one “conspiracy theory”, I’m not a fan of “have problem, jump to conclusions about sinister motives” modes of thought.
I’m complaining about overblocking by automated system—the robot. That should be old hat to anyone who’s seen the EFF Deeplinks Blog. 🙂
I’ve looked for an email address for him before (and preferably, a PGP key). Wanted to tip a story. I saw only Bluesky, or a general web contact form. Did I miss something?
By the way, don’t get me started on how automated systems and the centralized email oligopoly have destroyed email. It is a problem invisible to any user of the centralized email oligopoly. Most people think that email works just fine. It doesn’t. The system is broken.
Yes, unfortunately.
Re: Re: Re:7
P.S.—I’ve said this before in another thread: The email address I use to comment is real—delightfully strange though it may seem. Thus, Mike knows my email address. I don’t know his.
Re: Re: Re:6 Again!
The robot just ate another comment (no mod message). After I successfully replied to you, I attempted to rethread and to return to the subject of criminal-law government censorship of portrait photography. Portrait photography as such is not protected by the First Amendment. Anyone want to talk about that?
My newly-vanished comment’s title: “Portrait of American Censorship”.
The robot has sinister motives. The evidence is patent and abundant. Or it would be, if robots had “motives”—which they don’t, because they are not intelligent.
Re: Re: Re:7
And I’ll tell you again: I’ve had plenty of comments caught in the spamfilter in a way that makes it seem like I never posted them, but they’ve been let through later on. Please don’t turn every comments section into an “I’m being censored because [reasons]” bitchfest, my dude.
Re: Re: Re:8 For the record.
In a direct reply to my brief note of a missing comment which stated, with boldface in the original:
You said, without mentioning that issue:
Please observe that to date, in fact, this hereby is only and exactly the one thread where I’ve ever complained at length about the collateral damage of an automated system that’s caused me immense frustration since last year. Elsewhere, I’ve briefly mentioned it maybe once or twice, and not discussed it further.
Do you, and/or does anyone else want to talk about the First Amendment issue to which I have repeatedly and emphatically tried to return? If so, I’d much prefer that discussion. It’s important to me, it’s on-topic, and I believe the First Amendment is cherished by many people here, including you.
Re: Re: Re:7
Look, if you pay enough attention, you’ll see that the AC comments are posted in batches throughout the day, at irregular and sometimes very long intervals, and almost never when it’s night in the US. That suggests there’s only one person, probably Mike, checking and approving them whenever he has the time. And I haven’t been keeping track of “who said what and when” enough to be sure they’re all AC comments, so it’s probably reasonable to assume anything the spam filter catches is treated the same way. Basically, it’s way too early for you to raise hell about a couple comments you made over the weekend not showing up yet.
Besides, it would be weird if the content moderation expert who says “AI is only bad if you let it think for you” let an AI think for him on content moderation decisions. No, I’m sure he double-checks every single one. He’ll get to yours. Just be patient.
Re: Re: Re:8
Look, if you pay enough attention, you’ll see that I said, “Comments which vanish with no moderation message have often shown up later. I guess they probably land in a trash bin outside the moderation queue, where a human may or may not fish them out.”—and several related observations. Although I didn’t specifically mention it, I have indeed noticed that AC comments tend to show up in batches—sometimes with mine.
My “Portrait of American Censorship” comment about criminal prosecution of portrait photography has now appeared! (My much earlier missing comment from yesterday has not.) I’ve repeatedly expressed a strong interest in discussing the lack of First Amendment protection accorded to portrait photography. Would you like to discuss that? I think it’s a very important issue.
Re: Portrait of American Censorship
So, let’s talk about criminal-law government censorship of portrait photography. Anyone want to talk about that?
I named two world-famous portrait photographers, whose portraiture has resulted in police raids on museums. In one case, there was a criminal trial of a museum curator. As I noted in my vanished comment, the criminal trial was the censorship of an art exhibition that was arranged at CAC by the University of Pennsylvania.
I could greatly expand my argument, to show that a very large amount of portrait photography is not being given adequate First Amendment protection. However, like a lawyer would do here (IANAL), I propounded my strongest argument first: World-famous fine-art portrait photographers. Police raids on art museums. A criminal trial. This establishes that, on the whole, portrait photography as such is not protected by the First Amendment.
Some portrait photography is accorded the full protection of the First Amendment, in theory and in practice. That’s like observing that some books, some movies, some websites, some forms of dance, and otherwise some expressive conduct enjoy the full and undisputed protection of the First Amendment. It’s not a meaningful statement.
You mean, with exactly that same reply to (necessarily) that same commenter.
Re:
Wait, you attribute exactly the same text both to Stephen T. Stone and MrWilson.
Re:
MrWilson’s funny comment was actually…
Re:
Yeah, Stephen’s comment got quoted twice. They’ll probably fix it when they notice.
Re: Re:
Oh, for a moment I thought the commenter was failing so badly at understanding the point in Stephen’s reply you felt the need to repeat it verbatim. 😛
Re: Re: :)
Yeah, Stephen’s comment got quoted twice. They’ll probably fix it when they notice.
Re:
My bad. Fixed!
Columbo actually said “this far, and no farther” (without the two preceding sentences of Picard’s quote).
Anyway, that show’s original run started in 1968 and ended in 1978, and since this is Techdirt, a subtext I found fascinating was that of technological advancement in consumer products. Columbo marveling at a telephone answering machine stands out in my memory, but I know there were many other instances in which something I took for granted (I was born after 1978) was new and amazing.