This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment offering an additional resource on our post about the White House’s new app:

The other half of the story

The analysis by “thereallo” covers the Android version; there’s a dissection of the iOS version at Security Analysis of the Official White House iOS App

It’s just as bad and sheds additional light on why this is a security and privacy disaster.

In second place, it’s a reply from Rocky to a commenter who was angrily getting everything wrong about the Murthy ruling:

What’s pathetic clownboy, is that you think you understand legal matters.

You blather on about merit while totally missing the point why they ruled they way they did and it is just mindboggling that you are unable to connect the dots here. It is very simple, it was concluded the plaintiffs suit had no merit, substance or proof of injury (you know, the part you are desperately ignoring) that would trigger Article III standing.

But keep screaming about lies while we point out your stupid clownishness.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from martin1961 deploying an aphorism in response to Virginia’s legally misguided attempts to compel CSAM scanning:

When you come across a man made obstacle, do you
A) dismantle it and carry on, or
B) find out why it was placed there in the first place ?

Next, it’s Drew Wilson pushing back against a commenter who disputed the comparison of the social media moral panic to previous moral panics:

That would be because the comparisons are justified. Video games were supposedly going to corrupt the youth by turning them into murdering psychopaths who would be deadly effective because they train all day on their “murder simulators”. That never played out no matter how many times the media blamed video games for anything violent.

The same is being done with social media. Social media is corrupting the youth because the youth will become distracted or have no sense of morality because they are seeing easily accessible pornography on platforms like YouTube (something that doesn’t even pass the laugh test in my books).

If there are any fundamental differences between the two, I’m not seeing it. There was never really any evidence that video games were going to turn the youth into murder machines and there was never any evidence to say that social media will inherently destroy the youths moral compass, attentiveness, or whatever else the heck that is being fabricated by politicians and the media.

The irony here is that by making your argument, you proved Masnick’s point about someone always insisting that “this time it’s different”.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Pixelation with a comment about RFK Jr.’s struggle to fill the CDC Director position:

Job ad

Needed: Whipping boy. Experience required:Conspiracy theorist.

In second place, it’s Arianity with a quip (plus a nice note) on last week’s comment post regarding the considerable length of one of the winning comments:

Congrats to Azuaron for getting their first article published on TD!

In all seriousness though, that article’s comment section was one of the best I’ve ever seen in terms of people actually productively trying to work through issues and explain their positions, even if I didn’t agree with everything.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from Thad on our post about Pete Hegseth’s war on truth:

It’s not a war, it’s a military operation on truth.

Finally, it’s MrWilson with a good reply to anyone making confidently wrong statements about the law:

Another thorough legal analysis from Trust, Me, Bro, & Associates, all graduates of the Gut Feeling School of Law, magna cum dumbass.

That’s all for this week, folks!

It’s time for the second in our series of spotlight posts looking at the winners of our eighth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1930! We’ve already covered the Best Adaptation winner, and this week we’re looking at the winner of Best Deep Cut: CARAMENTRAN by RedSPINE and poymakes.

Sometimes, we get entries that were designed for more than one game jam, and this is one of them. In this case, the game was also created for the Themed Horror game jam in which one of the themes was “macabre carnival”. CARAMENTRAN delves specifically into a Provençal carnival tradition from France, in which the “King of Carnival” or Caramentran is put on trial for all the year’s ills then burned at the stake in punishment. As the player, you are Caramentran himself, trying to ward off accusations from the villagers while extinguishing the flames at your feet in a grimy, unsettling horror arcade game.

It’s a fitting premise for a horror game, but what makes it special for this game jam is its visual assets, drawn from a variety of public domain sources. The game’s hauntingly hideous aesthetic comes from a collage of archive images and postcards of actual carnivals in Southern France, combined with figures taken from American magazines, ads, and fashion plates.

Many of the materials are from 1930, while many others are from earlier, and the combination of wildly different styles is viscerally jarring in a way that amplifies the horror. There are no widely recognized images or famous works of art here, only fragments of visual language plucked piece by piece from the vast sea of imagery in the public domain, and for that it’s this year’s Best Deep Cut.

Congratulations to RedSPINE and poymakes for the win! You can play CARAMENTRAN in your browser on Itch. We’ll be back next week with another winner spotlight, and don’t forget to check out the many great entries that didn’t quite make the cut. And stay tuned for next year, when we’ll be back for Gaming Like It’s 1931!

In the conversation about online speech, most of the attention tends to fall on the big social media platforms, while other intermediaries get overlooked — especially payment processors and other financial intermediaries. But that very thing is the focus of a new book coming out next week, Rainey Reitman‘s Transaction Denied. With launch events coming up on April 7th in Berkeley and April 9th in San Francisco, Rainey joins the podcast this week to talk all about the book and the vital role of financial intermediaries in online speech.

You can also download this episode directly in MP3 format.

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This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a rebuke to someone defending the Fifth Circuit’s ruling about whether a cop could sue Twitter:

By the logic of the Fifth Circuit’s rulings, Donald Trump can and should be held responsible for the actions of the rioters on the 6th of January 2021. Is that the position you wish to take?

In second place, it’s a long comment from Azuaron disagreeing with many parts of our post about the verdict against Meta:

Hold up

I don’t wholly agree with this ruling or it’s implications–The Encryption Problem, in particular, is a terrible argument that has to die–but I really have to address this section because it’s not accurate:

The trial judge in the California case bought this argument, ruling that because the claims were about “product design and other non-speech issues,” Section 230 didn’t apply. The New Mexico court reached a similar conclusion. Both cases then went to trial.

This distinction — between “design” and “content” — sounds reasonable for about three seconds. Then you realize it falls apart completely.

Here’s a thought experiment: imagine Instagram, but every single post is a video of paint drying. Same infinite scroll. Same autoplay. Same algorithmic recommendations. Same notification systems. Is anyone addicted? Is anyone harmed? Is anyone suing?

Of course not. Because infinite scroll is not inherently harmful. Autoplay is not inherently harmful. Algorithmic recommendations are not inherently harmful. These features only matter because of the content they deliver. The “addictive design” does nothing without the underlying user-generated content that makes people want to keep scrolling.

Instagram has, I’m sure, thousands of videos of paint drying that, I’m also sure, have very few views. Those videos have very few views because part of Instagram’s algorithmic recommendation system is to not serve videos of paint drying to people, because the design goal of Instagram is maximum addiction and use, which would not happen if their algorithm only recommended videos of paint drying.

The scenario of “Instagram, but with videos of paint drying. Same infinite scroll. Same autoplay. Same algorithmic recommendations. Same notification systems,” is the scenario we’re in now where we do have people addicted, we do have people harmed, and people are suing. Constraining Instagram to have “only” videos of paint drying is a straw man because it nearly eliminates all the design decisions that caused the harm. So, yeah, if you eliminate all that design that causes harm, the harm isn’t caused, but that’s not what anyone’s talking about.

First, however, let’s start with what Section 230 actually says:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—

(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or

(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).

There’s more that I believe isn’t currently relevant, but by all means look and correct me.

In every day language, what does 230 say? It’s a narrow carve out for responsibility based only on “providers are not necessarily publishers” and “providers can choose what content appears, or does not”.

Now, what are these lawsuits claiming? They claim (I’m going to speak to just Instagram here, but this applies to all the others as well):

• That Instagram, as a system, has been specifically designed to be addictive
• That Instagram, as a system, has been specifically designed to worsen the mental health of its users
• That Instagram, as a system, has been specifically designed to maximize user engagement at the expense of that user
• That children deserve additional protection–just like children get additional protection from advertisement–from hostile systems because their brains are still developing and they’re particularly vulnerable to it

None of those are content arguments, and saying, “But what if the content was paint drying?” is not relevant or helpful. People aren’t addicted to “a single Instagram video” or even “a single Instagram channel” (you can probably tell I’m not on Instagram; I’m sure they’re not called “channels”). People are addicted to the system of Instagram that feeds them content specifically tailored to maximize addiction and use, and feeds them content in a way that maximizes addiction and use. For some people that’s makeup videos, for some people that’s movie clips; the specific content is not the point. Hell, there’s probably one guy in Minnesota who’s hopelessly addicted to paint drying videos.

The problem, as with practically everything we’re dealing with in the world, is not single bad actors or individual responsibility. The problem is the system, and the system has, in fact as documented in court, been specifically designed to be addictive, to ruin people’s mental health, and to cause harm. The only way we’re going to be able to address this is by focusing on the system.

Finally, we’ve got to address this statement as well:

If every editorial decision about how to present third-party content is now a “design choice” subject to product liability, Section 230 protects effectively nothing. Every website makes decisions about how to display user content. Every search engine ranks results. Every email provider filters spam. Every forum has a sorting algorithm, even if it’s just “newest first.” All of those are “design choices” that could, theoretically, be blamed for some downstream harm.

Instagram’s targeted recommendation and addiction algorithm dark patterns are not the same thing as “newest first”. This is a slippery slope argument with no evidence that such a slope exists. If “newest first” was equally addictive and harmful, Meta would not have spent probably billions creating its various “engagement” systems. This is like saying a lawsuit against a restaurant that poisoned someone with puffer fish will lead to lawsuits against restaurants for selling salmon because they’re both fish.

Another example: we didn’t ban normal darts after we banned lawn darts, despite their similar design decisions, because of the key differences in their design decisions that resulted in clear and obvious differences in their harmful outcomes. No one’s going to get sued for “newest first” specifically because of how it’s different to the engagement algorithms.

The people and companies who make products have always been responsible for the designs of their products when those designs cause harm, from the lawn dart to the Pinto. And, we have long recognized that mental harms are harms: “Intentional infliction of emotional distress”, for instance, has been a recognized tort for decades. That we now have products that cause mental harm is new simply because we didn’t used to have the technology to create those products. But, “products have designs that cause harm” is not a new concept, and neither is “mental harms are tortable harms”.

Furthermore, “every editorial decision” is not now a “design choice”; just the design choices. Providers are–still!–not publishers or speakers of third-party content, and–still!–are not liable for moderation. Nothing in these lawsuits can be reasonably construed to impact decisions to publish–or not–specific content, which is all 230 protects. These lawsuits are, fully, not about the content, any more than California’s ban on Amazon’s dark patterns are a ban on having a web store. This lawsuits are fundamentally not about speech, because the problem is not the speech, but the system around the speech.

That some people might benefit from social media doesn’t negate the harm done to other people, nor make the company not liable for the harm it causes. No matter how many people found joy and friendship playing lawn darts with their friends, that doesn’t resurrect the kids who died, or replace the eyes that were lost. “Someone who was not harmed by lawn darts” would never be invited to a lawsuit about someone who was harmed by lawn darts; that just doesn’t make sense.

I’ve come down pretty hard, here, like I’m fully in favor of these lawsuits. While I definitely believe the nature of these social media sites is specifically designed to be harmful, and we do need a way to address that, ehhhhh, the plaintiffs in these cases made some pretty bad arguments. “Encryption is harmful”, well, guess what, lack of encryption is more harmful! We absolutely can’t be saying that companies are damned if they do, damned if they don’t, and we definitely don’t want to be restricting encryption. As rightly pointed out by the author, mental harms are complex, multifaceted, and it’s difficult to determine a reliable causality; I don’t know enough about the people in question to speak on the analysis that happened here, but it probably wasn’t sufficient. But, that doesn’t mean that such an analysis is impossible, and being on social media for 16 hours a day is certainly a compelling starting point.

So, more broadly speaking, what should we do about it? I don’t know! There’s a needle that needs to be threaded, and I’m not the one to thread it. The big algorithmic social media sites are really bad and I love every cut that someone gets against them, but there were certainly arguments being made on the plaintiff’s side (encryption? Come on!) that were pure BS and bad for everyone.

All that being said, one thing we absolutely must not do is misrepresent the actual harm and problems caused by the systems these companies created, and we need some kind of law or regulation to end it and make them liable for it. Hell, a basic goddamn privacy law would probably get us most of the way there on its own just by cutting down on the fodder that goes into their algorithms. Good luck to us all on that.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from MrWilson about the Trump administration trying to rein in RFK Jr.:

Junior should check the schedule. There might be a bus coming and he might be under it soon.

Next, it’s frankcox with a comment about Brendan Carr lazily trying to ban all foreign routers:

Ban MS Windows instead?

If the objective is to increase Internet security with no regard to secondary/downstream ramifications, then wouldn’t it make more sense to ban Microsoft Windows?

MS Windows has been responsible for more security issues than any other single factor pretty much since from the first day showed up on the Internet.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is MrWilson again, this time with a comment about learning HTML back in the early days of the web:

This comment is best viewed in Netscape Navigator 3.0.

In second place, it’s Thad with a comment about a bad take from the Washington Post editorial board:

Well jeez, if you can’t trust an unsigned editorial from a paper whose owner has actively and publicly interfered with its content to favor the Trump Administration, who can you trust?

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from Pixelation about the deployment of “synergy” corporate speak to announce layoffs:

Pushing the envelope

Well, they can use those synergies and circle back to their core competencies, which will streamline the deliverables for a deep dive so they can move the needle. It will be a paradigm shift when everyone has skin in the game!

Finally, it’s Bloof with a comment about the court’s rejection of attempts to take down the DOGE deposition videos:

Once again biased judges fail to protect the most delicate treasure that america owns, the egos of unqualified white men promoted well beyond anything their mediocrity would justify.

That’s all for this week, folks!

Last week, we announced the winners of our eighth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1930! Now it’s time to begin our series of spotlight posts, examining each of the winners in a bit more detail, and we’re kicking things off today with a look at the winner of Best Adaptation: I am Sam Spade by Marshview Games.

A lot of people associate the hardboiled genre of detective fiction with the protagonist’s inner monologue, as they ruminate on the situations that they face and give the reader a sense of their character and motivations. But some of the genre’s foundational works, such as Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, actually omit this entirely: the reader never sees inside detective Sam Spade’s head, they only see what he does. I am Sam Spade by Marshview Games adapts this early classic while centering the later convention, with gameplay that focuses on the inner life of the detective to drive his actions, and puts players in his shoes. And not just one player, but all of them.

To do this, it borrows mechanics from Michael Sullivan’s Everyone Is John, a classic in its own right. Two or more players become “Sams” — aspects of Sam Spade’s personality, each with a pool of power and a specific skill, plus a core motivation that they will attempt to achieve. As the game master guides them through the events of The Maltese Falcon (or another detective story!), players bid their power to seize control of Sam Spade’s actions. Though they must cooperate at least a little bit to make any progress, they are also in competition: the player whose motivations were most fulfilled by Sam wins the game.

The character of Sam Spade isn’t a blank slate, but he is opaque, which makes getting inside his head the perfect starting point for reimagining the story, and I am Sam Spade puts this at the heart of its gameplay. For that, it’s this year’s Best Adaptation.

Congratulations to Marshview Games for the win! You can get everything you need to play I am Sam Spade from its page on Itch. We’ll be back next week with another winner spotlight, and don’t forget to check out the many great entries that didn’t quite make the cut. And stay tuned for next year, when we’ll be back for Gaming Like It’s 1931.

Last month, Mike participated in the Cato Institute‘s Section 230 at 30 event to mark the 30th anniversary of the passage of Section 230. The event featured a series of fireside chats and panels that went deep on the past, present, and future of the all-important law, and you can watch videos of all of them on Cato’s website — but for this week’s episode of the podcast, we’ve got the audio of Mike’s panel (moderated by Jennifer Huddleston and also featuring Jess Miers, Matt Perault, and Matt Reeder), all about how Section 230 and similar policies will apply to new technologies like decentralized protocols and artificial intelligence.

You can also download this episode directly in MP3 format.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Bloof with a reply to a commenter who defended the DOGE kids cutting all kinds of useful humanities grants for being “DEI bullshit”:

Giving well paid government jobs to unqualified kids based on their skin colour and willingness to commit crimes for bigots is everything you idiots claim DEI is and does.

In second place, it’s MrWilson with a reaction to some of what we saw in Afroman’s defamation trial:

After the questions about him hurting the feelings of the delicate law enforcement officers, I was half expecting the lawyer to go mask off out of exhaustion and ask, “do you recognize that as people in positions of power and privilege, they’re not used to being questioned or made to feel bad for the the abuses of their power?”

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got two more related comments from the debate over the DOGE cuts. First, it’s MrWilson again with some simple questions about the shaky definition of DEI:

So would you say breast cancer research is identity politics? What about starving children? What about renewable energy resources?

Next, it’s Asst DA BA Baracus with a more expansive variant of the question:

A number of these were recording or preserving history, i.e. stuff that actually happened. I tend to think preserving accounts of significant past events, regardless of which group they happened to, is worthwhile.

Is a documentary about historical persecution of people of Irish descent in the US inherently DEI and unworthy of study and dissemination? Or does it have to include, then, persecution of the Swedish, Jewish, African (including originating from Lesotho, Central African Republic, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Bostwana, etc.), French, Catholic, Protestant, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mexican, […goes on listing 100-200 more countries and territories].

How many people of different backgrounds have to be part of a historical event before it’s not DEI? Or is your contention that every moment before the ever-moving “now” is irrelevant for study or preservation?

In case you use an LLM to help your answer (and especially if you don’t) here’s a prompt: Do not beg the question. Do not engage in non sequiturs or red herrings or One True Scotsman fallacies.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is a quick anonymous quip about Afroman’s victory in court:

I mocked the sheriff, but I did not mock the deputy.

In second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone with his own nearly-as-good joke about the outcome:

The law fought the ’fro and the ’fro won.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got a pair of anonymous comments about the trademark fight between pop star Katy Perry and Australian clothing designer Katie Perry. Here’s the first:

Maybe the seamstress should name herself something that can’t be mistaken for any popular musician. For instance, she could brand herself as the Swift Tailor.

And lest you thought that was the only solid pun to be had regarding the situation, here’s the second:

The only way I could see confusion between a musician and a seamstress? It’s the fault of the sewing machine… a Singer.

That’s all for this week, folks!

It’s finally time! Once again it took us a little while to get through all the entries this year, but we’ve now selected the winners in the latest installment of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1930!

As usual, we’ve got winners in six categories. Plus, at the end, we’ve got some honorable mentions for games that didn’t quite make the cut. Let’s get started!

Best Analog Game — Diary of a Provincial Lady by donnabooby

When E. M. Delafield published her semi-autobiographical comedy Diary of a Provincial Lady in 1930, it became an instant smash hit that has never been out of print to this day. With a little polish and expansion, we wouldn’t be surprised to see this party game of the same name achieve a similar status. It combines the gameplay of popular rotating-judge games like Apples to Apples, in which players compete to craft the funniest combinations from a set of cards, with the found-object art techniques of blackout poetry, in which creators turn existing text into a new work by subtraction. Players modify entries from the titular diary to suit randomly selected prompts, competing to collect cards featuring the book’s charming illustrations. It’s simple, fun, funny, and a fitting winner of this year’s Best Analog Game.

Best Digital Game — I Could Do That! by Geouug

Among the notable paintings to enter the public domain this year is Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow, one of the most recognizable works from the abstract art pioneer’s series of geometric compositions in primary colors. Of course, like many deceptively simple works of abstract art, it is often met with the declaration: I Could Do That! So what better title for this game, which responds: prove it! Players are given a brief look at the painting then sent to a blank canvas with some simple drawing tools and challenged to reproduce it, after which their effort is compared pixel-by-pixel with the original and assigned a numerical score with a detailed breakdown of just how close they got. It’s a clever and somewhat cheeky rebuke to dismissive attitudes about abstract art, and this year’s Best Digital Game.

Best Adaptation — I am Sam Spade by Marshview Games

Dashiel Hammet’s 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon is one of the definitive early works of the “hardboiled” genre of detective stories, and its main character Sam Spade was a major inspiration for Raymond Chandler’s famous detective Philip Marlowe. I am Sam Spade is a TTRPG based on the novel that does something very interesting as an adaptation: it draws inspiration from Chandler’s stories, which explored Marlowe’s thoughts and inner life in a way that came to define the character and genre, to enrich Hammet’s story, which very much did not do the same for Spade. To accomplish this, it makes use of mechanics from the brilliant minimalist TTRPG Everyone is John, and has all the players taking turns as Sam Spade, each inhabiting and fleshing out a different aspect of his personality. It’s an intriguing and thoughtful way of reflecting on this seminal novel and character, making it this year’s Best Adaptation.

Best Remix — Lilac Song by Autumn Chen

Lilac Song is a rich piece of interactive fiction that casts the player as a servant in the household of Prussian Minister-President Otto Braun during the last few years of the Weimar Republic. In this charged historical setting, it explores heavy themes of gender, democracy, socialism, and the rise of the Nazis, and it does so with grace through its excellent writing. On top of this, the game mixes together a perfect selection of public domain works to anchor its story with a background aesthetic: the player guides the character as they admire 1930 paintings by Klee and Kandinsky and listen to a variety of early 20th century musical compositions. The use of these works is subtle and elegant, serving to enhance the game’s original story without overtaking it, and for that it’s this year’s Best Remix.

Best Deep Cut — CARAMENTRAN by RedSPINE and poymakes

In the Carnivals of Southern France, there is a tradition: parading an effigy representing the “King of Carnival” or Caramentran. He is scapegoated for all the past year’s misfortunes, placed on trial, and ultimately burned at the stake to conclude the festivities. In a dual entry for both this game jam and the Themed Horror Game Jam, CARAMENTRAN is a haunting video game in which the player is the effigy, trying desperately to extinguish the rising flames and repel the townspeople who hurl accusations and admonishments at you. This premise is unsettling enough, but it’s made all the moreso by the collage graphics that clip their elements from archive images, postcards, magazine advertisements, and other obscure 1930 sources that could easily be overlooked and forgotten. For that, it’s this year’s Best Deep Cut.

Best Visuals — As I Lay Flying by Geouug

There are no returning winners from past editions in this year’s selection, but there is a first for these game jams: a double winner! In addition to winning Best Digital Game, designer Geouug has locked down a second win with As I Lay Flying, which was in fact a strong contender for the former category as well. The game is based on William Faulkner’s 1930 novel As I Lay Dying, and transforms it into a rather silly and slapstick physics-based challenge while still carrying forth a surprising amount of the story and heart of the book. But on top of that, it looks great: it has a robust array of well-polished graphics including original character portraits, parallax backgrounds, and thematically appropriate interface elements. Check it out and you’ll quickly see why it’s this year’s winner for Best Visuals.

Honorable Mentions

It’s always hard to narrow things down to just six winners, and we always end up having to leave out a few that we still feel deserve recognition. Here are some of our other favorite entries:

The Agatha Effect by A.M.Homunculus and Matteo Ignesti — a very creative narrative game that has players jointly crafting a unique murder mystery then conducting a seance with the spirit of Agatha Christie in order to find the solution.

Early Sunday Morning by Nora Katz — a truly unique entry that involves neither a computer nor a tabletop, as it sends players out into the streets of their home city for a play session that combines hide-and-seek with an improvised scavenger hunt.

The House Hunter Mystery by Gwen C. Katz — a genuinely fun little object-finding video game based on Nancy Drew, in which the player must solve a series of riddles while exploring the rooms of a house.

Poetry Appreciator 2K26 by ZapJackson — a comedic exploration of T. S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday that combines purposely-obtuse resource-management style mechanics with some funny and surprising twists as you click on words to “appreciate” the poem.

The winning designers will be contacted via their Itch pages to arrange their prizes, so if you see your game listed here, keep an eye on your incoming comments!

A huge thanks to all the designers who submitted games to this year’s jam! Stay tuned for our series of spotlight posts taking a closer look at each of the winning entries, and for an episode of the Techdirt Podcast where we’ll be discussing them. In the mean time, go check out all the other great entries on Itch!

There’s a notion that pops up in the comments here on Techdirt that Mike and our writer Karl Bode are deeply opposed in their opinions on AI and engaged in an epic ongoing debate. Alas, the truth is a little less spectacular: while they might have some differences of opinion here and there, they actually agree on most things, and would both prefer to hear (and have) more thoughtful and nuanced discussions about the technology without going to the extremes. By way of demonstration, Karl joins this week’s episode of the podcast for a long conversation with Mike all about AI, its role in our society, the challenges it raises, and where things go from here.

You can also download this episode directly in MP3 format.

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This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Nimrod with a comment about the lack of checks and balances for RFK Jr.:

Observation

If a member of organized crime were to manage to get themself elected President, they would probably try to delegitimize the legal system, law enforcement and government authority in general. After enriching themself and their cronies, of course. Maybe they’d even start a war or two as a diversion. They’d also put as many “friendly” judges in place as they could, particularly in the higher courts.
It’s a good thing we’d never elect such a person. /s

In second place, it’s MrWilson with a comment about MAHA’s call to eliminate the whole childhood vaccination schedule:

This is another instance where you’d be fine with the stupidity if it didn’t affect innocent people. Like with covid, you were fine that dumbasses got themselves infected, but it led to grandmothers and children and random people they encountered getting infected and sometimes dying, so it wasn’t okay. It was fine if some random 50 year old Trump supporter wanted to get the ivermectin shits or waste money on homeopathic “cures.”

But this is expressly the same evil abuse as Christian Science and Jehovah’s Witness parents who refuse medical care for their children, preferring they die than benefit from modern science and treatments.

It also undermines the entire “parents rights” narrative that conservatives like to spin whenever an issue comes up. You don’t get to kill your children just because you’re a brainwashed dumbass. Except, in America, you actually do. And that’s fucking horrible.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from TKnarr that is similarly about the consequences of the administration’s stupidity:

The sad thing is that you should take what Trump says seriously in the same way you should take what the Joker says seriously. Because they’re literally an insane clown with only a tenuous hold on reality, but they’re an insane clown with a tanker-truck full of SmileX who absolutely will blanket the city with it. The people who claim you shouldn’t take him seriously or literally? Are the ones who paid him to do that and are now worried someone might connect the dots that lead back to them.

Unfortunately our version of Bruce Wayne really is the brainless billionaire he-bimbo Batman’s secret identity pretends to be.

Next, it’s Epic_Null with a comment about the impact of social media on kids and teens:

We also should not forget though that we have children who are fairly restricted in where they go. A child who is not allowed to go to the park on their own is not exactly likely to turn into a teen who hangs out at the mall.

If we want independent people who use third spaces… we have to make laws and culture that supports people being independent and using third spaces.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous comment about Stephen Thaler’s latest loss in his quest to get copyright protection for the generations of his AI system:

Does Thaler believe he got thrown under DABUS?

In second place, it’s an anonymous reply to our guest post entitled Human Problems: It’s Not Always The Technology’s Fault:

There is one golden rule – It’s always someone else’s fault, and they owe me a lot of money.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, it’s another somewhat slow week when it comes to jokes, so we’ll keep it to just one pick — another comment from MrWilson, this time about Roblox’s rollout of AI-powered real-time rephrasing of profanity in chat:

Holy forking shirtballs!

That’s all for this week, folks!