This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment about calls for RFK Jr.’s resignation coming entirely from Democrats:

And that’s why trying to distill partisan politics down to just “team blue” vs. “team red” is reductive at best and false equivalence at worst. This and many other life-or-death issues break down on pretty clear partisan lines, and it’s entirely clear which party is right and which one is wrong.

Christ knows the Democrats aren’t perfect. But of the two major parties they’re the one that’s not a eugenicist death cult.

In second place, it’s an anonymous comment on our post about monitor makers hitting owners with annoying ads, and our characterization of how it happened:

No, that’s not how computers work. Microsoft Windows identifies the connected monitor, and then, on its own authority, checks whether the manufacturer has “recommended” any software to go with it; if so, Windows installs that without telling the user. The monitor isn’t installing anything.

Of course, we should also be criticizing monitor manufacturers for taking advantage of this misfeature. But the root problem is with Microsoft. More than 2 decades after the Sony rootkit, they haven’t learned their lesson (or maybe they have: people will put up with this shit, and the blame will mostly be misdirected).

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a pair of comments from. MrWilson. First, it’s one about giving Elon Musk credit when his products work:

Nope. Not at all. Screw that noise.

Teslas might function as a car some of the time, but that doesn’t mean you have to give Musk any credit whatsoever.

Starlink is a money pit from whence nothing can be recovered. Even the most corrupt broadband fiber deployment can be dug up or reused. Comcast could, in a just judicial system, be broken up as an illegal monopoly and their infrastructure that we paid for could be reused by other service providers.

And not every dollar was going to go to big monopolistic companies, whereas any money going to Starlink funds literal authoritarian, anti-democratic election interference.

Next, it’s one on our post about the “Darnella Test” for social media regulation:

Unfortunately, “kids won’t be able to post videos that make authorities look bad and fuel significant protests” is an appealing argument to the authoritarians who are already in favor of curbing social media access for kids which those authoritarians can’t directly control.

Over on the funny side, things are extremely quiet this week, so we’re going to truncate it and just feature the only comment that received enough votes to earn a funny badge. It’s Stephen T. Stone with a reply to a comment calling Mitch McConnell a vegetable:

How dare you insult vegetables like that. Unlike Mitch McConnell’s political career, vegetables are actually good for the average person.

That’s all for this week, folks!

This Week in 2016

• UK Gov’t Report: Facebook, Twitter, And Google Are Pretty Much Unrepentant Terrorist Supporters
• New Zealand Court Grants Kim Dotcom’s Request To Have Extradition Hearing Livestreamed On YouTube, Despite DOJ Protests
• PETA Has Lost Its Monkey’s ‘Next Friend’ In Its Crazy Copyright Case
• James Comey Claims He Wants An ‘Adult Conversation’ About Encryption; Apparently ‘Adults’ Ignore Experts
• Our ‘Copying Is Not Theft’ T-Shirt Seems To REALLY Upset Some People
• DHS’s New Election Cybersecurity Committee Has No Cybersecurity Experts

This Week in 2011

• You Can Copy Our Articles All You Want… But Please Don’t Claim The Copyright Belongs To You
• Pakistan Officially Bans All Encryption Online
• Pure Awesomeness: Two Chat Bots Talking To Each Other
• All Of Justin Bieber’s Music Removed From YouTube Via ‘Prank’ DMCA Claims
• Twitter Keeps Suspending Accounts Based On Highly Questionable DMCA Claims
• Leaked State Department Cable Confirms What Everyone Already Knew: MPAA Was Behind Bogus Australian ISP Lawsuit

This Week in 2006

• Cable Companies, Telcos, Have An Epiphany — Their Service Sucks
• The HP Way: Scientists Innovate New Ways Of Determining Ink Patent Infringement
• iPod Factory Makes Even Apple’s Treatment Of Bloggers Look Good
• RIAA Following MPAA’s Lead In Brainwashing Kids
• MPAA Rates Film About MPAA Ratings As NC-17
• RIAA Still Feels Entitled To Scour Everyone’s Hard Drives

This week, MrWilson scores another double-win with both top spots on the insightful side. In first place, it’s a piece-by-piece response to a commenter who defended ICE’s failed illegal raid on an immigration law office:

“Immigration lawyers are aiding abetting criminals.”

Yeah, sure. Except, you know, you have to be convicted of a crime for it to be determined if you’re actually a criminal and that requires due process…which includes access to a lawyer.

“They all have to go.”

Cite the specific law that demands this. I’m sure there are videos of the law you’ve seen all over that you’re just itching to copy and paste links like all the other evidence you’ve ever shared here.

“We have to enforce laws consistently, especially those that treat people differently based on accident of birth and the personal discretion of government officials.”

The Trump administration is enforcing laws inconsistently with the entire previous legal history of the country. You might as well scream, “shut up, I’m trying to defend free speech but you keep talking!”

“Your precious “Constitutional rights” just get in the way of the government enforcing the law.”

“Your precious [laws] just get in the way of the government enforcing the law.”

Constitutional rights are the law.

Now we know who ate all those lead paint chips as a kid.

In second place, it’s a comment about the first two measles deaths of 2026:

Then: “Nobody has died. It’s not a big deal!”

Now: “It’s only two people. Still not a big deal!”

Later: “So a few more. Who cares, right?”

Even later: “Okay, here’s why all these deaths are Biden’s fault…”

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment about ICE’s threats following its failed raid:

So ICE threatened to come back and kick off a night of broken glass, huh? Can’t imagine why anyone compares these assholes to Nazis.

Next, it’s Bloof with a comment about the Washington Post rehiring the columnist they fired for quoting Charlie Kirk:

They really, really wanted Charlie Kirk to be a martyr for their cause, but the problem with him being a prolific user of social media, the man’s character was out there for the whole world to see in numerous embarrassing videos, and the man’s own words when it came to things like empathy and the victims of political violence were out there to see, and to quote.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous comment about the growing opposition to banning kids from social media:

We need a ban on impressionable politicians seeing anything that was penned by Haidt.

In second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone quipping in response to another commenter’s question about teens who express support for social media bans:

“What kind of an idiot begs please to be handcuffed, locked into a padded playpen, and spoonfed so that they don’t go places and do things that they don’t like?”

A religious conservative in the United States. 🙃

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous comment about Meta’s payout to settle with the states suing it:

Surely the states will spend this ~$18bn for clearly needed help foe children and only under the best stewardship.

Finally, it’s Cathay with one more comment about ICE’s illegal raid:

law offices … tend to be filled with people who actually know the law

ICE may not have been aware of that. If they’re used to the “lawyers” employed by ICE, they wouldn’t expect any legal knowledge.

That’s all for this week, folks!

This Week in 2016

• India Criminalizes Merely Visiting A Copyright Infringing ‘Blocked’ Site
• Anti-Piracy Operations Are Fabricating Links To Non-Existent Torrents In DMCA Notices
• Peter Thiel’s Lawyer Now Sending Questionable Defamation Threat Letters To Media On Behalf Of Melania Trump
• Copyright Group, In Arguing Against FCC’s Set Top Box Proposal, Appears To Argue That VCRs & DVRs Are Also Illegal
• Lawyer Sues Basically All Mainstream Media For RICO Violations For How They Report On Donald Trump
• Team Prenda Done Fighting Judge Otis Wright

This Week in 2011

• RIAA Files Expected Appeal Over Judge’s Decision To Decrease Jury Award In Jammie Thomas Trial
• MP3Tunes Ruling Protects DMCA Safe Harbors
• Australian Government Considering Three Strikes; Consumers Not Considered Stakeholders
• EMI Doesn’t Pay Royalties, Or It Does, But To The Wrong People, Or It Doesn’t, Or Maybe It Does…
• Washington Post Editorial Claims Piracy ‘Costs’ Companies Millions; Believes PROTECT IP Won’t Be ‘More Sweeping Than Necessary’
• Paul Vixie Explains How PROTECT IP Will Break The Internet

This Week in 2006

• Companies Don’t Want To Put Jobs Online… So Some Politicians Want To Force Them To
• The RIAA’s Last Profitable Business Model: Automated Extortion?
• Actually Competing In The Marketplace Is Using Intellectual Property In The Wrong Way?
• Brazil Tries To Shut Down Google, After Talking To The Wrong People
• I Sue You, You Sue Me, We’re An Unhappy Web Family…
• Asking ISPs To Block Hate Speech Is The Wrong Solution

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!

This Week in 2016

• Snowden Docs Show NSA, New Zealand Spied On Pro-Democracy Activists
• Which Crazy Copyright Holder Took Down Katie Ledecky/Carlos Santana ‘Smooth’ Mashup First?
• Billionaire Backer Of Palantir & Facebook Insists He’s Bankrupting Journalists To Protect Your Privacy
• Donald Trump Says He’ll Turn Off The Internet For Terrorists
• Twitter Suspends Hundreds Of Thousands Of Terrorist Accounts, Gives Everyone Its ‘Quality Filter’
• Recording Industry Whines That It’s Too Costly To Keep Copyright Terms At Life Plus 50, Instead Of Life Plus 70

This Week in 2011

• Could The Internet & Television Be Making Everyone Smarter?
• Dear Musicians: The RIAA Is About To Totally Screw You Over (Again!)
• Waffle House Says Rap Song Called Waffle House Violates Its Trademark
• Dear MPAA: Stomp Your Feet And Repeat It As Many Times As You Want, But Infringement Is Not Theft
• MPAA Calls MPAA Intellectually Dishonest For Claiming That Infringement Is Inevitable
• As Expected, Backpage Is Not Liable For Prostitution Ads

This Week in 2006

• Oh Look, The More Hollywood Attacks, The Further Underground File Sharing Goes
• Cabbies Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Navigation Systems
• Captain Copyright Gets A Rewrite?
• Ignoring Obsolete Analog Technology Is Now Considered Circumventing Copy Protection?
• There Ought To Be A Law… Any Law… To Protect The Children
• Where’s The Checkbox For ‘New FBI Computer System Is So Bad I Plan To Go On A Crime Spree’?

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment about Fauci’s Senate hearing and the weaponization of conspiracy theories:

The MAGA audience needs its two minutes hate and Fauci is a recurring Emmanuel Goldstein for them to collectively froth at.

All the chuds who were upset they couldn’t go out and lick doorknobs at the height of the infections are happy to sacrifice someone for their own fictitious edification, just as they were completely fine with killing off grandma so they could cough on other people back in the day.

In second place, it’s an anonymous comment on that same guest post (which was by an associate professor of sociology and criminology):

And I’m a virologist, which is why respectfully, to be clear,

“The investigation did not establish that the virus was intentionally manufactured or released.“

I’ve seen its genome, that was in no way deliberately manufactured, there’s none of the tells, and all the junk you’d expect of a natural zoonotic transmission.

You build research labs where the viruses occur naturally, in order to keep on top of monitoring them. The real failure of containment here was in the lab not spotting this strain earlier in the wild.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment about the moral panic around social media:

There is not a shred of evidence that social media harms (young) people directly. Yes, children (and adults) who are already in need of help may use social media as an excuse or as a reason to avoid treatment. Yes, children who lack parental engagement may use social media as a substitute. And yes, there is social media that is just plain dangerous, with misleading or dishonest messages that readers, mostly adults, don’t have the mental skills to see through. Replacing parental responsibility with absurd (and easily avoided) rules on social media is a slippery slope. It would be far more beneficial to have minimum intelligence requirements for adults to engage with social media!

Next, it’s n00bdragon with a comment about uncritical praise for Elon Musk:

Abraham Lincoln may or may not have said “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” but for about a decade now and some change the powers that be have realized that you can just fool that special segment of the population over and over again and that’s more than enough to achieve economic and political mastery. It doesn’t matter if the lie is bad. It doesn’t matter if it’s easily disproven. It doesn’t matter if the person saying it has a long and public history of fabulism. Just tell the lie and the same shmucks who bought it last time will buy it again, forever.

Over on the funny side, one of our winning comments is a reply to the other, with the votes tallying up in the opposite order — so for clarity’s sake we’re going to flip things around at start out with the second place winner from Stephen T. Stone, itself a reply to a joke about Fauci being the infamous Q:

The Star Trek deity or the leader of the QAnon movement? Because I think you could convince a sufficiently ignorant Trumpist of both.

In reply to that comment, we have our first place winner in the form of a slight correction from an anonymous commenter:

Q was never a deity nor actually omnipotent. And Fauci can’t be Q, because Fauci passed up more than 100 opportunities to monologue.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, alas there are no more Star Trek jokes to be had (though I wish there were), so we start out with an anonymous comment about the ongoing reflecting pool nonsense:

These revenge prosecutions are clearly the result of vandalism. I’ve personally witnessed an Antifa with a box cutter make a 300-foot gash in Jeanine Pirro’s briefcase.

Finally, it’s Mcinsand with a comment on our post in which we mentioned Starlink’s terrible customer service:

This sounds like StarLink is already intruding on AT&Ts brand.

That’s all for this week, folks!

This Week in 2016

• Primatologist Tells Court That Macaque Monkeys Are, Like, Super Smart, So They Should Totally Get Copyrights
• Will DNC Email Hacking Make Legislators More Friendly To Encryption?
• Donald Trump On Intellectual Property: China Is Bad
• Botnet Bill Could Give FBI Permission To Take Warrantless Peeks At The Contents Of People’s Computers
• Judge On Whether Twitter Is Legally Liable For ISIS Attacks: Hahahahahaha, Nope.
• Why Does The Copyright Office Keep Acting Like A Lobbying Arm For Hollywood?

This Week in 2011

• Police, Yet Again, Arrest Someone For Filming Them, Saying It’s Obstruction Of Justice
• Court Says Sending Too Many Emails To Someone Is Computer Hacking
• British MP Calls On RIM To Shut Down Messenger Services To Stop Riots; Because Pissing Off Rioters Calms Them Down?
• Fark Gets Patent Troll To Settle For Nothing… Did Reddit Pay Up?
• What If Tim Berners-Lee Had Patented The Web?
• DA Realizes That Gizmodo Didn’t Break The Law In Writing About Found iPhone 4 Prototype

This Week in 2006

• How A Little Editing Inflated Some Web 2.0 Hype
• Does A EULA Wipe Out Fair Use Provisions?
• Turns Out Major League Baseball Doesn’t Own Stats, After All
• Judge Says Blogs Are Guilty Of, Well, Just Guilty Dammit!
• DRM Supporters Changing Their Story?
• Is Wikipedia To Blame For Students’ Laziness?

If you know anything about Techdirt, you know we’re big fans of the EFF and its decades of advocacy for digital rights and the open internet. Recently, the organization went through a big change in the form of a new executive director: legal expert and long-time leader in the space Nicole Ozer. On this week’s episode, Nicole joins the podcast to talk about her new role and what’s coming next for the EFF.

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 Thad with a comment about Capital One’s stated reasons for shutting down Trump accounts:

Would be nice to have some disclosure laws so that if a presidential candidate’s had his bank accounts closed for money laundering, we don’t learn about it years later in a lawsuit.

In second place, it’s MrWilson with a reply on that same post to someone claiming Trump was targeted for political reasons:

“for political reasons” = Trump violating his oath of office, multiple laws, the Constitution, human and civil rights, et al.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment about the Paramount merger:

Given that Oracle laid off around 25,000 employees (of 162,000) last May just to keep inflating the AI hype, I won’t be surprised if Paramount has already planned layoffs to offset the giant debt of the deal.

Next, it’s Commenter #5759 with a comment about Buc-ee’s shying away from their John Oliver challenge and suing a tiny convenience store instead:

I wonder if John Oliver can convince HBO to fund this store’s legal defense.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous comment about the Trump/Capital One dispute:

A Republican: Tell me how I can be like you.
Trump: You have to start an insurrection, and launder money.
Republican: Why launder money?
Trump: See, nobody cares about the insurrection.

In second place, it’s an anonymous comment about requests to post proof of the claim that there are “numerous videos” of people cutting into the reflecting pool:

He can’t. They go to school in Canada.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got an exchange about RFK Jr.’s latest embarrassing display. First, it’s Heart of Dawn with an initial reaction:

If only the worms had finished what they started.

Next, it’s WTF over with a reply:

Unfortunately, the worms died of starvation.

That’s all for this week, folks!