Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the in-your-words dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone responding to the accusation that our coverage of Elon Musk suggests some kind of vendetta:

A rich moron bought a thing he didn’t understand for a price that makes him an even bigger moron. He has since done everything possible to wreck that thing he bought in record time. That includes his decision to let a shitload of the staff running that thing he bought leave him and a relative handful of employees left to run the thing he barely understands.

And you think that isn’t going to be a huge news story for days, if not weeks?

In second place, it’s Gene Patt with a comment about Facebook’s policy that fact checkers can’t fact check politicians:

That’s not how it works

So, I’m a teacher. If I take the position of refusing to check to see if my students are cheating, and I tell my boss, “I’m simply not taking a position on whether cheating is being committed”, I’m going to get run through the ringer and held out by the MAGAs as an example of why public education is dying.

I think it’s reasonable that we hold candidates to the Presidency to the same basic standard that I expect a 15 year old to follow.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got two more comments about Facebook’s fact checking policy. First, it’s an anonymous response:

Worth noting that Trump made at least 20 false and misleading claims in his announcement speech according to to CNN.

Fact checkers should be free to check anything a politician says or writes even if the politician and their supports are not going to like it. Truth matters and trying to stay “neutral” is not an option. It just lets bullshit, lies and falsehoods propagate.

Next, it’s another comment from Stephen T. Stone, responding to the idea that this policy means being “neutral”:

Let’s say a politician⁠—doesn’t matter which party they belong to⁠—tells a lie. That the statement is a lie can be easily proven by a quick Google search. Is it “neutral” for someone to say that the politician told a lie, or would that be going too far into “editorializing”? What determines whether saying “this statement is a lie” is a statement of fact or a partisan opinion? When, if ever, should a news source state that a politician’s lie is actually, provably, 100% a lie?

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous comment on last week’s winning comments post. I was away for the week and didn’t write the post (or, mercifully, closely follow all the latest Musk happenings) and I haven’t yet caught up, so I’m still parsing the layers of this joke in response to Mike mentioning that a new Techdirt feature must be live in a week:

They are probably ghost anyhow, so they many not care.

In second place, it’s an anonymous commenter on the Facebook fact checking post, replying to a comment about Facebook “hiding” the Hunter Biden laptop stuff:

Yeah, it’s the same one.

As a matter of fact, they hid it so well that somehow you and every other nut like you knew about it.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from Thad about the assertion that Musk’s erratic Twitter decisions might just be in service of shareholder interests:

Just look what a great job he’s doing serving the shareholders at Tesla.

Finally, it’s hij with one more comment about Facebook ending the fact checking of politicians:

Yuge Announcement

I am officially announcing my candidacy to be President of the United States. Please let the folks at Meta know.

That’s all for this week, folks!