This week, both our top comments on the insightful side come in response to the latest evidence that FOSTA has failed. First up, it’s Paul making a simple pitch that a lot of you seemed to agree with:
This needs a John Oliver segment
John Oliver seems like the perfect guy to compile all the sound bytes and videos of celebrities endorsing this, then put them on full blast for everyone to see.
In second place, it’s James Burkhardt with a response to the accusation that we never covered sex trafficking issues before FOSTA/SESTA, which is true but irrelevant:
Outrage that a situation was made worse does not preclude outrage about the situation originally. Failure to blog about the issues of the sex work trade prior to a law passing which made the situation worse does not preclude the ability to complain that a law would make the situation worse, nor that a law has made the situation worse.
And in fact, Mike has discussed relevant issues that plague the internet sex worker, if not directly noting the connection. Difficulties with payment processing and having a bank account when your income comes from even legal sex work like consensual sales of images and videos due to draconian policies and skittish bankers have been discussed numerous times.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment looking closer at the data from telecom lobbyists and the FCC:
Can we also talk for a second about how utterly misleading those bar graphs are?
CAPEX from 2015-2016 went down approximately $3 Billion absolute dollars or about 4%. BUT, the bar itself shrunk by around 50% (maybe more) in the eyeball test.
(Here’s an accurate representation of the spending data. This is exactly how flat the spending graph SHOULD look: https://www.meta-chart.com/share/untitled-26288).
Next, it’s Chris-Mouse responding to the idea that free speech limitations are simple — just “don’t be an asshole”:
Please define “being an asshole” in words that won’t require spending a small fortune on legal fees to have a court decide what does and does not fit your definition.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner comes in response to a commenter who objected to our use of the term “snowflake”, and offered up the novel (to me and many commenters at least) idea that it’s a racist slur for white people because apparently it has at some point been used that way in some circles. Toom1275 applied the same standard elsewhere:
So in your world, a comment on pastry, “I like chocolate tarts,” is both racist and sexist.
In second place, it’s Gary responding to someone’s comment about why they won’t support Techdirt:
Thanks for supporting TD with your opinions, page clicks and donating your copyrighted posting to Mike!
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous commenter who was confused when we said journalists shouldn’t try to stifle speech and pointed fingers at Breitbart:
So at what point were we going to hear about a journalist?
And finally, we’ve got one more comment from Gary, this time in response to the Texas high school making kids learn about how to behave around cops:
Texas is also bringing back the DARE program, abstinence-only sex ed, and a mandatory seminar about how torrenting supports terrorism!
That’s all for this week, folks!
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Author: Leigh Beadon