Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous response to a comment arguing that Cloudflare isn’t very important to the internet:

I would like to hear your argument as to why DDoS mitigation is not an essential part of hosting a website in 2024.

In second place, it’s an anonymous comment about the House looking to make KOSA and COPPA worse:

I get the impression that some people want social media to be their nanny, not unlike past generations that used the television as a nanny.

Some folks would like the internet to operate just like the broadcast media of yesteryear, it aint gonna happen.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment inspired by our mention of Chesterton’s Fence:

There’s a great scene in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan where Kirk and Spock tell the USS Reliants shields to go down by utilizing the “prefix code.” Now, horrifically bad security, even for the early 80s, aside, I love how Kirk tells Saavik “You’ve got to learn why things work on a Starship.”

It’s not Chesterton’s Fence, but it’s something that I struggle with getting people to do professionally all the time. You’ve got to understand why certain things are done. If you understand that, then you can make an informed decision when you need to modify or outright ignore something. I guess it’s a bit like the famous joke about cutting the ends off a pot roast.

Next, it’s an anonymous comment about Congress moving to bring back unfettered patent trolling:

A bill that’s squarely made to facilitate patent trolling and another that’s squarely intended to make it harder to prevent patent trolling, both pushed by a politician who used to be a professional patent troll.

It’s so brazen it’s almost impressive.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous evaluation of a proposed legal definition in internet regulation bills:

COMPULSIVE USAGE.—The term ‘‘compulsive usage’’ means a persistent and repetitive use of a covered platform that substantially limits 1 or more major life activities (as described in section 3(2) of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. 12102(2))) of an individual, including eating, sleeping, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating, and working.

So. Romance is to be banned.

In second place, it’s yet another anonymous comment, this time in response to a comment intending to defend cops:

Oh! So you’re saying that the officer should be fired! I agree.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from Whoever about ExTwitter going behind Cloudflare in Brazil:

This is simply Elon making sure that eXTwitter no longer needs the servers that he impetuously ripped out.

Finally, it’s Pixelation with a juvenile but irresistible joke regarding our headline about the troubles facing KOSA:

“But Cracks Are Showing”

This is exactly the thing they are trying to prevent children from seeing.

That’s all for this week, folks!