Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous piece-by-piece response to a comment questioning the truth about what happened with GARM:

I don’t think this theory of “brand safety” makes sense.

And yet plenty of advertisements subscribed to it. Even if they are wrong, telling (using governmental power) them they can’t talk about their view is… Ethically reprehensible. And a violation of the First Amendment.

An advertising cartel isn’t really the answer to that though, nor is it appropriate.

Sure. But GARM was not a cartel. There was no coercion. No “price regulation”. No “forcing out of business” (unless you count people not wanting to do business with you… but in that case you would be an entitled asshole, or a thief).

We as a society can talk through issues like this without a house brand which sells soap reckoning that they know better on moderation issues. We can also do moderation for normal sites, not tailored specifically to kids, without adding padding to everything.

Does “best practices” not mean anything to you? There was no direct control of moderation. Just standards and best practices so the advertisers (the ones that valued the standards and practice GARM suggested) could field comfortable advertising there.

In second place, it’s Guiltypanacea with a related comment about Elon’s lawsuit:

Pretty cute to claim GARM violated antitrust laws while also claiming Twitter is the singular “global town square.”

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with another anonymous comment on the subject:

This isn’t about moderation, though. It’s about advertising. This is about companies realizing that advertising alongside polarizing content is going to lose them customers, because their brand is going to be associated with that content.

These companies don’t want to offend potential customer bases. And that’s a perfectly reasonable business decision. Not to mention well within their rights of freedom of association.

Next, it’s an anonymous comment about why big companies face antitrust scrutiny even when they have competitors:

That’s the wrong question. Yes, a company can have a monopoly simply by being the best. That’s not illegal; but, once in that position, they come under additional legal scrutiny. Thus, the monopolist is prohibited from doing things (“abusing their monopoly”) that their smaller competitors legally could do. It’s probably legal for Kagi or DuckDuckGo to make “tying” deals with Mozilla and Apple, exactly the same as what was found illegal for Google to do.

And as for “solutions”, this is hardly the only situation in which there’s nothing obvious for a court to do. Convicting or acquitting someone of murder doesn’t solve anything either, for example, but a court still makes that determination. Sometimes with negative effects to other people, such as the convict’s family, balanced by nothing but a vague sense of justice.

While I’m not entirely sure whether it’s right for Google’s payments to be considered illegal, requiring Google to stop buying market share, and go back to earning it, doesn’t strike me as crazy. With their market dominance, they can afford payments their competitors can’t, effectively locking out those competitors. Unless and until the competition becomes so good it can’t be ignored, which is hard to do while Google is tilting the playing field. That seems similar to “payola” which was found to be illegal in the music market; or to Standard Oil railroad paying companies to favor their shipments, also found illegal.

Over on the funny side, both our winners also come in response to Elon’s lawsuit against GARM. First, it’s That One Guy with a summary of events:

The Republican First Amendment(tm) strikes again

Elon: Fuck off, we don’t need or want you around!

Advertisers: Alright, we will indeed ‘fuck off’ then and take our money with us.

Elon:RICO! Blackmail! How dare those advertisers do exactly what I told them to do and stop giving me money?!

In second place, it’s an anonymous prediction:

Sometime in the future…

3rd act twist: GARM members are jointly and severally responsible for the damages.

• X/Twitter is a member
• X/Twitter bears the costs for damages

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous comment about a Michigan prosecutor complaining about the need to convict people for asset forfeiture:

“Now that we have to convict people, it will be harder to convict people”
─Person whose job it is to convict people

Finally, it’s David on last week’s comments post, responding to the previous winning comment about Donald Duck making a better president than Donald Trump, and taking a long walk to get to a very silly joke:

He’d be called a lame duck even before assuming office. Also Arthur Byron Cover would be a shoe-in for vice president: just imagine the impact of an election campaign that can proudly proclaim: “Your best choice for this election: Duck and Cover!”

That’s all for this week, folks!