Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson, with a comment on our post about ChatGPT and privacy rights in Europe, specifically in response to someone who raised the issue of “false light” torts:
False light is a privacy tort in the US. We’re talking about Europe. But also, false light typically requires the defendant to publish the information widely rather than just in a private chat, it requires the misinformation to be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and the defendant must be at fault. These requirements aren’t met unless you can prove the company intentionally programmed an LLM to specifically identify and defame individuals and did so to a large audience rather than just one person in a chat. And no reasonable person, understanding that a non-human LLM literally makes up everything it says by its very nature (barring a web search or a RAG), would be offended by it. So you’re wrong on top of being wrong on top of being wrong.
The irony is that your hallucinated “facts” are more offensive than ChatGPT’s.
In second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone with a comment on our post about Utah’s transphobic snitch form:
When the anti-trans crowd is done with trans people, they’ll go after other queer people next. Anti-trans bigots never stopped being anti-queer—they just stopped being so loud about gay people because nobody was buying into their shit any more.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a pair of comments responding to the idea that banning TikTok is okay because China bans sites already. First, it’s an anonymous reply:
I’ve seen loads of people make this argument (they ban us, we’ll ban them), only it’s a 5 year child’s argument, not that of an adult.
Next, it’s That One Guy expressing a similar sentiment:
If you would throw your principles aside that easily you never had them
It’s both telling and disturbing how quickly some people are to dismiss any moral high ground or principles they might have held the second they find it inconvenient to hold them or or beneficial to throw them aside.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is a reply to another comment that just barely didn’t make the winners, so we’re going to go a little out of order and slip that one in as an editor’s choice first, to provide proper context. So, as our first editor’s choice, it’s an anonymous comment about ChatGPT privacy concerns:
They’re really gonna have fun with my Magic 8 Ball.
Now, for our first place winner on the funny side, it’s an anonymous reply to that comment:
Don’t count on it.
In second place on the funny side, it’s another anonymous comment from the post about Utah, this time replying to a commenter who went on a rant about gender identity which, in their hate-filled world, is apparently casually abbreviated to GI and decried for not being “a valid science”:
I’m pretty sure the Gastro-Intestional tract is both real and both a part of science and medicine. Though I do agree there there’s no reason for a GI Tract Bill Of Rights outside the context of a Taco Bell bathroom.
Finally, for our second editor’s choice on the funny side, it’s an anonymous comment about Louis Vuitton’s latest silly trademark crusade:
Louis Vuitton: Next lawsuit, “Ludwig van Beethoven” aka “L V Beethoven”, let’s ask 1€ per CD ever sold.
That’s all for this week, folks!