Happy new year, everyone! You know what time it is — time for our round-up of the top comments from all of 2021, based on user votes for Insightful and Funny. Plus, unlike past years where we featured a few outliers from the leaderboard of combined votes in both categories, this year there was absolutely no overlap for the second time — so we'll be including all three of the comments from overall votes as well. Meanwhile, if you want to see this week's winners, here's first and second place for insightful, and first and second place for funny.
The Most Insightful Comments Of 2021
For our first place winner, we head back a few months to September, when GoDaddy reignited the debate over infrastructure-level content moderation by banning the snitch website brought into existence by Texas's anti-abortion law. Naturally some more general points about the issue came up in the comments, including the perennial observation that pro-life movements often seem unconcerned about what happens to children once they're actually born. That One Guy wins first place with a response to someone making this point, but in a way the real credit goes to the person being quoted:
A quote I ran across in a youtube comment section of all places sums it up nicely I'd say.
"The unborn are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; chy; unlike orphans, they don't need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don't bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn…
You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.
Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.
— Dr. Dave Barnhart, Christian Minister
For second place, we step just a bit further back to August, and our post about the Canadian government's proposal for new (and terrible) legislation to combat "Online Harms". Blake C. Stacey racked up the votes for second place by focusing on a point that the post didn't dig into — the huge number of services covered by the expansive proposed language:
Through this framework, "Online Communications Services" (the government lists Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter as examples)
But it sure as hell isn't limited to those examples. Quoting item 1(A).2:
The Act should define the term Online Communication Service (OCS) as a service that is accessible to persons in Canada, the primary purpose of which is to enable users of the service to communicate with other users of the service, over the internet.
That's every forum, bulletin board, fediverse instance and comment section. Once again, lawmakers act as though Facebook is the Internet ... and propose a regulatory regime under which it will be.
For third place, we jump back one more time to June, where a simple and utilitarian comment won the day. In our post about how bad patents get in the way of fun toys, we had originally been unable to find one particular patent filing — but samuelhopkins had better luck, and kindly provided the link:
Apple, Google, Facebook and their ilk are clearly not the ones at fault here. It is time we face the fact who our true enemies are: The Children. Techdirt, since time immemorial, have hinted at their ungodly powers to sway the will of the most powerful corporations and governments. We need to stop them.
Personally, I have never seen one of these little fuckers so I have no idea how we can defeat them but we have to try.
Because if we don't, then... The Children have already won.
In third place, it's a different anonymous commenter on that post, this time with a quick reply to someone else's comment. I'll leave you to deduce, or click through and find out, what they were responding to:
uh...phrasing
And that's it for the funnies! But we're not done yet...
The Top Comments Of 2021 For Insightful & Funny Votes Combined
As noted, there was no overlap between the two individual category winners and the winners on the leaderboard for the combination of Insightful and Funny votes. This happened once before in 2019, but this time we're going to go ahead and feature all three of the combined winners in full. In first place, it's Bloof on our January post about social media trails making it easy to identify people who stormed the Capitol, with a comment about the incident in general:
Voter fraud that only happened in the parts of the ballots and the states that went against Trump, not the house and senate races where an unassailable democratic majority would be incredibly useful, only the top ticket featuring a massively unpopular republican candidate. Voter fraud so cunning that it only happened in cities filled with minorities among whom Trump is about as beloved as porcupine skin toilet paper. Voter fraud so cunning it somehow managed to happen in places where republicans controlled the elections. Voter fraud so cunning the Trump team have been unable to present any evidence of it whatsoever and had their legal teams back down the moment any judged asked them for actual proof because they don't fancy parroting the same lies they vomit on TV in a place where there'll be consequences for lying. Voter fraud so cunning that republican donors are suing the groups they funded that claimed they're able to prove it happened, for not being, in fact, able to prove anything. Voter fraud so cunning even the most hyper partisan right wing 'news' outlets like Fox and Newsmax issued on multiple on air retractions the moment the election machine companies got the lawyers involved because their stories were based on 4chan posts and the say so of the son of the guy who runs notorious pedophile and Qanon hangout, 8kun.
They have no evidence, there is no evidence, it did not happen and screaming and committing acts of terrorism will not make your far right fever dreams of fraud and persecution into a reality. They had ample opportunity to present evidence in front of friendly TV hosts like Tucker Carlson, as well as judge after judge after judge, some of which were appointed by Trump himself and they showed nothing and their cases were rejected every single time.
It is clear to everyone with even a lick of common sense that the people parroting these lies are so full of sh*t even the Trump gutted EPA would consider them for a potential superfund site.
"The flag represents freedom...No, not that freedom...No, not that one either...Okay, okay. The flag represents our freedom to tell you what to do when you participate in our most holy religion: college sportsball."
And with that, we're all done for 2021. A huge thanks to all our commenters, who keep supplying great material for these weekly and yearly posts — keep it coming in 2022!
Sickr posted: " The talented individuals at Japanese gaming studio CyberConnect2 have announced that they are planning to showcase a brand new game in February. The mysterious new game is currently scheduled to be released this summer, so we won't have long to wait unti"
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Eurasia News Online posted: " Relations with the two giants of Asia - China, and India is for Russia one of the main foreign policy plots of the year. Beijing and Delhi, which are part of the Russia-India-China (RIC) alliance. As well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO"
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Ace Worldwide News Group posted: " #AceNewsReport - Jan.03: Most of the areas are considered to be part of the 'Red Wall' – a political term for the traditional Labour heartlands in the Midlands, Wales and north of England. #AceDailyNews says according to Delta Poll Northerners doubt B"
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WTX News posted: "2,400 US flights cancelled as Omicron and bad weather cause travel chaos More than 2,400 US flights are cancelled as Omicron and adverse weather continues to cause travel chaos On Sunday, more than 2,400 US flights were cancelled as Omicron and bad w"
Pacific Daily Times posted: " Taiwan is on the rise. With chip shortages, stock is booming. You know how graphics cards are astronomically high? A lot of that money is going into Taiwan. Meanwhile, China found an excuse to order a real estate developer to demolish 39 freshly, "
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Ms. Arya Rao posted: " As Wayne Dyer rightfully says, "Judging a person does not define who they are. It defines who you are." Today my article is going to be about one of the evilest and most common things that happen in every society around the world. The topic for today"
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WTX Sports Team posted: "NFL drama as player quits on field after mid-game walk-off Tampa Bay Buccaneers player Antonio Brown has sensationally left the team after he walked out of their game against the New York Jets. Wide receiver Brown, 33, stripped off his jersey and pad"
Ace Worldwide News Group posted: " #AceNewsReport - Jan.03: The mother of 5-year-old Kamarie Holland had allegedly sold her daughter as a sex slave before the young girl turned up dead in Alabama, newly made public court documents reveal. #AceDailyNews says according to Fox News Repor"
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Back End News posted: " Student and community journalists across the country will gather to discuss misinformation on the COVID-19 vaccine in a free webinar scheduled on Jan. 28 -29, 2022 at 10a.m. - 12 nn, which will be streamed live on FYT's YouTube channel. Titled "#FYTCO"
Student and community journalists across the country will gather to discuss misinformation on the COVID-19 vaccine in a free webinar scheduled on Jan. 28 -29, 2022 at 10a.m. - 12 nn, which will be streamed live on FYT's YouTube channel.
Titled "#FYTCOVID19: Fighting vaccine misinformation," the online event is a fact-checking initiative of the independent media outfit FYT supported by Google Philippines.
As the Philippines continues to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is also the case of "infodemic" or the spread of false or inaccurate information about the virus and vaccine. There is an urgent need to bolster fact-checking efforts around COVID-19 vaccine information at the local level and support journalists from the community, national, and mainstream media.
Experts from the health sector, the academe, and Google will speak at the event which will be headlined by FYT Media co-founder and broadcast journalist Atom Araullo.
"I urge everyone to take the advice of doctors and experts, and to be mindful of fake information that spreads on social media or in our communities," Araullo said, inviting community reporters and citizen journalists to join the timely conversation.
"Google is committed to working closely with the media, partners, and communities to help fight misinformation," said Mervin Wenke, who leads Communications and Public Affairs for Google in the Philippines. "This webinar, together with FYT Media, will pave the way for opportunities to improve the skills of student and community journalists in telling stories that help combat COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation at the community level."
Student and community journalists must register here to attend the webinar. FYT Media and Google will select 10 student and community journalists that both organizations will support beyond the webinar so they can learn more skills about fact-checking and building content on YouTube.
Quoting recent data from the Department of Health shows, Google said 49.8 million Filipinos (about 45% of the population) have already been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. According to a report, cities and municipalities including Taguig, Pateros, and Manila have already begun the preparations for the vaccination of children aged 5 to 11 which could start soon.
The Millenial News posted: " This is a prayer of hope,A hope so dire in these trying times,A time when we look into the new year with a shimmer of hope.A shimmer so beautiful that we can't help but smile,We smile as if this is the year we've been waiting for.We look forward to b"
This is a prayer of hope, A hope so dire in these trying times, A time when we look into the new year with a shimmer of hope. A shimmer so beautiful that we can't help but smile, We smile as if this is the year we've been waiting for. We look forward to better days, We dream of confidence and boldness, A confidence so great that we wish and pray for a better year.
Many will say 2021 was better than 2020, And go on to say that 2020 was the year they hit rock bottom, 2021 became a year to live rather than thrive. But what becomes of the New year? We are looking forward to a great year, A blessing and a time to thrive rather than survive. Being alive we cannot take for granted, But being alive alone doesn't seem to be enough nowadays.
This is a hopeful piece, A prayer of hope, A hope for a brighter day, Brighter days we long for but we don't prepare for. Preparation means readiness, Readiness for opportunities, An opportunity we all long for to show the world who we are. But how can we express who we are when we don't know who we really are? They said that the only way to know who you're not is to know who you are. But who holds the manual to the key? The key to success when success we chase. In a quest to satisfy 'our souls,' But we may be fighting a losing battle when all we are chasing is the wind.
In this hopeful piece, I pray that you discover your gift, I hope for better and brighter days, Even if that means putting one foot in front of the other and moving. I am hopeful that you will find rest, But find rest after enjoying what you do. I want to wish you a happy new year! But I won't do that today, Because today is the day I hope you meet yourself, I hope you see yourself as you are and not what others think you should be.
I hope you find love, joy, and strength in yourself, And I hope you pay it forward to the next person who may be feeling dejected. So today instead of wishing me a happy new year, I hope you wish me a purposeful life. I pray you find joy in yourself, I ask that you surrender to your being, I pray that you listen to your voice, I hope that you yield to your spirit and follow your own path. I have a lot of hope for 2022, And so should you!
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