Egregoros

@coolboymew @joemcl realistically, if they actually cared about this would they want to switch to the Fediverse? Imagine switching people to Mastodon and now it's whack-a-mole trying to block every server that pops up that's posting content illegal in Europe. Not happening. European countries fund Mastodon a little bit because it has the _appearance of opposing American Internet hegemony_. If Mastodon actually got big enough to compete, it wouldn't be controllable and they've already shown they don't want that any more than America wants that.

@sun @joemcl

Hot take time. Not new; I've had this idea for a long time:

- There should be government-run social media platforms. (Maybe one per country, or per state etc., with federation.)
- These are a supplement to private-run ones, not a replacement.
- Every citizen has a RIGHT to an account with public posting permissions.
- The RIGHT to publish can only be taken away as part of CRIMINAL PUNISHMENT.
- Citizens sign up with their ID, so the account holder is known to the government.
- But the public-facing account name can be a pseudonym.
- (optional) You can publish "nameless" posts that are literally anonymous. Will only reach people searching for a topic, not sent to followers. The government can still look up who posted it, of course.
- People can mute each other, and choose who can reply directly under their posts. Quote-posting is always possible.

Why would this be a good idea, if governments were technically competent enough to implement it without glaring security or stability issues?

- Private corporations with an oligopoly over social media cannot implement mass-censorship of political opinions by using the "it's a private platform bro!" argument.
- Citizens become more keenly aware of what the *law* does and doesn't allow them to speak. If they find it too limiting, this motivates them towards political action to change the law.
- Perfect accountability when someone actually does post something heinous, like direct physical threats, direct incitement to commit a crime, uploading CSAM, etc.

It would have the potential of encouraging everyone to act like adults and partake in political discourse more seriously, because they can't cry to a private platform owner to have them censor unpopular opinions, but also can't post literal criminal shit.

having what is effectively a "generate porn of this person and send it to them" button under every selfie or photo anyone posts was a very bad idea and crosses a line that a very, very large number of people are uncomfortable with. it's more an issue with image generators in general than with twitter specifically but it should be obvious to see why making it so in-your-face would draw significantly more attention to this already very controversial topic. grok makes targeted sexual harassment effortless.

The average person isn't going to see that. They aren't personally directly effected by any of that in their day to day lives, as far as they can tell. Minor inconveniences at worst for a lot of people. You feel cute and post a selfie, and suddenly get flooded with AI generated porn of yourself? You post a pic of your kids and suddenly get flooded with dozens of indecent images of them? That's something the average person is directly seeing and which directly involves them. It's targeted at them, specifically, in a way that is going to cause an immediate response. It's not some vague concept that someone somewhere is being censored for something or other, it's porn of them being sent at them whenever they post any pictures of themselves. It drags the majority of people who just want to go about their day and don't want to care about any of these things into it and forces them to care.

@Alex @sun @joemcl ???

The UK has their current government BECAUSE they didn't vote because no matter what they vote for they won't get what they want

Once again, the government has not gave a single shit about the people, no matter who's voted in. It's a power play, the EU and co has fucking hated the American social medias for forever and instead of attempting fuck it over by actually legislating over the bad, this is what they go insane over, when they can't even clean up their crap locally?