volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@tokyo_0

Ha, it's almost like "they" are training us to prefer apps over websites :)

Well, jokes aside, companies and marketing departments do find value in being able to lock us into apps, so there is something to it...

@dswidow @daveunderwood

No, all of the legal drama has only given him more attention and a larger place in our psyches.

His star was fading as people wanted to focus on the election of someone who wasn't such a loser, but now the legal stuff has put him back in the center of the story, where he likes to be.

IMO it would have been better to drop the legal mess and let him slink into irrelevancy. That people would ignore and write him off would probably have been the harsher punishment for someone like him anyway.

He'd *enjoy* being the martyr in the jail cell. He'd think of himself as so damn important that he had to be locked up. And that would keep him as a force in the psyche.

@troed

How would regulations be written to practically differentiate between the two, though?

@tokyo_0

Not an app. A website.

I emphasize this because one of the advantages of Fediverse is its openness. Similarly, we need to focus this sort of thing on websites, not yet more locked down apps.

@jackhutton

"Vaccinate his workforce" is a phrase that would be bad enough if it described just any employer treating workers as a herd to be lines up and medicated, but it's especially problematic when the employer is a government official.

The courts have been respecting laws against that sort of thing.

We're just not all so comfortable with such power imbalances.

@Dahlialith

@burritojustice

What happened?

And the two don't sound mutually exclusive.

@lauren

Yep, and the same issues apply.

I thought it was really funny how with this week's fracas over TikTok, so many were yelling about outlawing the thing, and for every twenty voices I heard yelling to make it illegal, I heard maybe one voice quietly asking exactly how exactly that would actually be done.

The federal legislature is no stranger to passing unenforceable laws either.

California can't enforce a a law against the sun rising tomorrow. But neither can the federal government, even with all the might of the US government behind it.

@Stark9837

Well, I would point to Web of Trust over blockchain for this particular application, but yep.

Blockchain gets you confirmations of timing that aren't so vital for social media, IMO. Web of Trust gets you the authentication without the overhead needed to run a blockchain.

@lauren

You're overlooking the realities of executive branches.

It doesn't matter what courts say if the key parts of the picture aren't even in the jurisdiction of law enforcement in the first place.

The legislature in California can pass a law outlawing jaywalking on New York streets, but regardless of what any court says, California's governor won't be having cops stopping pedestrians in CA that are crossing NY streets because there are no NY streets in CA.

Even if the law is passed unanimously with bipartisan approval, there still aren't any NY streets in CA, so the law is irrelevant from the get-go, as there's nothing the executive is physically able to enforce.

Laws can only be enforced if law enforcement can reach the people involved, regardless of any theoretical or abstract issues.

@mathias

Exactly, and to be clear I'm not saying federation instead of decentralization is a bad idea or a bad compromise. We just need to recognize its pros and cons, that it is a compromise.

In this particular case federation means handing content to untrusted third parties and asking them politely to respect visibility notations. That's fine so long as everyone is aware it's based on voluntary compliance.

Had the system been designed around decentralized users instead of federated instances we could have cut out the third party. But that's not the compromise they settled on.

@jupiter_rowland @MetalSamurai @Stark9837

@lauren

Right, but these are different governments with different designs, different enforcement mechanisms, different legal realities.

Different checks and balances, different notions of federalism, free speech rights codified, statutory realities, legal precedents... I could go on and on.

A state can pass whatever laws it wants. Often enough the just-enacted laws will be instantly irrelevant as if they outlawed the next morning's rising of the sun.

An unenforceable statute is just that.

So let's see what happens.
There's a good chance this will be nothing but a political stunt--paid for by the public--in the end.

@mnemonicoverload

@lauren

That's not the critical part for enabling the scheme, though. The state would need a way to enforce it, and that would be difficult.

All the firms in the world trying to sell verification services won't matter if nobody bothers going to them because the law is unenforceable in the first place.

@TwistedEagle

Huh. Turns out AZ law does allow courts to reverse elections.

https://www.azleg.gov/viewdocument/?docName=https://www.azleg.gov/ars/16/00676.htm

@lauren

Well, so much depends on actual implementation.

An impossible to implement law is just bluster. Annoying, yes, and maybe even expensive to the government trying to pursue it, but it's not clear Utah's law will be anything more than whistling into the wind.

It'd be like a city council outlawing gravity. That's a nice law they've got there, but...

So we'll see. Utah's law so far is little but a political stunt.

@Stark9837

Oh no! They DIDN'T choose decentralization, and that's such an key point here.

ActivityPub chose to *centralize* around instances.

They chose a federated model, not a decentralized one.

Had they decentralized with key focus on users there's a good chance stuff like this wouldn't be such an issue.

@MetalSamurai @mathias @jupiter_rowland

@shansterable@c.im

Firstly, the profit incentive is absolutely alive and well in nationalized industries.

You think NASA employees work for free?

But to the point, it sounds like you're trying to have it both ways, saying the industry is already under the control of the federal government--just look at how badly the feds have screwed it up--but what we need now is to put it under the control of the federal government--they'll fix these problems.

No, I'd say the examples you've given here are great examples of why we SHOULDN'T nationalize the industry.

Trump removed regulations and Biden forced people to work, and that's through the regulatory and processes. Imagine what harm they'd do with direct command of the organizations.

@mariusor

Well not quite since most people have NO understanding of ActivityPub at all, much less a misunderstanding :)

For so many people, all they know is that they set their post to have a limited audience, and then magic happens, and then Wait, what? What do you mean people outside of the audience I set can see my post?

Anyway, my point is only to raise awareness of this issue as so many have said they've been caught off-guard by that lack of privacy here.

The source of that mis-expectation of privacy is a bit of a side topic, I suppose.

@Stark9837 @MetalSamurai @mathias @jupiter_rowland

@HistoPol

I just go back to the original title above saying that the purchase makes no sense unless it's part of something bigger.

Given Musk's track record, it makes sense to me without being part of something bigger.

So alright, maybe you do have circumstantial evidence to support the bigger, more complex theory, but at the same time we shouldn't dismiss the simple explanation since it makes sense as well.

@davetroy