I can’t wait for everyone to make a big deal about COVID again now that Trump is heading back to the WH.

Never-mind that it’s been raging basically un-restricted for the last 4 years while the CDC has been relaxing its mitigation guidance - now that Trump and his anti-vax buddies are back in office it’s suddenly going to be a crisis again.

Say whatever you want about COVID becoming endemic and not important enough to act against, Biden took the very first opportunity to cut back on COVID labor protections as soon as it was clear that increasing vaccination rates wasn’t going to solve the rapid spread. Things like paid sick leave, the eviction moratorium and rent freezes, Federally funded COBRA and free treatment initiatives were all groundbreaking social programs that should have been made into permanent fixtures and would have been a positive legacy for his administration, but they didn’t even try to stretch those programs on the basis that COVID was still a clear and present danger.

Big “mission accomplished” vibes.

Downloaders can be prosecuted.

They wouldn’t go after the users, just the domains and the host servers. Similar to shutting down TPB or other tracker site, they’d go after the site host. True enough, there wouldn’t necessarily be risk to users of those sites, but if they escalated things enough (like if an authoritarian got elected and was so motivated…) they could start taking more severe punitive action. Who knows, they could amend the regulation to go after the users if they wanted - it’s a dangerous precedent either way. Especially when the intent is to ‘protect children’, there’s no limit to how far they might take it in the future.

Blocked servers are inaccessible to adults, too, which raises freedom of information issues.

I’m not familiar with Australian law but I don’t think this really applies. Most countries with internet censorship laws don’t have any guaranteed right to uncensored information. At least in the US, they don’t have ‘censorship’ per se, but they do sometimes ‘block’ an offending site by seizing domains/servers/equipment, and they can force search engines de-list them if the offense is severe enough. If the server is beyond their reach, they can prosecute or sanction the person hosting the site to pressure them into compliance. I can imagine a social media site who refuses to age verify and that hosts pornographic content (cough cough lemmy cough cough) be pursued like a CSAM site.

Large scale piracy is illegal pretty much everywhere, meaning that the industry can go after the operators and get the servers offline. Not so here.

That doesn’t mean they can’t throw their weight around and bully self-hosters/small-time hobbyists and scare them into compliance. Any western country enacting a law like this could pressure their western trade partners to comply with enforcement efforts. And anyway it isn’t necessarily about the practicality of enforcing the law, so much as giving prosecutors a long leash to make a lot of noise and scare small-time hobbyists out of hosting non compliant sites. Most people can’t afford the headache, even if it isn’t enforceable where they live.

It gets banned/blocked, or sued for noncompliance for allowing Australian users without age verification. They’ll play whack a mole for decades, just like they have been for P2P file sharing.

Like a lot of post-911 legislation, it’s anti-privacy surveillance disguised as a way to ‘protect the children’. It’s absolute shit and we should absolutely be taking measures to anonymize our open source social media platforms further.

There’s no editorial process, anyone can post anything (within the TOS).

A lot of people use it for personal vlogs and such. It might be easier to ask how it’s meaningfully different from something like tiktok that makes it not social media.

Yea, no disagreement. I more am curious if the federated nature is what helps mitigate that risk, or if there is some other systemic distinction that has helped.

I also just don’t know what the others were like long-term - did they peeter out? Would I realize it if lemmy was in the same decline?

I’m not actually sure comments get sorted by vote tally by default here.

I’ve always just ignored downvotes - I know when my opinion is unpopular, I don’t see the votes as validating. I’d be fine if there were no visible votes at all

If i could do this without my wife noticing, I’d be golden.

Unfortunately, she took to lurking some reddit communities right as I was exiting

I wonder if anybody here has tried some of the other failed reddit alternatives like Voat for a long enough time to be able to speak on how lemmy has fared relative to them.

I tried a few during other reddit exoduses, and they all felt… bad. Lemmy is the first one I’ve managed to actually stay on comfortably without being tempted back to reddit.

Least islamaphobic liberal.

I’m not much for word games, thanks.

not protest, that doesn’t work

Civil disobedience works too.

If all you do is vote then you’re a big part of the problem.

OK now do Iran

And this is why libs are made fun of for their feckless electoralism.

Try organizing and building mutual aid networks instead of just sitting on your ass and watching.

Maybe in 4 years you’ll be better prepared.

I just want to hear you say that votes cast not for your party aren’t legitimate votes

Never what I said, nor intended

voting for a 3rd party doesn’t count

Whoomp, there it is.

I just want to hear you say that votes cast not for your party aren’t legitimate votes

Hmmm

I voted third party.

Read it again.

So did OP.

It worked for some democratic voters, but not for the 14 million others.