> This video has been removed by the uploader

Welp, I hope there's some invidious instance out there hasn't purged their caches

ti ringrazio

age-verification looks to me just like a first step to real-name obligation .

the
Millions of People in Europe: "Pls, stop killing games!"

EU commission: "We heard you, but we think you actually want mandatory ID verification as a predecessor for completely authoritarian control for every online communication"

#stopKillingGames #wsocial #ageverification

thank you again for your hard work. We need to keep pointing to these dangers that are the start of chinese circomstances: full controll over all Europeans and beyond

#control

Some in the fediverse were irked by the pile-ons, like “I left twitter for that, only to see it here too!”.

Fren, these are justified. What the EC is doing is basically promoting a VC owned social media platform as a so-called European alternative (false) and thus encouraging trial runs to enforce ID verifications. I say hell to the fucking NO!

Piling on threads will be the least of one’s problems if our personal freedoms are taken away, step by step.

@elena

I wouldn't worry too much. You just don't come up with a social network and then expect masses to come over just like that. That just doesn't happen. It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I mean, otherwise everyone would be spawning social networks like there's no tomorrow, right?

Unless, ofc they _don't even expect_ it to gain traction, but want to use it as a testbed for id control... I have a hard time believing them to be _that_ smart. I think they're just being plain stupid.

I do not think the fediverse is under threat by the new commercial effort.
It is entirely up to us, the users, to keep the fediverse alive and lively.

If politicians and journalists want to move to something controlled in a boardroom, that is up to them. They can enjoy the new algorithms as much as they like and implicitly be controlled by where the advertisers are.

In the mean time, we will be where we can have real discussions with real people without the promotional fluff.

if in the USA someone in govt endorsed a new social media, say if Chuck Schumer said "go to Bluesky!" it would be a kiss of death, not a boost. i don't know about Europe, might be different there

if it's Dua Lipa or SZA, i would expect a boost. but not from a govt hack

however, there is a social media that got a boost from a politician: truth social. but that's because it's a cult of dum dums. europe also has dum dums but ursula is no cult leader

Well, what can I say?

I am currently working on a European project about “sovereignty”, meaning a project financed by the EU, and I can tell you this: yes, the EU is definitely moving in that direction. But — and this is a very important *but* — it is doing so in a very peculiar way.

First: there is a lot of gatekeeping.

In the EU, even if you move one single bit, you need to be acceptable both to the parties sitting in the Parliament and to the countries represented in the Commission. Unless and until it becomes clear why the Fediverse is useful *to them*, the EU will not be consistent in its statements about “sovereignty”.

An example? The so-called “Digital Euro” was supposed to be some innovative blockchain-based instrument. It ended up looking like a debit card backed by the ECB: fifty-year-old technology with a new label slapped on it.

Second: there is a lot of sheer incompetence, on all sides.

For example, almost every Fediverse implementation solves the CDN/storage problem by implementing Amazon S3-compatible storage and protocols. Why? Because even many Fediverse developers are not fully aware that, if we are talking about sovereignty, the path should require us to abandon US technologies before merely abandoning US giants.

I have tried to propose alternatives — IPFS, for instance, for CDN and storage — but it is hard. Why? Because the reason we are doing all this is not 100% clear to everyone. For many people working on federated software, if the EU comes in, it simply means money.

Third: do not overestimate people, do not fall in the exausting trap.

The federated space was born with GNU Social, and took off from there. The idea was already present in Diaspora. Then we went through OStatus with GNU Social and Friendica, then Pump.io, and eventually we arrived here.

So never assume that everyone in the Fediverse is here “for the cause”, or that everyone has some original vision in mind, guiding them in a coherent direction. The idea of federation as *the path* is not as obvious to everyone as you might think.

So yes, we will probably see WSocial and many other gatekeepers.

Just do not waste time on them. Even wasting your time arguing with gatekeepers is already a victory for the gatekeepers.

--
Uriel Fanelli
Using Aktor: git.keinpfusch.net/loweel/Akto…
XMPP: uriel@keinpfusch.net
old blog: blog.keinpfusch.net
new blog: keinpfusch.net

> I have held back from sharing more evidence I found because I don't want to appear like a bully who promotes pile-ons

Nah some things are worth bullying. Like age assurances and biometric Ausweiss efforts