My hot take:

Biden has been the best President we’ve had in 30 years.

He’s exactly who we needed when we got him. He got us out of Afghanistan. As much as a debacle as it was, he not Trump and not Obama pulled us out. His deft handling of the Ukrainian conflict where he used soft-power and influence to let the EU and NATO members come to decision to enact the super harsh sanctions themselves. Knowing that if the US pressed, they’d resist. It had to be their decision. He’s continued to say and do all of the right things. His attempt to forgive student loans his huge. Some of the measures worked even if all of them didn’t. He got the most meaningful infrastructure bill passed that I’ve ever witness. Neither Trump nor Obama could make it happen and Biden did it with a split Congress That infrastructure bill was also the most meaningful environment legislation that we’ve ever had That bill also paves the way for significant investment in our broad-band across the country Passed the Safer Communities Act …actual gun related legislation since the Brady bill. Again, with a split congress. Gave us our first public defender SCOTUS justice. This might not seem like a big deal but I think its pretty significant given the amount of case law that exists that, so far, hasn’t had a public defenders ‘say’ in it.

I could go on but I gotta go eat dinner.

People want to shit on Biden, but I actually like him. He’s not perfect, but he’s been insanely effective given everything he walked in to. Including him diligently and quietly rebolstering the executive branches that were gutted and had people leaving in droves in the last admin. Eg the Department of State. He’s assigned quality folks into key roles and its making a difference.

I voted for him without hesitation because well, the alternative was terrifying, but I was not expecting much from him at all. He’s surprised me.

edit: I literally can’t figure out how to make this a list. Sorry for the wordblob.

I’m gonna throw this out there:

If Meta is going to join the fediverse (or implement something with activitypub) there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop them.

It’s an open protocol. They can use it.

The only thing we can do is force them to follow the AGPL and/or fork the code if they get crazy with change requests.

The “right to be forgotten” rules are, with all due respect to the EU regulators, pretty shortsighted.

I think the initial “right to be forgotten” lawsuit that Google faced from that Spanish guy-- where he claimed bankruptcy years prior. People( potential lenders?) kept finding that information online through google searches. He sued to have Google remove those sites from the index. He won and the Spanish Judge told Google they had to remove those results from searches.

But it didn’t change that the information was still on each site. Those sites, the ones that actually held the information didn’t get sued, just Google.

It also opened the door for oppressive governments covering up human rights abuses or hide other information they dont want widely available.

Google appealed and won: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49808208

I also want to point out that this Spanish guy’s situation is very different from “posting publicly on social media”. He was getting written about by others and the courts eventually said “no, this can stand. This information should remain available”. So I imagine, public statements made by an individual certainly wouldn’t qualify to be forgotten.

At the end of the day, to me, this is a technical decision not a privacy one.

The only drama I’ve seen on it is a few idealists on other instances complaining about it and these posts.

I actually like beehaw more as an instance because of what they’ve done.

Nilay Patel had a great article when Elon bought Twitter. One of the key take aways I tend to agree with is:“The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works.”

I love being part of a community and being able to discuss and debate. But ultimately I want to do it in a place where I don’t feel creeped out, skeevy, or where I am getting harassed or threatened.

I value the moderation. I value the curation. I want the mods to defederate if they see an influx of trolls, shit posts, or sketchy content from a particular instance.

And you know what, I’ll be annoyed when they block something or someone I don’t think they should have.

The reality is: the fediverse is designed for this sort of thing. Theyve been very transparent and they will re federate when the tooling is better. I have no reason to doubt that.

I see this as growing pains and nothing more.