(I personally don't think Bluesky is a bad idea and I'm glad for more things in the ecosystem. But the point of decentralizing isn't just to protect against editorial constraint by the service owner; it's to protect against government pressure too. Mississippi could go after Mastodon service providers, but it'll cost them a lot more to find and chase 'em all).
Like I run one and I'm in Louisiana and I sure do not have the funds to mount a legal defense.
They can stop all but the most persistent users. It is just a question of how much they care about it; they have the means. And most users are closer to Homer Simpson than Edward Snowden.
They could try, but not even China could build an impregnable firewall.
> Luckily, we don’t have to imagine the scene because the High Court judgment details the last government’s reaction when it discovered this potentially rather large flaw. First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act. They suggested asking Ofcom to think again and the minister agreed.
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/online-s...
Or, conversely, I'm unsure if other decentralized platforms would be unable to implement a similar block.
whicks•2h ago