> "Democracy" is when "bad actors" (as defined by the establishment) are shut out of all online discourse.
The point of ID laws is not to stop "bots" or "sockpuppets", it's to enable governments to shut down the speech of their political adversaries by painting them as dangerous. That is not democracy, that is authoritarianism, even if you absolutely hate the people that are being shut up.
Western countries are not in the midst of polarized political crises because of "external bad actors" or "sockpuppets". They're in these crises because of fundamental contradictions in values and desired policies between different segments of the populace.
The Europeans are currently full steam ahead in attempting to "fix" the situation by criminalizing dissent, which will, in the end, only exacerbate the political crisis by making the democratic system illegitimate.
The Internet is already all but dead. We could fix it (as I propose). Or we let it die.
I'm fine with either outcome.
> criminalizing dissent
When has that not been true? Serious question.
Socrates was compelled to commit suicide. Jesus was nailed to a cross. Journalist and activists are routinely murdered. How many political prisoners are there right now?
Probably the lack of pictures. Maybe the moderation. Maybe the slight niche.
It could die if it becomes profitable to spamers. Or maybe it's dead now and one or both of us are llms.
But as long as the content quality meets my personal utility threshold, it makes sense for me to visit it, regardless of whether it is a victim of DIT. Ultimately it's probably up to webmasters to understand if the traffic on their site is either profitable or of a high enough quality to justify the operating costs of a hobby.
No ads. No algorithmic hate machine. Active moderation.
Two other fine examples of thriving online communities are metafilter and ravelry.
I'm sure there's many more on the web. I just don't get out much.
And many, many not on the web. Using discord, telegram, old school BBSes, etc. But, as dead Internet theory notes, they're not publicly visible and therefore not discoverable, not being indexed.
The point of ID laws is not to stop "bots" or "sockpuppets", it's to enable governments to shut down the speech of their political adversaries by painting them as dangerous. That is not democracy, that is authoritarianism, even if you absolutely hate the people that are being shut up.
Western countries are not in the midst of polarized political crises because of "external bad actors" or "sockpuppets". They're in these crises because of fundamental contradictions in values and desired policies between different segments of the populace.
The Europeans are currently full steam ahead in attempting to "fix" the situation by criminalizing dissent, which will, in the end, only exacerbate the political crisis by making the democratic system illegitimate.