[viraptor]

You wrote this like the ideas are mutually exclusive. They're not. I want both regulation of massive internet services and for mastodon and others to become more common choices.

> based on free software where such type of arbitrary rulings are impossible.

Software license has nothing to do with what rulings are possible. If you're found to be doing something illegal, it's on you to figure out how to deal with that. It may involve not using that software.

But we don't live in a Cyberpunk dystopia. Government regulation is useful for many things. The answer to corps running wild does not have to be starting an isolated system from scratch.

[rglullis]

> You wrote this like the ideas are mutually exclusive.

No, I am writing like one of them has shown to be completely useless in effecting any type of real change, while the other is an equalizing force.

> Software license has nothing to do with what rulings are possible.

The software license has nothing to do with it. It is the economic and social forces that differ.

[drekk]

I wouldn't consider the abolishment of child labor or enforcement of the 40 hr standard workweek as "completely useless"

If government is supposedly accountable to the people it should serve public ends. If it doesn't it should be replaced. I thought that was the entire "Amwrican experiment"? Huh, guess it's a generational thing

[rglullis]

> I wouldn't consider the abolishment of child labor or enforcement of the 40 hr standard workweek as "completely useless"

Regulations haven't abolished any of that, they just pushed to China, where you still happily buy products from because they are so cheap.

> American experiment

First, the American experiment was to have a loosely coupled federation of states and to have spread power on the lower spheres of influence. That experiment has been abandoned for a while.

Second, the world should not not revolve around what American people and its government wants to do.