Were it only that we didn’t need to put carets on both sides of every word for one, haha! Ah well, Lemmy issue.

So, sans much context (short of a quick read on Wikipedia on the Telecommunications Act of 1996), this honestly looks like naive libertarianism, and reads like an obnoxious manifesto. Feels appropriate for the attitude of the 90s, I suppose – from what I know, there was a lot more belief in the internet as a frontier of freedom and justice, then – but it’s not so fitting these days. Many of the internet’s ills have spawned from an environment of shockingly little regulation, and I’d argue the all-too-common “move fast and break things” paradigm devolved into existence from that, too. Yet this appears to be rebuffing regulation writ large, in some misguided belief that the internet was perfectly fine how it was, would continue to be so forever, and that no positive government intervention was possible — rather than the reality that the internet was flawed, at risk, and that good law was possible if only a state had been willing to pursue such a thing. ¹

Which isn’t to say that a low- or even zero-regulation environment can’t work. But it needs specific alternatives; you can’t just not fix something. And infinite scroll is definitely a something, here. It absolutely contributes to creating an addictive environment while rarely being used for anything good. Personally, even if this letter had aged well, I don’t think this would be an appropriate time to reference it.

^{1. Some of which was passed in the very law this article so hates! Section 230 comes from the TCA!}

That’s still a separate issue. Infinite scroll is scarcely ever used in a good way, and is almost always used to encourage addictive behavior; something which affects adults just as much as children. Even on the rare occasion that it isn’t being implemented as an engagement tool, it still often ends up being one anyway. It’s a dark pattern and little else.

As far as I’m concerned, banning infinite scroll could easily be a very good thing, and I’m in favor.

Perfectly valid to be angry about Discord’s current behavior, as it’s absolutely terrible. I already cancelled my Nitro over this and am actively taking steps to be prepared to leave the whole thing if needed.

Consequently, it’s worth mentioning that I don’t actually have any faith whatsoever in Discord’s current CEO. It’s just important to make sure that when we hate Israel’s treatment of Palestine, we don’t end up slipping into bigotry towards people just for being from the country and nothing more. Not every Israeli likes Israel’s actions. Plenty of teens have chosen prison over IDF draft, for example.

With regard to that, then: I appreciate the self-awareness and de-escalation. Not easy to do, but always good to see. Thanks for that.

I thought this comment was going too far when you felt the need to mention they were from Israel, as though merely being born in a country is grounds to hate someone. But Jesus Christ, this is a hell of a lot of assumptions to make based solely on an individual’s nationality.

I hate Israel’s genocidal government as much as the next guy, but this is just racism.

Edit: Author of the above comment has retracted and apologized. Good on them.

This really doesn’t make Brave look any better though, seeing as it has its own version of “privacy-focused” attention-monetization schemes (Basic Attention Tokens) and its own fair share of controversies. Not to mention being Chromium under the hood and being developed by a company headed by Brandon Eich of all people — a massive homophobe.

None of which make Firefox impeccable or ever did. But all of which made Brave decidedly worse to me, including after this all happened.