I live in France. The government here is using every single tool they have to prosecute radical leftists and environmentalists while ignoring the fact that more than 60 % of the police force has fascist adjacent ideals. I do not want these people spying on me, period. This is not some libertarian horseshit, trust me.

He never gave a shit.

He is not going to stop, people outside France need to understand this. This man, despite his mild mannered centrist exterior, is an authoritarian. He will stop at nothing short of full tilt censorship. Environmental and political activists are being jailed for no reason while fascist groups run amok. This is bad.

T his is not new. He just stopped giving a shit about hiding it.

I always expected someone to coin the term pornporn to describe the excess of pornographic images. Alas, it was not to be.

Who woulda thunk.

Fuck this is depressing.

Whataboutism is a hell of a drug. I'm afraid people in many countries are so used to not having those freedoms that they look at us weird for trying to keep them.

I host my own instance mostly because I find it fun to do, and because it allows me to choose which communities and instance I federate with without having my account tied to the whims of somebody else.

Our ranking is unfortunately not getting any better, just look at what is currently happening with Les soulèvements de la terre.

I understand Le Pen would be worse, I truly do. I actually voted against her in the last two elections. But imagine Le Pen in power, which is very likely to happen soon, with all those legal framework already in place. She is going to have the mother of all field days.

You absolutely can find my view to be an exaggeration. Some part of me hope it is. But I'm quite worried about our future as a country right now.

Yes they were bought by an Israeli spyware company.

Well thank you for the thoughtful, respectful and engaging response.

I do not advocate for the state surrendering its authority, far from it. The problem lies, to my mind, within some very abuse prone legal frameworks that are currently being put into place. For example, in France, local "préfets" (which are unelected officials that act as local governors) have been steadily gaining more and more powers that cannot be democratically countermended, or at great expense: they can limit people's movements, forbid demonstrations, etc.

That could be seen as a necessary measure against the rising polarization you talk about (a point on which we agree btw, 100%), but then again whenever the far right happens to be the one doing the agitating, the préfets are suspiciously slow to act.

For example, in Paris, the prefet did not forbid a neo Nazi march ending in an Aryan rock concert whereas a week before that he had forbidden multiple démonstrations against Macron's pension reforms. And the list goes on. Our minister of the interior refused yesterday to condemn a police union campaign labelling rioters in Parisian suburbs as "pests to be eradicated". This is not moderate.

Macron is not really a moderate. He acts like one and manages to feel like one from abroad perhaps. But here he is more and more leaning towards the exact type of authoritarian doctrin a moderate should, as you do, strive to impede. And the thing is, his actions, and the general apathy of many towards them, are reinforcing Le Pen's chances come 2027. And that scares me.

Systemic racism and a president basically giving cops licence to beat up, torture and murder. Elle est belle la république bordel.

Well they do have their hats.

No approval is needed to launch a service in Europe. Them not launching simply means they know it is not regulation compliant.

Preach. The shitshow is only getting started.

This guys are litterally pissing on the captain while the Titanic sinks. Quite the move.

It would be a fun experiment to fill a lemmy instance with bots, defederate it from everybody then check back in 2 years. A cordonned off Alabama for AI if you will.

User engagement is important, yes, but since we do not have ad targets here, I think most people are okay with less content as the cost of the overall quality being higher. At least that is my hope.

That would be very welcome indeed, I agree!

French person here. If their previous attempts at creating anything digital are any indication of the future we are in for a fun ride. I fully expect them to implement the blocking by hiding the page behind a black png.

I guess this could be a way to finally create that genocidal AI everybody keeps promising us is definately coming.

This would be so useful to group related communities from different instances as well.

Nope, the government decided to simply ignore us. I'm sure this will have positive consequences down the line...

This. The internet as it is today is utterly unusable without at least 3 levels of as blocking. Truly a dystopian nightmare (not to mention the environmental impact of this garbage).

At the moment, the Dollop and Behind the bastards are my mainstays. Both are as excellent and funny as they are depressing.

Same. The AI truly are taking over, but instead of skynet we are going to be eradicated by meme bots.

I guess measured response is not a thing where you come from.

We still don't know what actually happened as we only have the police version of events. And as a French person let me tell you, police be lyin. A LOT.

I was replying to the part where you said that "You can spin up your own email server tomorrow and start communicating with the world through the email protocol standards". While I agree that this is technically possible, it has become increasingly difficult (see this blog post for example).

Update: in the end it only partially worked. Bummer. Thanks anyway!

I think that as long as the instances you scrape from have not updated, the bug will remain.

And my axe!

Mostly the clothing. And neckbeards.

Well, they do intend to federate...

You mean the deep state was in Reddit all along ?

You can host your own instance, which will be federated with this one by default. Every little bit helps.

This is true but if you were to do that most people would simply not receive your emails. The fight against spam has effectively turned email into an oligopoly.