You don’t have to make an informed decision.

Correct, but you are still presented with a decision that adds friction to the onboarding experience. I was aware of how Mastodon works and that I could migrate and it took me a while to create an account because I didn’t want to “waste my time”. I can’t imagine a regular user being prompted to “select an instance”, decide to go with the first one they see, and registration is either closed or invite only. That’s a huge barrier to entry compared to being forced into a single login that is always open.

Meanwhile, if you’re worried about something you don’t align with, then you don’t even get that choice with a centralized platform like Bluesky. For example, I don’t align with any of this shit https://toad.social/@davetroy/113476788536250587

100000% agree with you. I would never create a bluesky account because of that. Unfortunately people aren’t as informed and most really just don’t care.

Having to make an informed decision is a barrier to entry. it took me a while because I wanted to make sure I didn’t join (and waste time/effort) something I didn’t align with.

Thoroughly dismantling America. Sad day for Americans, exactly what Putin ordered.

wouldn’t implementing ranked choice voting in blue states just further fracture them and weaken them against red states? I would think it would make sense to initiate ranked choice in red states first.

the real answer shines through when you step outside of US politics. The global recession had people in every country questioning the incumbent party. It doesn’t matter if it was left or right, conservative or liberal, whoever was in office was being blamed - because the public in general has no idea how the world works and has the collective memory of a goldfish. The US is performing better than most countries [1][2][3][4][5] in regards to the impact covid-19 had on the world, but Americans are too uneducated to realize they had it good, as the road to recovery is never easy.

With the public angry at the incumbent government (globally, not just in the US), the Trump/Putin hate machine decided to to stoke fear, uncertainty and doubt in Americans. This clearly worked as people’s views on the nations economy have been trending down [6], so now we’re left to deal with the Magagenda, which all seem to align with everything Putin ever hoped for.

You would think people would learn that republicans tend to wreck the economy just for democrats to fix it, and republicans to shit all over any progress that’s been made again, but just like dogs aren’t smart enough to learn that a snake bite’s venomous bite could kill them an hour later, Americans can’t seem to grasp the concept of economic momentum and that changes made in one term may not be immediately fixed - especially if the previous guy smeared his shit all over the bathroom walls before he left. It’s understandable it will take some time to clean up.

Anyways, Trump took advantage of these economic hard times by stoking fear and hatred with claims that the incumbent party is to blame, that it’s all corrupt, and somehow immigrants and trans people are to blame.

In summary, we’ve got a known rapist/conman/cheater with a history of rape, conning, and cheating and we’re supposed to believe he won fair and square? I don’t buy it.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68203820

[2] https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-us-economic-recovery-in-international-context-2023

[3] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-us-recovery-from-covid-19-in-international-comparison/

[4] https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-us-economy-in-global-context

[5] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/despite-global-inflation-the-u-s-economic-recovery-is-among-the-strongest-of-g-7-nations/

[6] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/23/views-of-the-nations-economy-may-2024/

You do realise they’re trying to become the crypto WeChat?

Any evidence to support this claim?

Because I’m aware Signal introduced a beta crypto wallet 7 years ago, which was originally only available in select countries, and has had minimal resources allocated to its continued development since. They make zero mention of crypto/payment on their website, and best of all, the crypto wallet isn’t even enabled by default.

Shit app with horrible management.

And here you expose your personal emotional trauma by lashing at at the most inconsequential “nothing”: the development of a privacy preserving crypto wallet, “feature complete” half a decade ago, and disabled by default in a privacy preserving messenger.

Signal is the best free, open source, E2EE messenger that doesn’t leak metadata and has decent UX. Best of all, its completely free to use. Simplex is a good contender, but the UX is still lacking.

You genuinely don’t need to make concessions.

So backwoods white Christian nationalists are okay with abortion? Gay marriage? Women’s rights? Interracial marriage? Muslims Immigrants? Mexican immigrants? People not having a full grasp of the English language?

You, like all neoliberal excuses, have no idea what the working class of America is like, which is amazing because statistically you’re a part of it.

You’re attacking a straw man brother. You have no idea who I am, where I came from or what experiences I have. You’ve also painted a picture that doesn’t match reality based on your own experience. The world isn’t as shallow as your singular perspective nor is it black or white.

Its in a very alpha state, but check out Zen browser. Based on Firefox, incredibly fast and customizable. Their github page: https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop

Not the same scale but Signal has a rather new approach for a messaging client. Completely free and funded by user donations - at least that’s the direction they’re trying to head as their initial seed funding starts running low. I’ve doubled my donations for Signal because I’d like to help prove that its a working model and I encourage everyone who uses it to donate, even if it’s just once. I’d love to see Firefox head in that direction where funding goes directly to the browser’s development. If I donate to Firefox today it might go to one of their dozen or so other pet projects that are unrelated to the browser. I think their side projects are great and glad they were able to do them while they had the cash, but funding is clearly drying up and they need a whole restructure to keep the browser alive.

you have to work within your environment. you can’t just go full leftist in the backwoods redneck country that is the USA and expect to get anywhere. making concessions is necessary. but people fail to understand the nuance required to play the game. the second you’re an “outsider” you’ll be cast aside by the prevailing parties - exactly what happened to Sanders when he assumed most people were with him. social media has created echo chambers that reflect a mirage of what we want to see, not what’s actually there.

“if you don’t wanna do forced labor, just don’t commit crime”.

a poor education and ignorance (willful or other) are a key factor to why they have that sentiment.

an educated and informed person would realize that “punishment” does not benefit society. they would see how other countries approach the topic and realize that treatment and support are what criminals need ( not all of them obviously ). an informed populace would also look internally and realize prison-enforced slavery incentivizes increased incarceration of petty crimes, which only pushes people into more crime, not to mention private prisons and the 13th amendment make for an evil combination.

to quote SOAD:

All research and successful drug policy show that treatment should be increased

And law enforcement decreased while abolishing mandatory minimum sentences

Haven’t been paying attention, eh?

100% agree.

If its not open source 1) you can’t fully trust/audit. and 2) you’ll be left in the dust should the company cease to exist as nobody can continue development.

If Firefox is not private enough use Librewolf. If you’re interested in something new and exciting give Zen Browser or Floorp (both based on Firefox) a spin.

I know that happened, but again, if it was truly bernie or bust, and “the people” mostly wanted him they could have written him in. nobody says you can’t vote for whoever you want.

Don’t argue with the trolls, just downvote. They’re either too far down the rabbit hole or state sponsored trolls.

The Democrats have really set this up to make it a boom or bust strategy, and the Republicans reap all the benefits.

I’m not familiar with the history, how did Democrats set a system which then lets Republicans reap the benefits? Sounds counterproductive.

If it was bernie or bust wouldn’t bernie have won?

First I’ve heard of browseraudit, thanks for sharing!

EDIT: For comparison I got the same scores on Firefox (duh) and the following on Edge.

Score :

• Passed : 392
• Warning : 39
• Critical : 0
• Skipped : 0

Bonus! Browserbench.org speedometer 3.0 scores:

• Firefox; version 132.0.1 (64-bit)): 13.9
• Firefox nightly; version 134.0a1): 18.6
• Zen; version 1.0.1-a.17 (Firefox 132.0)): 17.6
• Edge; version 130.0.2849.68 (Official build) (64-bit): 19.8

Valid complaints. I can see the first and last issue being addressed at some point, not sure what they could do about storage space.

They’re actually very bad.

Care to elaborate? They seem to be working great for myself and family.