Linked article in the body suggests that likely wouldn’t have made a difference anyway

The scrapers ignored common web protocols that site owners use to block automated scraping, including “robots.txt” which is a text file placed on websites aimed at preventing the indexing of context

Maybe the EU will pass some legislation that will carry over to the US

GDPR requires the right to have your data deleted at least, but a lot of companies will only allow that if you are within the EU (because of profit and spite, I suppose). Though some just allowed it for everyone instead

Similar for California Consumer Privacy Act where a lot of companies will only let you do the stuff it requires if you are within California

Sort of like the “unsubscribe” button you get at the bottom of some emails. Did they have to pass a law to get that enacted?

Yes, see the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003

There are also Tesla protests growing in Europe (and Canada, and more)! Musk’s influence threatens more than just the US, so we must all step up. The Tesla Takedown protest movement started in the US, but it’s now becoming international. Here’s a map of the latest ones in Europe

Here’s the site with that info along with a guide on how to plan one around you if you don’t see one

https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown

There have been tons of protests and there have been some pretty widespread ones outside of Tesla this weekend. The media is just hardly covering it making them seem way smaller than they are

Here’s a map of recent Tesla Takedown protests alone

https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown

Here’s just a handful of photos from yesterday

Most people within the US aren’t aware these protests are happening either. There are also broader nationwide protests planned on April 5th as part of the 50501 movement. This will be the 4th nationwide 50501 protest

Democracy Docket is a good source for court battles. They cover all kinds of court cases and the updates on them you hardly find in other media

The other action is harder to find concentrated in one source, but there’s people on various social media that try to signal boost the limited media coverage of that stuff. For instance, Ariella Elm (@ariellaelm.bsky.social), various activism groups like Indivisible, the r/fednews and r/50501 subreddit, etc.

Protests are a starting point not an ending one. Many of the groups involved in this like Indivisible are also recruiting people from theses protests to do the less flashy work of fighting back in other ways

They also are quite the lighting rod to get people to feel engaged more broadly. If you’ve never gone to a mass protest, it’s hard to describe how they reignite you to fight back. Seeing all those people there makes you realize you are not alone. That you are not the only one who doesn’t think this is okay

These most recent protests were also much larger than the media is describing it. The media is saying thousands nationwide, but there were multiple cities that each had 1000+ people. Many smaller cities had hundreds protesting

There have been people fighting back. They just get 10x less media coverage than all the horrible things going on. This is part of what people mean when they say the revolution will not be televised

Many of their actions have been blocked in many of the federal courts and they are largely complying with those orders

There are many federal workers refusing to go along with all kinds of their action that slow them down

Many blue states and localities have already passed laws/ordinances to stop cooperating with the federal government ICE raid making them more difficult to carry out

My reaction is to get to work. The far-right is trying to take over much of the world, and it’s going to take many of us to push it back. Don’t wait for someone else to step up - everyone else is waiting too. Be the person who steps up. The people have power if we use it

There’s groups like Indivisible doing directed pressure of those in government that need more people to contact their house representatives and senators. With that pressure for instance, they’ve started to get Democrats to use procedural tools to slow down senate confirmation of Trump’s picks

There’s movements like the 50501 protests in many cities in all 50 states yesterday, on Feb 5th, and there will be future protests

For anyone else reading this, don’t think this can’t happen wherever you are in the world, join the fight back locally. People in the US thought it couldn’t happen to them too until it did. People in the UK thought Brexit wouldn’t happen until it did. It can happen to you. Take what’s happened in the US as a warning for you too to get involved in the push back

but there isn’t a mass movement right now

Lookup the 50501 movement. There were protests across the entire country in every single state yesterday and they are planning future ones too. Many of them were quite large especially considering how short notice they were prepared

Here’s one video montage with just handful of some of the protests https://bsky.app/profile/50501movement.bsky.social/post/3lifqkjki2k2o

Elections are not run federally, they are run by each state which makes it harder for Republicans to be as aggressive as they’d like to be

Mind you they lost a US house seat this cycle even with Trump winning. They have just a 3 seat majority. They would need a gain of +70 seats in the house in a midterm environment to get to 2/3

On the senate side, Republicans would need to pick up 12(!) seats to get 2/3. In the 2026 map, that’s extraordinarily difficult and would require winning extremely deep blue seats. 66 senators is a lot. They would have to win literally every single senate seat up for election in 2026

Assuming they win all the solid red + lean red seats, they would need to defend both senators in North Carolina and Maine to keep 53. Then they’d have to flip the tossups of Michigan and Georgia to get to 55. Then the lean blue Minnesota senate seat to get to 56.

Then the very likely blue seats of New Mexico, Virginia, Colorado, and New Hampshire to get to 60. Then to get to 66, they would need to win the safe blue states of Oregon, Illinois, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, and Rhode Island to get 66

Midterms are usually very unfavorable to the party in power. Even with more stringent voter laws, that would be a tall ask. Flipping safe blue senate senates where dems have state and local control would be insane

And you’d have to flip a large number of state legislature in deep blue states too

Would be difficult for him to do so via any legal means. Each individual States run elections. They are not federally run, even for federal offices per the US constitution

Election days are similarly set by the US constitution

The bar to change that is quite high with 2/3 of congress + 3/4 of state legislatures to ratify. And while Supreme Court is insane, they did recently ruled 6-3 against the insane independent state legislature theory (which would have meant even state courts could not rule on anything election related) which is related to the exact piece of the constitution

Plus 3/4 of state legislatures to ratify which would be another high bar

There’s a reason why there’s so few constitutional amendments

The X service remains available to the people of Brazil, billionaire Elon Musk’s platform said on Saturday.

Wait so what do they mean by stopping operations in Brazil then? Just the offices and staff? The article isn’t super clear on it

Not the person you are replying to but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_market

Not OP, but as someone who was at one point excited by the potential of crypto, the ecosystem has moved more and more towards what it claimed to stand against initially

It’s supposed to be decentralized, but things like mining pools have lead to heavy amounts of centralization in block production. If we look at Bitcoin, for an example, we see that over 51% of block production is controlled by just two mining pools. That’s not limited to just Proof of Work mining either. Proof of stake sees centralization in staking pools as well. That’s only just looking at one aspect of the network

It has also not really been seen as a currency. People’s view of it as an “investment” which have the opposite qualities you really want to see. People are encouraged to hold it and never let go, meaning they won’t want to spend it which is adverse to its use as a currency. This has also lead to it being incorporated and dominated by the very financial systems it was initially supposed to move away from

I don’t want to type out an essay, but I could keep going on in other ways that’s not really lived up to its promises.

Raising the wage of 1 million contractors is not just words. Yes, we do need more, but don’t think it’s nothing

Part of the goal is to encourage their campaign to get more of a mastodon presence

Most of those claims about treatment of trans people are just false. They are primarily based on misattributed actions of other people which harris has denounced

Here’s a good article looking at just that

https://archive.is/FNqUx

Not saying she’s perfect, but consider with the two party system in the US, the alternative is far far worse

Harris has generally pushed for minimum wage increases where she can. For instance

August 08, 2023

FACT SHEET: Vice President Harris Announces Action to Raise Wage Standards Over Time For More Than One Million Construction Workers

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/08/08/fact-sheet-vice-president-harris-announces-action-to-raise-wage-standards-over-time-for-more-than-one-million-construction-workers/

She has advocated for $15/hr minimum wage and joined protesting and striking workers in that push before

https://apnews.com/general-news-united-states-presidential-election-6a566fe8785a4ae5aa7963fd3bc5166f

Unlike a certain rich republican candidate who has misused funds, the money goes to their campaign not the person themselves

US elections certainly takes way more money than it should but until Citizen United gets overturned, donating is an unfortunately important part of elections for those who can afford to do so