Picking up the discussion here rather than on the butterfly app.

I think a big underlying issue here is what a genuinely progressive politics of the web looks like in 2024.

Is the main end goal a move away from the corporate walled garden surveillance internet? Towards a more community-owned internet? With open source, open protocols, federated communities, and nonprofits (such as Wikimedia Foundation and Mozilla)?

Is it breaking up the corporate internet giants, and regulating them heavily to prevent their worst excesses?

Are there other considerations that should come into play? Access? Inclusion? Protecting vulnerable groups in our community? Preventing deliberate disinformation?

An open, community-led internet can itself be a powerful counterbalance to other structural issues in the community, and entrenched power interests (such as the mainstream media). It's a vital tool for grassroots activism and organising. Particularly when it's used as a tool for transparency or amplifying the voices of marginalised groups. Chelsea Manning's leaks and Black Twitter's response to police brutality in the US in the 2010s.

But it can also be a tool for state-sponsored disinformation.

Assuming all of the above to be true, I agree that a much more nuanced conversation about what good public policy looks like with the web than the EFF/web libertarian view.

Sometimes, a lighter regulatory touch is needed. Especially when you're dealing with the grassroots web. And resistance to governments trying to silence dissent from marginalised communities online is justified.

But at the same time, big tech should be regulated far more than it is. And public policy should actively support and promote a more community-centred internet.