flamingos

I would like to use Bluesky. They've done a bunch of seriously interesting technical work on moderation and ranking that I truly admire, and I've got lots of friends there who really enjoy it.

But I'm not on Bluesky and I don't have any plans to join it anytime soon. I wrote about this in 2023: I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will.
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Enshittification can be thought of as the result of a lack of consequences. Whether you are tempted by greed or pressured by people who have lower ethics than you, the more it costs to compromise, the fewer compromises you'll make.

In other words, to resist enshittification, you have to impose switching costs on yourself.

That's where federation comes in. On Mastodon (and other services based on Activitypub), you can easily leave one server and go to another, and everyone you follow and everyone who follows you will move over to the new server. If the person who runs your server turns out to be imperfect in a way that you can't endure, you can find another server, spend five minutes moving your account over, and you're back up and running on the new server.

Any system where users can leave without pain is a system whose owners have high switching costs and whose users have none. An owner who makes a bad call – like removing the block function say, or opting every user into AI training – will lose a lot of users. Not just those users who price these downgrades highly enough that they outweigh the costs of leaving the service. If leaving the service is free, then tormenting your users in this way will visit in swift and devastating pain upon you.
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Bluesky lacks the one federated feature that is absolutely necessary for me to trust it: the ability to leave Bluesky and go to another host and continue to talk to the people I've entered into community with there. While there are many independently maintained servers that provide services to Bluesky and its users, there is only one Bluesky server. A federation of multiple servers, each a peer to the other, has been on Bluesky's roadmap for as long as I've been following it, but they haven't (yet) delivered it.

That was worrying when Bluesky was a scrappy, bootstrapped startup with a few million users. Now it has grown to over 13 million users, and it has taken on a large tranche of outside capital.

Plenty of people have commented that now that a VC is holding Bluesky's purse-strings, enshittification will surely follow (doubly so because the VC is called "Blockchain Capital," which, at this point, might as well be "Grifty Scam Caveat Emptor Capital"). But I don't agree with this at all. It's not outside capital that leads to enshittification, it's leverage that enshittifies a service.

A VC that understands that they can force you to wreck your users' lives is always in danger of doing so. A VC who understands that doing this will make your service into an empty – and thus worthless – server is far less likely to do so (and if they do, at least your users can escape).

Joint Statement from left leaning politicians criticising the new Budget.

Labour’s first budget punishes the “working people” they claim to support. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves promised to deliver real change to the electorate, after 14 years of Tory rule. This week, they have broken that promise. This budget is austerity by another name.

While we welcome the government’s decision to invest in school and hospital buildings, it is extremely disappointing that these investments have been undermined by a swathe of public sector cuts, cruel attacks on the worst off, and a dogmatic refusal to redistribute wealth and power. These are not “tough choices” for government ministers, but for ordinary people who are forced to choose between heating their home and putting food on the table.

Labour is raising defence expenditure to 2.5% of GDP while telling us there is no money to lift 250,000 children out of poverty. This is a lie. There is plenty of money – it’s just in the wrong hands. The richest 1% in the UK hold more wealth than 70% of Britons. By refusing to impose a wealth tax, this government has chosen to force vulnerable communities to pay the price for years of economic failure, instead of making the richest pay their fair share. Labour’s first budget shows us whose side they’re on.

Years of austerity and privatisation have decimated our public services and pushed millions into poverty, disproportionately impacting women, people of colour and disabled people. Making millions of children, working, retired and disabled people poorer damages our entire economy and stretches our public services. An austerity economy is a false economy.

We, along with nearly 100 progressive Independent and Green politicians across the country, are calling on the Labour government to: 1) introduce wealth taxes; 2) abolish the two-child benefit cap and stop attacking welfare recipients; 3) reverse cuts to winter fuel; 4) restore the £2 bus cap; and 5) invest in a Green New Deal.

We refuse to believe that child poverty, mass hunger and homelessness are inevitable in the sixth largest economy in the world. A progressive movement is growing up and down the country, demanding a real alternative to this race to the bottom between Labour and the Tories, which has seen the new government perpetuate decades of austerity and rampant corporate greed.

The Tories’ collapse allowed Labour to come to power with the lowest vote share ever won by any single-party majority government. Labour haemorrhaging votes to progressive independents and Greens in their heartlands should be a lesson to this government: you are wrong to believe that progressive voters have nowhere else to go. Our movement is growing every day – and you ignore the demand for a real alternative at your peril.

-- Jeremy Corbyn MP Independent, Carla Denyer MP Green party co-leader, Adrian Ramsay MP Green party co-leader, Sian Berry MP Green party, Ben Lake MP Plaid Cymru, Ann Davies MP Plaid Cymru, Liz Saville Roberts MP Plaid Cymru, Llinos Medi MP Plaid Cymru, Zack Polanski Green party deputy leader and London assembly member, Leanne Mohamad Independent candidate for Ilford North, Jamie Driscoll Former North of Tyne mayor, Andrew Feinstein Former ANC MP and Independent candidate for Holborn and St Pancras, Leanne Wood Former leader, Plaid Cymru, Beth Winter Former Labour MP for Cynon Valley, Hilary Schan Chair, We Deserve Better and Independent councillor in Worthing, Anthony Slaughter Wales Green party leader

Original

Nigel Farage used nearly £33,000 of donor cash to help support Donald Trump in the US election - months before he complained about Labour activists volunteering for Kamala Harris.

After he was elected as an MP, the Reform UK leader missed the King's Speech to travel to Wisconsin in July to attend the Republican National Convention (RNC).

He publicly admitted his trip was intended "to support my friend Donald Trump at the RNC", adding "we all have a duty to support and defend democracy."

It comes after Mr Trump's campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), calling for an investigation into whether around 100 UK Labour Party activists and staff volunteering for Ms Harris' campaign was a breach of US election rules.

Under federal law, the travel expenses of a volunteer are considered a donation to the party they work for if they exceed $1,000 (£770) in one election.

When it was first revealed that Labour activists had been volunteering for Ms Harris, Mr Farage said: "This is direct election interference by the governing Labour Party, and particularly stupid if Trump wins. Who is paying for all of this?"

Mr Farage's trip was paid for by Christopher Harborne, a British tech investor based in Thailand.

Mr Farage declared on his register of members interests that the flights and accommodation for the trip came to £32,836.

Also see yesterday's discussion of Trump's complaint.

Crosspost

Nigel Farage's fans have been offered tours of Parliament with an MP for £300.

A fundraising email was sent out by Reform UK inviting supporters to a Christmas party at a central London bar and nightclub, with an option to purchase expensive tours around Parliament as an extra. There are restrictions on MPs using their access to Parliament, with the invite appearing to be a breach of House of Commons rules.

In 2020 Green MP Caroline Lucas was found to have breached parliamentary rules by giving a tour of the Commons for a £150 contribution to a fundraising campaign. An investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner found she had breached the Code of Conduct for MPs.

Reform UK's MPs are understood to have been unaware of the event or tours until someone who bought a ticket contacted them. The party said the email, first seen by the Times, was incorrectly sent out by a local branch that wasn't aware of the rules. Those who have bought a ticket are now being offered a refund.

Full list of investments can be found on the government website.

Investors attending the Labour government’s first International Investment Summit have announced pledges totalling £63bn today, which will create an estimated 38,000 jobs.

Spending commitments include £20bn from ‘Vampire kangaroo’ Macquarie, on projects including a rollout of fast-charging electric vehicle infrastructure at motorway service stations, over £6bn of new data centres by US tech firms, an expansion of Stansted airport, and a tie-up with US pharma firm Eli Lilly.
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The government also secured a £1bn expansion of London Gateway port, after the row over transport secretary Louise Haigh’s criticism of its owner’s poor business practices was defused.

Opening the event, Sir Keir Starmer said the government and investors were bound together, in the “shared endeavour of prosperity”.

Growth, Starmer argued, was “vital…if we are to steer our way through a great period of insecurity and change”.

Having ‘celebrated’ 100 days in office on Saturday, Starmer pledged to fix the UK’s public service and stabilise the economy quickly, and also repair Britain’s brand “as an open, outward-looking, confident, trading nation”.

In comments that have caused alarm, Starmer pledged to “get rid” of regulations that are holding back investment, such as building homes, data centres, warehouses, grid connectors, roads, and trainlines.

Both the Green Party and the RSPB have voiced concerns about what this will mean for Britain.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, told delegates that UK corporation tax would be capped at 25% for the lifetime of this parliament, in an attempt to give bosses some certainty.

She also warned that the government faces ‘difficult choices’ as she draws up the budget, and hinted that she is planning to raise employer national insurance contributions.

Reeves also announced that the UK Infrastructure Bank has been converted into the National Wealth Fund, which will be capitalised with £27.8bn to catalyse private investment in the market.