I read Dean Jackson’s piece and the guy is right. You talk about “Oh, advertisers won’t want their ads running next to this stuff” but advertisers seem fine with going back to X and more. Meta’s stock keeps climbing in spite of its rollback of moderation policies.

Self-made or third-party moderation/block services and custom algorithmic feeds run into an obstacle. This obstacle is that there are people that run things at the top level of some of these platforms, that just allow bad actors to stay. The trans community on Bluesky was correctly angry during the events of December 2024 where nobody at the company listened or cared about their issues with one bad actor who was essentially whitelisted. Third party/defentralized systems of moderation can stop the bad actors from being seen or seeing you/interacting with you, yes, but they do not stop the stochastic angle where they can preach to and marshal their followers to do bad things online and off. “Just block them/subscribe to this custom feed” is not a satisfactory answer when a marginalized group rings the alarm bells about someone who has a history of making that group’s life a living hell.

Regarding state power: Jackson highlights the dangers of the approach of state power. The way you discuss it in the podcast, it makes it sound like he doesn’t, and that seems intentional on your part.

Brazil was in the right position at the right time to wield its state power for good, after a learned experience with dictatorship. Brazil playing hardball with Big Tech is a good thing.