Did you think this blog post was aimed at the people with power, to petition them to change the laws?

It's aimed at us, the people getting fucked over, to point out what (among the many other things) we should be fighting for. Commentary like this is important to align the goals of the organizations, charities and lobby groups that defend YOUR civil rights by filing amicus briefs, publishing articles, encouraging activism and drives to get citizens to write to their representatives on the important matters that affect their rights. You don't even have to do anything and there are thousands of people out there trying to protect you from getting more fucked by Big Tech and capitalism, on a volunteer basis.

It sounds to me like you've just given up hope that any progress can be made on this front, given the new status quo.

Never give up. Just because civil rights defenders will be on the defensive for a few years does not mean that discussions of what is worth defending no longer have value.

Heaven forbid someone point out the reasons things suck and the ways we could do thibgs different, even if you know no one's going to change.

Better to just shrug everything off and tell folks "that's life, get used to it", right? That does a lot of good!

the idea that these webs of laws or these models of “how things should work” mean anything tho the people with power are complete nonsense.

Kinda ironic that you are discussing the nonsense of "how things should work" on a federated service where you control the intermediaries you work with and through, which is, IMO, the way things should work.

The problem is, once the middlemen gain power, they’re never gonna give you up. Music producers are a great example of this, as are telecoms companies.

All the current SaaS stuff is similar; the offerings LOOK similar, but they’re explicitly designed not to be a 1:1 match, so you can’t just take your business elsewhere, just like the mattress companies of old.

We’re even seeing this play out in the streaming video market, where each player has its own differentiator, moreso than we ever saw with traditional cable TV.

Standards are great, but middlemen have no incentives to not subvert them.