I think it's really worth watching this Flipboard interview/podcast with Eugen Rochko, the creator of Mastodon.

https://flipboard.video/w/cTBu4HusskGTuPBahqm6WY

He sees it as a good thing, and I'm inclined to trust his judgement - it lets us share our ideals and culture with a broader audience, it lets us engage with a larger amount of content (if we want to), and we still have the power to block it at any point if we decide it's a bad thing. Pre-emptive defederation takes the power out of users hands, only grants more power to large silicon valley corporations, and is self-defeating if the goal is to try to move to a federated web.

Also, their federation is likely to have a near non-existent impact on aussie.zone, given we're a link-aggregation platform and not a microblog like Mastodon or Kbin.

Ultimately this won't change unless young Democrats actually take over the party and shift the overton window back to the left.

This generally, and specifically electoral reform is the only way to get the USA out of its two-party hellhole.

Well Google has recently been forcing through its awful Web Environment Integrity proposal so...

The government only has no real need to remove it if they're happy with the status quo regarding inequality - they can still point to the (presumingly failed) body and say 'we tried' and not bother with something better.

Of course that's an option in theory - but in practice, referendums are incredibly expensive operations, not to mention generally damaging to public discourse of other issues.

Most Governments would prefer to just reduce any funding for the body down to the bare minimum required, and have it sit impotently to the side, rather than front up and say 'yeah nah, this didn't work, so here's another big money spend to fix the constitutional issue we created while we think of something else'.

and removed next term when the next quasi fascist gets elected.

Come on, this is just FUD, plain and simple.

If the voice does turn out to be a white elephant, then we should have the flexibility to remove it and try again with a different model. I'm 100% on board with the Government of the day legislating a body, but I don't believe it should be in the constution, and I doubt I'm the only one.

Using inflammatory language is not the way to try and convince people one way or the other.

I really wish they didn't have to kill third party integration with smart speakers for this. Google bait and switch at its finest.

To be honest, I can see where the no campaign is coming from though - seems unfair for ticks to count as a valid vote but crosses to not count.

Remove them both IMO, but that ship has sailed for this particular referendum.

The far cheaper Galaxy Tab A series is a near equivalent competitor for where Google is positioning its tablet (an at-home media device, rather than a highly-performant professional device), and for a lot of people, trading the considerably lower price for no docking station and some older specs is worthwhile.

Google need to either make the docking capability a lot more appealing, or reduce the price significantly because at the moment it sits squarely in the home entertainment sphere, but with a price tag creeping up to match professional-tier devices - why would someone pay the premium for what is effectively an ebook and Youtube device?

I'd also argue Firefox is hardly mainstream at ~3% usage. Edge would be a better replacement given it comes with every Windows install (and many corporate environments don't allow using an alternative).