this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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This is precisely the point of literally all the recent new laws regulating online platforms, including this.
To kill smaller ones that can't comply with those laws, so that only large ones remain (if at all) and it is easier to censor and surveil the users there.
I just hope that at some point, people will figure out how wrong politicians of the 2020s were to do all of this, and a new free and open Internet will rise from the ashes as long as any remain.
Unfortunately, the general public has no idea whatsoever of the Fediverse and doesn't care about the monopoly of information, mega platforms abusing your data, privacy, and so on and so forth. I'm old enough to finally have come to the conclusion that progress is not made by the masses but by smart, motivated and usually underappreciated individuals. Sadly.
I was already posting on web forums (also wikis) before Facebook or Twitter became popular, when the Internet was not yet very established and posting things on it oneself was something only few people thought of doing.
I was outright excited when I saw "social media" becoming more mainstream. I thought at the time, at least more people are using the Internet, even if it's "just" Facebook or Twitter (which I didn't and still don't see much value in), at least it's the Internet, that's a good thing because the Internet is a great and exciting thing for society and a wonderful source of entertainment!
Now we live in a world where the general public mostly only knows how to operate social media apps, otherwise has no tech proficiency at all, doesn't even know what else is out there on the Internet, and doesn't know or care how the social media apps they're using are designed to manipulate them. And politicians are busy working to make it harder for good idealistic people to solve those problems. :(
Small platforms are excluded but don't let that get in the way of your hysteria
Small platforms are excluded today
Yeah that's how laws work, if it included them it would be a different law or a significantly different proposal.
From some things maybe. Plenty of recent "online safety" style laws around the world have no exceptions based on platform size.
We are talking about a specific thing: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/dsa-vlops
You are talking about the DSA.
There is no reason to believe that future social media bans will have such exceptions. VDL said explicitly that the app means that there are "no more excuses".
The DSA excludes small platforms from some rules, so as not to overwhelm start-ups with bureaucracy. Clearly, such considerations are to be neutralized in the future.