Brave Search is now frequently beating DDG and Startpage for accuracy of search results. It's like using Google 10 years ago when it was actually good but without the ads, tracking and pestering to "log in". Good stuff.
Social networking should be done on personal devices anyway. Bearing in mind the risk still exists even in that scenario that bad actors can still buy data from data brokers to infer location, personal particulars etc of most users of the big social networks anyway.
But I suppose the rail loop that serves all 10 people who currently catch the 903 bus is still on the agenda with a price tag of $100 billion. Good stuff Andrews.
So why does that sick note from your doctor say, "As a large language model, I can't actually diagnose your medical condition. But here's a note I might write if I were your doctor..."
So instances that are actually supporting CSAM material can and should be dealt with by law enforcement. That much is simple (and I'm surprised it hasn't been done with certain ... instances, to be honest). But I think the apparently less clearly solved issues have known and working solutions that apply to other parts of the web as well. No content moderation is perfect, but in general, if admins are acting in good faith, I don't think there should be too much of a problem:
For when federation inadvertently spreads some of the material through to other instances' databases: Isn't this the same situation as when ISP's used to cache web traffic to save on bandwidth costs? In that situation, too, browsed web pages would end up in the ISP's cache which could then harbour whatever material the user was looking at. As I recall, the ISP would just ban CSAM and other illegal material in their terms of service, and remove anyone reported as violating the rule, and that sufficed.
As for "bad" instances/users: It's impossible to block all instances and all users that might disseminate this material as you'd have to go to a "block everything, then allow known entities" rule which would break the Fediverse model. Again, users or site admins found to be acting in bad faith should be blocked and reported (either automatically or manually). Some may slip through the net, but as long as admins are seen to be doing the best they can, that should be enough.
There seem to be concerns about "surveillance" of material on Mastodon, which strikes me as a bit odd. Mastodon isn't a private platform. People who want private messaging should use an E2EE messaging app like Signal, not a social networking platform like Mastodon (or Twitter, Threads etc.). Mastodon data is already public and is likely already being surveilled, and will be so regardless of what anyone involved with the network wants, because there's no access control on it anyway. Having Mastodon itself contain code to keep the network clean, even if it only applies to part of the network, just allows those Mastodon admins who are running that part of the code to take some of the responsibility on themselves for doing so, reducing the temptation for third parties to do it for them.
There should be a law forcing energy companies to charge the best pricing they have on offer to all customers at all times, instead of the current nonsense of having to ring up the power company every year when the year's pricing deal "is expiring" to avoid being put on extortionately high "default" rates. Not only to save money, but also time, as I am sure I am not the only one who hates having to wade through which "deal" is supposedly the best each year on pain of being given a big bill if I don't want to be bothered.
High levels of infrastructure spending = eventually, high levels of tax. A "big build" is not a "free build".
And infrastructure spending is almost certainly needed, so that isn't much of a point to argue on either. What the opposition should be asking is whether the right infrastructure is being built, as that will ultimately determine whether we get an improved standard of living out of it rather than just a big tax bill.
If this kind of thing becomes widespread, then people will find a way to broadcast fake anti-camera signals as well. Imagine a thief breaks into your house and you want your security cameras to record them... but guess what, the thief broadcasts an anti-camera signal and they all switch off, completely neutralising your security system. "Unintended side-effects"
Expensive and impossible to customise effectively, making it much poorer value than Android. Not that Android is perfect. The instant some form of non-proprietary Linux (like Debian w/phosh, PostmarketOS, etc.) becomes viable as a daily driver, Android is out as well.
IMHO Mastodon needs to have some kind of automatic update scheme to roll out bugfixes to these kinds of problems quickly ... if there are enough instances out there vulnerable to this or any subsequent issues like it, we could end up with a situation where someone starts coopting Mastodon servers as part of botnets and costing their owners a ton of money in bandwidth bills, getting them IP-banned in various places, etc. The only way to fix this is fast automatic updating.
I think these are "nice to have" features rather than absolutely essential, but:
For 1. I could deal with just being able to download my list of subscriptions and upload it to another server. That's the only bit that's really slow to copy over by hand.
For 2. I think the main thing that really would benefit is the ability to search all active communities on all servers. The way it is now is alright if there are only half a dozen really active instances whose communities I might be interested in, but it doesn't scale if there are hundreds of servers to check out. Probably the more important of the two IMHO in the long run.
Or you could make public transport run faster and more efficiently and faster, reducing the number of people who drive.