Glenn, yes. Snowden I don’t think so. My impression of him is that he wants to unite everyone against surveillance, and doesn’t want other issues to get in the way of his messaging/work about that. I could be wrong.

To chime in on the user creation thing:

I think it’s a natural part of decentralization that it’s harder for a single instance to get big enough to be the “go-to” for general users.

Having said that, I also think this will naturally happen over time. As long as the mechanical aspects of sign up are simple, it’s just a matter of users of a given instance to promote their instance.

World events also always play a role in encouraging a move to freer waters. Look at what happened with Mastodon and Bluesky (though Bluesky imo is just a big snooze button on a blaring alarm)

For me, it has been a process of accepting that we can’t handwave actual opposing worldviews by talking about intelligence.

I know people who aren’t “smart” by most definitions, but who still have a lot of empathy and kindness. On the other hand, I have peers who I consider geniuses in their interests and fields, but with whom I struggled to find common ground politically.

It’s more useful to look at values. I can agree with most people in my life on the broad strokes. It’s when we get bogged down with micropolitics that fights happen.

I still think the public reaction to Luigi Mangione was a prime example of how people actually agree about a lot in this country, but frame it differently.

Hopefully this actually leads to something lasting, but I don’t have high hopes considering how Europe is getting dragged atm