If it's "we've improved the way private data is collected", okay sure. If it's "we've bent big tech to our political will", which was kind of the vibe then, well : no.

Oh it's way better than not having anything. It just depends on what you mean by "big"

This is spot on. Years ago, when RGPD became a real thing. Many of my friends saw this as a big victory. When I invited to look deeper and see how it's first and foremost a way to protect European tech capital ; thus see a struggle between US and EU capital. I was greeted as a weird buzzkill

Interesting but I can't help thinking about mastodon. If the concept of instance is already something complicated for the average user, I'm not convinced it would be that much different with a middleware.

Indeed. I believe you've reached the logical conclusion of journalism