what was stopping them from doing this previously? Isn't this just government virtue signaling?

When I was in college I learned I liked the idea of coding a lot more than I liked coding. Now I know just enough C++ to be able to translate dev speak into corporates speak and back, can claim to be an engineer, and get to talk to stupid people, who think they are smart, who think that I'm really smart, and I spend more of my day on social media. I had one job that in the six months I was there I think I actually did MAYBE 40 hours of work. If it wasn't for "business conditions related to COVID-19" I'd probably still work there, though I'm making more, and working somewhat more, now.

Yeah, that's a crock. My first corporates job did that to us, and then never approved the paid vacation requests, let-a-lone the banked time-off we were promised for being such good cubicle slaves working above and beyond, and it is all legal because "exempt salary employee"

My parents used to winter in Arizona. They told me many of their neighbors used to go to Mexico for dental care, but allegedly Mexico (I would think America but my dad said Mexico) is trying to put a stop to folks crossing the border for this kind of care.

certainly not just a Mastodon thing, as Friendica , and I'm pretty sure GNU Social, had it before Mastodon did.

Thanks for the info though

The good thing about Free Software is you are never at the mercy of a single provider. If you and your friends like Lemmy, you can always use lemmy. The amount of content might not be what it once was, but you are welcome to use and change, or pay someone else to let you use/change, the service forever. (Like pump.io used to be the whole #Fediverse and now identi.ca is little more than a internet graveyard save me 4 bots, and six people that cross post to Mastodon, but even it may come back now that /u/@evan indicated he's adding ActivityPub to it now that its all the rage.

You'll see the most on the original community's instance, but even that won't show everything due to how activity Pub works and some platforms allowing "anonymous follow" and the like. #privacy

if they do, you can just folow them for here right? Or does lemmy.world have less features than kbin.social?

actually it came from when the USSR sent tanks to Hungary to keep down a workets revolution against the Soviet backed regime in the mid-twentieth century. Origanally it was used as a description for divisions in the British communist party between those who felt a global [Soviet backed] communist plan, versus those who supported independent worker collectives democratically deciding their own direction.

welcome to the fediverse! Before you get "locked in" to a particular instance, take a look at your other choices and pick one that you might fit better in. https://fediverse.observer

centralized markets have a pretty poor track record

huh what? when did this happen?