the merest whisper that such a block might come in the then-future caused the entire Fediverse to avoid blocking places such as lemmy.ml and hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml for over a year.

It sounds just like the effects of Elon announcing the hyperloop.

1 announce new tech that solves all the problems

2 don't give a release timeline

3 profit, due to delay

4 the people you lied to finally figure out the problem solving promises were actually lies.

I think we should call this type of scheme hyperlooping

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 5 points 3 weeks ago

I'm not sure if Lemmy is large enough to attract a realistic disinfo campaign, but on the other hand it's probably ingrained so deeply that it's basically habit reflex, and you never know what might pay out in the future, like perhaps the ability to maybe swing an election or two if you can encourage some people to ah... not vote maybe?

Bc according to some, bOtH sIdEs SaMe: