This will suffer from a backfire effect where the result is you just get more technically savvy radicals. Google's decision here exacerbates polarization. However, I actually welcome it because I would totally join a fediverse with a higher bar to entry, and where ideas had a longer period and participants were committed to building alternatives. It's the real punk. Everyone else can entertain and outrage themselves to death on public platforms where they compete for the reflected approval of a hive mind.

I realize the sort of people who make decisions like this think they are doing this to "win," as the only thing on anyone's mind right now is influencing November, and making sure it "never happens again," but Googlers and tech people like this are creating a self-isolating minority of themselves.

Exiting what has become the Karen-net is probably one of the most interesting problems to solve right now.