it includes a halt on publishing scientific articles as well, so there is a currently a moratorium on federally-sponsored research/knowledge being open source (which is like...the whole point of having federally-sponsored research)

I am at one of these agencies. This includes a pause on scientific publications to journals

Far more concerning is the fact that anybody (or country, company, etc) on the planet with enough money can now directly bribe the us president through crypto

Same! It is definitively unconstitutional and the us gov just pushed it through anyway (with even supreme court backing it up?!) Shit is crazy, and yet I see a lot of 'no big loss' type comments on it.

Reddit userbase absolutely skyrocketed when Obama (then president) did an AMA. The site was never quite the same after that

the Chinese state is censoring and fencing off some of the content there as a result. Source?

tiktok has(d) developed into a hivemind where tens of millions of people (or more?) can be a part of a discussion. This made it easy for trends to spread rapidly, such as deciding where to migrate with the impending tiktok ban. From my own experience on tiktok, the last few weeks there was much discussion of where to go, and it appears the hivemind settled on rednote.

What makes you say that? From my recent experiences with short form media I’d say there are plenty of bright people involved. There’s tons of actual good STEM/Maker/DIY/Educational/History content and the medium lends itself well to quick community building

I imagine merch sales are not insignificant, maybe? I see some artists selling special items on occasion like vinyl presses. Do musicians on tiktok with lots of views make money? I’m not sure how that works but it seems popular