A true champion of free speech. 🙄

I love the idea, but I can’t see it actually working. Developers would just sell even more games as subscriptions instead of selling licenses, regardless of any interactive online content or lack thereof. (Think of EA’s 2013 release of SimCity with always-on DRM, for example.) Then when they want to shut their servers down, they just stop selling subscriptions and wait until the last one expires.

Oh nooooooes, a disaster!!!

🙄🙄🙄

Good question! Whether it’s actually infringement is a legal judgment I’m certainly not qualified to make. 🙂 But my understanding is that it hinges on whether a court thinks a “reasonable person” could be confused. For example, a clothing brand called “Firefoxy” would probably be in the clear since Mozilla isn’t in the clothing business. And maybe even a clothing brand named “Firefox” might be okay! For example, Apple Computer and Apple Records (founded by The Beatles) coexisted nicely for a long time until Apple Computer started getting into the music-selling business. I forget how it got resolved (maybe a licensing agreement?) but The Beatles’ music wasn’t available on the iTunes Music Store for a looooong time while that dispute was going on.

Firefish is an online service and software package, the very space Mozilla operates in, so there’s at least a case to be made that reasonable people might incorrectly assume it’s from Mozilla. It’s come up many times in this discussion already, and we as active Fediverse users are already pretty well informed about this!

The name is way too similar to the Firefox trademark and could create the impression that Firefish is associated with Mozilla. I suspect some lawyers are currently in a huddle trying to figure out how to send a Cease and Desist letter that won’t completely piss off the community.

(Trademark law, at least in the US where Mozilla is headquartered, requires organizations to actively defend their trademarks. So just ignoring Firefish would be risky, even if they don’t actually mind the similarity.)

not supplying them to Ukraine gives russia an advantage, thus being against the US supplying them to Ukraine is de-facto a pro-russian stance.

I strongly disagree with you here. I’m not against providing any weapons to Ukraine, I just believe there are better options than cluster munitions — options which won’t still be killing civilians in the decades to come. I don’t believe that cluster munitions are in any way essential to Ukraine’s defence.

Ukraine and its allies can’t do anything (short of surrendering, which I certainly don’t advocate) to stop Russia’s use of them, and there will be long-term consequences. But that doesn’t make it a good — or even neutral — idea to add on additional long-term consequences. The more unexploded ordinance, the more danger to residents in the future.

I read this more as a condemnation of the US (as opposed to Ukraine) for enabling further use of an indiscriminate weapon that will have civilian consequences for decades to come. But alas, it’s what I expect from those warmongers to our south. 😔

Look for an instance that has adopted the Mastodon Server Covenant, points 3 and 4 deal with this situation. It’s just a promise, not a guarantee, but most people running such instances are doing it because they care deeply about their community.

Marginalized people would suffer far, far, far more than the bad actors. ☹️ Many people who have been doxxed already go through this, and it’s still near-impossible to stop an online harasser even if you have proof of who they are. It would become dangerous for us to be online at all if this “miracle” were to come about.

Don’t worry, Google is bluffing. They don’t want other countries to do anything similar so they have to make a big show of fighting it, but their massive power to fight it is exactly why C-18 is necessary. Google backed down in Australia, and sooner or later, they’ll back down here — there’s still a lot of money for them to rake in even after paying to use the news outlets’ work.

It seems like the author is asking “why isn’t there a just-like-Reddit or just-like-Twitter site that was totally ready and waiting for this moment, and even though we’d never heard of it before now has everyone using it?”

Fediverse is different, and that’s a good thing. Because note how all of these corporate social media platforms are ending up…

I looked up the past comment you mentioned. And just… Wow. 😐

Even if you do specifically have gender dysphoria, jumping to gender affirming care is radical. It’s not how we treat any other kind of disordered thinking

Gender Dysphoria is not disordered thinking. That’s exactly why the name was changed in DSM-5 (formerly Gender Identity Disorder in DSM-IV). Or if you prefer, it’s exactly why ICD-11 renamed it to Gender Incongruence and moved it out of the “Mental, Behavioural, and Neurodevelopmental Disorders” section. Shouldn’t a former therapist commenting on the issue know that?

Does Gender Dysphoria present alongside disordered thinking? Quite often! But that doesn’t invalidate one’s gender identity. Transition didn’t make my F33.2 Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent Severe magically go away, but it sure is easier to cope with and treat these days. (Well, I guess it’s 6A71.3 now that ICD-11 is out.)

I think people who can only find relief for their dysphoria by transitioning should be allowed to

And there we have it: the core of the argument you’re making is that people should only be allowed to transition if a gatekeeper is satisfied it’s the only way they can get relief. And the only way to “show” that is to suffer more and more — unnecessarily! — until someone like you finally believes them, which might never happen. Do you believe trans people genuinely have the gender we say we do? If so, withholding treatment is simply cruel. Or do you not believe us and just think it’s okay for us to “pretend” if nothing else works? That’s not real acceptance.

There is no medical reason not to try more traditional forms of therapy and medications before pursuing the less understood and riskier treatments.

Scientists still don’t fully understand how antidepressant medications work. They come with a black-boxed warning (the strongest kind) in the US, and similarly strong warnings in the Canadian product monographs. Benzodiazepines commonly used for anxiety disorders can be extremely risky. Puberty blockers and hormone treatments are better understood and carry less risk in many cases.

I very much wish the LGBT community could try to understand where moderates like myself are coming from.

Oh, believe me, we understand exactly where you’re coming from… quite possibly better than you do. You’re only fooling yourself with that “moderate” label.

And that’s why I wrote this reply out for the bystanders — it’s not actually for you.

For the record, I’ve been an LGBT supporter all of my life.

No, I’m afraid you haven’t been. For example, there was that time you wrote:

LGBT values are an invasive culture change that is being pushed on kids without the interests of the parents in mind.

Some of those kids are gay, some are bi, some are trans, some are ace, some are intersex, the list goes on. Every one of them deserves acceptance and support, whether their parents agree or not. A queer child’s safety and well-being shouldn’t depend on winning the supportive-parent(s) lottery. And even with a supportive parent, a hostile school environment can lead to suicidal ideation. Any guess as to how I know that?

I’ve only recently had to start pushing back because I believe certain parts of the LGBT culture are not suitable for children.

Sure, but which parts do you mean? Because lately, the rhetoric has mostly been about “drag queen story hour” which is really just reading books while playing fancy dress-up. There’s nothing inherently harmful or even sexualized about it.

Such a bubble seems workable to me, with the caveat of “during classes” or the like. If teachers are on strike, then there aren’t classes in session and thus it would be okay. And for BLM, a student-led rally could take place after classes, and a community-led rally during school hours would probably be much more effective if held elsewhere.

But the reason we’re talking about this is because anti-trans protestors want children to feel it’s dangerous and bad to be queer. It’s specifically an attack on queer kids and anyone who helps them feel safe at school. And kids, whether queer or not, shouldn’t be forcefully exposed to that hate in a place they are required by law to be.