Ada was clear in another comment thread that yes, emotion was absolutely involved in her decision. That isn’t a bad thing. Why is there a social attitude that decision-making is only valid if it’s cold and unfeeling?
Personally I’m in the camp of “let consenting adults do adult things”
Me too. I don’t think anyone is arguing against that. Anyone can still access LemmyNSFW’s content elsewhere, Blahaj Zone simply isn’t going to relay it anymore because some of it is incompatible with Ada’s goals in nurturing this community.
But if it is in fact legal, and well moderated, then is there a problem?
Yes. Legality has nothing to do with acceptability. This instance already bans lots of content that doesn’t actually violate any laws. It’s a judgment call.
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!
Truthfully, bigotry and harmful content should be reported, not downvoted. 🙂 Our local admins are very responsive, and they’ll defederate from any other instances that sanction or defend that stuff.
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.)
Other people here are already doing a great job of covering the “what we think” and “whether welcome in queer spaces or not” aspects of your question, so let me dive into this part instead:
…someone who’s not in the space or actively an ally. I would more accurately describe myself currently as a “don’t care” person in the sense that to me it genuinely does not matter what someone identifies as or who someone is attracted to.
Ever watch the TV show Ted Lasso? There was a scene in the final season where one of the players on the football (soccer) team came out as gay. The other players tell him they “don’t care”, meaning to be supportive but not actually succeeding. Ted gives a speech and, as his character admits afterward, makes a poor comparison — but still does a good job of communicating to the others that they should care. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcaUZ9R0y2c
So, like… I’m glad you’re not antagonizing any of us, but that’s just kind of the bare minimum for being decent, you know? And that is somewhat similar to racial discrimination: as a white person in North America, telling Black people I “don’t care that they’re Black” would tell them I haven’t considered that being Black is something core to their identity and how they experience the world because of the way society works. It would tell them I still see whiteness as the “default” but it’s “okay” to be something else. It would tell them that I might say something if I witnessed blatant racism happening, but they shouldn’t count on me to do so because I haven’t made any effort to learn how racism actually works and I might back down if I feel speaking up would put myself at any risk. But I do care, so I try to educate myself, and I look for opportunities to practice anti-racism. I absolutely make mistakes, but they tend to be easily forgiven so long as I show a willingness to listen, learn, and try.
But hey… I freely admit that I was way older than 18 when I finally started listening to people and began understanding all of this! So I absolutely don’t mean to “rake you over the coals” or anything. I just tell you these things because I hope you grow into a better person faster than I managed to. 🙂💜
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.
As someone who has endured religious bigotry for much of my life, Catholic “health care” infuriates me. I really wish we’d take all that public money and invest it in facilities that don’t push their dogma on other people in their most vulnerable times.
I have a complex enough medical history that I have it printed on a wallet card. (Two reasons: in case I’m incapacitated, and in case I have trouble remembering all the details.) One of my big fears is that someday I’ll be unconscious and paramedics will fail to see or respect the bold-print “Do not take me to a Catholic hospital” instruction, and the Catholic hospital will treat me extra-poorly when they see it.
I know it sounds fun, but that will almost certainly backfire. Most likely it would feed the “persecution complex” many religious groups feel even when they’re in the majority and convince them to “dig their heels in” and become even more staunch in their wrong-headed beliefs. 😔
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.
What, you don’t think a self-professed “former therapist” isn’t an expert on infectious disease and vaccine development??? 😂
I do have to agree that the medical and scientific community’s consensus shouldn’t be “beyond reproach”, but only because the scientific method requires being open to new evidence that shows past theories to be flawed. (Key word evidence.)
Alas, a common tactic for spreading misinformation can be summed up as “a mosquito doesn’t care if the window is only open by an inch or all the way, it’ll fly inside regardless.”
One thing I should add here is that there’s often no one person who’s “best for the job”. Different people have different strengths in ways that often don’t directly compare. The idea that we can stack-rank candidates of similar knowledge and experience is misguided at best.
Mod chips used to be necessary for playing games on CD-R, but now that can be done with just a 4-in-1 cartridge using the PseudoSaturn hack. My recollection is that Saturn mod chips only defeat the copy protection check and you’d still need another solution (like the 4-in-1 cart) for disabling the region-lock.
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.
PS2 defaults to 4:3, digital out can be things besides HDMI, and the vast majority of 360 consoles sold had HDMI out. If you want to draw the line elsewhere, no big, do your thing, there’s no one True answer to OP’s question… but your comment feels like whataboutism to me and adds nothing of value.
Ada was clear in another comment thread that yes, emotion was absolutely involved in her decision. That isn’t a bad thing. Why is there a social attitude that decision-making is only valid if it’s cold and unfeeling?
Me too. I don’t think anyone is arguing against that. Anyone can still access LemmyNSFW’s content elsewhere, Blahaj Zone simply isn’t going to relay it anymore because some of it is incompatible with Ada’s goals in nurturing this community.
Yes. Legality has nothing to do with acceptability. This instance already bans lots of content that doesn’t actually violate any laws. It’s a judgment call.