‘Leigh 🏳️‍⚧️

A true champion of free speech. 🙄

“A copy of the UN application says his refugee claim was denied because the adjudicator did not find Mwangi, who is married and has two children, to be a credible bisexual man“

Bi erasure strikes yet again. Bi and pan folks in supposedly “straight” relationships are still LGBTQ+, the letter “B” is right effing there. Bi and pan folks absolutely face discrimination and oppression, even if it doesn’t necessarily manifest in the same ways other queer folks experience.

I’m glad he has a temporary reprieve from deportation, at least.

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.)

Hah, good one. 😆 And ‘grats to your sister! It’s a big step. 😊

💯 A cishet person who treats “ally” as a verb is WAY more helpful than one who only wears it as a noun.

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. 🙂💜

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. 😔

Sounds like your boss was spouting some rubbish. Maybe they were having a bad day, but it’s no excuse for treating you like that (assuming — and I think it’s safe to do so — that you don’t have a history of repeatedly making this same mistake). Bosses are human too, but it’s still fair for you to be peeved about that.

Whenever an employee somewhere is apologizing to me (as a customer) for a mistake, I almost always reply “no worries, heaven knows I make my share of them too”. 🙂

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.

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…

…nope, can’t use it to chat with my friends and family, we all gave up on Teh Goog and I worked there for over a decade! 😆

(also, by the time you see this, they may have renamed it or introduced a competing messaging app. or both.)

Sorry, I couldn’t read this all the way through. All I hear that author saying is various capitalist-mindset “if it won’t serve everyone and won’t ever become a monopoly that crushes competitors, it’s not worth doing” b.s.

It’s perfectly fine that the Fediverse isn’t the best option for everyone! Geeze!

Ooh ooh, let me make some popcorn before I read this!

That, and also just a preemptive caution from having seen similar discussions go that route in the past. As you implied, it’s virtually impossible to exist in the modern world without being findable and harassable, no matter how careful one is.

Also, I’ll just leave this here. 🙂

It’s creepy af, but let’s all be careful not to victim-blame please.

How long until Google gives up and shuts it down? Place yer bets!!!

I’m issuing an opinion that they’re getting off cheap. But their careers have suffered irreparable harm, so it’s alright. 🙂