I’ve never see anyone respond with hostility to any ‘how to’ question on mastodon. What you’ve described sounds totally unlike anything I’ve seen there. So if you have a link to your discussion, I’d be interested in seeing how that happened.

joinmastodon.org (the ‘official’ way to get join mastodon), has a default server for its join button. To me this looks very similar to the default server that appears when you try to create a bluesky account. So… I guess that’s not a barrier after all.

No quantity of counter-content can overcome the person who controls what posts are actually seen by other users. Staying on X can never lead to any kind of balance. Staying there only serves to prop-up the false sense of legitimacy.

[edit] I’d posted something to go into more detail. But I’ve decided that branch of conversation is not really the way forward.

I’ll just say that the software is not installed by choice, and it does things that people don’t want it to do… so it could be described as malware. But if you want it on your computer, then I guess for you it is not malware. In any case, it doesn’t look like we’re going to agree about this regardless.

Anti-cheat software is very clearly and explicitly spyware. That’s the entire purpose of it. It spies on how you use your software in the hope that if you cheat you’ll be seen by the spyware watching you.

This spyware is generally not something people want on their computer - as evidenced by people complaining about it. So effectively whats happening is that people are being spied on against their wishes. Spyware is a common category of malware.

So I think it’s pretty easy to see why people might describe anti-cheat software as malware.

I’m sorry that reading long posts is hard for you. But don’t take it out on others. You can say that it was too long without the added abrasiveness.

And here, you’re telling me that my opinion is meaningless. Why do you do that? Almost everyone here has similar values and goals; and yet you’re lashing out at everyone, creating conflict and division. Isn’t that the opposite of what you want?

You’re saying that people me stuff and that I insisted on whoever… who exactly do you think I am? I haven’t insisted on anything like what you’re talking about.

In any case, I think you’ll find that in the previous election the fascist leader did in fact lose. That does count as a defeat for them, doesn’t it?

Chrome is already spyware on its own. That’s basically the reason Chrome exists.

Is Brave the one with the built-in crypto scheme and its own ads?

Hey, the Earth won’t last forever. Eventually all life will end. So maybe we should just let it all end asap. Keeping it going is nothing to brag about since we’ll lose in the end anyway. Is that right?

Or maybe we should make the best of the time we have. Maybe we should push back against fascism and corruption and destruction, even if our victories don’t last forever. What do you think? Is it worth defeating a fascist leader once even if fascism can still eventually return, or is it all just a waste of effort and we should just roll over and die?

edit: for the downvoters, how can I take anyone seriously if they’re not going to sit and defend their opinion.

You’re mocking someone for posting their reasoning in detail, and then getting upset when people downvote you without giving reasons. What do you want?

X’s supreme dictator openly campaigns for Trump. He even promised to pay millions of dollars to help people vote for Trump. So yeah, I reckon that probably had an effect.

Yeah, and although it will be painful for Mozilla in the short term - it would be a good outcome. It was always bad that Mozilla’s main source of funding was from their most powerful competitor. It’s an obvious conflict of interest. And obvious way to skew decision making. … But that money is just so addictive.

There will be some pretty severe withdrawal symptoms if the money gets taken away, but everyone will be healthier in the long run… unless the overpaid CEO continues to suck in all the remaining money and leaves nothing for the people actually doing the work. That would be bad. In that case, if the corporate structure chokes the company to death, I suppose we’d be hoping for Ladybird, or something like it to take Firefox’s place.

I saw a better version of this meme yesterday. But I appreciate the variety!

It’s a result that you might get if you were searching for this kind of thing. So posting it here saves the step of having to search.

I mean yeah, subscription services are shitty, but what’s wrong with lifetime purchases?

This thread is about subscriptions. So I’d assume that when people talk about ‘rent seeking companies’ etc, they are referring to subscription payments rather than lifetime purchases.

I’ve literally never bought anything from Amazon ever, at all. Not once. Nothing. Zilch. … So I think it is more than fair to say that there are plenty of alternatives to Amazon.

I find Widelands to be slow and relaxing; but also challenging and engaging.

Jeff Bezos killed. Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris. Paper reports.

That’s a big news day.

By default there is a shortcut to the terminal shortcut on task bar. From memory it is one of three default shortcuts. (File browser, Terminal, Firefox.) You can also find it by pressing the menu button (the ‘start menu’). From there the terminal has a prominent special position where it is always accessible. And if you don’t notice it there, you can always start typing to search for it - as with any other installed app. I find that if I type ‘t’, then “Terminal” is the top result; and obviously I can kept typing to eliminate the other results if I want.

So if your difficulty in finding the terminal is your main complaint about about Mint… I’m not sure what to tell you. Do you want it to auto-launch or something?