darq

That's fine, add a big disclaimer that "here there be dragons" and a checkbox to accept that.

But they fight the user every step of the way to disable features that do in fact work.

I really wish it would allow us to install .xpi files.

Unfortunately the add-on that I want, Yomichan, seems incompatible with Fennec. I've done all the collection steps, but I just get a generic "failed to install" message when trying to add it.

Edit: Holy crap. Switching the user agent totally worked. Dead simple. Thank you so much!

Why do they make this so complicated if the add-ons will just install?

If it’s conspiracy theories in general, and not just the soy thing, then I think you might be taking the wrong approach. Just trying to debunk the soy thing might prove impossible because there is some underlying cause that is making him want to believe it.

Your friend might be being radicalised. By a person he trusts, a community he is a part of, or simply by the algorithm of a website he is spending his time on. In which case, getting him to let go of the conspiracies is going to be extremely difficult, because to do so would lose him those connections.

It doesn’t sound like he’s too far gone though. Maybe reasserting healthy connections will help, and if you can try breaking his media habits.

Then you shift to an instance that mods the way you prefer.

The idea would be that the badge would be worn by everyone. Which is why I said it isn’t really feasible.

I can think of a few differences between a universally voluntarily chosen pronoun badge, and a pink triangle forced on queer people to mark them as other.

Yes. I wasn’t disagreeing with you or anything. Just saying what I thought would be most likely.

It might also just be that the person asking you just always asks. Because as you mentioned, only asking when someone “looks” trans or non-binary can be rather invalidating. So to avoid that, they just don’t assume.

For your last paragraph, I’m personally of the opinion that, short of de-gendering the language entirely, a good solution would basically just be a gender/pronoun badge, but stylised to be more easily readable from a distance. Like a bracelet or a necklace or something of that nature. That would eliminate the need to ask in the vast majority of cases, because the person would be wearing something that unambiguously signals the answer. And it would be completely detached from the presentation of their body, which might not match their gender, or their clothing, which probably shouldn’t be gendered anyway. Changing pronouns, for whatever reason like coming out or just being fluid, would just be a matter of swapping out the single symbol.

It’s not really feasible, of course, but even as a queer person I find asking and being asked quite clunky. But whenever I go into LGBT+ or geek spaces, I find that wearing a badge just sidesteps the whole issue.

Because they don’t actually care about pronouns. What they are angry about is transgender and non-binary people being accepted as normal.

Everything else, the pronouns, the bathrooms, the medication, the sports, everything, is just pos-hoc justification for their real belief, which is that transgender and non-binary people should not be accepted as normal.

Definitely! I wouldn’t mess around with it either.

Was going to say, this sounds more like a prank from a friend who had access to the machine, than an actual hack. A malicious hacker isn’t going to drop a “hibro.txt” on your desktop to mess with you. They aren’t going to be interactively watching your session at all. They’re going to silently keylog you for financial or identity details, or they’re going to install ransomware.

I have never met a self-described centrist who was doing any critical thinking. And I say that as a former centrist who was not engaging in critical thinking.

It’s almost always “there are two sides to this issue, and because there are two sides there must be some merit to both, so thinking that one side is right or wrong is bad, and so anybody holding particularly strong convictions one way or another must not be thinking critically”. Which if you noticed, is a line of reasoning that doesn’t actually engage with reality or the nuances of the situation at all. It’s just a thought-terminating cliche that leads to not thinking about an issue, but then concluding that one is more enlightened than people who hold strong beliefs.

The second I actually started getting informed and thinking critically, I shifted drastically in my politics.

Fighting for equity, as a man who’s supposed to be at the bottom of the hierarchy, I spit on it.

I know this is difficult for a lot of more conservative-minded folks to conceptualise or believe, but the purpose of progressive movements is to dismantle the hierarchy, not change who is at the top or bottom.

As such, you are not “supposed to be at the bottom of the hierarchy”, because there should not be a hierarchy at all.

Is it happening on any scale worth being concerned about? No. And you have absolutely no idea why the tiny handful of cases over under-18s receiving this care have played out the way they have, you just assume, based on nothing but your gut, that the medical teams don’t know what they are doing.

Keep your nose out of other people’s healthcare. You aren’t a doctor, and more importantly, you aren’t THEIR doctor. You are neither a clinical expert, nor an expert on these patient’s situations.

Accessing healthcare for trans people is difficult. And it comes with massive social costs, and is done in the face of rather unbelievable social and political backlash. And this constant pearl-clutching about the healthcare that people you know nothing about are receiving is why the lives of trans people are so much more difficult than they have to be.

They will always correctly identify the pincers and the stinger, but they will never mention a scorpion.

There’s a difference between an unpopular opinion, and fearmongering about a vulnerable minority.

Why not actually write the bits that you think people are missing? Just saying “watch to the end” over and over is obnoxious. People’s time and attention is valuable, you should learn to respect that if you want more positive responses.

You aren’t going to find an instance that both tolerates hate-speech, and is federated with mostly everyone. That’s not how that works. Sorry, you cannot have your cake, and eat it too.

Federation is a two-way agreement. Instances that do not allow hate-speech will also not probably federate with instances that do allow hate-speech, because of all the hate-speech.

I didn’t say just give up. But understand what is being asked with the suggestion of “just don’t use YouTube”.

Also text-based social media is going to be less expensive to disrupt than video.

I’m not saying it’s impossible. But “don’t use YouTube” is kinda not an answer. Maybe supporting creators on alternative platforms is a good idea.