GoG isn’t the publisher. Y’all don’t read the shit you agree to, and know fuck all about media distribution. You’ve never owned a video game, a movie, or even a book that isn’t in the public domain. You’ve only ever owned licenses for personal use, and those licenses have always been provisional and revokable. Always. Your ignorance is not change that.

You really need to look at what you’re buying. Whether it’s a download, a DVD, or damn floppy disk, you’re still just buying a license. A very revokable license. If it’s online, the publisher can cut you off.

So, they’re both out to fuck everyone, and just playing for different teams?

For people that play D&D and think “I wish this had more complicated rules…”

2e generally has rules that are on par with 5e, or even simpler in many cases, just written in a way that makes them sound like a software development reference text. The number of times I’ve been “Ohhhh, they mean X! Why didn’t they just say so?!?!?”

The timer also discourages kinds of interactions or engagement with other players that may actually be welcomed, entertaining, and appreciated. It also takes a significant amount of the responsibility of being a referee off the GM’s shoulders - you know, that thing that they’re actually charged with doing - and turns it over to a clock that they can just use as a cudgle.

It’s the classic toxic nerd shit of turning something that should be a social encounter into a souless mechanical system.

It’s because it was actually a Walz thing, and she sidelined Walz for some reason.

It gets things most popular. That is often in a different postal code from “right”.

People have had standing requests, and even PRs, for features for years. Many of them are for exact kinds of things Bluesky has implemented. Some have been for similar features but at the server level.

The requests have gone unheard, the PRs have been ignored. So, what I’d have Mastodon do is listen to those requesting better self-safety features, or hurry up and die so development team that actually gives a shit can gain some traction.

Like you I’m confused at the continual cries of racism on Mastadon.

I, uh, said I’m not confused by the cries of racism. I’m confused by the constant claims of “I don’t see any, therefore it must not exist”.

It’s like no one gives a shit, because it doesn’t affect them personally. Which, you know, makes everyone the kind of people that those experiencing harassment don’t want to be around anyway.

Yeah. It’s pretty telling that my entire time on Mastodon has been punctuated by black users complaining about how much racism they’re exposed to on the network, and everyone else going “I don’t see any racism!”

Like, ok, maybe you don’t. I don’t. I’m as white as snow, and don’t post about my experiences as a racialized person (not being one, and all). But it’s pretty clear, just from seeing the same exchange over and over again, that racialized people are experiencing something I’m not, and them expressing as much has Defenders of the Faith circling wagons every time it comes up.

Mastodon being a little more complicated than Twitter wouldn’t have been a major blocker to communities coming over. “Hey, join this site”, rather than “join Mastodon!” is all you need. But no one’s going to be telling black folks, or any other community, to come on over if the social atmosphere is at least as toxic as where they’re coming from.

Now with another alternative, Mastodon also needs to be better than “not being Twitter”. And the people who are there already seem to have zero interest in doing that.

Oh, he’s not complaining anymore.

Yeah. A public internet means a public internet, for good and for ill. People have been trained to see the internet as private, and we’re now reaping those sown seeds, and people really hate the harvest.

Do you check in on the profiles to see the karma count of people who you feel have a neutral or even positive personality?

Probably not. So you have no idea how the average person with “lots of ‘karma points’” tends to act. Instead, you’re looking at the profile of people who feel safe enough in a space to let themselves be seen as assholes.

This is like asking “why does drinking alcohol make everyone violent?” You’re just noticing the ones who are making a scene.

They’re always welcome to get a regular job. They’re not choosing what they have to do to survive, they’re choosing what they want.

Oh no. I don’t be needin’ no internet enabled legislation! Good, old fahsioned, airgapped legislation was good enough before, and it’s good enough today!

I’m not sure what order you read my reply in, but it wasn’t linear, was it?

Social Networking Sites: Full of fascists actively trying to recruit people into fascism

Social Media Sites: Full of videos and memes pushing fascism

Governments Around the World: Increasingly giving into or controlled by naked fascists

You: “Have you considered financial literacy?”

What the fuck, dude?

Because among the users it does have are some of the most influential people in the world.

Like, the US Senate’s pretty small, too, but people from the world over have to pay attention to its members.

“Like DNS” there is an analogy. And DNS is actually a distributed system.

Imagine if every web DNS had to go through Facebook. That’s how all of the ATproto traffic works. It’s all funneled through Bluesky’s servers.

It does nothing. Verification is only important in general for public individuals, anyway. Public officials, celebrities, etc. Those people have the means to do it. They also have the means to host their own instance on their own domain, or on a government domain, which is even better verification of identity.

But most of us do not need to give a damn.