Is providing a number of commands to use that require user input really that bad? When people start tinkering with the command line, first of all they shouldn't trust just anything on the website blindly, which at the very least requires a basic understanding of how to enter commands, and respond to the terminal asking for input. The following "bad" example..

sudo apt update
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
sudo apt install python3.9

..is instead turned into this single command with even more confusing syntax for beginners:

sudo apt update && \
  sudo apt install --yes software-properties-common && \
  sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:deadsnakes/ppa && \
  sudo apt install --yes python3.9

Sure, it's convenient, but if you just throw blocks of code at people to run, are they really learning anything?

A better approach would be to have a quick tutorial on how to use the terminal and what the $ and # symbols mean (though they could be CSS decorators that can't be copied), what sudo is and warning people about running untrusted commands on their system. Then you just link to that at the top saying something along the lines of "if you're unfamiliar with running commands, and the following seems confusing, check this quick summary", behind a question mark icon connected to each block of commands, or similar.

Yes. Them's the rules on Blåhaj Lemmy.

They’re a capitalist company trying to make as much money as they can.

Unlike publicly traded companies, Valve is not beholden to shareholders, so they, unlike most others, are in a unique position to not JUST maximize profits. I think it's okay to point at Valve as an example for other companies to be more like, because most are still worse. But obviously we can always strive for better, as well.

(Also, out of curiosity: Under a capitalist system, can you have anything BUT a capitalist company?)

I've looked into Wolfire's claims multiple times in the past, but it was never confirmed elsewhere, so I don't know what to think. Maybe this was a thing Valve did in the past (in which case, yes, boo!), but they couldn't get away with it anymore, with the volume of developers that are now on their platform.

Valve is not publicly traded. We don't know. (Unless it became public information through a lawsuit or was leaked. In which case: Source pls.)

Why are you making it my responsibility to explain why companies are not passing on their savings to consumers?

I understand Steam not wanting to moderate the absolute flood of user-created content of its thousands of games (on their own), but then, it probably shouldn't force community forums on every single one of its games when the developers can't or don't want to moderate them.

(Also, the ADL doesn't recognize the ongoing genocide of Palestinians so maybe we should just ignore what they think.)

As a spectator with no stake in what happened, except of course wanting people to feel comfortable, I feel like two things were still left unaddressed:

• It looked like the owner of the affected community was driven out by something that almost resembled a witch hunt, with accusations that appeared to be unfounded or even maliciously pushed by people opposing the views or moderation style of the community.

• There was a particular user who stood out to me because they tried to respond to as many posts as possible, seemingly fueling the drama, or at least actively pushing their opinion on everyone. I feel like this is not the appropriate way to interact in such a forum, nor healthy for that individual.

What did the admins do or are planning to do in regards to these concerns?

I have a feeling that the people that think "cis" is a slur just don't understand what it means, or are outright transphobic.

I recently had a guy admit he might be transphobic because he "prefers actual women", and later uttered the sentence "maybe women don't like to be called 'cis women'?" and like, dude, it's just an adjective that means the opposite of trans. But how dare we imply that trans women are women?!

In the end, treating cis / cisgender as a slur is yet another way to attack trans people.

But whether it's technically legal is exactly what does or doesn't make it CSAM. "Looking like" is going to be highly subjective, and I don't understand how the admins of the other instance are supposed to handle reports, other than to verify whether or not it actually is the case or not.

Are petite looking people not supposed to make explicit content while dressing up cute? Should a trans man not share explicit pictures of himself, because he might look like an underage boy? Do we stop at porn that gives the appearance of someone being young? What about incest or ageplay? Like, what if you or someone else was made sufficiently uncomfortable by some other kind of porn? How do you decide what is and isn't okay? How do you avoid bias? What would you be telling a model when they ask why you removed their content?

Apologies for going on with this when I'm sure you're already sick of dealing with this. I had just felt like some of the points I brought up (like in my original reply) were entirely overlooked. Putting effort into an (attempted) thought-out reply doesn't mean I get to receive a response I was hoping for, but I was at least hoping for something you hadn't already said elsewhere.

The reason I brought up emotion in my reply was because I've felt that the lemmynsfw admins have been able to explain their decision quite reasonably and seemed to be open to conversation, wheras Ada was set on one goal and upon finding disagreement, wasn't in the right mindset to continue a constructive conversation. Which, to be fair, due to the nature of the content, is understandable.

If the content that the Blahaj Lemmy admins are concerned about are limited to certain communities, and part of the issue is the concentration of content in said communities in the first place (at least, as I speculated in my original reply), then I don't quite understand why blocking these communities only isn't something that was considered, rather than defederating the entire instance. I do respect Blahaj Lemmy's decision not to want to host such content. Or is there some technical limitation that I'm not aware of?

I don't trust Meta/Facebook even a tiny bit. We on the fediverse shouldn't implicitly support Threads by interacting with it at all. It gives it legitimacy. It encourages users to get their data harvested. We need to stick together as fedizens and defend our values, one of which is to get away from all this corporate meddling.

The creator of Mastodon has written a blog post after, from what I know, having been in talks with Meta, who required signing an NDA. And what a coincidence, it was posted on the day Threads was launched! I'm worried about the extends of that NDA.

For example, one of the things conveniently left out of this blog post is Meta's ability to analyze every single post and user going through Threads, obviously including the ones posted on Mastodon. Sure, your IP won't be visible to them, but if someone looks at your post, profile or follows you in the Threads app, what you posted is going to them. I doubt they'll be able to resist the urge to harvest all the data they can, perhaps even illegally. Threads is not available in Europe yet. I wonder why...

For the sake of completeness, if you haven't come across it yet, some of the embrace-extend-extinguish (short EEE) worries have been outlined in this post: How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)

What happens when Threads takes off and their users demand to be able to follow and be followed by fediverse users? Especially if we don't all stick together and defederate on day one. Are instance admins going to cave in? Are users going to switch to a Meta-friendly instances, or worse, Threads itself? What happens to the discourse, if algorithms once again start to encourage people to post in ways to please it?

Think of what happened, or is happening to, Reddit. Corporations, especially these monolithic ones like Meta/Facebook, don't care about their users. They don't care about open protocols. On a good day they care about giving the appearance that they do care about these things. But really, they care about their investors. About making profit and infinitely growing. We must resist this cancer on the fediverse.