I have been using Tuta since the start of the year when I decided it was time to remove myself from Big Tech as much as I can. Really highly recommend them!

Christ, what an asshole

Why would an American be mentioning GDPR?

Yes, I was aware though under the impression of improving geospatial and mapping models. There are many ways in which we are now entwined into these systems and so it’s a matter of deciding, on a personal level, what you are comfortable with.

I am certainly not comfortable with the data going to Saudi Arabia where access to such is used for active suppression and harm.

Maybe it was a naive viewpoint at the time, but the climate of 2016 was very different to what it is now.

Yip, absolutely. Which is why I’m moving away from big tech products (one of the reasons I’m on Lemmy!).

Saudi Arabia is considerably worse though for LGBT rights so I don’t think there is any benefit in pushing whataboutism in this case. Both are awful, one is definitively more so.

Location data? Yeah, naively I was since I’d previously been fine with Niantic’s work with Ingress. Hindsight is 20/20 though.

Yes, absolutely, which is why I’m moving away from those services. This just speeds things up in the case of PoGo since Saudi Arabia has has been much, much more blatant and apparent with this in prior years (c.f. The tragic case of Eden Knight).

For myself, it is much more about the ties to Saudi Arabia given that the country and government aren’t all too happy with LGBT people.

Niantic and Google are (were?) not companies with very strong links to the Saudi Arabian government.

I’ve seriously reconsidered how much I use Google in recent months, but Google and Niantic aren’t owned by a government that is incredibly repressive and discriminatory of people like myself.

I’m a level 50 Pokémon Go player, who has played since release day, and that’s the app deleted.

Next up will be requesting removal of my data under GDPR.

Thank you for making this post.

You’ve outlined exactly why allowing the far right to resolve perceived social issues isn’t the way forward, especially when it comes to any sort of “minority” (which seems to be anything that isn’t non-immigrant white Christian cis straight men) issues.

It’s honestly disappointing to see these sorts of expressions stated here on Lemmy. It was the shitty, uninformed, “I don’t care for the science or data”, reactionary right wing views that contributed to me leaving Reddit and here we are again.

I suppose continuing to dehumanise trans folk with the most important issue being a tiny number of trans people competing in a subset of activities, that are inherently unfair, is so much more important than avoiding demicide.

Got to placate the far right! They are really well known for being reasonable, not demanding more and having positions based wholly on logic without an ounce of hatred slipping through.

I honestly cannot fathom how you can be looking at the situation of the US currently and not realising how wedge issues based on lies and bigotry work and the absolutely deletrious effect it is having on minorities.

I suppose you’ll still be equivocating and making excuses when it’s gone past travel bans (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/marco-rubio-state-transgender-visa-b2704734.html), erasure of LGBT literature (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/banned-books-lgbtq-transgender-black-people-of-color-pen-america-rcna193879), banning of social and medical transition (https://www.hrc.org/resources/attacks-on-gender-affirming-care-by-state-map, https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/texas-not-for-freedom-house-bill-could-ban-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-adults/ar-AA1AjTF5), the creation of specific crimes for the existence of transgender people (https://msmagazine.com/2025/03/03/montana-hb-446-criminalizes-trans-existence-social-contagion/), the removal of protections in law (https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/01/23/trump-administration-moves-reject-transgender-identity-rights) and we’re in camps waiting to be “purified”.

Why are you falling for wedge issues that are designed to wipe out a group of people in a way that absolutely parallels actions taken by Nazis? Is a discussion about 10 athletes out of hundreds of thousands that important?

What conversation do you want exactly?

If you want to pretend there is nuance you will be fully aware that the evidence that supposedly supports banning trans athletes, which is an initial step of control used to further limit transgender people by e.g. preventing them for entering the country, are meta studies based on comparisons of cisgender men and cisgender women, right?

There isn’t a nuanced debate to be had and I’m sick of pretending that people like myself who just want to live our lives are a subject for debate.

So yes, worrying about tens out of hundreds of thousands of athletes when there isn’t clear evidence of an advantage is bigoted and not calling that out leads to situations where conservatives and the far right try to introduce bills like that which was recently struck down (thankfully) in Montana.

Now, question for you - why is it so important to you that a minority of people should have their basic humanity and ability to participate in society be questioned in the way that transgender people are? Why do you support that? Why do you consider that to be an okay thing to do, when the consequences of allowing it are so plain to see?

I am not sure what you don’t understand about the statement that walking back support is, in fact, walking back support.

Walking back support in one area is walking back support.

It ain’t that complex. As soon as concessions are made, the far right demands more because there must always be an enemy to crush completely for the in-group. Who will then pick a new enemy when it comes politically convenient.

I’m not surprised sadly - I have a PhD in chemistry and then continued to a postdoc and teaching before heading elsewhere. During my undergraduate there was a woman on the course who was very good and very competent but was also evangelical to the point of believing in a young Earth. To her, concepts such as half-lives were just lies that needed to be learnt.

Normally that has been flushed out by the time of doing a PhD, but if not it really should be.

I really cannot fathom how anyone that has been paying the slightest bit of attention to anything they’ve been doing during their PhD could vote for Trump and his fascists.

They were very clear what they were going to do and that included cutting this support.

It’s a huge assault on the sciences and Trump being in power and acting as king has already been impacting American researchers in hard sciences to the point where papers on physics and chemistry that are under peer review are requested by authors (and in some cases journals that should be investigated by COPE) to be substantially changed.

The censorship is incredibly wide ranging and these idiot PhDs don’t seem to have woken up yet to how bad it is.