EngineerGaming @ EngineerGaming @feddit.nl

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2 yr. ago

Yeah! One of my issues with Signal is how clunky it is to have several profiles - something I cannot imagine living without. Not only would you need separate phone numbers, but you'd also need separate clients (or separate profiles with the same app on mobile, or different users on desktop).

The people in the echo chamber seem to actually enjoy yelling at people outside of it, though. So it's not as enjoyable for them either.

And where I am at, Telegram is just the main social network nowadays. VKontakte became unusable garbage even for an average person, Facebook never gained traction in the first place, Instagram and Tiktok are not that suitable for communities, Whatsapp is purely a messenger - and Telegram appeals to everyone, being a hybrid of a social media and messenger. So, while I was able to avoid Whatsapp, Telegram is actually hard to leave. Unuversity, art meetups, education channels - all there. I did get a few people to use encrypted messaging with me, but most don't care about privacy because Telegram is convenient and everyone is on there.

Blocking the server is not even the most effective way it can be restricted. If a country wants to gimp Signal, it can ban their cell carriers from delivering the confirmation codes. Or, on the contrary, if US wanted to restrict sanctioned countries, they could prohibit Signal from interacting with the country's range of phone numbers.

Yes, you could rent numbers of another country to avoid that. But while pretty much everyone can figure out how to bypass website censorship, phone rentals are much more of a roadblock, especially if your payment method is sanctioned and thus you have to use crypto or workarounds. Not to mention that the number being temporary introduces a permanent security hole, and if it is not temporary - it's an extra expense, which may be noticeable for poor people.

On a similar note - the issue I take with Signal in this regard is the fact that the stock app only allows their own censorship bypass proxy. Why not just arbitrary Socks?? Sure, you can use a whole-device VPN, but for a lot of people this is inconvenient (like if the free VPN is very slow), so a proxy for a background connection is much better. Thankfully, Molly addresses this.

I doubt this cloud infrastructure would be able to disobey the main organization's orders or go on without it if said organization is told to shit down.

IDK, maybe it's just the server only being personal, but I found Simplex and XMPP roughly equivalent (Matrix was very annoying, though). What features does XMPP do better in this regard?

But when you migrate devices with Whatsapp, there's a database migration as well - so there is some familiariy with inconvenience. Anyway, certain XMPP clients make using the protocol as easy as Whatsapp. I'd say even more so since it's snappier and wouldn't suddenly cut off users of old phones

As for the lists - everyone is on some list or the other anyway.

I understand that my details would have to be sent to the company - however, I would really like to avoid posting them publicly. I have an argument for this - I know a lot of hacks begin with using Linkedin to find employees.

I don't pay for my media now because I'm poor by Western standards, but I did pay for some games unavailable on GOG - bought them on Steam, then downloaded a corresponding DRMless version. Wouldn't want to buy physical media just to rip, because I don't want it to occupy space, so I'd have to throw them out or resell. There are some exceptions, though - wouldn't mind certain CDs as memorabilia.

And even with Tor, if the person didn't compartmentalize their conversations into different identities, they'd have the pseudonymous graph.

An HDD/SSD is just as "offline" and easier to write though. No bulky extra equipment required, the capacity is bigger, and you can erase and rewrite over and over. While I underatand how people enjoy CDs as collectables, in a purely practical sense, I don't see much value anymore.

But yeah, I do have some songs from Soulseek that are specifically from a CD release and don't exist in the same form on Youtube)

Why wouldn't it? They had all the data in plaintext, they just chose not to cooperate. This was the only possible outcome.

Yeah. I know Ublock Origin can do this content blocking as well, but NoScript is just more convenient for me.

You may be confusing it with Mullvad VPN, which is an entirely unrelated company, and yes, it is going just fine.

The whole DivestOS project was ended, together with its apps :(

Now that's how you go against this social media! Not by bans, but by big organizations leaving it, as well as by advertisers cutting ties.

Banning the Three Letter Word is unenforceable too. If you ban Open*** and Wireguard - too bad, China has done that and people developed obfuscation methods. Even if you try to ban talking about them, they won't go extinct. If there's a supply, there's a demand.

Because how would you do that on desktop? Or on a degoogled phone? Or if the download was via an apk from elsewhere?

A lot of the offerings say "Webrip", so not sure about that - also, a lot of media simply isn't released in physical form. Also, if I wanted to pay (hope I eventually earn enough for this), I would rather buy a DRMed copy to correspond to my DRMless one that I actually use. I do that already with Steam. Because a disk would either occupy space, have to be sold or thrown out, none of which are options I like.

And if my internet is out or if something is removed from a service, I can plug in an external drive that has orders of magnitude more capacity than a DVD, and not bother with having to swap them or them taking up too much space.