It’s hard to overstate what a nothing-burger this article really is! Let me break it down:

• Signal got $3 million from the Open Technology Fund at some point in its development
• Some anonymous source alleges that the OTF’s ultimate goal is to promote US foreign interests
• The current chairman of the board Katherine Maher worked at the National Democratic Institute and Wikipedia before
• The same anonymous source says she was recruited because of connections to the OTF
• She has at some point voiced the opinion that a completely free internet without regulation just reproduces existing power structures, and that balancing regulation and 1st amendment rights is a tough problem
• Signal doesn’t have reproducible builds on iOS (it absolutely does on Android btw)
• Some people feel like Signal chats come up more often than they should in court cases and media reports

That’s it, that’s the whole story. That’s the reason why the Telegram guy of all people thinks you should be careful, and better use his chat service instead, and the Twitter guy agrees.

I mean, reproducible builds on iOS would be nice, but that platform has much bigger problems from a privacy/security/sovereignty/freedom standpoint anyway. And the rest is just nothing turned up to 11.

I think some of the arguments are quite flawed. Bitcoin itself has most of the properties it is said to have, but it lives in a world that doesn’t and so some only really apply if you manage to stay inside the system. Like, your Signal chats are private as long as you don’t copy-paste them to Facebook.

Regarding self-custody/decentralization and using custodial services: The problem here is not that those properties don’t apply to Bitcoin, but that some people just choose to give away control over their wallets or not use Bitcoin itself for certain transactions. Can’t blame that on the currency, unless you think it can’t be done any other way.

Regarding privacy: I don’t think any serious “Bitcoiner” advertises Bitcoin as private. The message has always been that it’s “pseudonymous”, that you have to take extra steps in order to make it anonymous, and that it’s transparent instead of private by design.

Regarding transparency/inclusion: These paragraphs actually argue about privacy again. One is trying to spin the existing transparency into a negative, which is a valid opinion but not something “Bitcoiners” are wrong about. The other circles back to the idea of staying inside the system. Bitcoin transactions are inclusive, but ofc you can still get into trouble if you have to fear external repercussions and can’t stay anonymous.

Cause it’s one big part of why the Fediverse and Lemmy exist in the first place.

We wouldn’t need all this decentralization overhead if centralized sites were trustworthy and focussed on serving their users. The fact that they are not is what leads to privacy violations and enshittification, hence why people created the Fediverse and why we are here (at least most of us I presume).

pay for it with advertising your data

FTFY.

That part is not allowed according to the GDPR afaik, the decision about your personal data cannot be artificially linked to something else. They can absolutely show ads, but without using your data.

From what I understand the GDPR says you have to give users a real choice about the usage of their data, without any unreasonable negative repercussions. Having to pay money (at least as much as they are asking for) is such an unacceptable repercussion, no matter how FB might phrase it.

They are allowed to take money or show ads for access, but they can’t couple that decision with the one about the user’s data usage.

Afaik the stated reasons for moving back were pure BS, or at least blown out of proportion. It mainly came down to the people in charge being very “friendly” with M$. Munich got a new major, he publicly called software-freedom “idiological nonsense”, asked a consulting firm that partners with and sells M$ products to analyse the situation, and everyone was shocked when they recommended M$.

The video is probably factually correct, but very disingenuous with its interpretations and conclusions imo.

Of course Mozilla and Firefox have their own share of problems and bad decisions, and they are pretty well known and talked about from what I’ve seen, but equating it to Google and Chrome is just pure cynicism. Mozilla having to earn money somehow (1% donations!) and Google trying to maximize profits at all costs is not the same thing, even if it might look similar sometimes.

I think the ban was a little too harsh, but removing that comment was the right decision.

I also see a few problems with your “your highness” comparison:

1. “Your highness” is an official title, not a personal designation. Its proper usage depends heavily on the context, e.g. the perceived social rank and status, how well people know each other, if it’s a formal or informal conversation, and so on. Pronouns have none of that, you just use the one people identify as and that’s it.

2. It implies that people just pick whatever term they can come up with to mess with others or to mock them. People don’t choose a pronoun lightly, they usually think about it a lot and it’s an important personal decision. They also usually pick one of the common pronouns, so it’s really not hard to just use it.

Making quick logical comparisons regarding social norms is a very tricky thing in my experience. There are many things going on that we aren’t fully aware of all of the time, and getting it wrong can hurt people badly.

Downvote it to oblivion then, but disagreeing or not being interested is no reason to remove a post.

Edit: Saw the post. I think the removal was valid, but the ban was a little harsh. And not being interested had nothing to do with it.

Nope, not if you use the Beeper Bridge Manager. I’m running two bridges right now, without having my own Matrix server.

I started using their Signal and WhatsApp bridges today, probably one of the easiest setups I ever did. You just run a Docker container for every bridge, and login to your Signal/WhatsApp account by chatting in the app with the Matrix bot it creates.

Literally takes like 5 minutes if you’ve used Docker before, and you don’t need a domain or forwarded ports or anything.

You only need to selfhost the bridge, it can use their Matrix server. Makes it much simpler.

Self hosting their bridges is really simple, if you have a device to run the Docker containers on. That way you don’t have to give them your logins, all they get to see are encrypted Matrix messages.

There always something missing, like

• Not available on all platforms
• No sync, or only to some corporate cloud service
• Missing formatting/linking/calculation/organization/sharing capabilities
• No/Limited/Only drawings
• Clunky/Unfinished/Buggy

Every app is different, but I have yet to find one that ticks all the boxes.

Didn’t know about that one. I’ll check it out, thanks!

Edit: Windows/Browser only, no mobile app :/

Yup. It looks promising and I’ve tried it a few times, but it still has a long way to go before it can replace Notion for me. Also, self-hosting it is a complete mess right now, definitely not ready for everyday use.

It should probably be replaced with a more bespoke operator for that, like x isempty or something.

Notion + OneNote/Samsung Notes

There is a myriad of open source notes apps, but none of them really hit the spot for me.

It’s a known issue and should be fixed in the most recent version of Piped (and probably everything that depends on NewPipe). I updated mine yesterday and it looks like all video comments work again.

I have flickering issues with some Electron apps. Everything else seems to work fine, including a 2nd monitor. But I still dual-boot Windows for games, I’m waiting for HDR support to fully make the switch.