this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
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On the side bar it lists the following:

  • [Matrix/Element]Dead
  • Discord

"Discord" is an active link, but the Matrix link is completely inactive. Not only is it inactive (which could have be excused as a broken link), but it is also manually labeled as "Dead", as if there is no intention of making it work. How can a community that is focused on privacy willingly favor a service that is privacy non-respecting when a perfectly functional privacy-respecting alternative exists?

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[–] [email protected] 179 points 1 year ago (17 children)

It's the timeless debate between accessibility and exclusivity. Do you want more people in your community by compromising some values? Or would you rather be a hardliner but never reach those people?

Most of the time you have to pick somewhere on that spectrum. It's a question of pragmatism and utilitarianism.

Does it do more good for lots of people to be slightly more privacy-aware, or is it better to have a very small portion of the population that are super privacy-aware?

You have to decide, and the debate rages on all the time.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (7 children)

If you compromise on the very topic you're promoting, you don't care enough.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Wait, really? So you think Matrix is the ultimate form of secure and private "chat" communities? Because if it is not then it is a compromise.

This Lemmy instance for sure as hell is not the most private and secure.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's a lot better than discord, that's for sure

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Not compromising at all would be not using the internet though. Probably live in a cottage somewhere in the middle of nowhere too.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

The people that need a topic to be promoted are the people outside of the topic. A place where privacy and non privacy focused individuals can meet is needed to atract and teach new users.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

I want a nicely bridget matrix - discord channel, so that the individuals of the community can choose themselves

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[–] [email protected] 104 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Because privacy communities are a joke.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Yeah it quickly becomes a dick measuring contest and shunning people for using different things. It becomes very black/white views, and have some crazy out of touch takes, like expecting your grandma to self host lol. They also confuse anonymity with privacy, like how not being able to sign up for something with tor and monero is a privacy violation, it's not.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I think it falls into the same pitfalls as most super niche communities, like a lot of subreddits did.

For example, the shaving subreddit (/r/wicked_edge I think?). Its mission statement was to introduce people to cleaner, safer, and more efficient shaving methods. And for the most part, with all of its resources and wikis, it successfully did it. But if you choose to stay after you've made your informed purchases, the posts were mostly braggarts showing off their latest hundreds-of-dollars handles, supreme razor blades, brushes made from actual gold, that sort of thing. My point is, the average person (by my guess, like 90% of people going to the site) gets the information they need and then never participate in the community again. But those who stay are those who really want to stay-- people who are most likely to brag and boast. So over time, it falls more and more into plain old dick measuring contests.

This obviously isn't true of all communities, but I think it's a common pitfall for a lot of them. I can imagine privacy is very similar: take all the steps you can to learn to protect your privacy, and then... you're good, for the most part.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Pfft. My gramgram self-hosts on her own LFS build with a hardened kernel and custom written SELinux policies. All your grandparents need to get on her level.

Disclaimer: Everything here is a lie.

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Most cryptocurrency communities use Discord or Telegram. It's such an embarrasment.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I've never understood this either, given the whole notion and enthusiasm behind decentralization. I get the trade-offs regarding privacy, security, and convenience, but if you're really tryna start a movement, and you really believe in the concept and principles of something like cryptocurrency, it seems like your communities and communication channels should also reflect similar values.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Crypto enthusiasts don't really care or understand decentralization. If you talk to crypto bros you will realize pretty quickly that a lot of them are very very low IQ morons.

I was at an event and met a crypto bro. He tried to explain to a group of us that btc is like moss and the world is the forest. A couple people legitimately "got it" and began to get excited about crypto.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

And that's where you realize that them defending decentralization is just trying to have a nice-sounding argument instead of assuming their dreams of getting rich with new tech

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (16 children)

I don't understand why it's so popular... It's a fancy IRC that's centralized by a single company

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

Because it has significantly more features than IRC and it's dead simple to spin up your own "server" where you aren't beholden much to "admins" or whatever.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

fancy IRC

IRC was already "caveman playing with sticks and pebbles" a decade before discord became a thing. It's really not a good point of comparison and questioning.

Discord became popular for one simple reason: anyone could make a server, share it with a crossplatform link, and others could then try out that link without installing anything. In other words, it became popular because it literally copied Slack and because the Skype era was atrociously bad customization and ease of use-wise compared to the preceding.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Every time I see Slack/Discord et Al. described as such, I wonder if any of these people actually used any of those. By use, I mean actually try out its features, not just treating it as IRC ("just" channels, messages and DMs for text convos).

I hate Discord with a passion, but pretending like it's just "fancy IRC" is IMHO pretty absurd.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

If you legitimately don't understand why it's popular, you are seriously out of touch.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 year ago

Lazyness and convenience, as always.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Thank you! It's basically impossible to use discord anonymously

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago

I've used the Discord bridge before; it works pretty well, and allows Matrix users to practice better (identity & tracking) privacy if they want. There is none, in Discord.

It does require (a) the Discord community admin to allow the bridge, and (b) some playing with configuration of the bridge to get banning working.

The biggest issue with Matrix is how privacy-respecting it is. Any public forum with anonymous account creation is subject to spam bots, and requires more work by admins. The biggest complaint about the bridge, and why so many Discord admins do not allow it, is because it greatly increases the spam they have to deal with. Kicking and blocking do work fine through the bridge, but it's still a distraction requiring constant vigilance.

Matrix needs better admin tools (where have we heard that before?) Mjolnir is good, but the freely hosted instance was shut down a year or so ago, so it's not available to casual users. And taking on running a service just for a community bridge is a silly requirement.

My points are, that it's not an either-or, but that it requires work. It's a question of commitment, not possibility. c/privacy could have a Matrix-first, privacy-friendly approach and still offer Discord for privacy casuals; it's just harder.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

People who dislike discord and want a good alternative besides matrix should check out revolt.chat <3

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A majority stake of Discord is owned by Tencent, which is a Chinese data collection company required by law to pass personal user information to the CCP. Discord runs on an unencrypted network.

I'm just stating some facts. Make your own judgement call.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Tencent is not a data collection company. Discord is not owned by tencent instead tencent and tons of other companies have invested in discord. https://businessmodelanalyst.com/who-owns-discord/

Tencent itself doesn't get discords data. Tencent is not required by law to pass all user information to CCP.

Discord like any communication systems is required to pass data to all major governments when they are investigating crime. Such as the USA and FBI. Your lemmy instance does the same thing.

Please state facts rather than misinformation. If you are going to pass off these facts provide sources.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Because conversations about increasing privacy doesn't need to be private. It's usually about learning about other tools and that they exist.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I really don't understand why people say this, I find is very easy to navigate and use.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You must be a monster. To me it's very chaotic and hass too many shit going on.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Again, I just don't understand what you mean by this, there's a list of servers, you click one and get a list of channels in that server, click one of those and you've got a classic chatroom.

What is it you find chaotic?

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

"discussing privacy on discord" that should be a joke anyways i created [email protected] so join if you want

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess people just prefer and are more active on Discord

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"I guess people just prefer and are more active on Facebook Messenger"

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

Because privacy and convenience are two extreme opposites and you can only go so far in the privacy direction before you start losing everything. Discord just works a million times better as a public forum/community than Matrix and is much more easily accessible to everyone.

There is a limit. I am privacy conscious but I still use all Google Services for example, because they actually provide me with a better web, work, mobile and entertainment experiences. Similarly, I prefer Discord for big communities with channels, server bots and topics, over Matrix.

Edit: all those people saying we can't be privacy conscious and use Google Services at the same time: yes you can. Their services literally make my life better so I will keep using them, but I keep what I share with them to the absolute minimum. I go into their settings and disable everything I can about tracking and ads personalization (even if they still track me, I do my best not to be). You can surely still be privacy conscious using non-private products. Being extremist is not how you convince average joes to think about privacy, nor by telling them to give up all they use for unknown (for them) alternatives.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Matrix is pretty convenient. They've got a great mobile and web app experience.

What exactly does discord have that mateix doesn't? They both have threading, replies, reacts, etc.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Because this community (along with all privacy subreddits/communities) are a fucking meme.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Wanna go crazy? Use SimpleXchat

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Some shocking answers here 🤷‍♂️

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