This sounds like a unjustified callout and a bit of an ad hominem. He doesn’t argue against tools for dissent, but specifically against Signal and recommends matrix. link to post
Any communication tool that requires you to personally identify yourself through a phone number and is hosted centrally in the US is not good for dissidents.
Well maybe his bias is showing there, but Venezuela is in a cold war with the US and it is objectively a smart move from a strategy perspective.
You simply cannot have open and free democracy if a superpower is meddling in your election. If I didn’t know who the dessalines was (I don’t) I wouldn’t especially think he was wrong. Any country that finds itself in opposition with the US is smart to limit or shut down US controlled IT infrastructure.
Of course I wouldn’t be surprised if Venezuela and Russia would ban Matrix and other P2P protocols too.
You simply cannot have open and free democracy if a superpower is meddling in your election.
I’m pretty sure the concern of Venezuela and Russia is not in having open and free democracy, but preventing it.
Any country that finds itself in opposition with the US is smart to limit or shut down US controlled IT infrastructure.
How convenient, then, that the US controlled IT infrastructure they target is the same IT infrastructure that dissidents use to communicate and that totalitarian governments can’t track. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
Well I’m not going to argue against any of that, I’m certainly not a fan of Putin. I still hate Signal though and hate that it gets recommended and marketed as a secure messenger when it’s clearly an unsafe tool for dissidents.
We still don’t have mature and widely used fully decentralized P2P messenger apps. I suspect that Signal is part of an effort to prevent that, I imagine all it takes is to ever so slightly sabotage projects, like hire a guy who works on an open source project, or buy it, or invest a bit of money into marketing the controllable alternative.
So putting this critique about Signal in an article about repression is worthwhile and important. At least in an “enemy of my enemy” sort of way 😉
Venezuela is an authoritarian regime not because the US is “meddling in its elections” but because the current leader is a despot who faked the election results.
Are you suggesting that the US would compel signal to turn data about Venezuelan dissidents over to Maduro?
I mean, there’s maybe a conversation to be had about the wisdom of using Signal in particular, but I really struggle to imagine a justification for banning it anywhere near that conversation. Furthermore, we all know Dessalines is a redfash bootlicker. His intent here is very clearly more cheerleading for said boot
This sounds like a unjustified callout and a bit of an ad hominem. He doesn’t argue against tools for dissent, but specifically against Signal and recommends matrix. link to post
Any communication tool that requires you to personally identify yourself through a phone number and is hosted centrally in the US is not good for dissidents.
He says it’s a ‘smart move’ for the totalitarian countries he simps for to ban signal. It’s not just a question of preference.
Well maybe his bias is showing there, but Venezuela is in a cold war with the US and it is objectively a smart move from a strategy perspective.
You simply cannot have open and free democracy if a superpower is meddling in your election. If I didn’t know who the dessalines was (I don’t) I wouldn’t especially think he was wrong. Any country that finds itself in opposition with the US is smart to limit or shut down US controlled IT infrastructure.
Of course I wouldn’t be surprised if Venezuela and Russia would ban Matrix and other P2P protocols too.
I’m pretty sure the concern of Venezuela and Russia is not in having open and free democracy, but preventing it.
How convenient, then, that the US controlled IT infrastructure they target is the same IT infrastructure that dissidents use to communicate and that totalitarian governments can’t track. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
Well I’m not going to argue against any of that, I’m certainly not a fan of Putin. I still hate Signal though and hate that it gets recommended and marketed as a secure messenger when it’s clearly an unsafe tool for dissidents.
We still don’t have mature and widely used fully decentralized P2P messenger apps. I suspect that Signal is part of an effort to prevent that, I imagine all it takes is to ever so slightly sabotage projects, like hire a guy who works on an open source project, or buy it, or invest a bit of money into marketing the controllable alternative.
So putting this critique about Signal in an article about repression is worthwhile and important. At least in an “enemy of my enemy” sort of way 😉
Venezuela is an authoritarian regime not because the US is “meddling in its elections” but because the current leader is a despot who faked the election results.
There it is. There is absolutely no evidence that the US is medaling in Venezuelan elections.
The US defines sanctions as acts of war and their explicitly purpose is regime change.
I’m not sure what that has to do with what I said.
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No. He’s a well known Tankie and has a Castro profile picture. So crying about privacy while rooting for autocrats is absolutely laughable.
Are you suggesting that the US would compel signal to turn data about Venezuelan dissidents over to Maduro?
I mean, there’s maybe a conversation to be had about the wisdom of using Signal in particular, but I really struggle to imagine a justification for banning it anywhere near that conversation. Furthermore, we all know Dessalines is a redfash bootlicker. His intent here is very clearly more cheerleading for said boot
I agree the callout is unjustified, but there is still something to be said when those countries ban Signal but aren’t banning WhatsApp.
Shoutput to simplex as another option
Not fully decentralized but you can host your own servers or use whichever ones you want
https://simplex.chat