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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • It makes me suspect they’re not talking about the stock systems OEMs ship.

    The developers of GrapheneOS, an independent, security-oriented Android distribution are probably not only talking about stock OEM Android. What they’re saying is true about stock OEM android though.

    That’s a separate issue from whether users are forced to get all their software from a specific source, which is also separate from whether users will actually use other sources when given the option.

    On Android, developers can offer users a way to install an app that isn’t easily traced to their identity and on iOS they can’t. Furthermore, an Android app can be both on the Play store and available from other sources; there’s no exclusivity.






  • I’m sure there are several I would consider fine for me.

    I’m skeptical that they can be fine for someone who doesn’t know what federation means, isn’t especially upset that a handful of megacorporations control most human communication, and already finds the fact that I’m asking them to use anything different from what they’re used to annoying. XMPP has more things for the end user to think about than Signal does even if a client is very polished.


  • That’s a risk, and a reason I’d like to see something federated succeed in this space. Unfortunately neither Matrix nor XMPP has managed to achieve quite the level of UX necessary for mainstream adoption, nor have the average person’s tech skills and comfort level improved.

    Signal’s status as a well-funded nonprofit gives me hope that the current situation is reasonably stable.




  • I think the fediverse has a built-in legal risk in that any time someone posts, data is sent to a large number of servers when then make it available via the web or sometimes push it to additional servers (e.g. by user boosts or community subscriptions). This is currently done without any explicit license for the IP contained in that post.

    I’m inclined to think that irrevocable permissions are the right thing here, in large part because it’s impossible to guarantee that any subsequent signal from the original poster propagates to everyone who has a copy of that post, or that the server software responds how someone else expects it will.





  • Why do you care?

    If it’s just about following the rules as a matter of principle, I suggest not doing that. Nobody is checking, and saying your exact age on public social media is oversharing anyway.

    If it’s about content moderation being strict enough to satisfy some comfort level, I wouldn’t rely on that, but I also think 13 is old enough to start learning there are shitty people online and how to deal with them, preferably with some adult support.




  • signal got overloaded, experience degraded

    I did not experience this, and I’ve been using Signal daily for years. Prior to 2020 or so, I experienced more unreliability and hesitated to recommend it to the average person.

    I’m familiar with the problem though; in most of the EU and probably other places WhatsApp usage is so high that it’s a major inconvenience to avoid it entirely.