When it’s not E2EE, maybe they are right. What’s the point of encrypting something that gets decrypted midway by an organization with hundreds of employees, many of them with access, not even talking about law enforcement and accidental criminals.

EDIT: I mean, illusion of security may be sometimes worse that lack of that little security which comes with it. Everything is complex.

it’s a threat to the future of “libraries” that decide to completely ignore copyright and give out an unlimited number of copies of ebooks

So do I, so this is very bad.

I live in Russia, so meaningful elections are off the menu for a period of time.

The fact that a mod decided that my comment should be removed is telling. See, if we consider that only freaks openly funded by Russia yadda yadda are its hands in Europe, then what I said is harmful, because I’m spreading the attention of the reader to wide. But if what I said is true and European politics are in general, just as well in the West, penetrated by Russian\Azeri\etc influence, with bribing politicians and companies which then lobby for criminal regimes, then what that mod did is much more harmful.

Removed by mod

A horrible simplification. Power is what they are fighting for and they are getting it.

This is also what the Putler-backed far right parties in Europe stand for.

In European politics corrupt, and usually by Russia among others, parties encompass much more than these. You can tell easily a not yet poisoned voice when comparing with theirs.

When there’s sufficient popular demand.

The article is not about that anyway.

It’s fine. Connectivity allows subscription services, but doesn’t necessitate them. It’s a power to connect your machine to those of other people in many parts of the world.

It’s like starting to do your dishes in time because of the cockroach problem. Perfectly normal going “underground” when the cockroaches have occupied the kitchen and make laws there.

On what they would and wouldn’t do - yes, I try not to make opinions.

But perhaps I underestimate the scale of that practice.

Considering that the balance of power between US government and, say, Meta is not much different from the same between it and Russian government (Meta doesn’t have a military, but has ways to compensate for that), that should be right.

Even if it were encrypted

It’s not.

logically that would make it safer than Facebook for anyone living in Western jurisdictions. The Russian government cannot get them and is hardly going to exchanging intelligence

No it wouldn’t. You shouldn’t opine on what they’d do. They can negotiate, you know. And they are exchanging intelligence all the time.

with its enemies.

If that were true, corporations wouldn’t work with their competitors.

That you can’t do something well or at all without understanding it is philosophy. Philosophy is weak in the sense that it exists on the same level as aesthetics or instincts. So it’s fighting instinct in a system built to make crowd management through instinct convenient, - in disadvantaged position.

Also NT people like to champion their stupidest ideas as a banner to assemble under. Stupidest exactly to exclude any rational reason, so that only the feeling of community would remain.

They don’t always say what they mean. They might say “this thing is better”, but what they mean is “I’m with the group which distinguishes itself by support for this thing, don’t be against us”.

Oh, and it’s been potentially backdoored by the FSB (Russia’s CIA) for six years.

From the very start rather.

And there’s been a few cases where not FSB, but mundane police was reading suspects’ messages before arresting them.

Don’t trust Telegram, I use it because, eh, most people use either that or VK DMs in Russia as the default IM. But never trust it for something which should be secret.

You can even have “opposition”-themed channels there or call for rebellions, but don’t ever expect anything to be secret or even pseudonymous. Even without ill intent regularly flaws are found which allow to get a lot of information, and the code quality is sewer-level.

Telegram is as safe as just using Facebook DMs (unencrypted), only it’s Russian.

I suggest you judge for yourself how safe that is.

so if he claims anything is secure, I will believe him unconditionally.

That’s much more stupid than just using Facebook and unencrypted e-mail with Outlook address for communication, but knowing how safe exactly those are.

This is how you know the brain has rotten and become a slick turd.

Agreed. Making it a contest of “this talking head seems smarter” means exactly that.

Try explaining that to normies though. They don’t want to understand shit, and they want to think they are safe without understanding shit. That this is impossible they just don’t want to believe, because they don’t understand shit.

Yes. And those pretenders are always people who can’t install Synapse and “delete” their messages thinking that’s very smart.

An FSB (or AP, don’t know which, the main thing is it’s Russian) honeypot at that.

It’s like a blog with comments under every post.

You mean, with things similar to TG channels? Will try. Still answering specific messages with referencing them, referencing specific posts in channels and so on don’t seem to be in XMPP functionality yet.

Nothing is against the attack described TBF.

Say, if I run only OpenBSD, carefully selecting non-base applications, with tightened setup and so on, the baddies may just come when I’m not at home and flash a trojan into my laptop’s UEFI.

Well, it’s easier with phones because these likely already have plenty of backdoors to do this remotely, available only for nation-states.

I’m starting to like the taste of this “conspiracy theorist” thing.

Well, those having the competency have likely already thought of such a thing, and possibly already busy with it.

I’m hopeful for Locutus as a platform for making such applications.