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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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] 171 points 1 year ago (6 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] 42 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (2 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

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

That depends on your threat model. All lemmy posts are publicly visible and can be scooped up by Farcebook, google et al. Discord is very definitely not properly private but all posts aren't public. They are undoubtedly doing the same thing FB does and selling a semi anonymised set of meta data about you, but the world doesn't have direct visibility

I know the three letter acronyms have access to everything I do, hidden or not, I don't like it but I don't see anyway around it.

I can however do my level best to keep FB, google, M$ out of my stuff to some extent

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Never used it but I can imagine it being better. Discord is annoying as hell. Point was that the commenter seemed to argue that you should not accept any compromises, which seems silly to me.

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

They said a "big" compromise? Why did you skip over their qualifier? Are all compromises equal?

(Test)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I dunno. The comment doesn't have the word in it now; that's why #1981 is important. But, maybe they didn't and I imagined it.

It remains true that not all compromises are equal, and the privacy compromises we make for Discord are relatively large compared to the ones for Matrix.

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

There is an "edited" indicator for posts, and the post you're referring to doesn't have it.

Sure, your point is true, but you were (incorrectly) accusing the other commenter of skipping a qualifier that would make your point relevant.

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

You're right; Voyager doesn't show the "edited" flag.

I was mistaken about the word, and the accusation about skipping over it was unwarrented.

I think this is missing the point by arguing semantics, but my phrasing was wrong.

[–] [email protected] 17 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Isn't Lemmy itself a big compromise?

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

We all compromise somewhere, it's just a question of where the line is. Even Richard Stallman makes concessions for things like Firmware and hardware being closed source.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Enigma 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Are you able to at least bridge you matrix to the discord? You should, at the very least, be able to do that while also promoting matrix.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes there are bridge bots. But discord breaks them, and bands their accounts. Sometimes

[–] Enigma 5 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In addition to adoption, it takes time for the usability to catch up.

Right now Signal is just as good (IMO better) as Messenger usability wise, but that wasn't always there.

Matrix needs some time to iron out those issues

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I agree to an extent, but usability is not a sufficient condition for mass adoption. I think Lemmy for end users is just as usable as Reddit was, at least for me it is. But people don't want to leave their communities.

That's why personally I have a Discord still. There are too many communities I am an active part of on there to abandon Discord outright. Plus all of my friends and family are on there, and I've already approached some them about switching and they all have said the same thing I just did.

I wasn't ever super invested in Reddit, so it was easy for me to abandon it for Lemmy, and I vastly prefer the communities here. Discord though is a different story for now, unfortunately.

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

Accessibility would be to let people have the choice: making a bridge between Discord, Matrix, Telegram, XMPP, IRC, etc... There are plenty of tools to do that today, it's not complicated.

https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

How is this more accessible? Have you read the installation instructions? How would someone that has no IT background even manage to configure this? Even just grabbing a binary from the releases page is complicated for a lot of people.