winterayars

It's not a slur, is the thing. Not any more than "transgender" is and, in fact, less so.

They know this but they are pretending otherwise, as if Elongated Muskrat were a power mad 1990s forum moderator.

Try typing the word "cisgender" into Twitter.

UhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?????????????

Yeah i don't think i need to reply to that one.

I think that's an ineffective and inaccurate way of looking at things. It's not reflective of the reality of the situations where we've seen anarchist communities rise (and fall). The Ukrainian anarchists all got killed by the Soviet Union, but so did everyone else. They beat the hell out of the monarchists, capitalists, etc in the region and had a good chance at establishing a major anarchist force in the world but ultimately the Soviets betrayed and killed them all. Does the fact that the Soviets killed all the capitalists and monarchists, too, mean their philosophies are utopian? After all, they couldn't fight off the Soviets in the same way the anarchists couldn't. They were even less effective at doing so in a lot of ways.

Yeah, the governments of the world do tend to all murder any anarchists they can get their hands on but that's not an argument in favor of big state governments. That's not really an argument against anarchism, either. Really, it's an argument against big state governments. It's weird to me that it's held up so much as if it "disproves" anarchism or whatever.

That said, if you want examples of anarchist groups that have managed to survive let's talk about two:

The first is the Zapatistas. This is a small group in Mexico that has been at war with the United States government and Mexican government for decades now. If the US government wants you dead but can't kill you, i'd say that's a pretty good "immune response". There are not a lot of people who can actively fight the US government and survive and there have been many, many, many other leftist movements in Central and South America that the US government has killed in the forty years since the Zapatistas got their start.

The second one is Rojava, aka more properly: the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). They're a bit younger, only officially establishing their independence a little over a decade ago, but they're in some ways in an even more hostile part of the world. They're a larger organization than the Zapatistas, too. It's unclear what the future holds for them, but then again that's ultimately true for all states. We'll have to wait and see.

I've already addressed this but i guess i'll expand on it.

Signal would not be able to add backdoors to all its users. Security researchers would see pretty quickly (more below) and that would be pretty big news because Signal is quite popular with people who care about their privacy.

They could in theory backdoor an individual's Signal app but, again, that's pretty inefficient. If anyone ever noticed it would be a big black mark against Signal, though they may not have much choice in the matter if it really came to it. However, we know that big governments and other sophisticated attackers usually prefer to just stick spyware on your phone. It's easier, more comprehensive, and doesn't require collaboration with Signal.

In contrast, you don't need to do any of that with Telegram because it's not E2EE. Your argument is basically "security features can be defeated by a sufficiently advanced attacker so use this other service that doesn't have them to begin with." This makes no fucking sense.

I don't know what you're talking about with FOSS stuff. Yeah, Telegram is open source. Signal is too. Some Signal forks (particularly the ones with "Signal" in their names) have been killed but others still exist, ex molly.im.

Signal client does have reproducible builds and has since 2016, as far as i know. This is another point against Signal being backdoored.

Beyond that, Signal has gone through a number of formal security audits. As far as i know, Telegram has not.

Finally, Telegram itself. Telegram could simply enable E2EE for all chats. They choose not to and that is concerning if you care about your privacy or security.

Yeah Signal could be better but that isn't a case to use Telegram over Signal when Telegram is worse in almost every respect.

I have no dreams that i can achieve in this life and my heart grew cold long ago, but life is still getting better for me anyway. I'm still somewhat optimistic about the world. We don't have to give up just because things suck. On the contrary: that's when we can do the most in the world.

Fake speeding tickets as a service...

There have been anarchist communities out there before. (Anarchist proper, not ancaps.) Most (though not all) of them have been destroyed by states who... well, not to put too fine a point on it but: states who hate freedom. I don't necessarily know what people mean by "utopian", i think anarchism is quite practical in a lot of cases but i think it also faces a number of significant obstacles.

(Properly implemented E2EE is too difficult at the moment but those are some big caveats. Still: didn't use Telegram.)

No, they cannot do it. That's what E2EE means. It means they do not have the technological ability to do it. It is not possible.

Yes, even if a judge orders. You can see instances of that on their website: https://signal.org/bigbrother/

Yes there are weak points (the huge one with Signal being: requiring your cell phone number as a part of authentication) but that's far beyond the level of technical expertise required to, say, just intercept clear text communications, ex from Telegram. If a government is wiretapping you then you've got problems that neither Signal nor Telegram can solve.

Now maybe you will suspect that a three letter agency will force them to do something bad, like send a suspect a hacked/backdoored version of the app or something but by and large i don't think they would do that. They'd just go to Google or Apple and put a keylogger on your phone, or some other solution. Realistically, though, this is a level of effort far beyond what >99% of all humans need to worry about. Choosing Telegram over Signal because you're afraid the government is manipulating your Signal app is a sign of incoherent paranoia.

A more serious concern would be, for example, the government capturing all data sent across the Internet and then holding onto it until some hypothetical future computer is developed that can just break the encryption. That's still pretty silly but it's something the US (at least) is doing. Still way beyond what they would need to get your Telegram messages because, again, they don't need to decrypt those. They can just look.

The difference being: Signal cooperates as they're legally required to buy do not have the technological capability to betray you. Telegram has the technological capability to betray you (and governments can spy on Telegram, with or without Telegram's assistance) but refuses to cooperate.

Signal is much better and more reliable in this.

The problem is: nobody is doing that and nobody even has a realistic plan to do that.

Even if we hit total zero tomorrow that still wouldn't save us, at this point. We need negative. Corporations and capitalism aren't gonna get us there, though.