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tasoeur 4 hours ago

At this point, it’s clear these sort of measures will go through, if not now but in some foreseeable future. What would be our best bet moving forward? Moving to signal/telegram?

npodbielski 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Signal is centralized. So this company operating in EU, under EU laws, will have to do the scanning too. How they implement it however and when and if at all remains to be seen. All maybe they will not and EU will block signal. Maybe they will allow you install apk and Google will block installing from apks directly, basically forcing companies to do the scanning.

And if everybody will do the scanning, maybe they will be sending all of this data to the giant EU server then that will look for 'problematic citizens' like in minority report.

Who knows, but it seems like running your own private chat for your own and your family and friends will be the only way to have some privacy in a few years.

rjdj377dhabsn 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Simplex Chat looks like a decent alternative. It also has the benefit of not needing a phone number or email address.

AJ007 2 hours ago | parent [-]

They have the same jurisdiction problem as Signal. So does Delta Chat, Matrix which were mentioned in another response here.

From a practical side, if the client and server are open source then the project is survivable even if the supporting organization is wiped out. For now users don't demand it nor do they understand it. At minimum, the clients must be open source and buildable, all encryption must happen on the user's device and there should be some control over the end server connections. It is also critical that there are near foolproof workarounds for tunneling the traffic in severely locked down countries like China. This is one of the big problems with requiring a phone number, for example. If users in China can't use a communications tool then it's bullshit.

Some projects like Delta Chat are criticized for one reason while the critics take at face value unverifiable claims from other projects. Delta Chat checks a lot of boxes along with user control and deployment of servers.

SimpleX is a good concept but I'm not sure how it can scale -- which is a detail that shouldn't be ignored. How Signal expects to continue with no visible revenue source is another good question.

XMPP should not be written off either. If I had to bet on a protocol having users a decade from now, that's the one. AI coding agents are going to rapidly iterate on improving the front end stuff. With all of the privacy busting age verification coming from the US, I'd be willing to bet the replacement for Discord will be something XMPP based.

On one side the EU funded open source projects to try to break away from the US tech giants, while passing laws to kneecap their own tiny open source alternatives (Cyber Resilience Act etc.) If the US & the EU wants to exist in the next century they need to be going the opposite direction. It was bad enough that western tech companies built China's great firewall and assisted authoritarian regimes elsewhere.

Most end users don't understand that keeping communications secure is not a given, it is really expensive and difficult. Adding wacky, difficult, very expensive or impossible to follow requirements is the fingerprint of EU bureaucracy and not just unwelcome but very dangerous.

For the EU Elon haters -- with the growth of Starlink, Elon Musk or whoever controls SpaceX is going to have a deep view of global internet communications in the years ahead. That will include an ability to block, filter, and allow things either they or those who control Starlink choose. Any regulation which weakens or cripples the security of internet communications is ceding power to that entity, whoever it may be.

rdm_blackhole an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> Signal is centralized. So this company operating in EU, under EU laws, will have to do the scanning too.

The Signal CEO has repeated that they will rather leave the EU than start doing the scanning.

npodbielski an hour ago | parent [-]

We will see...

rdm_blackhole 40 minutes ago | parent [-]

Yeah, I agree. We will see what happens.

Words are just words as far as I know but the prospect of leaving the EU for Signal would really send a strong message to all those who still believe that the EU is better in terms of privacy than the US.

As far as I am concerned this is the nail in the coffin for the EU privacy advocates/ evangelists.

apopapo 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Overlay networks + libre and open-source software only (preferrably with reproducible builds).

sunshine-o 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes I believe one way to see what is happening is in fact our own mistake. We thought we could prevent those law of being signed but it was very naive.

The only way you fight this is by moving forward and faster than them. Because their eternal weakness is that they are slow and somehow stupid. But tech oriented people got pretty lazy in the last 2 decades:

- We let ISPs be the only gatekeeper of the Internet

- We let big tech dominate the mobile OS space

- We embrassed the Cloud and SaaS (not your computer)

These 3 things made us sitting duck to any authoritarian government and now we pretend to be surprised we are getting shot.

Here is what we can do before it is too late:

- Buy a $10-20 LoRa device and setup Meshtastic, Meshcore or Reticulum https://reticulum.network/

- Buy one for a friend

- Run openwrt and consider things like like B.A.T.M.A.N https://www.open-mesh.org/

- Connect and explore yggdrasil https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/

- Try I2P https://geti2p.net

- Get into a protocol like NNCP https://www.complete.org/nncp/

- Self-host at least a few services you can and care about

- Setup a DNS like https://opennic.org/

- A fair amount of understanding and use of the good parts of crypto/blockchain

- Get out of GMail, Outlook, iCloud, etc.

(there are probably many more)

It is gonna take the governments time to figure out what those things are and how to block and attack them.

Plus you will get more satisfaction and knowledge than with writing HELM charts, web apps or using AI.

xyzal 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Some decentralized platform with federation abilities. Delta Chat seems promising, but does not support forward secrecy. It is quite interestingly based on plain old email!

Or Matrix? No experience with it though

throw20251127 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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