PS. With all the Discord stuff, in case you wonder why you never see me promoting Matrix, it’s not because it’s a usability nightmare (which it is) but because it’s made by the kind of people who’d be happy to call ICE a customer.

@kravietz @aral @element
I don’t recall insulting you, unless perhaps you self-identify as a fascist.

@MisuseCase@twit.social @aral@mastodon.ar.al @element@mastodon.matrix.org @precariousmind@neopaquita.es let's pay Amazon for our servers!

@freediverx @MisuseCase @aral @element I think we all everywhere in the world need to find new ways of organizing ourselves politically and socially. All old models require a revision. And I am deeply convinced that any working solutions must be democratic.

@Stomata @aral @element @precariousmind Which social justice oriented and totally non-fascist tech company made your laptop, bruh?

@sotolf @LukefromDC @aral @element
Can you recommend alternatives to Signal that are more trustworthy?

@mpsi @MisuseCase @aral @element
No argument there.

@freediverx @aral @element Yes, they did enjoy a lot of improvement in the quality of life. But that era is over, as further improvement would require democratization, and the CPC decided otherwise.

@freediverx@mastodon.social

Read the second paragraph of your comment in which you conveniently built a strawman of an opponent, clearly using words which you consider insulting even if you don't fully understand their meaning.

@aral@mastodon.ar.al @element@mastodon.matrix.org

@freediverx @aral @element As for the gunboat diplomacy, China is increasingly keen on doing so. There is constant tension around Taiwan and a lot of bullying in the South China Sea.

@freediverx@mastodon.social

Not at all, periodic blockades and 'military exercise' around Taiwan are just a friendly gestures intended at strengthening international peace. Same goes for occupation of Tibet, labour camps for Uyghurs, death penalties, country wide censorship and social rating system.

@mpsi@toot.lv @aral@mastodon.ar.al @element@mastodon.matrix.org

@mpsi @aral @element
I think China has generally benefitted from what is effectively a somewhat benign and competent dictatorship that hasn’t revolved around the personal interests of the dictator.

The national government also doesn’t seem to micromanage local affairs.

But we all know that is not a sustainable long term solution. What happens when conditions change or their ruler dies?

@zzt @aral @element
Don't need a back door if you don't have walls.

@mpsi @aral @element
True but Taiwan seems to have some American tendencies treating capitalism almost like a state religion, with unsurprising consequences in wealth inequality and affordability.

That is at odds with the Chinese government’s objectives so the tensions are understandable.

And China is forging mutually beneficial relationships with other countries very much unlike the US and western Europe.

@freediverx @aral @element I'd like to write a somewhat detailed reply to your post, but can't do that now. I'll try to share it later. In short: there is a difference between China before and after Xi Jinping.

@element @aral

What (if anything) is the use case for Discord/Matrix that can't be done at least as well with an appropriate combination of Signal/Threema and Mastodon?

@freediverx @sotolf @aral @element @LukefromDC

AIUI, Signal rely on third-party hosting (AWS I think), so they don't control where their servers are located.

@freediverx @sotolf @aral @element @LukefromDC

To some extent, as long as the encryption works, that doesn't matter. I don't want to write them an instruction manual, but if a hostile US government really wanted to break the privacy of Signal Chats, its easier approach would be to use the fact that the Google Play Store and the Apple Store are hosted on US territory to sneak a backdoor into the client apps...

@freediverx @sotolf @aral @element @LukefromDC

... It'd probably only last a few hours before someone compiling from source themselves noticed that the builds on the Play Store and the Apple Store were not reproducible, but those few hours would be enough to harvest a *lot* of data.

@freediverx @sotolf @aral @element @LukefromDC

They have, but will they faithfully promise a customer to host stuff only on those servers, and will they be 100% reliable in sticking to that promise?

@zzt @Tamtam @aral There are some people working on adding E2EE to Mastodon, but, as far as I read about it, it will be like having Signal but decentralised and with better UX but lacking voice/video calls (so, Mastodon but your instance owner can't read your private messages and you don't need to verify codes or qr codes like Signal).

They are taking their time because once deployed it will be hard to fix things. I know that from experience developing megajs!!! I wish they didn't use RSA — non-standard RSA even, is a pain in the ass to work with — for authentication. Why not Ed25519 which has smaller keys or a post-quantum scheme?! I wish Matrix development was done like Mastodon's E2EE.