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.

@nemo @aral I've worked in UK public service and am currently employed in a highly regulated industry (health and social care).

Even if there isn't any covert backdoor to the FOSS version, communications services considered suitable for use by public services and corporates are *expected* to provide some way of monitoring comms and inspecting data for regulatory and compliance purposes (usually at server level), its extremely difficult to get contracts/funding for software without this.

So once they are chasing funding from these sources, there is now no commercial incentive to make a system secure to the point its safe for users such as activists etc, it just needs to be "good enough" for the govt/corporates...

@kravietz @aral @element
Fascists and fascist enablers should be judged by their actions, not by their race or gender.

You seem to approach this subject from the neoliberal perspective that is just thinly veiled colonialism and authoritarianism.

@mpsi @aral @element
The role of police is primarily to protect capital and suppress or oppress the public.

@mpsi
Well then until society can be made to adhere to democratic standards, we shouldn’t support the mechanisms that allow it to suppress resistance and dissent.

@mpsi @MisuseCase @aral @element
A rapidly shrinking number given the realization that so many of them are effectively vassal states to America.

@Tamtam
What exactly do you mean by "private"?
And, service needs to run *somewhere*. And "just buy servers and rent datacenter space" leads do "and who goes in to replace disks and RAM when they fail? And who pays those people?"
And, depending on your needs etc, I'm quite intrigued by Zulip, though it's a specific niche. And yes, they can host it for you. But then they have access to servers.
@davidgerard

@mpsi @aral @element Guess what? Even in most “better” countries around the world, the cops are an armed gang.

@Stomata @aral @element @precariousmind What kind of hardware are you posting from?

@aral @element I wonder if this is a "we support fascist governments" or "if these idiots will sell useless encrypted data, we'll sell it"?

Not immediately clear to me given the small context.

@MisuseCase @aral @element Do you have any personal experience of living in other countries than the US and encountering police violence?

@freediverx Fight for that, this is the only way.

@sotolf @LukefromDC @aral @element
Is that an intentional choice? Could they change that?

@freediverx @aral @element In which countries, exactly?
For example, there is police in China, too. And they certainly don't serve "capital".

@mpsi @aral @element Ask people in France, where the cops are infamously brutal.

Or the UK, where they’ve been harassing Palestine Action protesters.

Or Canada, where the RCMP brutalizes First Nations people.

Your ignorance about this kind of thing is a YOU problem. Don’t make it out like it it’s a ME problem or the OP’s problem.

@freediverx @MisuseCase @aral @element The position of the US is rapidly declining, and this is a chance for "vassals" to become actually independent.

@mpsi @aral @element
Don’t they? The Chinese government follows the doctrine of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and that clearly involves embracing some elements of capitalism including the presence of a financial elite even though that elite remains subordinate to the people’s government.

@MisuseCase @davidgerard @aral @precariousmind @element Well. Just for the sake of accuracy, matrix foundation includes people from element. They have strong ties. But matrix foundation is at least supposed to be neutral and mostly about the protocol. But it is hard to avoid element in the matrix ecosystem as of yet anyways. So I can see your point.

@sotolf @LukefromDC @aral @element
I’ve followed them for many years and their motivations, at least, seem to be sound.

@mpsi @MisuseCase @aral @element
One would hope, but I’ve seen little evidence of that so far. Europe is still more scared of China than the US and I think that’s a critical mistake.

@MisuseCase @aral @element Each of these situations is an individual case and it should be solved as such by citizens of the relevant countries. This is how democracy is supposed to work.

The US urgently needs to solve its own crisis. Do that, abolish the police if you think it is a good solution, but please don't interpolate your situation to the rest of the world constantly.