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.

@ahltorp @aral @element Personally I think it's a big difference between selling to police, so they can be independent from US oligarchical tech companies, which will give all their data to the fascist US government if asked, and to sell to the Gestapo.

You don't have to agree with me, of course, but I don't see for example my own country disbandoning its police force any time soon, and I'd rather not have them reliant on MS Teams or the like. So imo Element having this distinction is good

@kravietz
I'm french, and I wouldn't dare say that our past governments don't love authoritarianism at the very least (the people you mention are tokens, they do not care about their skin color, they help white supremacy anyway because they belong to the same class, and they've had terrible policies), and they drive us right into the hands of fascists...
sorry for this example you picked, it doesn't fit I think
@aral @element @ahltorp

@couscous@mamot.fr

Okay but would you say that deploying Matrix to French government is actually "white fascism"? You live under that government, so what would you like to use on daily basis so that it's not "fascist" - WhatsApp? Telegram? Paper letters?

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

@forteller I don’t necessarily agree completely with @aral, but I think Element should be really clear here. They posted a non-denial denial while referring to a policy that suggests ICE would be a welcome customer. I don’t have any other information on who they’re actually selling to, I’m only judging their behaviour.

@aral Your position implies that the police is an enemy and that states shouldn't have any kind of law enforcement called "police". But can you pledge that you will never, ever call the police, nor expect any police intervention or involvement, no matter what?

States are human super-organisms and their existence is both necessary and unavoidable in our world. And states need a police force to be effective. @element

@element

• Is there a public list of the governmental & police entities that are your customers?

• Also, some clarification is needed what you mean by »We don’t sell to governments who are under investigation by the #UN for international atrocities«. Which organs or specialized agencies of the UN do you mean? You seem to be referring to the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, who doesn't investigate, but merely creates reports, within an early warning system.

• Also, you're saying »We don’t sell to organisations who are committing human rights abuses (i.e. abusive organisations within a government, even if the wider government itself isn’t in scope).« Who is performing that assessment, and according to which criteria? Which potential customers have been rejected so far, after this assessment?

• You're also saying »We don’t sell to governments with poor human rights, to avoid risk of harm to their population. This is currently defined as countries scoring 20 or less« in the Freedom House ranking. Among others, this allows e.g. #Qatar, #Algeria, #Turkey, #HongKong, #Serbia or #Israel to become your customers. Are they?

Without specifics, especially evidence, verifying that you abide by your policy becomes impossible, and it stays yet another text.

@aral

#atrocities #genocide #police #HumanRights

@kaosk @aral Please report on how it goes

@aaron @aral @element @LukefromDC @delta I recently switched to deltachat and for IM it works well and gets my vote

@aral @element What we need is effective democratic control over all public institutions and social spaces, not abolishing police or other standard state institutions. And for that effective democratic control, we need open standards and open protocols, among other things. (I would even say they are indispensable, although the public discourse doesn't seem to understand that yet).

@LukefromDC @aral I am still waiting for Mastodon to have E2EE support.

@mpsi @element Yes, abolish the police. I don’t see a problem with that. We don’t need a slave patrol derived institution that protects the interests of the uber rich. Imagine other possibilities, it’s not either/or.

@kravietz @aral Dude, please check your sources before using Aurore Bergé as an example... This woman is a well known TERF, islamophobe and zionist.

@Tamtam

In addition? I'd pick a fallback solution that works on a different type of infrastructure. @delta for instance.

@zzt @aral

@aral @ahltorp @element They are funny.
- We don’t sell to organisations who are committing human rights abuses
then proceed to say they sell to:
- US Department of Defense, German Bundeswehr, UK Ministry of Defence

Like, hello? No human rights abuses ever by those three, nooooo, could never happen...

@aral @element
Oh for fuck's sake! I hate this timeline!

@KarlHeinzHasliP @ahltorp @element Depends who you consider to be human, I guess.

@jherazob @element You and I both, Jaime, you and I both.

@kravietz @couscous @aral @element @ahltorp

I see it that opponents view it as "blood money" that poisons the project, and supporters see it as "the police/military have these fuckloads of money, might as well have them go to some commons"

now, is "tapping MIC budgets for a good cause" enough to outweigh "selling your services to the oppressor"?

two things can be true at once, and there's an (at least perceived) risk of the project getting too chummy with the violence-dispensing institutions

@aral @precariousmind @element Hahaha. So next time I see someone putting down Signal and boosting Matrix, I can say “signal isn’t run by fascist bootlickers.”

Imagine regaining effective, broadly inclusive democratic control where it was lost (or winning it where it was absent). Then the problem of slave-patrol mentality will be easy to solve. Otherwise, you will end up recreating the same thing under a new name. It's not the name that is the issue, it's the shape of the institution within societies that don't adhere to democratic standards.