Tankie Lemmy dev cheerleading banning tools for dissent

This sounds like a unjustified callout and a bit of an ad hominem. He doesn't argue against tools for dissent, but specifically against Signal and recommends matrix. link to post

Any communication tool that requires you to personally identify yourself through a phone number and is hosted centrally in the US is not good for dissidents.

He doesn’t argue against tools for dissent,
He says it's a 'smart move' for the totalitarian countries he simps for to ban signal. It's not just a question of preference.
- Well maybe his bias is showing there, but Venezuela is in a cold war with the US and it is objectively a smart move from a strategy perspective.
  You simply cannot have open and free democracy if a superpower is meddling in your election. If I didn't know who the dessalines was (I don't) I wouldn't especially think he was wrong. Any country that finds itself in opposition with the US is smart to limit or shut down US controlled IT infrastructure.
  Of course I wouldn't be surprised if Venezuela and Russia would ban Matrix and other P2P protocols too.
Are you suggesting that the US would compel signal to turn data about Venezuelan dissidents over to Maduro?
I mean, there's maybe a conversation to be had about the wisdom of using Signal in particular, but I really struggle to imagine a justification for banning it anywhere near that conversation. Furthermore, we all know Dessalines is a redfish bootlicker. His intent here is very clearly more cheerleading for said boot
I agree the callout is unjustified, but there is still something to be said when those countries ban Signal but aren't banning WhatsApp.
Shoutput to simplex as another option
Not fully decentralized but you can host your own servers or use whichever ones you want
https://simplex.chat

Signal was already made to hand over all the data they stored for one account at least in the US, here is a video describing how that went: https://youtu.be/3oPeIbpA5x8

Tell me though, which company will not hand over what data they have when asked by their country's judiciary?
The question here is how much data they keep. Strict legal minimum or more.
- You obviously didn't watch the video, the point made is not that there is information being handed over (every company has to comply with legal orders), but that Singal handed over nothing except 2 timestamps shared as integers.
While this is true it's still good to add nuance.
There is a difference between judiciary and intelligence context in these kind of things, if you use a tool in a judiciary context you burn it (as with the FBI malware on Playpen). So it's probably better to keep it low, even avoid to use some of the information gathered, so you keep the intelligence source.
I'm not saying that's what's going on, just that this is not an absolute proof.

Yeah, better use Telegram /s

He continues by saying use matrix

That's a way to know it's banned. Zero local coverage, but yes, it doesn't work without tricks as I've tested. That's said, it's a nice proof it's is\was relatively safe to use and popular in said countries and the likes.

Dess may seem smug for promoting mtx over Signal, but it's one less channel for communication, and they'd try to come for mtx next.

Wasn't it protect-your-privacy-Snowden who pushed for signal a few years ago?

I don't understand. Weren't most lemmy users cheering when tiktok thing happened? How is this any different?

No, most Lemmy users were not cheering for the Tiktok ban.
Signal is not owned in large part (namely, a golden share) by the Chinese government, and the proposed Tiktok ban only goes into effect if they don't divest within a year.
It wasn't done just after a political crisis in an attempt to silence dissent. Hell, it's not even in effect yet.
The US is far from the only country to have taken such steps, as the espionage risks of a ubiquitous app that an enemy government has unlimited and legal access to is not great. Numerous other countries have been restricting Tiktok until a change in their data sharing policies is effected, because of how wide open it is right now.

Thus keyword blocking not implemented. You must read it all.

In Russia, the country’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, says that Signal violated Russian legislation, reports Interfax. People in Russia also can’t register a new Signal account without using a VPN, Reuters reports. Russia has “restricted Signal messaging app backends on most internet providers” as of Friday afternoon, NetBlocks says.