A frog who wants the objective truth about anything and everything.
Alt of [email protected]
EDIT: The Fluxer dev has agreed to remove the CLA!
Just a heads up to anyone interested in Fluxer: there’s a huge red flag; it has a contributor CLA that could allow it to change to a non-FLOSS license in the future. I was hopeful for it previously, but that kills it for me.
Personally I think it matters in this case due to the odd way that Matrix is designed to share metadata with all federated servers, which means the one run by Matrix/Element basically has access virtually all metadata on the network, which considering their background, is concerning for me. I wrote more about that aspect here: https://lemmy.cafe/post/31672929/15961430
I see. Does the crypto aspect of Odysee and its new NFT-liking owner concern you at all? If not, have you seen this video?
That would be impossible to enforce practically, and would devastate businesses, their main financial supporters.
Matrix is so laggy and clunky and slow and annoying. XMPP was just perfect. And the “Conversations” client, for XMPP, is so fucking fast.
I’ve noticed that as well, XMPP has never been laggy in my experience, it’s very snappy. Matrix is hit or miss, sometimes fine, sometimes a bit slow, especially in larger rooms.
How does XMPP’s E2EE compare to matrix’?
As far as I know, XMPP’s OMEMO encryption is modeled off of Signal’s encryption, but modified to function without a centralized server. It’s generally regarded as a very solid, strong encryption, even better than openPGP.
Matrix’s encryption uses Megolm or olm, which I believe is also regarded well as far as the encryption itself. The issue is that Matrix’s inherent design means it’s spreading copies of the metadata of those messages (though the contents of the message itself is encrypted) far and wide to many servers unnessesarily. Seeing as a lot can still be gleaned from metadata (when a message was sent, to who it was sent to), it’s a concerning model considering how big the main Matrix server is, which means that it usually always receives a copy of all metadata activity on the protocol, unless a self-hosted server completely kills federation (which defeats the point of it).
A good comment from an older reddit thread summed it up well:
matrix.org is unique because it hosts so many user accounts. As a result, it becomes a metadata honeypot for the entire matrix network. It’s kind of a design flaw in my eyes. Matrix is great. But it would be even better if it didn’t have this issue.
Xmpp is federated, but you have the option of not sharing chat metadata with other servers on the network. Matrix doesn’t give that option. matrix.org is effectively a central server due to the fact that a majority of accounts are hosted there, AND all metadata associated with those accounts, which includes metadata from other servers they communicate with, accumulates on matrix.org. I would suspect a very high percentage of matrix metadata, ends up on a single server. Xmpp just does not have this problem.
odysee as much as possible
Just a heads up, Odysee became bankrupt after its parent company LBRY (owned by a hyper racist and fascist ancap who was trying to politically takeover New Hampshire with a right-wing libertarian community to, among other things, revoke child-labor protection laws before being kicked off the board for his racism) did a pump’n’dump of their LBRY coin without reporting it on their taxes, which the government sued them for since it was illegal.
Odysee was then bought out by Arweave; a blockchain crypto scam company created and owned by Forward Research, which itself is owned by Sam Williams; another venture capital crypto techbro libertarian/ancap who also bought a big NFT company during the Odysee aquisition. So unfortunately, Odysee is no better than Google.
Peertube is great though.
I’ve never used Instagram, so I wouldn’t know how it compares, but Movim looks like this, which is very Discord-like to me.
As I mentioned in my previous comment, the only thing missing from Movim is collections of rooms under a single group/channel, which the developer is actively working on.
It’s a downside in my opinion, considering the police in most countries assist in maintaining the control of corporations and authoritarian governments. To offer services to them knowing this is a negative ethical marker for a company.
Matrix because it seems like the most logical choice - largest platform that’s federated/decentralised and has end-to-end encryption.
Personally I’ve had consistent problems with messages not un-encrypting in Matrix, requiring frequent re-sending of messages. I’m also not a fan of how much Metadata is shared across the Matrix network even with encryption, nor am I fan of the history of the group (Amdocs) who developed and funded it, or the willingness of the Matrix/Element team to sell their services to law enforcement (They had purchased a booth at a police convention).
Movim has all of the same features as Matrix without those downsides, if you’d like to give that a try instead.
I don’t know how, but ultimately this is on us all to fix
There are concrete steps we can take toward resisting this takeover, eventually culminating in in the deployment of one of our most powerful weapons: a proper, long-term, nation wide General Strike.
The country would be brought to its knees if suddenly deprived of profit and labor. That tactic was extremely effective in Chile in 2019, and had they not fallen for the trick of liberal reform, they would’ve had a successful revolution on their hands with virtually no bloodshed.
But getting to the point where we can enact a general strike requires we do some groundwork in other ways, which will both make it more effective, and more bearable for us all to weather. Here’s what we need to do (the titles below expand if you click them):
As we’re seeing, deadly violence is being used against us and it will only continue. It extremely important to have the skills to be able to keep yourself and others alive if they get hurt.
Tacticool Girlfriend provides a great introduction to building a personal first aid kit, called an IFAK, which can deal with things like bullet wounds and other serious bleeding wounds. I also want to emphasize her recommendation of only buying medical gear from reputable sources (not Amazon!), such as North American Rescue to avoid fakes that could cost you your life.
But you’ll need to learn how to use that equipment, too. The best resource for that is to take a local Stop The Bleed class, which are pretty widely available in most places. They may cost a small fee, but can also sometimes be free. Alternatively, if you cannot access a local class, this video by PrepMedic will give you a solid understanding of how to use Tourniquets and Gauze for wound packing.
Injuries are less harmful if they are tended to early. Learning first aid can help conserve resources when healthcare becomes unaffordable. Having several medics in case of harm by police is an extremely powerful morale booster during a protest that may become a police riot. When you become comfortable with the basics of first aid, riot medicine is the next suggested step.
If you haven’t already, get to know your neighbors. Mutual aid is a willingness to support and grow your community. This can include informal networks through friends, tenant/renter organizations, solidarity groups, and industrial unions.
These are groups using direct action to solve each other’s problems. Building strong communities makes it difficult for fascism to take root. The actions of the government are going to hit every community hard, and the ones who build trust in each other and work together are most likely to survive. We’ve been building a list of resources in [email protected] to help you on your way. Also check out this handy guide to find existing groups in your area.
This isn’t only for your own community protection. Your ability to organize today will change the political landscape tomorrow. When revolution occurs, the social organizations that show the greatest resilience through the regime are the ones typically calling the shots when the dust settles. When it comes to elections, get out the vote drives are useless if most of the voters are fascists. At some point, you have to do grassroots political education if you don’t want fascist candidates winning elections. Mutual aid networks are excellent forums not only for teaching each other good political ideas, but demonstrating them in practice.
If you aren’t in a union (or even if you are, it’s worth dual-carding), consider joining the IWW to or contacting EWOC to unionize your workplace (bonus: you’ll get higher wages, better benefits, and more time off if you succeed!) to strengthen a general strike if we manage to enact one, as most unions have a strike fund that can supplement your income during a general strike to make it more financially bearable (you should also save as much money as you can reasonably do, so it can also be used to keep yourself afloat during a strike). A General Strike is officially planned by the UAW for May 1st 2028, but it was planned before Trump was elected, and by then may be too late, so prepare now for one that may start sooner.
And for our international friends, you should join one as well, as fascism is gaining momentum globally. If your country isn’t listed below, just contact the IWW directly in the link above, and they’ll help you set up a new local branch.
Sometimes benign seeming efforts can turn into unexpected personal data collecting traps. Like an obscure website for exchanging contact info with other students turning into a global ad-tech surveillance network (Facebook), or innocent seeming online personality tests being use to harvest character profiles. Even Etsy, Reddit, Tinder, and Duolingo are feeding information to US Government Agencies like ICE.
Security culture is commonly used to describe the general awareness of such potential traps and how it can affect groups or entire communities. This goes beyond mere individual privacy efforts, as without joint efforts these often fail to work.
Especially in activist circles, security culture is paramount. For opsec reasons not everyone in the group might be aware of what clandestine efforts others are involved in, but with a general security culture many potential data leaks can be avoided.
Movements are made by the volume of their participants, and the easier and less dangerous it is to participate, the more people will get involved. As more people get involved, individual involvement becomes even less dangerous, creating a virtuous cycle.
We’ll start it off with some General Advice:
For a full guide on what encrypted communications platforms to use, and how to stay off the radar, read the Digital Camouflage section within the Monthly Meta post here (you’ll need to scroll down. I’d add it here, but it won’t fit in this comment).
I’d also highly recommend Full Spectrum Resistance to anyone who wants further info on how to resist (audiobook version here).
The fascist noose is tightening the world over thanks to proprietary big tech. We have to escape now while we can to open-source alternatives.
Currently the best (in my subjective opinion) self-hostable, encrypted and federated (like lemmy/piefed) alternative is Movim.
It offers 90% of the features of Discord, including group video calls, group texts, and even screensharing with audio (must use a Chromium based browser currently to share the audio). The only feature missing is discord-style rooms, which the dev is currently working on to release as fast as possible.
It doesn’t even require an email to create an account, and runs right in your browser, so it has an extremely low barrier to entry. Give it a try with a friend to see if it can meet your needs! :D
For a more complete guide to swapping proprietary apps for safe open-source ones, I suggest referring to this post: https://lemmy.cafe/post/18663514
The fascist noose is tightening the world over thanks to proprietary big tech. We have to escape now while we can to open-source alternatives.
Currently the best (in my subjective opinion) self-hostable, encrypted and federated (like lemmy/piefed) alternative is Movim.
It offers 90% of the features of Discord, including group video calls, group texts, and even screensharing with audio (must use a Chromium based browser currently to share the audio). The only feature missing is discord-style rooms, which the dev is currently working on to release as fast as possible.
It doesn’t even require an email to create an account, and runs right in your browser, so it has an extremely low barrier to entry. Give it a try with a friend to see if it can meet your needs! :D
For a more complete guide to swapping proprietary apps for safe open-source ones, I suggest referring to this post: https://lemmy.cafe/post/18663514
As I said, the discord-style server/rooms are currently being worked on. After which, it should functionally be pretty much 1:1 with Discord. The only thing it’d be missing is the Forums feature, but instead it does have a pretty cool blog feature :)
Movim does, and recently landed screen-sharing application audio too (must use a chromium based browser for now to stream the audio too).
EDIT 2: The Fluxer dev agreed to remove the CLA!
EDIT: Just a heads up to anyone interested in Fluxer: I was just informed today of a huge red flag for Fluxer; it has a contributor CLA that could allow it to change to a non-FLOSS license in the future. I was hopeful for it previously, but that kills it for me.
Of all the discord clones, this one does look promising I must admit, especially since the dev has mentioned they’d be open to incorporating federation and some encryption abilities down the road. The GPL license is a good mark, and the dev seems pretty chill. Downside is that’s it’s still very rough and in more of a visually polished alpha state. The dev mentioned they’re about to release a major refactor of the codebase, which they hope will fix the sluggishness the server is experiencing after an influx of new users from the Discord dumpster fire.
Personally, I’d still suggest Movim over Fluxer at the moment.
Movim already has a proven, scalable back-end (XMPP), it’s already federated, already provides good encryption, has 90% feature parity with Discord such as Chats, group video calls, screen-sharing with audio (requires chromium browser to share audio for now), its made in the EU, and it’s ready right now, not some time in the future (if Discord users fleeing discord try Fluxer, they’d be likely to bail on it due to the current bugs and just go back to discord). The Movim developer is also currently working on adding in discord-like channels and rooms.
But that’s just my 2 cents. Fluxer is one to keep an eye on for the future, though.
Hm, could be. Very strange it isn’t working for you :\
Didn’t know that! Thanks for the info, that sounds very promising.
Hm, perhaps your instance needs to update to a newer version? I notice that it’s on 1.4.6, while Piefed.social is currently running version 1.5.3
EDIT: Ah, nevermind, 1.4.6 is only a couple weeks old! I was thinking of the gap in those releases in relation to Lemmy’s, where that would be a massive difference.
Is voyager updated to the latest release?
The difference in speed could be due to differing hardware specs of the servers, locations of the servers in relation to you, and the amount of user activity on each server.
I’m not sure if piefed.ca is hosted in the same location as lemmy.ca, or if their server specs are similar, but it probably has a better chance of being able to compare relative speed.
On my end at least, they both seem about equally as fast, but perhaps it would be more noticeable on a slower internet speed.
An unexpected but welcome update, the Fluxer dev agreed to remove the CLA, which puts it back in the running.