44
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
44 points (75.0% liked)
Privacy
31609 readers
99 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Signal is not my tool of choice, so I'll answer from a more general perspective:
Having multiple friends and social groups on an e2ee chat system for the past few years feels great. Knowing that our words aren't being recorded and exploited by half a dozen companies, we no longer feel the need to self-censor. The depth and value of our online conversations have grown noticeably.
Yes, there is more work to do, both at the endpoints and in the protocols. No, not all of us have flipped all the switches to maximize our privacy yet. That's okay. Migrating is a gradual process. We do it together, helping each other along the way, rather than trying to force it all at once. Every step an improvement.
This is exactly my take. It basically holds for Signal too.
The question of self-censorship is too often overlooked IMO. The knowledge that nobody is reading your messages except their intended recipients is empowering and liberating. No one is filling a database with information about you and your friends, because they can't. You can say exactly what you would say at the dinner table and not think twice about it.
In a police state with mass surveillance (we all know the big examples) you don't have this privilege. Whether or not you think about it consciously, you are constantly monitoring and policing what you say - and therefore ultimately, to some extent, what you think.
I've been in a couple of those places recently. I can tell you that just the banal act of using Signal there (sometimes over VPN) felt almost exhilarating, like jumping the prison walls.
In historical terms, free speech is a vanishing rare thing. It absolutely is not the norm and it bothers me that so many people in the West don't seem to know this. We should not take it for granted.