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This is a Dengist community in favor of Bashar al-Assad with no information that can lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton, our fellow liberal and queen. This community is not ironic. We are Marxists-Leninists.

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Matrix, Element, and links with US Gov and NATO (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 days ago by absurdity_of_it_all@lemmy.ml to c/genzedong@lemmygrad.ml

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I wanted to find a proper Marxist Leninist instance/community to ask this, because everywhere else people may not care.

I've been slowly moving my close people and even the people I work with to Matrix for messaging, and I have been suggesting that they download Element for it. And for me this is beyond privacy reasons. It's to stay away from Meta, Google, and the like.

But recently I've been doing some digging and Element has been proudly posting about it's work with NATO, US armed forces, and German armed forces. They also have an "ethics" page that clarifies that they don't just work with anyone. For example they said they don't work with countries sanctioned by the US, EU, or UK. They've also mentioned they don't work with governments that have "human rights issues".

I'm feeling very conflicted about this whole thing now and I'm not sure what to do. It might have been even fine and I might have written off Element as a private entity and just switched apps if not for the Matrix Foundation also being closely working with Element, sharing resources, people, and also boosting each other on social media like Mastodon.

I even questioned the Managing Director of the Matrix Foundation on mastodon and they first said they don't see how NATO is imperialistic, then said anyone using Matrix is a good thing because we need to fight "authoritarian enabling Big Tech". Which I agree with if they weren't actively collaborating with said authoritarians.

Please redirect m e if this is not the right place for this.

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[–] davel@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

What is your actual concern here? Are your concerns that the security and privacy of these protocols and/or software may be compromised? Or are you concerned about something else? Because this sounds rather like a purity fetish thing. Almost everyone in the imperial core is like these people, so if you need your software to come strictly from anti-imperialists then you may be waiting a long time.

Somewhat relatedly: Why not Signal? » Good Alternatives

[–] cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml 15 points 5 days ago

I don't see how being safe, rational and properly paranoid is being purity fetishist

[–] absurdity_of_it_all@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I'm concerned about the software again playing into capitalist, imperialist spirals like we've seen with everything else so far. I am also concerned about supporting such an organization/company by doing "marketing" for them through my circles. The whole reason I started this was as part of the BDS movement and it doesn't make sense to just jump from one highly problematic ecosystem to another.

And if you're okay with "lesser evils", sure. I'm not. I believe continually choosing lesser evils instead of building good things is why we're in this mess in the first place.

[–] davel@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 5 days ago (2 children)

A couple of points.

We’re talking about open source software here, right? They’re not as susceptible to capitalist enshittification, and they can always be forked.

I don’t see using some particular open source software as an endorsement or support for the ideologies of the people who made it. I’m not subscribing to an ideology, I’m just using a tool. There isn’t even a consumer activism argument to be made here, because these are free tools.

[–] absurdity_of_it_all@lemmy.ml 6 points 5 days ago

As the other person who responded to you mentioned, things can get bad. At some level, trust is always going to be a factor with these things.

Matrix.org is still the most popular server - if I just tell people to download Element, they're going to pick matrix.org. Automatically, this builds a sort of lock in with the "default instance". Even if I host my own server, that's not something I can recommedn to everyone, nor do I have the resources to make it a public server.
Already there's trouble with hosting your own Matrix server due to how heavy the software is apparently. This coupled with point 1, things concentrating into the hands of the foundation is not a good thing.
Following from that, for example, what if they suddenly decide there's too many people with "radical" ideologies that are against their masters, the imperial powers? They have metadata (even if not content, because encryption) through the public servers they host that they can use to surveil.

The issue is not just that it's built by people with poor ideological rigour. It's that it's both a fragile structure that depends on trust and the people we're trusting have poor ideological rigour. That seems like a bad combo to me.

Imagine if they just wrote and worked on the protocol. That's it. No official apps, no official public servers. Then I wouldn't care coz it doesn't matter. People can check the protocol for suspicious stuff but that's it. Nothing else is in these organizations' control.

[–] optissima@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago

Okay now talk about vendor lock in after the thing goes close sourced and your friends are locked into it.