GenZedong

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.