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SMH @ activists using techno-fascist platforms for communications during an operation subject to state-actor level interference. I thought we recognised and acknowledged this problem 15-20 years ago already.
https://xcancel.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1965431513320927706
With all respect to a privacy advocates(I'm one), but blaming them on using WhatsApp is besides the point, these people are not trying to hide their activities, or locations, and many of them are not tech-saavy, the shame is on the cess pool that is Meta, and all the other goons...this is so fucked up on so many levels.
blaming them on using WhatsApp is besides the point
WhatsApp admins are explicitly interfering with a public protest in order to satisfy a genocidal foreign government.
This is at least as big a deal as TikTok censorship of anti-China posters. It's just on behalf of a US ally, so we're defending it rather than threatening to interfere in their business practices in turn.
the shame is on the cess pool that is Meta
Who appoints WhatsApp administration heads if not Meta? It's the same picture.
not tech-saavy
that's like owning a classic sports car and refusing to learn the basics of maintenance. just a bad time.
yeah, shame on meta like always, but if you are going against an empire, you should at least make sure your critical communications are not on the empire's servers.
I don't think Meta's the one they're going against, here
meta is one of the surveillance arms of the empire that makes the genocide possible in the first place.
of course they will cut them off.
relying on whatsapp for dissenting
more leftists could really use understanding computers. how the fuck can you go in such a mission full of the empire's tracking devices. using whatsapp shows there wasn't even thought put into it.
Keep in mind the tweet refers to the group chat as used by the flotilla to communicate with their European supporters, not necessarily for their internal communications.
communicating with your supporters in a mostly political mission is very important. meta has deleted the account of political activists in my country before too and it does hinder their efforts.
They literally broadcast their location publicly on their website.
This public tracking is the only reason they didn't all get murdered on the last boat
tracking doesn't only mean location.
and the power they get is not only tracking. its shutting down their communications too.
Maybe the aim of the flotilla was to just make people aware that there are activists who are worried about gaza. Just to create media buzz.
yes, but i don't think handing all their communications (and possibly much more) to the entity they want to pressure is helping though.
Meta is complicit in the genocide
Not the first genocide, either
Amazing that they weren't using Signal for comms outside their group, but for internal comms it's even more amazing they weren't using something like Meshtastic.
Amazing that they weren’t using Signal
I wouldn't rule it out. But you can't do public comms over Signal.
it’s even more amazing they weren’t using something like Meshtastic.
Again, I wouldn't rule it out. But if I'm on a public group that's very likely compromised by the IDF, I'm not going to announce all the other protocols they need to block.
He's just reporting one avenue that's been closed to the protesters by a corporate entity that is now complicit in genocide.
Can only say a person who has never used meshtastic.
Source: The struggle.
Not sure what you mean. I use Meshtastic a lot, both as a hobby but also for remote sensor reading and herd tracking. Works a treat.
I know this is off topic, but herd tracking? Critters? I'm always curious about people's lives.
Cows.
A friend of mine was taking over his family farm with access to open moorland for grazing and as an experiment we wanted to see if we could implement tracking without giving a monthly small fortune to a company for a proprietary product or noisy polluting methods like a helicopter. BLE beacons are cheap and long-lasting so each cow got one, and we bodged together about twenty solar powered Meshtastic nodes with GPS that were small enough to be worn on their collars (since the cows tend to heard together only one in the group needs a node), plus another dozen we could install at choke points on the land (old gates, land bridges, etc) the cows were likely to traverse. The nodes were like this, but smaller and shitter. The nodes were programmed to report every time they saw a BLE beacon nearby, with the mobile ones also reporting their own GPS location, all being fed into Home Assistant for mapping. I just checked and apparently, aside from a couple of storm-damaged fixed nodes and replacement batteries it's still going strong after two years.
That's cool as hell
Thank you for telling me about meshtastic!
For anyone like me who never heard of it before:
I use WhatsApp cautiously with friends who still refuse to jump over to Signal (let alone Matrix or Session). But it's def mind blowing to read an activist group was relying on it for organizing. Reminds me of FB being used for organizing G20 and BLM demos -_-
Considering their entire marketing campaign is "nobody, not even WhatsApp can see your messages," I can see how folks would fall for that.
But they can see the metadata!
I think a lot of non-techie people only know signal from the Trump admin using it illegally earlier in the year. In a lot of people's minds because of that they think Signal = insecure because they don't get the nuances of why using it in that specific context -- on personal phones, using a third party app, with a random journalist in the mix -- was bad, but that for most people it's still one of the best options. WhatsApp on the other hand has a lot of marketing around it and if you didn't know that Meta is Facebook I think some people wouldn't even realise who the owners are.
I had a friend who heard signal was backdoored and that a regular old cell call was more secure. Had to correct that
wasn't it telegram that got hacked?
also i vaguely remember the signal ceo getting sued or something because they couldn't/wouldn't let some government body read someone's messages, because it's encrypted
All the more reason to use Signal.
At least they werent organising on discord, maybe its intentional to send a message to people about meta
A sad reality of political activism is the inability of many groups to follow proper opsec.
I mean, based on the source, they're still even on Twitter which is a lot more overtly fascist than WhatsApp. So…yeah…
There are some unofficial pages on the fediverse: https://mastodon.bida.im/@globalsumudflotilla
But yeah no links or mentions to mastodon and federated platforms on their website
That's fucked
Maybe consider Signal instead?
or like any opsec at all.
WhatsApp Supports starving children to death
Meta*
This is why you don't use whatsapp
This is yet another reason why you don't use whatsapp
ftfy
another reason why not to use whatsapp? for all that is good, don't use meta or any corporate technofascist company. there are better options.
The number of people who are like "are you on Whatsapp? " fir secure conversations....
Yeah, that's curious. I'd think they'd be prepared with Signal at the very least and some backup self-hosted channel, as well as cameras and backup cell hotspots.
So happy not to be using Whatsapp...
Did they select Whatsapp as a main communication channel and direct their supporters to it?
Or did they just start a group chat to reach out to supporters who were already on the app?