A BBC investigation reveals that Microsoft is permanently banning Palestinians in the U.S. and other countries who use Skype to call relatives in Gaza.

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[–] 80 points 2 years ago (5 children)

That's what you get for trusting Microsoft with anything...or Google...or Apple...or Facebook... stop tying your communication to these companies, they can pull the rug at any time.

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  • [–] 66 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    You have to trust someone with these communications, there is no free communication beyond face to face

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  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Matrix (federated) or Briar (multi-modal P2P) are both good options for getting rid of dependency on central organizations.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Still need an ISP. ISPs are pretty centralized and monolithic for lots of people.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    Unless you build your own, you have to trust your ISP to move packets, but you don't have to rely on any third party services or give them your personal info to use social media.

    Fully decentralized, open-source, and encrypted social networks exist. The only servers needed are your computer and the computers of the friends you communicate with. (See: Retroshare )

    They're just never going to get big because small, personal friend-to-friend networks can't compete with the network effects of centralized media and a never-ending torrent of dopamine on tap.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    trust yourself by hosting a matrix server

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    How do you call a landline number in a war zone through a matrix server?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    I was simply responding to the comment:

    You have to trust someone with these communications, there is no free communication beyond face to face

    the oh-so-clever smart alecks saying "whaddabout ISPs????" forgot about 2-way radio and meshnets

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (3 children)
  • [–] 26 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Signal is centrally hosted thus it's proverbial rug can be pulled.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Wait until you find out about internet service providers

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You can have more than one dumb pipe to push bits through, but if the ISP can read your network traffic then you have bigger problems than a single-point-of-failure.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Do you have more than one ISP?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    I'm very lucky in that regard. Not only do we have a local ISP and mobile service from a national carrier, but the electric co-op that provides our power just ran 2.5Gb/s fiber through the neighborhood and lets members use 200Mb/s on it for free.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (3 children)
  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    They didn't fuck up, they made a design choice about the scope of the app. Are they also fucking up by not blurring the messages on screen? After all someone could be looking over your shoulder without you realizing it. Maybe Signal should ship with spyglasses.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Wasn't Elon Musk trying to push Telegram?

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    That wouldn't shock me, but he was right that Signal was not addressing a known vulnerability. In fact, denying that it even was a vulnerability.

    For what it's worth, I trust Telegram even less than Signal. And at least Signal seems to be finally doing something about the problem.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    Yor right I will just use my billions of dollars to build a global internet infrastructure and make my posts on my own phone using the os I just built in my spare time for fun its not about trust its about necessity

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    We had an issue a couple days ago where we couldn't move a VIP to a new phone because the vendor wanted us to perform multi-factor auth via a device from two years ago. We had to roll back the service. Our entire lives are built atop fragile digital infrastructure with broken and poorly thought-out policies.

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