Technology

Wired ran a smear campaign... Who paid for it?

I thought the same when I was reading the Wired article. Fuck Wired, extremely not very cash money of them.

Read the article by wired previously and it rubbed me the wrong way. I don't doubt that there are Nazis using it, but I also don't doubt that there are Nazis driving ford cars and I know a big chunk of fediverse traffic is Nazis. Outside of the comment from the SimpleX developers there wasn't any mention of it just being a tool, with plenty of traffic not even going through SimpleX hosted servers. Seems like it was meant to make readers think Nazi when they heard SimpleX. As apposed to reporting on Nazis moving from one tool to a better tool, e.g. Chevys got recalled so many people, some Nazis, bought fords instead.

I read the Wires article for the first time just now to try and understand this article. I don’t really think it attacks SimpleX at all. I think it states the fact that nazis have moved to the platform, the fact that SimpleX is a very private platform, the fact that SimpleX claims to prevent extremist content and growth, the fact that extremist content is being spread and growing, and the fact that SimpleX is unaware of claims. As someone who has been following this discourse for decades, this is the kind of thing that gets published. There is a balance between privacy and extremism. Privacy-focused individuals like myself will always focus on the privacy provided there are tools to combat the extremism (where applicable).

I feel like SimpleX is being defensive because their claims are not panning out. Their response calls out all of the things I feel were said in support of them while ignoring the actual critiques of their system. Not adding a backdoor? Great! That’s law and smart! Supporting groups of over a thousand posting extremist content?

We never designed groups to be usable for more than 50 users and we’ve been really surprised to see them growing to the current sizes despite limited usability and performance

SimpleX will remove such content if it is discovered. Much of the content that these terrorist groups have shared on Telegram—and are already resharing on SimpleX—has been deemed illegal in the UK, Canada, and Europe.

This is the stuff that needs response, not the privacy stuff Gilbert is arguably a fan of.

The response from SimpleX reads like a naive idea that just because there are Nazis here doesn't make us Nazis.

The Wired article by David Gilbert focusing on neo-Nazis moving to SimpleX Chat following the Telegram's changes in privacy policy is biased and misleading. By cherry-picking information from the report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Wired fails to mention that SimpleX network design prioritizes privacy in order to protect human rights defenders, journalists, and everyday users who value their privacy — many people feel safer using SimpleX than non-private apps, being protected from strangers contacting them.

Yes, privacy-focused SimpleX network offers encryption and anonymity — that’s the point. To paint this as problematic solely because of who may use such apps misses the broader, critical context.

Like, guy, the Nazis are using that idealistic vision of a shared private world and staining it with bigotry and hatred. If nothing is done, SimpleX is a Nazi network.