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"smaller countries don’t work together when near a larger/hostile neighbor" Classic propaganda, you are aware that US is alone much wealthier and has bigger population than Russia?

NATO existing had an excuse when there was a Warsaw Pact, which was created to balance the powers of eastern and western block. After the fall of soviet union, it is just Russia (and Belarus in this war) and NATO should have been disbanded because clearly Russia is no threat to Europe and certainly not US, it can't even win it's idiot war against Ukraine.

Classic propaganda on each side is just pointing out other sides flaws, not accepting that all of us live in countries run by imperialistic governments. NATO is involved in far many wars in fighting for their own interests around the World then Russia and are funding Israel and Saudi Arabia, two most horrific countries in the World. There is no excuse for NATO as there is no excuse for Russia.

It amazes me that after two World wars started by the west, people still believe in this idiotic propaganda like they are the victims. Both are horrible, one is far bigger then the other, but both are horrible.

The reason we don't have democracy is not because we don't fight enough with each other, but because we can't fight together for a common goal. 98% want a democracy and would prefer privacy. We need to stop letting politicians pin us against each other, but let us understand that despite our differences, we have a lot of common interest and that they are the actual enemy.

As some did in Russia during conscription for war in Ukraine, shoot the officer that made you fight in a war, not the unwilling solider on the other side of the border. People don't want to fight each other, it is politicians that throw other people's lives away while they sit far away from action, pretending to be actual war heroes.

I wouldn't if that was a viable option. Today it is not really possible to not use technology, even not using mainstream apps will make you socially isolated and unemployable (which due to lack of decent social services, is a death sentence)

I dont know why I cant reply to any of you in this thread. EDIT: I will do it here:

That’s a terrible line of thinking. Why not just use it till the end, if it ever comes?

It is perfectly reasonable to sail on a solid boat instead of jumping from one sinking ship to another.

I get that you want to promote XMPP but accusing others of corruption is not how to do it, unless you have solid proof of it. Do you have any sources suggesting Signal has sold data?

I never mentioned in my main post that Signal is selling data and I also clarified in this post what I was exactly referring to. It is unreasonable to put words in my mouth

Either you have some centralization to help facilitate its ease-of-use for customers, or it becomes more difficult to setup and use. Much like the rest of life, there are trade-offs.

I disagree. There are many decentralized apps that are easier to use than centralized apps, including Signal. It is simpler to create an account on a P2P app like Briar then a centralized app that requires a phone number like Signal.

See the difference is, you need to convince non-technical people to use xmpp. Most of my non-technical friends already have Signal, no convincing required.

Every XMPP server gets as much as data from your private messages as Signal does and since XMPP clients have an option for using Tor, unlike Signal, it requires even less trust with data.

The benefits of decentralized network compared to centralized are very significant and worth trying to convince your friends. There is no single point of failure. If Signal closes due to government pressure, you will need to convince them to another app anyway and at that time there might be another popular centralized app that will again close after certain amount of pressure. The only way out of this is by pushing decentralized apps and pushing them now, rather then latter.

Signal launched in 2014 and is open source. It is literally impossible for them to “sell out”. If the main developers want to stop developing it, it will simply be forked. Do you even understand what open source software is?

I understand what open source is and I fully understand the dangers of centralized apps as well. I have addressed these arguments in my main post already. If it gets forked we will need to again develop a new app and grow the userbase from scratch. It is far more reasonable to make a switch now to decentralized services. I am simply trying to explain to people the dangers of centralized apps, just like I did for reddit (which was also open source centralized app until 2017 and here we are on decentralized lemmy now). Seeing people fighting for decentralization, out of no possible personal goal, while defending centralized system run by small group of people that gain funding for it, should never sicken you. You should encourage people like me that try to warn you in time and let you know about alternatives instead of booing me off, like people did lemmy advocates on reddit before this recent scandal.

As you can see I spent a lot of time trying to teach people about this stuff to make an actual social change that will benefit us all, so please read about XMPP and think about it. Spread the word, because I can't possibly reach everybody.

XMPP clients support end to end encryption, so the servers only get encrypted messages. Also unlike Signal, XMPP clients support use of Tor to hide your IP.

It is important that you do bother, since the people that need it can't reach you otherwise while keeping their anonymity.

It goes hand in hand. We need to fight for privacy in order to have direct democracy

It is burning in part because any organized movement against social or economy change that is big enough is stop by interference by the government. You can't organize a blockade of streets or a riot it the FBI is in every chat that you use to organize a group of activists.

It might be a good idea to ask local schools to talk to every class about digital privacy, teacher might be into that. Telling them about examples, such as XMPP, might be very useful.

They don't need to be. I am talking about the security being in your hands, it is end to end encrypted and you can hide your IP behind tor, since unlike Signal, XMPP clients support use of Tor.

In less and less countries we are allowed to buy phones and sim cards without an ID. Phone network is a centralized system, controlled by governments, we can't depend on that for privacy. The main treat to privacy has always been the current ruling government, they fear privacy, because they fear people organizing against them.

I disagree. There are many FOSS decentralized projects that are still running today, including XMPP, that are doing fine and make even better and more secure software than Signal. All centralized privacy apps so far closed or started sharing data with governments. Statistically that is far more likely scenario then a popular FOSS app to lack devs.