Syncthing was made for this and has been around for almost a decade now.

Great post comrade. We need a /c/bestoflemmy community to highlight comments like this.

You have no idea what code their server is running, and its impossible to host your own signal since its a centralized service.

They went a whole year without publishing server code updates also, until they got a lot of backlash for it. Still, even publishing those is moot since its a centralized service.

What’s your normal standard of trust that a hosted, open source project is running the same code that they’ve made public?

Its a centralized service, you have no idea what code they’re running. You can’t host your own.

Also they went a whole year one time without publishing any server code updates until they got a lot of backlash for it. Still, since its centralized, it can’t be trusted to be running what they say they are.

PRODUCT PITCH: Hey everyone, I have a great idea for a secure / private messaging service.

It’s hosted in the US, subject to its pervasive spying laws including national security letters.

Also I need all your phone numbers.

Also no you can’t host this yourself, I run the only server.

Everyone who uses signal and supports it, is falling for this pitch.

Your phone number is the biggest metadata you could possibly give (it means your real identity, including your current address), and signal has it.

Not true at all, you still need a phone number to sign up.

Give me ssh access to their centralized server so I can verify this “sealed sender” idea is working.

Otherwise this is a “trust me bro” claim.

Something being easy to use has nothing to do with privacy or security. Apple, just like signal, also sold it’s products as secure, yet they also were forwarding all communications to the US government as part of the prism program.

Signal is not a stepping stone, it’s a honey pot. Best to avoid US services that require your identity entirely.

That isn’t true. You still need a phone number to sign up.

Your entire social network graphs, and timestamped message history.

No one can “prove” signal doesn’t store everything. If you give me ssh access to their server, then I can verify. Otherwise it’s “just trust me bro”.

We know it’s an op, RFA does damage control for signal:

Libby Liu, president of Radio Free Asia stated:

Our primary interest is to make sure the extended OTF network and the Internet Freedom community are not spooked by the [Yasha Levine’s critical] article (no pun intended). Fortunately all the major players in the community are together in Valencia this week - and report out from there indicates they remain comfortable with OTF/RFA.

https://dessalines.github.io/essays/why_not_signal.html

• In a typical example of proletarian police accountability, the CPC sentences a police officer to death for killing a pregnant woman in a restaurant in southern China.
• Why do Chinese billionaires keep ending up in prison? Why are many billionaires and CEOs going missing? China sentences Ex-Chairman of a major bank, guilty of embezzling ~$100M USD, to death in 2019.

To do this effectively, they’d have to ban facebook/whatsapp, which are the two most popular chat apps in Europe.

Lahey and Hunter S Thompson don’t seem all that different.

I don’t have the original source, I only found a few others online that repeated her statement.

After the red scares and anti-communist purges in the US the 30s-40s, no writers or anyone in hollywood could come out and say they were communist or socialist. Many of them like Roddenberry were only able to push communitarian values and do societal critiques of racism, nationalism, and selfishness via sci-fi.

Star trek is unique among US media for telling a hopeful story about a communist / post-capitalist future, but these already had a long tradition in the USSR. This article gets into it a bit more:

• Star trek and its debt to revolutionary socialism.

Picard speaking to a whiny businessman: we’ve grown out of our infancy.

It is kinda a weird name. Lwaxana is one of the best characters tho, I love her episodes.

That one where she falls in love with the guy whose culture it is to kill their retirees, that one is really sad.

Wrong.

Is China State Capitalist?

• The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2 The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.
• Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
• Is modern day china communist? Is it staying true to communist values?
• Didn’t China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn’t it liberalize its economy? Is China’s drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
• Is the CPC committed to communism?
• The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
• The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
• Tsinghua University- Is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics real socialism, or is it state Capitalism?
• Isn’t China revisionist for having a capitalist sector of the economy, and working with capitalists? Why isn’t it fully planned like the USSR was?
• Castro on why both China and Vietnam are socialist countries.