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this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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Privacy
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
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- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
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- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
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Because privacy and convenience are two extreme opposites and you can only go so far in the privacy direction before you start losing everything. Discord just works a million times better as a public forum/community than Matrix and is much more easily accessible to everyone.
There is a limit. I am privacy conscious but I still use all Google Services for example, because they actually provide me with a better web, work, mobile and entertainment experiences. Similarly, I prefer Discord for big communities with channels, server bots and topics, over Matrix.
Edit: all those people saying we can't be privacy conscious and use Google Services at the same time: yes you can. Their services literally make my life better so I will keep using them, but I keep what I share with them to the absolute minimum. I go into their settings and disable everything I can about tracking and ads personalization (even if they still track me, I do my best not to be). You can surely still be privacy conscious using non-private products. Being extremist is not how you convince average joes to think about privacy, nor by telling them to give up all they use for unknown (for them) alternatives.
Matrix is pretty convenient. They've got a great mobile and web app experience.
What exactly does discord have that mateix doesn't? They both have threading, replies, reacts, etc.
But that's cyclic reasoning. Nothing that you need/want will be on matrix if you (and everyone else) does not think it's worth to make what you need/want be in matrix..
I don't need EVERYTHING to be in Matrix, just the things I'm interested in. So I'm happy when I see a push to have those specific things there. This is the same argument as to why I don't use Reddit anymore, despite Lemmy/Kbin having only a fraction of the content.
It also helps the fact that Matrix is very flexible when it comes to mirroring/proxying other protocols. I can easily access IRC communities from Matrix, for example. The integration in that direction is nicer than requiring discord channels to add bots that parrot an IRC chat.
Yes, but the question is: what does matrix need to establish itself as a solid alternative?
You can't answer that by saying "people don't use it, change that" because that's something only people can change, not matrix, that'd lead to a cyclic problem.
Specially when that's given as a counterpoint to justify not wanting to do the change for "this community". It's contradictory to want its popularity to be changed but accept the lack of change alone as a valid reason to justify your communities not changing.
I don't think EVERYONE needs to understand / know about it. I mean, I remember when I was young most people had no idea how to use the internet (hell, they didn't even know how to program a VHS), yet I was perfectly happy using that technology.
I only need a specific set of people and specific communities to be there for it to be worth it. Like I said: I no longer use reddit, even though the fediverse has only a small fraction of the content existing in reddit... I would have expected people in the fediverse would be more receptive to unpopular but technologically/ethically superior alternatives.
How and who is addressing this at large scale? I mean uptake of foss vs proprietary, privacy compliant vs not etc... It's the same story for signal vs WhatsApp, when one sees the majority of relatives using WhatsApp, s/he would then drop signal altogether or keep it alongside for the one geek that uses it. I am in this situation and it defeats me that not much people care and chose convenience over concerns that I find legitimately vital, or in any case not trivial. I quit using Facebook/Instagram 2 years ago seeing what it does to society and am better off mentally, but the interactions I have through mastodon and pixelfed are zero, although my meta pages are still up with these links
Could you elaborate?
Each matrix chat is it's own channel. To admin multiple channels as you would on discord you just have to set up multiple matrix chats held by a common owner.
There is a mod role but you're right that you can't make custom ones though I honestly don't see much need to for a simple privacy community.
And I think matrix has voice now.
But yah I get what you're saying. Thank you for the elaboration.
i dont think anyone using google services is "privacy conscious"
Well they're privacy "conscious" but still feel trapped. IMHO the first sentence is even more telling namely "privacy and convenience are two extreme opposites" as a justification. It's not necessarily true, namely one can use... well pretty much anything BUT Google or Meta product and have a perfectly convenient experience. They are just used to it, so amalgamating what they are used to to what is objectively convenient for all.
Maybe some day in the near future they will decide to go from being conscious to active about it and I can tell in advance, they are going to feel a lot better, but it requires more than introspection, it requires action.
non-privacy services have more money=have more and probably better people to work on them=better quality
Please stop using questionable logic to promote large companies, they do not need your free help for more marketing. There is even research showing it's false https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/when-31-4-the-effect-of-gift-salience-on-employee-effort-in-an-online-labor-market in many ways https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672231159781
There is no correlation between pay and quality work. I'm genuinely shocked this is even an argument held on a platform running on FLOSS.
Some might be more "convenient" on having an easier on-boarding, and even that is questionable, but regardless that's not the same as "better quality".
i said more and probably better programmers
Yes, Google even read your mails, it's sooo private. Its right that Google offers good services respect quality, but its a privacy nightmare and nowadays there are very good alternatives out there, even when they are also propietary. Eg, YT is maybe the best streaming platform, but full of ads, clickbaits, tracking and other crap, now even blocks videos if you use some adblockers. Because of this a lot of people translade subscriptions and playlists to Odysee, also privacy but way better respect privacy and few ads (online service of IMDB)
Discord is certainly not the best but also not the worse (see Reddit, X, Fakebook, WhatsCrap, etc), but offers a lot of features which other platforms don't have.
Privacy in internet finish when you go online, the user can only patch the worst leaks more or less succesfull, beginning with the worst privacy and security hole, himself. Read the TOS and PP of an soft or service you want to use, check the sites with Blacklight, Webkoll, UrlVoid, Exodus Privacy, AV or similar, even if it is FOSS, which no neccesarly is a security or privacy feature, tracking APIs from Google, Amazon, Facebook and M$ are also FOSS and included in a lot of FOSS in this Microsoft site called GitHub.
You don't need a tin foil hat, but common sense in the internet.