I don't think the US cares about who exactly pays them back.
It's not really comparable. Duolingo is a nice game and all, but if you want to get serious about language learning (having a vocabulary > 10000 words) Anki + example sentences is the way to go.
@ArbiterXero Exactly, if you use any other provider other than the normal Signal server, you're separate from the rest. You have no other choice to agree on all policy decisions (e.g. requirement for a phone number on registration) or loose all your contacts there. This is separate concern from privacy, but to protect against enshittification and the like, interoperability and compliance with internet standards is absolutely crucial. Let's not promote the usage walled garden apps.
@mishimaenjoyer @iturnedintoanewt What are you talking about? They are lobbying *against* this EU regulation spreading fears that it would 'break encryption' (which is bullshit btw, since federated E2EE can work fine as shown by XMPP/OMEMO. You just need to standardize.) If WhatsApp and the like wanted to federate they were always free to do so, no lobbying required.
@papalonian @possiblylinux127 They say the internet never forgets, but still... An overwhelming percentage of content on the internet will be lost to time, because websites die constantly and most things aren't archived. It's also yet to be seen if archive sites like archive.org survive or not.
@mojo @SummerBreeze Conversations is gratis on F-Droid. Standards compliance and interoperability is a lot more important than slightly more rounded message boxes in a walled-garden app, that doesn't give you the freedom to run our own server or choose your own providers.
@baseless_discourse The gold standard has always been XMPP. It's the IETF Internet Standard for messaging, no walled gardens, ability to self-host, no phone numbers required and modern clients use the same end-to-end encryption protocol as Signal does.
This looks like a SMBC before coloring.