foss people: "discord is evil!

[steff@soc.femme.cat]

@YKantRachelRead@social.treehouse.systems There's no such thing as "ethical capitalism"

[ykantrachelread@social.treehouse.systems]

@steff it's so funny to me that the people claiming that we have an ethical mandate to move off discord are directing people primarily to:

1) Matrix, a platform that self-admittedly sells their services to cops and fascists; and

2) Stoat/Revolt, which is made by AI slopcoders and has the same problems with age verification

and FOSS evangelists wonder why nobody takes them seriously as arbiters of ethical decision-making

[thejessiekirk@ohai.social]

@YKantRachelRead Honest question, what would you recommend if any please? These problems are deal breakers for me... @steff

[ykantrachelread@social.treehouse.systems]

@thejessiekirk @steff honestly, in the absence of any workable alternatives, I'm just staying on Discord and making secondary accounts elsewhere when/if people I want to stay in contact with decide to move.

that'll change when there's actually a viable option out there that people actually move to, but currently most of my friends are on Discord, and I go where my friends go.

[steff@soc.femme.cat]

@YKantRachelRead@social.treehouse.systems We desperately need a user centered chat platform. Forever, we had irc but it didn't keep up and then there was xmpp which didn't keep pace, and now we find ourselves at the mercy of corpos. I use Matrix, and generally support it's continued development, but it's barely out of beta.

Honestly, I feel like any decent encryption system is going to be adopted by govt and fascists (this was true when we were all stealing and distributing pgp code). The question is always is the code publicly available for review and audit, and can we modify it to improve it or fit our needs.

[steff@soc.femme.cat]

@YKantRachelRead@social.treehouse.systems @thejessiekirk@ohai.social I haven't decided whether or not to shutter my Discord account, but things this week are prompting me to start a re-build or build a new trans friendly matrix server...

[spacecheesewizard@woof.tech]

@YKantRachelRead I have found this past year that there is no goldilocks chat system. Everything has its compromises. While I wouldn't use Element, Matrix seems to be the best bet being a federated service.

As for internet practices go, don't be saying shit that could get you in trouble in the first place. I grew up with that in the early 2000's and it's still just as true today.

[steff@soc.femme.cat]

@SpaceCheeseWizard@woof.tech @YKantRachelRead@social.treehouse.systems

don't be saying shit that could get you in trouble in the first place.

I won't go into the ridiculous nature of this statement. But suffice to say, "trouble" is as vague a description for what's being written into law. Eg. KOSA (the kids online safety act) has multiple bipartisan sponsors in the US congress, and would essentially classify trans people - and their content - as porn. So the very notion that we should simply be more self-censorious online is absurd when there are major efforts underway to classify our very existence as prohibited content.

[spacecheesewizard@woof.tech]

@steff Way to take my statement and add onto things I didn't say in such bad faith. When I wrote that, I was intending things such as threats to others, deserving or not seeing as that tends to be where many bans come down.

KOSA is completely bullshit and should not ever be a law. People deserve to talk about their sexuality, porn and so on in peace as it doesn't hurt other people. The conversation was in regards to encrypted chatting services, in which people do need to be mindful that anything they post can come back to them. That should be standard procedure for assumption of risk. I am already combating KOSA-like legislation in my state and on the federal level with my representatives. I don't owe any further explanation.

[steff@soc.femme.cat]

@SpaceCheeseWizard@woof.tech Then I think you would agree that there is no way one can self-censor themselves to avoid govt or reactionary scrutiny. And that both TechSec and OpSec are critical components to managing any user's online risk. And e2e encryption is one such component of a reasonable TechSec operational stack. I am not suggesting that e2e encryption is a requirement for all, but nor am I suggesting that utilizing it is somehow pointless or an exersize in paranoia. Rather, the it's up to the user base to decide upon their own risk tolerance and choose a platform accordingly. I am, as you can see, generally opposed to the idea of blaming users for their own oppression for failing to self-censor. Preemptive censorship and drives to create a "Right Think" online culture are - at that very best - Orwellian exercises.