And they put people in house arrest, because… ? I just saw tanks being transported on public-roads today. So the reason couldn’t be to covertly move weapons: that goes on in public, in broad daylight and that transit sits alongside vans delivering ice-creams to convenience stores. So, the big cabal wanted to put people under house arrest… to do what?

Pick up a book. Pandemics aren’t new and neither is the orchestrated response to them by governing bodies. History can be a good reference.

Yes. I am just tired, comrade. Once can argue about the tone, but the reality is there needs to be a rectification on computer-education on a scale that only a government can enact. I can not do it. I can just rebuke.

Juvenile views do need to be rebuked. If you believe you can regain a portion of control back via payment to an entity, whilst still living in ignorance of the substrate you wish to increase control over you are a moron. You are merely paying for a belief.

I can not understand the user’s insistence on ignorance. All the users here are aware, to differing degrees, of the abuses that are inflicted on them due to this ignorance, yet there is a crowd who adamantly refuse to use their eyes; they wish merely to do the same things they were doing before, with no change in their own behaviors. They will continue to be abused.

I think the reality is they have no interest in the topic.

I think entertainment is a very low priority. Pushed to comment on the topic I would say it’s actually a great waste of time, regardless of political orientation.

It’s isolating and manipulative. It subverts the local culture and brainwashes the viewer into believing that what is seen often on the screen is a reflection of real life norms. It is not, but when the majority of a citizenry consume so much foreign media it does shift real cultural norms. This is the soft-power of cultural products created for export.

Turn America’s netflix off. Turn off whatever pornography you preference. Move your body. Get some sunshrine and play with your comrades.

I genuinely believe television was a mistake. I can not see anything of its legacy to feel warm towards; there is no good here.

A VPN does not protect the user from the type of sophisticated mass-surveillance that exists now and will only become increasingly more sophisticated without political critique. Users who are confused about the criticism of a capitalist-company when its benefactors are known to further entrench a beneficial political-ideology are simpletons who do not grasp the relationship between the Western-democracies and its political mass-surveillance organs that go on to spawn the private-surveillance companies that do get public critique (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Palantir, et al.).

No, a VPN is not better than nothing. Do more. Do better. Adopt real solutions like GNUnet. Liberate your computers with free software.

inb4 simpletons just want to use a VPN to watch mah netflix. Ok boomer.

You’re an incurious git that thinks you can pay for something contrary to what the market sells. I pay, therefore I believe the marketing material.

A centralized suit of tools sold by one capitalist-company does not make that company a comrade. They fight for their own capitalist-interests and the goal is a market-monopoly that enriches their owners. They are not open. They are not open to inter-network collaboration. They are capitalist and they hate user freedom.

From the drivel you’ve typed Google, Microsoft, et al will ‘meet 95%’ of your needs. “But I pay.” “The marketing material says they’re private.” Are you a child?

Proton: you can have privacy only if you pay us and use our proprietary tools exclusively. Press X to doubt.

You can have privacy now, for free. You’re too incurious to use those tools and liberate yourself though.

Try a thought experiment: Alice and Bob each have computers (super-computers in pocket-form); they also are subscribers that grant them access to the majority of the internet. They want to send each other ‘e-mails’. The market says you can only do that if you pay a third-party (or if you ‘consent’ to electronic-surveillance from a third-party that provides e-mail functionality for ‘free’). Are either option true? How could Alice, with her internet-connected super-computer, send Bob a message to Bob’s internet-connected super-computer. Both computers are functional 24/7/365. Hm… Nope, can’t be done. I need to pay Proton to use e-mail and for my pocket super-computer to have a calendar… oh look, the owner is filthy rich. Learning to use a computer is too hard. Let’s make him richer. Computer users are a joke.

Consume the ads like a good corpo-drone. Lobby the unicode consortium to have your emoji added/removed because you have no control over your computer; you have no property. Drone does what the computer says to do. Consume ads. Beep bop.

A lot of money is made through the ‘web’; the vast majority of users access the web via a browser: control the browser and you can direct that insane flow of capital. Which is actually a bit strange, because you’d think you’d get a lot of competing vendors, but the global market is served by two really: Google or Firefox.

Google basically shapes the web. They propose new standards and everyone has to go along with them, because they don’t have a choice: Google has their own web-browser. If the other’s don’t like proposal X Google can go ahead and implement it anyway. Now your users will claim your browser is broken, because “it works on Chrome”.

Web-devs are just people–lazy and stupid. As memories fade some devs think the web is “Google Chrome” and just design for that, which can make it incompatible with other browsers. “But bro, 90% of my traffic comes from Google Chrome. I’m going to lock in and dial it up to 100%. Hail Google!”

Capital accumulates and now you find yourself in a technocracy, because you were previously fooled into believing capitalism is the way.

I recently read a witty remark that went something like this: two nations were destroyed via British colonialism. They eventually revolted and threw their colonialists out. One chose the capitalist road, the other communism. Both have obscenely large populations: China and India. Which one would you prefer to live in?

Ah… the point I was trying to make, is there’s an obscene amount of money on ‘the web’. Users are seen as chattel to be sold and brought. I’ve seen glimpses of how laypeople use the internet: it is horrible. It’s more accurately described as how tech-companies abuse their users. The more abuse you can get away with the more capital you can accrue. It leads to a general trend of web-browsers getting caught up in ‘controversies’ and general degeneracy. There’s a lot of money in this game and tech-corps will attempt to overthrow governments to maintain their monopolies. But sure, let’s pretend the browser is just an innocent thing used to look up cute cat pictures:

This post is acrid; I’m venting. You’ll probably feel attacked.

I’d like a serious answer, but I’ll probably will only get replies from petulant adult-children though. That’s not a provocative jab; it’s a statement of disgust. The whole consumer side of tech is largely adult-children who fail to take any responsibility. This isn’t even new. From day dot commercial software vendors have been exploiting you.

the market only has two offerings: Google’s Android and Apple’s <whatever their mobile-computer O.S. is called>

Does no one see an issue with this? A duopoly? It’s not even one market in one country, it’s nearly a duopoly on a global scale.

get mad at increasing surveillance by surveillance companies (Google, Apple, et al.)

scream at internet, for the Nth time

Just don’t use them.

but my Discord my Bank apppppp~

You’re all willingly giving up your autonomy whilst crying about it. Why? Just why? The alternatives aren’t good enough for your pampered ass? Stick an external battery to the pinephone and suddenly it lasts for two days.

That’s too goofy; what would my friends think of me?

Install GrapheneOS on models that support it.

Too many buttons to click; it should all be done for me. Waaaaaa~

Too hard to escape the Google/Apple ecosystem

Are you all for real? Pressing buttons on your computer is too hard? Holy shit.

Computers are machines for war; if your computers aren’t liberated they’re working for someone else. You pay for the hardware. You pay for the software. You pay for the electricity. You pay for the data-connection. You create content/data. They take it all. They keep the profits. They don’t even pay nominally for the labour.

Shoshana Zuboff will claim it’s surveillance-capitalism. I claim she’s a reactionary reacting to a new domain of exploitation under capitalism that the intelligentsia were previously protected from. It’s not new; it does not need a clunky prefix: it’s still just capitalism. Only now this particular type of exploitation can be done invisibly, silently and on an industrial scale that spans the globe.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, et al kills. If you use these technology companies you contribute to sophisticated targeting-software used by militaries to kill. You’re not a goofy innocent, just wanting to post ‘selfies’ to Facebook on a Google-Android mobile-computer. You’re willfully ignorant at this point.

Putting aside ideals of privacy: economically you’re being exploited with no nominal compensation at all. You’ve been trained to grovel and you wonder why tech-bros have a god-complex as you use their software obeying them absolutely.

You’re either free or a slave. Maybe drone is more apt: computer says go here; computer says take photo; computer says input real-name of person photographed; computer says buy this; computer says don’t think–just accept–just agree–obey! The computer will set you free!

Addendum: the frustrating thing is this is a matter of consent. It can be halted entirely, but it requires users to make a choice: reject proprietary software. Think about what the software is actually doing with those CPU cycles you pay for. Stop donating data, capital and other resources to these surveillance networks.

Removed by mod

He blew the whistle because the surveillance apparatus was surveilling Americans; everyone else was fair game. The complete rejection he suffered from the Americans might’ve morphed into “mass surveillance is generically bad”, which now catches non-Americans too, but he’s an American dog who got a fright when he saw the reality outside propaganda reels. The system continues unabated. ACAB.

Most of the world is capitalist and poor.

Sports coverage is not news; there’s always a sports segment in every ‘news’ program. Entertainment masquerading as news. Kill Rupert Murdoch and his progeny.

Kill all those who hold obscene wealth whilst depriving their sisters and brothers their human rights. Vanquish the landlords, the economic speculators & the remote-owners who make profit in leisure. You should not even miss them for you do not even know who they are.

The vast majority will never see those they labour for or those they support through legalised exploitation in the paying of rents. This anonymity and remoteness of the owning class allows them to be cruel and vicious in their actions. It’s also a one way mirror: for the working class must be surveilled in ever more obscene detail. Through technical innovation you will be deprived another fundamental human right! The right to privacy. Every moment of your life becomes their data.

For the working class there is no loss. Until we are all free there is work to be done. Those that shirk that responsibility can be thrown to the wayside.

It appears that China is offering a bold future, whilst Western democracies are decaying and squabbling amongst themselves; their political class espousing nothing but the projected degradation of living conditions for the masses. Social spending cut back! No money for that. Wages declining! Too burdensome on business. Collapsing population demographics! Import foreign labour from previously ravished and plundered colonies.

Housing crisis! What housing crisis? I have fifty properties! Cost of living crisis! Shut up! More of the same! More of the same! Continue doing the same thing! Plunder! Exploit! Profit! War!

Even if you want to spin it all as ambitious rhetoric then China is the only ambitious nation. It has no peers. The future is truly China’s to take.

The future is built in China.

I’m also in favor of hardware passkeys & 2FA. They help alleviate vendor-lock in and are more secure.

Usually only YubiKey is mentioned. I do prefer NitroKey’s aims of transparency. If other users know of other vendors please list them.

From what you’ve written you’ve conflated separate things. Passkeys are not related to biometrics. Google wants your biometrics. Full stop. Google is a surveillance mega-corp. Full stop. Why are you still using Google? or Microsoft, which you clearly are uncomfortable with? That’s rhetorical. Don’t answer that. No one’s interested in your pissing and moaning for why you can’t leave this abusive relationship. Passkeys say nothing about biometrics. They’re unrelated.

The surveillance corps implementation of passkeys will always be in their interest. Hardware passkeys are superior to device-locked passkeys that are stored in a TPM. Such schemes are nothing but vendor-lock ins. Oh, I don’t want to buy a new phone; all my logins are stored on this phone. It’s too much hassle. I can’t leave Google’s Android, it contains all my credentials securely. Hardware passkeys have no such friction. I can use them on any hardware.

The surveillance corps software-implementation is dodgy too. They’ve opted not to use some of the spec, which objectively weakens security. They’ll claim it’s for user-ease and whatever else they want to spout. The ease of silently using passkeys to access data they shouldn’t, or to migrate the users passkeys to their new Google android phone–only Google android can migrate you to a new Google android device. You need Google android. Hit me harder daddy.

I mean, really, what are you trying to ask? You clearly don’t trust these surveillance-companies. Passkeys are a good. Just like cryptography is just maths. There’s no issue with the maths or passkeys. The issue lies in these mega-surveillance-corps that parasitically extract value from your computers–whether that’s a desktop, laptop, server, smartphone or some other mobile-computer. You pay for the hardware, electricity, data-connection and you labour on them and these corps take everything from you. That’s why Alphabet, Facebook and whatever other shit software-company has valuations in the billions or trillions.

Security is something they want. They want to be the sole holder of your information. They want a market monopoly. Strong cryptography helps them do that. Much like how a serial rapist and the police both like steel bars: one to keep their victims locked up in, the other to keep their victims locked up in too… huh… point is everyone likes strong cryptography.

I would like to direct the reader to Yacy. It’s a free-software, self-hosted search-engine. Users have the option to peer with other users, creating a larger decentralised search engine.

Build it. Use it. Promote it. Finance it. Bupf it, for short. Build the future you want or piss and moan endlessly.

That’s romanticizing history. When communication via post became economically feasible for a large number of citizens its surveillance began–in the 19th century. I’ll make a more contentious point: religion played the role of what modern-states now call domestic intelligence. The state’s desire to control (that’s what surveillance is about) has always been there. It’s an intrinsic aspect of a state. Technology only allows what would have been economically unfeasible to now enter the realm of feasibility.

What one should take away from this article is that: Signal is a central point that can be compromised silently; Signal has the power to revoke your access to its software at any time (leaving the Canadian ‘market’). Both point to Signal’s users being rubes. They are not in control of the software and are subjugated by a private dictatorship branded ‘Signal’. Users should not be concerned about the government’s will here (it’s the same; it has not changed). Users should be concerned that the private dictatorship–that they paradoxically hold dear–is a private dictatorship.

Signal users yearn to be subjugated and told sweet lies.

I would say liberate yourself first. Buy computers that can or already are liberated (that is to say computers running libre software). Once liberated you will understand how it is done and can then teach others how to do it too.

You should not be concerned about politics here. Already the people are rendered mute under Western democracies.

Even if you don’t think it’s folly to persuade others, what are you persuading them of? To use software that you yourself don’t use? Build it. Use it. Promote it. Can’t write software? Donate to the orgs that are writing libre software. Can’t run it? Haven’t you liberated your computer? If you have you can run it. Can’t promote it? Are you not able to communicate?

Ditch Apple and Google. Use GrapheneOS. Use a linux powered mobile-computer like Pine Phone. Use encrypted overlay networks to communicate over the internet like i2p (it has a Java implementation and a C++ implementation), tor, hyphanet or my personal favorite: GNUnet. Heck, use all of them!

I will preemptively address an infantile critique of GrapheneOS: it uses Google branded hardware. File off the logo if it disturbs you so much. This critique fails to address the reality: hardware is subsidized by technological behemoths like Google because their product is not the hardware, but the software that is built off data collected by the hardware. An argument could be made that taking advantage of that subsidization maliciously damages Google more than purchasing non-subsidized hardware. Something to think about. Regardless, Foxconn makes both Google Pixels and Apple Iphones. The branding blinds people of the reality.

Anyway… rambles, rambles. It’s not about convincing others, it’s about you doing what you think is the correct thing to do.