Best privacy chat apps

[marcusquinn]

Also, what are these high energy "things the miners are replacing"?

Bankers.

[jdaviescoates]

@marcusquinn said in Best privacy chat apps:

Bankers

Yeah. Thankfully, whilst most banks are still investing in climate catastrophe, not all are.

I do personal banking with Nationwide and business banking with Starling, neither of which invest in any fossil fuel companies nor projects.

https://bank.green is a useful website for checking how much your bank has invested in fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement.

The worst offender in UK/ Europe are Barclay's

See also:

The Banking on Climate Chaos report:
https://www.ran.org/publications/banking-on-climate-chaos-2022/

Recent issue of Ethical Consumer magazine on banking:
https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/sites/default/files/flipbook/Issue186/

I'd suggest moving money to more ethical banks (and pensions if you have one, see eg https://makemymoneymatter.co.uk/ ) is a far more effective action than using all the insanely wasteful web3 stuff

Probably also worth mentioning:
https://www.ethex.org.uk/
https://www.abundanceinvestment.com/
https://www.wearemoneymovers.com/

Happy ethical banking everyone!

[marcusquinn]

@jdaviescoates This we agree on.

I wouldn't worry about the "energy costs" of PoW blockchains, a large amount of the excess heat can be reclaimed and re-used, and it is motivating and diverting more funds to renewable energy investment, because ultimately, cleaner energy is also cheaper energy for all.

[necrevistonnezr]

@marcusquinn I highly doubt that the average miner running 100 AMD cards re-uses any of the excessive heat.

It‘s just a stupid system under which numbers are crunched that don’t need crunching and which gave rise to money laundering and cybercrime at an unprecedented level. There’s not one ransomware attack without cryptocurrency involved.

I don’t know why less oversight in finance matters would benefit anyone. And is there one aspect of cryptocurrency that has benefited society as a whole?

[A Former User]

This is off topic...

But I will say that crypto tends to be defended by those who make abnormal amounts of money off of it. Also miners can have a special corner of hell for the GPU shortage. Web3 is not needed. Its just a way to ram "bLoCkChAiN" into everything. Decentralization does not and will never need blockchain. Source: activitypub.

[marcusquinn]

@necrevistonnezr I heated my whole house with GPU mining this winter, so self-proclaiming my own confirmation-bias.

I like learning, and I like primary source information. I could have taken any bunch of opinions, regurgitated them and moved on, but I just like to know — and I'm satisfied that I can make my home-heating consistently profitable to fund other hosting and research projects.

I guess a significant part of the developing world, that now has an alternative currency to trade with, might be voting with their usage, and good for them.

If there were no utility, I'm sure the costs in chips & power would not be funded indefinitely, get here we are, 10-years in and mining, trading, and all sorts of other applications both exist and grow.

Like most things, none of us truly knows the future, and in many ways how the present works either, but I do like the idea that self-determination can survive and thrive in the face of accelerating AI capabilities — for which, soon enough, these public words are merely food for their modelling, and the utility of anything online will only be as good as the trust of either the few or the many that control the network we've taken for granted as being secure enough to rely on.

Maybe we're just being tricked into generating the computing power that an artificial hive-mind craves, who knows?

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The Sun, 1991

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Daily Mail, December 5, 2000

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[LoudLemur]

@jdaviescoates said in Best privacy chat apps:

@marcusquinn like what? What are they/ have they replaced. Nothing as far as I'm aware.

A single Bitcoin transaction uses more energy than an average U.S. household uses in 2 months!

I mean, perhaps you're referring to how much banks still invest in fossil fuels? But if you think web3 is going to replace banks any time soon you are wrong

A 10-year old iPhone could process more transactions per second than the entirety of the Bitcoin network it's so insanely slow.

Wow! That is amazing. I had no idea.

[marcusquinn]

@LoudLemur That's the wonder of statistics. Rarely are they every questioned, and you can always find one that supports your argument.

I'm not saying anything is true, if you found it online, there seems to be an increasing chance it is biased. I'm just saying, there's a fact for every occasion now, and the quoting of them usually tells you more about the hopes, belief or fears of the quoter, than they do about the subject matter.

[jdaviescoates]

@marcusquinn whilst you have a valid point about stats, that's a very silly graph.

The banking system is many many MANY orders of magnitude larger than the whole web 3 ecosystem, let alone bitcoin.

It's not even comparing apples to pears, it comparing a grain of sand to a whole beach.

Now do same figures per transaction

[byghuutran]

Someone has purpose to make money from Signal or open source chat app like this?

[marcusquinn]

Just gonna leave this here

https://twitter.com/marcuswquinn/status/1678017825800089602

[LoudLemur]

@doodlemania2 said in Best privacy chat apps:

yall should also check out Session (getsession.org) it's pretty sweet - a fork of Signal protocol with the backend using the Loki/Oxen network and in the table above, requires zero of the 19 permissions that Signal requires. I personally REALLY enjoy it.

The downsides are obvious here in the usability department. In order to get to chatting with someone, you HAVE to exchange keys. Signal makes that easier cause they generate QR codes but also integrate with your contacts.

One thing to note, however, as a plus to Signal, is they use confidential computing on Azure to hide all the contacts processing, which is a really great use of that particular tech.

Session is great. The developers are nice people and do regular, video updates on progress. The Session team is also involved in development of Lokinet, which is like a low-latency, more secure TOR. You can run services on Lokinet, for example, this imageboard supports it:

https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/9591/jschan-on-cloudron-imageboard-for-our-times

[LoudLemur]

@marcusquinn said in Best privacy chat apps:

Have created a "Cloudron" Group in Session, for both testing, and off-the-record chat (well, as much as all other members have a record). DM me for my Session ID. It's probably safe to post publicly, but no hurry to find out otherwise from haste

There are some lists published of Session Groups. You could mention it and have it listed there.

https://session.directory/
https://lokilocker.com/Mods/Session-Groups/wiki/?action=_pages

[LoudLemur]

@JOduMonT said in Best privacy chat apps:

Few companies with whom I work do business with the military and don't want to use anything Open Source because for them Open Source sound full of flaws and weaken their defence.

few vs a few

few < a few

A few girls have blonde hair or blue eyes or a beautiful smile.
Few girls have all of these. They are unicorns.

I saw him at the party. A few girls were with him. He must be quite popular.
Few girls like his friend though. For some reason, he lacks charisma.

It is similar with little vs a little

He had little to drink, so he should be OK driving.
I had a little, so he can give me a ride.

I like little spice in my food, so I will have the ordinary mashed potatoes.
You can have the Bombay potatoes, which have a little chile.

[RazielKanos]

I am a bit late to the party, but a messenger I love to use is Threema Libre. Using the Web client / Desktop is a bit a hickup since you have to log in every day, but I really like the security aspect.

[marcusquinn]

Handy spreadsheet comparing features:

• https://privacyspreadsheet.com/messaging-apps

[timconsidine]

Interesting : the only app from that analysis with 100% green (or N/A) is Simplex (https://simplex.chat/)

[Kubernetes]

@timconsidine I did try to use SimpleX with a friend. I use iOS, friend use Android. I tried to like SimpleX, but it was not such a good experience. Very battery consuming and many App crashes on both(!) devices.

[jdaviescoates]

For me Signal still provides the best balance of stability/ usability/ privacy (although to be honest I've not tried most of the apps listed in that spreadsheet as Signal is Good Enough for me and I've got various functioning groups on there that include not very technical people)

[marcusquinn]

@jdaviescoates And they allow usernames now, for phone number privacy.