Yeah I’m finding the clients hard to navigate. I can do it for myself, but to recommend to people, I’m unable to decide which to pick.

Edit: What did you mean by can’t recommend the switch?

Thank you! Also, what do you use for messaging?

As the other person who responded to you mentioned, things can get bad. At some level, trust is always going to be a factor with these things.

1. Matrix.org is still the most popular server - if I just tell people to download Element, they’re going to pick matrix.org. Automatically, this builds a sort of lock in with the “default instance”. Even if I host my own server, that’s not something I can recommedn to everyone, nor do I have the resources to make it a public server.

2. Already there’s trouble with hosting your own Matrix server due to how heavy the software is apparently. This coupled with point 1, things concentrating into the hands of the foundation is not a good thing.

3. Following from that, for example, what if they suddenly decide there’s too many people with “radical” ideologies that are against their masters, the imperial powers? They have metadata (even if not content, because encryption) through the public servers they host that they can use to surveil.

The issue is not just that it’s built by people with poor ideological rigour. It’s that it’s both a fragile structure that depends on trust and the people we’re trusting have poor ideological rigour. That seems like a bad combo to me.

Imagine if they just wrote and worked on the protocol. That’s it. No official apps, no official public servers. Then I wouldn’t care coz it doesn’t matter. People can check the protocol for suspicious stuff but that’s it. Nothing else is in these organizations’ control.

Yeah as soon as I read the sanctions bit I knew they must be using some shitty Cold War list from somewhere.

Which company involved is Israeli? That’s the first I’m hearing of that.

Edited to correct typo

I’m concerned about the software again playing into capitalist, imperialist spirals like we’ve seen with everything else so far. I am also concerned about supporting such an organization/company by doing “marketing” for them through my circles. The whole reason I started this was as part of the BDS movement and it doesn’t make sense to just jump from one highly problematic ecosystem to another.

And if you’re okay with “lesser evils”, sure. I’m not. I believe continually choosing lesser evils instead of building good things is why we’re in this mess in the first place.