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Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

cabal.chat

221–230 of 337 posts

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#221

For clarification: The 1st amendment ensures that the government may not stop you from saying what you want. This is a separate issue from private companies removing/banning you. Each company has their own right and freedom to be as dickish as they want with regard to deleting your account etc - but that is not related to the 1st.

I’d like to address this, since it’s a common retort meant to shutdown discussion on censorship. It’s disingenuous , because “First amendment” is so essential to American culture, that it means both the literal First Amendment to the constitution AND more importantly, the American principle of free expression. Ether you are aware that people are appealing to free expression as a principle, or you are unaware that fre…

> it’s a common retort meant to shutdown discussion on censorship

For your reference, I did not say it to shut down the discussion.

I purposefully said it to open up the discussion in order to hear viewpoints like this.

It's something I'm very interested in seeing discussed and I would like to learn more about both sides of the argument in general.

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#222
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any insights?

IMO, JavaScript became the most popular language in the world because: 1) Everyone with a modern, full-featured browser already has it. There's nothing to install. It's the modern equivalent of the built-in BASIC in the early microcomputers. 2) "View Source" lets you see exactly how something was done at the click of a mouse. This is invaluable for learning. 3) Writing it and debugging it just requires a text editor…

Sadly, these days JavaScript tends to be compressed and minified and bundled into frameworks that are much harder to peer into…

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#223

Network connections are getting faster... Peoples typing/reading speeds are not... One day it will be feasible for someone's phone to receive all messages sent by every other person on earth. They can then try to decode every message till they find one that their private key can decode. You've now made the perfect privacy messaging system - by sending all messages to all users, no quantity of network packet sniffing/…

I wouldn’t call that perfect because if your private key is ever compromised, all of your communication ever is compromised. Ideally data would be destroyed after a while, which isn’t really possible to do if everyone ever has the data. Broadcasting all messages everywhere would also be an incredible waste of resources, even if it was theoretically possible.

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#224
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> open source software at this point is just a pawn for being misused by extremists. This comment makes me question if you know what open source software is.

I wonder if this (baffling) line of reasoning will become the new "Open Source/FOSS is Communism" of the late '90s early '00s...

But bitcoin is open source (logiciel libre), and its pretty capitalist: look at how it enables people to put market value on really-hard-to-find prime numbers. What's needed to counter any 'open source is communist' rhetoric seems to be an awareness of how much private enterprise and entrepreneurial activity depends on open source.

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Without getting into JK Rowling, a site that has the technical means to but willfully ignores transphobia or homophobia certainly is not "cool".

It isn't transphobia to object to female erasure. Not every women's issue is also a trans women's issue, and it's sexist to insist otherwise.

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#228
post #3

Have there been any breakthroughs recently? Or just sharing to share?

Probably not a coincidence that this gets posted with no context the day that Parler gets kicked off AWS. I presume it's someone trying to offer Cabal as a Parler alternative.

They in no way support free speech.

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#229
post #215

It’s incredibly disheartening to see how quickly people are warming to the practice of coordinated top-down gagging of certain individuals and groups. You won’t be so happy to cheer on such behavior and policies when in the future the one silenced turns out to be you. The power to censor should be given solely to the individual to curate their own information diet; it should never belong to the medium itself (whether…

This is fear speaking, stand up for free speech that isn't inciting violence, racism, etc - like everyone else - and we'll all be safe, and we can all fight against tyranny when it shows itself. There's a nuance to understand as well that these people deplatformed aren't victims: they still have their freedom of speech, just not on these private platforms. It's inconvenient for them, yes, that they depended on them,…

Sounds like you're fundamentally opposed to free speech. Maybe we can coin a new term something like "non-dangerous speech" or "mostly free speech". I'm glad we'll get Apple and Amazon to figure out what dangerous is too.

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#230

Checked the FAQ. Downside: It doesn't support Tor and they don't seem to have any plan for that. So it's trusted-friends-only, IPs are always visible. Which is pointless for me, as a person trying to build healthy online friendships from behind Tor. Upside: I was afraid it's a reaction to Parler being deplatformed. And then I thought maybe it was a side-project of Urbit. But looking at the Values page: "No nazis, no…

[flagged]

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