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Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

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Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#811

Post by _ugfj »

darthrupert wrote: post #758
Drblessing wrote: post #710

2022 Salaries for those interested: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824... Compensation Key Employees and Officers Base Related Other Jim O'leary (Vp, Engineering) $666,909 $0 $33,343 Ehren Kret (Chief Technology Officer) $665,909 $0 $8,557 Aruna Harder (Chief Operating Officer) $444,606 $0 $20,500 Graeme Connell (Software Developer) $444,606 $0 $35,208 Greyson Parrelli (Software Developer) $…

I'll ask the question you're implying out loud. Why does an organization with about 50 employees need 4 C-level executives, totalling about 2M compensation per year? Or perhaps it's 7 C-level executives (3 hiding under the "Software developer" title) totalling about 3,7M compensation per year? I'm absolutely not donating money to such a thing without an answer to this question. As a counterpoint, I am a member of a l…

I find this hypocritical. C executives of tech orgs with world class products often have eight figures compensation -- if not from salary then from stock options. I do not see any excess here. You need to pay to compete.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#812

Post by rengle »

_ugfj wrote: post #809
moravak1984 wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. A former student of mine worked for a non profit in Afghanistan (his home country) for a few years. Said non profit was flying in McKinsey consultants for very short gigs at six figures (USD). Same can be said about many LGBT non profits that have shifted their goals in the developed world on the "T" part of the acronym. On countries where marriage equality is a given, no one is going to fund an NGO focus…

to me this smells transphobic but it's possible the trans genocide several US states are working on made me oversensitive

[flagged]

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#813

Post by rodlette »

fsflover wrote: post #777
rodlette wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried a few times. It always felt... clunky? I tried Element. UI felt slow, I was unable to find notifications in scrollback. Clicking the notification button would take me to random messages.

There are very many clients lighter than Element.

I just checked https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/

I'll try FluffyChat, thanks!

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#814

Post by rglullis »

discard124 wrote: post #552
rglullis wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could get my parents who are nearing their 70s to use Element (Matrix) and it took them less than 10 minutes, even with me asking them to register to a non-default homeserver. Screw "convenience". It's a poison pill. "Convenience" should never be put above "resilience" (not to mention "freedom") in a value scale. The American obsession with "convenience" is turning us all into cattle and it's getting harder and har…

With all due respect, it seems that you have conceded that a convenient, spam free, open option not only doesn’t exist in practice, but can’t in principle. That’s more than even I believe. I just think nobody in the OSS space has put the work in to figure it out yet. > I could get my parents who are nearing their 70s to use Element (Matrix) and it took them less than 10 minutes, even with me asking them to register t…

No, you got me wrong. I think that Matrix is convenient enough to be practical, and I think that the issue is that we keep holding it back because we keep waiting for "someone else in the OSS space to put in the work" to make it as convenient as the leading closed alternatives, which is a fool's errand.

> Well in that case Element would be the solution we’re looking for, except that not everyone’s parents have someone like you to help them.

Yet they manage just fine to get a sales rep from Best Buy to help them setup FaceTime on their shiny iPhones that they get to buy every two years. Why can't that Best Buy rep be trained to setup Element instead?

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#815

Post by serial_dev »

illiac786 wrote: post #732
serial_dev wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case it doesn't make sense to make it required. Sure, I don't mind if they ask for my phone number if they think that's a better default onboarding flow, but allow users to bypass it. With all that said, I don't think it's really only about user friction.

they did not "make it required", Signal was just never developed to support anything else for username/registration. Which is what they have now almost corrected.

sounds required to me.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#816

Post by chx »

rengle wrote: post #812
_ugfj wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to me this smells transphobic but it's possible the trans genocide several US states are working on made me oversensitive

[flagged]

> safeguarding of children against mutilation and sterilisation,

I am so, so tired.

None of that happens.

GnRH analogues are commonly used in gender affirming care, these are reversible.

Surgery is not done on minors.

> the protection of women's single-sex spaces,

Predatory men have absolutely no problems finding opportunities to predate on women. This made up crap need not happen.

You are parroting sound bites on issues you have no understanding of. For the sake of humanity, literally, please stop and start reading. You are on a very dark path.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#817

Post by theshrike79 »

tylersmith wrote: post #787
theshrike79 wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is for a non-profit asking for donations. If they want half a mill salaries, they should become for-profit instead.

Profit or non-profit is not about paying market rates. Even non-profits have to pay reasonably competitive salaries to attract and retain good employees.

Competitive is just fine and even expected, but competitive vs FAANG? Seriously?

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#818

Post by rglullis »

Canada wrote: post #788
rglullis wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, you talk like Signal never had any issue with usability or functionality, which is far from the truth. Signal amount of bugs and security issues with their client is notorious, and the insistence of requiring phone numbers is just a silly "let them have cake approach" that is conveniently ignored for too long. Second, are you hedging your bets and supporting Matrix or XMPP as well, or will you only encourage p…

Yes, I am encouraging people to donate to Signal because I prefer it. Why would I be soliciting donations for something I don't favor? If you want to contribute to something else go right ahead, but this is a thread about Signal's financial needs so it shouldn't surprise you that Signal supporters encourage other supporters to donate. I also use Matrix. Element has been pretty good for a few years now, but it's still…

> Why would I be soliciting donations for something I don't favor?

Because you are (consciously or not) creating a self-fulfilling prophecy for one champion over the others. Worse still, you are asking everyone else to devote resources to your preferred champion when we have no reason to believe that this is long-term sustainable.

> The Matrix protocol is also inferior to Signal in that all metadata is stored in cleartext on the server.

As I said in another thread: I honestly care less about the security guarantees from one protocol over the other than I care about the fact that pushing for Signal would mean that everyone's communication would be tied to one single provider. This is a systemic risk that no amount of "you don't need to trust us, you just need to trust math" can ever mitigate.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#819

Post by rodlette »

rodlette wrote: post #810
fsflover wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Matrix?

I remembered another issue with Matrix. Signal and XMPP (via Quickly) have a simple phone number based signup workflow that my family have grown used to. My family are not happy on having to remember/use passwords/keys. That's a shame, but is ultimately a constraint I have to deal with when persuading them to install/use an IM app.

Replying to myself... looks like some Matrix homeservers support OpenID-style login. That's probably fine for family.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#820

Post by rengle »

chx wrote: post #816
rengle wrote: post #812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> safeguarding of children against mutilation and sterilisation, I am so, so tired. None of that happens. GnRH analogues are commonly used in gender affirming care, these are reversible. Surgery is not done on minors. > the protection of women's single-sex spaces, Predatory men have absolutely no problems finding opportunities to predate on women. This made up crap need not happen. You are parroting sound bites on is…

> Surgery is not done on minors.

Sadly, this is not true. See for example this paper on 'gender-affirming' mastectomies, where the cohort included girls as young as 12 years old: https://journals.lww.com/annalsplasticsurgery/Abstract/2022/...

Also this article from Reuters on rates of 'gender-affirming treatment' in children, from health insurance data, which shows that girls as young as 13 are receiving 'top surgery': https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-tran...

There have been cases of minors getting genital surgery too. For example Susie Green, who used to run the Mermaids charity, is infamous for taking her child to Thailand on his 16th birthday for penis inversion surgery.

> Predatory men have absolutely no problems finding opportunities to predate on women.

Exactly, any male who disregards women's boundaries and imposes himself on a female-only space is exhibiting predatory behaviour by ignoring the lack of consent. Those males who call themselves women are no exception to this.

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