Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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Continue reading "Pluralistic: 19 Sep 2022 How to ditch Facebook without ditching your friends"
The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is set to become law; it will require the biggest tech companies in the world (Apple, Google and Facebook, and maybe a few others) to open up their instant messaging services (iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, and maybe a few others) so that smaller messaging services can plug into them. These smaller services might be run by startups, nonprofits, co-ops, or even individual tinkerers.
The logic behind this is sound. IM tools are the ultimate “network effects” products: once they have a critical mass of users, other users feel they have to join to talk to the people who are already there. The more users who sign up, the more users feel they must sign up.
Continue reading "End-To-End Encryption is Too Important to Be Proprietary"
I was wrong about Snapchat, but I was also kinda right.
When I first encountered the idea of disappearing messages, I was both skeptical and alarmed.
Skeptical because disappearing messages have an obvious defect as a security measure: If I send you a message (or a photo) that I don’t want you to have, I lose. You can remember the contents of the message, or take a screenshot, or use a separate device to photograph your screen. If I don’t trust you with some information, I shouldn’t send you that information.
I was wrong.
