Meta gave up on the idea, effectively

From their perspective: not enough users to be worth the bother.

That seems to be just another example of Americans trusting their corporate overlords over everyone and everything else, including their elected governments and to some extent their own freedom.

But sure, phone numbers were once widely considered public information (along with postal addresses, which were also in the white pages - innocent times!). In Europe at least, I believe that has not be the case for about 15 years. New phone number registrations are not publicly listed anywhere.

The “sharing” of contacts lists is surely the original sin of privacy on the internet.

It’s an absolutely outrageous proposition when you think about it. “Give us the names and numbers of everyone you know, whether they consent or not.” By triangulating this particular data, the tech giants (and even some of the more successful app developers) know more about us than our governments do.

It’s infuriating that this practice has been accepted as normal. It makes it almost impossible for individuals to choose privacy, i.e. without being grassed on by their oblivious friends. It should never have been allowed.

Ha. Actually I believe there are hundreds of thousands who do (and good for you!). It’s a great model IMO. Foundation status with an endowment, free to access and beg banners saying “Pay so that others don’t have to”. Of course, the quirky status was a bit of an accident of history.

Reminiscent of dumping on the Washington Post because Bezos.

The reason that quality independent journalism is so hard to find is that nobody much is paying for it. Including you, probably.

I listen to Politico’s EU Confidential podcast and it’s pretty good. The EU’s national medias are too parochial to cover Brussels, with Politico at least somebody’s doing it.

OK but I tend to think that this kind of hopeless cynicism kinda risks being self-fulfilling. There are fundamental differences between Russia and the West, ordinary people (especially in Western countries) do have some agency, and nothing about the future is set in stone.

A logical next step in Russia’s descent into the worst kind of police state. It will never quite be totalitarian, that era is over and anyway the Kremlin is too cynical and incompetent to actually control people’s thoughts. The model is obviously China. China has successfully locked down its internet and every dictator in the world has noticed.

Now that is some enthusiasm for the fediverse.

IMO this is excessively swivel-eyed. You’re crediting them with too much competence.

While obviously this is laudable, and better than not having such a mode, it still suffers from that same massive fatal flaw. Apple software is proudly closed source. If we can’t audit their software, in the end we’re just taking their word for it.

Or how to smuggle US politics into literally any community.

Walking the streets of Cambridge without a smartphone, with nothing to do but look at blue jays and squirrels has replaced buzzing notifications in my pocket.

There’s a middle way. Turn off the notifications. Or, go crazy (and this also foils most tracking): airplane mode.

This article is becoming a bit of a chestnut. IMO the cold-turkey advice is only appropriate to some personality types (maybe most of them, admittedly). It also occurs to me that “right to be unknown” is basically exactly the same as “right to privacy”. Still, the author writes well and it would be great if people listened.

Was just about to quote the same passage with the same question! Seems we’re not familiar with what the kids are doing with AI.

Before, normies didn’t know what they were doing and so they couldn’t do it. Now they can go ahead and do it anyway. Technical ignorance is about to become a serious problem.

I don’t see much indicating him as a former communist

He talked about it - some variety of Trotskyism IIRC. A bit of a surprise but shouldn’t have been. Tons of former Maoists have been in high positions. Even a neoliberal head of the European Commission (Barroso).

On the supposed virtues of communism, you won’t convince me but I suppose you know that already. IMO the world would have done very well to listen to George Orwell, someone who saw through it all on the basis of up-front experience 90 years ago. That might have saved an awful lot of needless suffering. Or Orlando Figes, who wrote a book whose title says it all: “The USSR: A People’s Tragedy”.

Amusing. And what detective work! Your time is valuable, careful not to waste too much of it.

Personally I’m not especially bothered by sockpuppetry in itself (talking of people wasting their time…). But it’s obviously important to have a plurality of viewpoints. If only they would sockpuppet more creatively!

This seems right. Personally I’m not sure I could roll my eyes harder at the fact that so many people in 2026 are so ignorant as to be prepared to call themselves “communists” - after all the famines, the purges, the 40 years in which much of Europe was struggling to escape (literally) from communism… And then I saw that you, too, call yourself a communist! So I guess I’ll stop there.

Except to recommend you the Ones and Tooze podcast, in which the brilliant host (an ex-communist) recently did a whole series, in great and illuminating detail, on the various communist thinkers. Which I listened to… dutifully.

Out of interest, how do you know it’s sockpuppets?

To be honest I’m genuinely a bit interested in who this might be. I’m imagining a disgruntled Hong Kong exile with too much time on their hands. Also seems likely to be Chinese in that they have a top-down concept of information, not seeing that obvious and relentless propaganda will just backfire with a sophisticated and relatively informed audience. Perhaps I’m being slightly optimistic, but I can’t see how they’ve convinced anyone here that “China bad” who didn’t already think that.

The real issue is that AI bots are making Q&A forums de-facto redundant. StackExchange posted its stats recently, and activity is dropping through the floor there too.

Of course, this leaves the question of what the AI bots are going to do in a few years when they have no new original content to eat. But right now they still have a banquet.

Ironically, the most active user on the current #2 China community, !china@sopuli.xyz, is an absolutely indefatigable anti-Chinese propagandist.

This person, @Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org posts multiple times per day, usually quite sensible and well-sourced articles, but always on the same downer subjects (repression, Uighurs, corruption and so on) and never anything that paints China (let alone its government) in the slightest positive light. Since nobody else in this community can match their posting stamina, the end result is a community that, to newcomers, looks like one rando’s “I hate China” blog. Hardly surprising that it’s not a very successful community.

I’ve asked this user to consider dropping the tempo a bit, and been met with defensiveness. I complained in private to the mod, who is completely AWOL, and they didn’t care. Oh well.

Yeah sure, I understand all that, indeed it’s pretty much exactly what I wrote. You are simply taking an expansive definition of E2EE where I am using a narrow one. As far as we know, Meta is indeed sending its messages in an encrypted state, end to end, so technically it makes the grade as E2EE. That debate is kinda boring, I was simply trying to point out that this case study illustrates the importance of FOSS. And since you are downvoting me, that’s all I have to say here.