Comment by fsflover
4 years ago
> Controlled by another third party.
Everything is controlled by a third party except self-hosting. Mastodon allows that too. Closed networks don't.
> Yes, you can switch to ProtonMail or something more secure if you want
So you answered your own question.
> but that won't solve the problems of the 99% of people that will use general providers and won't even know they can't switch.
My point is that they are able to switch due to the openness of the platform.
> Right now you could force Facebook to be interoperable and be open source and still 99% of the people would be on the original Facebook instance. Again, it's not a technical issue.
Yes. It's not just a technical problem. But there is a technical side in it. Millions will immediately switch given a possibility. What happens next, who knows.
> My point is that they are able to switch due to the openness of the platform.
And my point is that most won't, and the ones that do will still go to another platform that's controlled by another third party and they'll still need to rust that the platform is not doing things they don't like.
> Millions will immediately switch given a possibility.
Switch to where? To another company that could do weird things out of the eyes of the users? Do you think all of those millions are going to run their self-hosted Facebook?
My point is that privacy and security is not something that will be solved by federation or open source. For open source and federation to be useful in that regard, you need most people to actively research and check that the tools that they use are private and secure. If they don't, they're just trusting someone the same way they trust Facebook now. And most people (that includes most people here on HN) don't have both the time and knowledge to do those checks.
In other words, this is a collective issue. Trying to solve collective issues by individual choices is not the best path.
> My point is that privacy and security is not something that will be solved by federation or open source.
I disagree. Here's why:
> For open source and federation to be useful in that regard, you need most people to actively research and check that the tools that they use are private and secure.
This is the key point. You do not need most people. You need some people. And you can always find some people who verify everything and self-host for you. This is how Signal and Matrix appeared and became (relatively) famous.
> This is how Signal and Matrix appeared and became (relatively) famous.
And what happens when another app comes and says that "it's secure" and people start using it instead of Signal or Matrix? What happens if Signal starts requiring some payments (running servers is not free) and people move to other apps? Maybe those other apps are open source and federated, but the federation protocol is found later to have a backdoor, or some instances run data mining on the messages, or something like that. Who will be faster, the users flocking to those apps or the few number of verifiers getting to work and detecting those issues?
If you want most apps to be like Signal or Matrix, the solution is easy: push for legislation and certifications that ensure that, no matter the app, a certain level of security and privacy is enforced. It's not perfect, but it's far better than just relying on trusting that some people invest a lot of time on that research.
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What does switching to ProtonMail help me when all my contacts are on GMail?
It at least prevents Google from becoming 100% monopoly. It also allows you to interact with other ProtonMail users who value privacy.