Venezuela is restricting all social networks including WhatsApp.
Learn how to use Simplex for several reasons:
- There is no central server to censor.
- You can set up your own server in 5 minutes.
- They can't find out your identity.
Discussion
Why did MS and Bezos fund it through "Global Village"?
Probably because SimpleX presented a good business model. They said they are woeking on offering dedicated messaging infrastructure for corporate clients. Global Village saw a potential that this business model might work and put some VC money in. Nothing out of the ordinary. Evgeny talks about this in a podcast episode with Seth for Privacy ( https://optoutpod.com/episodes/s3e02-simplexchat/ )
These VCs will not respect your privacy, in the long-term, even if the developers are 100% committed to it. I found this out the hard way. An open source instance that is committed to privacy would be ideal. But no one has resources and infrastructure to run it. Catch 22. In the end the VCs will take it all, and they know it. They are not charities.
In case you didn't listen to the podcast I mentioned above: Global Village does not make any decisions on operations of SimpleX or the other projects they fund. They just throw money at small projects that look somewhat promising and hope that in a few years that paid of.
No one is stopping you from running an instance yourself, in fact I run one myself DM me for connection string.
That's all very well, but how do you verify it? You cant. I have worked with VCs and trust oriented VCs. They will subtly control the choke points if something grows. When it comes to VCs adjacent a well meaning open source project, "Trust, but dont verify". Is not a good option. Running your own is a good option, but hard to get traction. That's all I was pointing out.
What about Signal, not available in V?
Signal is a centralized service where:
- You have to trust their servers to run the code they tell you is published on github.
- You give your phone number to create an account and they look for contacts, aliases do not allow you to create an anonymous account.
- The metadata is not private.
- Easily censored by an ISP.
- Its desktop versions are based on chrome and do not encrypt the information, which makes it trivial to extract.
Thanks!
But seems like their contact discovery is private?
The problem is the metadata, it is possible to associate your phone number and other people's numbers to know when you have spoken.
Also, regarding metadata, the "sealed sender" functionality in Signal seems to at least remove data on who the sender is (but not recipient)?
Another important fact is that Simplex is seamlessly integrated with Tor and you can access servers that use Tor, so it is technically impossible for an ISP to restrict the protocol.
In case your ISP restricts Tor you can use bridges or snowflake.
You must have tools to be able to communicate privately and that governments can not restrict (Simplex).
And you must have money that is not censurable (Bitcoin) and that your government cannot confiscate, and if you need private money use Lightning Network.
nostr:note14txpvgpxcf567762mattkajge0xp2enxtesz5g04n60etlls26qqp8gg6r
That is alarming.
natural outcome. they tried to do the same here in brazil. telegram has actually been suspended for a few days. rumble is still banned.
The iOS app is the choke point like with Damus back then, no?
qtox pretty good too if you can handle being always online and ready to receive from whoever wants to talk to you.
Link to the git issue?
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Just use #nostr
Nostr is not private, with anyone's public key you can see who they have sent private messages to.
In Venezuela people are being detained for political ideas, it is not something trivial.
Absolute privacy is essential in such cases.
I agree. Here in the UK the govt talk a good game but they're not really watching us. So #nostr is fine for me.
In a country where money is no object in the persecution of dissenters, you need PFS, so you need #Signal, #Simplex, #Threema or maybe #Cwtch and #Tox, once they've been properly audited.
Tox is not recommended. It was audited back in 2017 and critical flaws were found in its encryption implementation. Literally nothing has been done to fix those problems in the past 7 years. Tox is a perfect example of the dangers of "roll your own encryption".
This is the use case. We are promoting it. Any advice on privacy and security is well received.
this is a massive mistake from Maduro btw
nostr:note14txpvgpxcf567762mattkajge0xp2enxtesz5g04n60etlls26qqp8gg6r
why simplex and not nostr?
By logging in with my public key you can see with whom I have spoken privately, not the content of the messages but with whom.
Enough for a dictator like maduro to retaliate against certain people for the simple fact of knowing that they have been in contact.
Obviously assuming they use public profiles or profiles that can be associated in some way to their real identity.
I personally do not give a fuck about what is going on in Venezuela.
The simple fact that they go to vote is like renouncing to their living men rights.
SO THEY GET WHAT THEY FUCKING DESERVE.
and I say that with no remorse, because I lived / survived 20 years in a communist regime (worse than venezuelean) and the solutioin IS NOT TO GO TO VOTE !
Unfortunately people do not understand the evil they do when they go to vote.
TRUE FUCKING WORDS!
Is there an advantage in running your own server? Isn’t there more risk having all your messages routed through it?
Simplex has the same architecture as email, your server is only used for receiving messages.
It is always safer to use your own server, it guarantees that the executed code is legitimate and keeps the network more decentralized.
However there is no problem if you use the generic servers.
I love Nostr but I really don't trust the devs to make a safe messaging protocol. I'm glad we have SimpleX and I wish Nostr could be used as a discovery layer. There were talks about this last year that didn't go anywhere. I made a proposal for a contact info field to link to an external messenger like SimpleX to hopefully replace the DM button in clients with but it was declined.