On the side bar it lists the following:

  • [Matrix/Element]Dead
  • Discord

“Discord” is an active link, but the Matrix link is completely inactive. Not only is it inactive (which could have be excused as a broken link), but it is also manually labeled as “Dead”, as if there is no intention of making it work. How can a community that is focused on privacy willingly favor a service that is privacy non-respecting when a perfectly functional privacy-respecting alternative exists?

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    It’s the timeless debate between accessibility and exclusivity. Do you want more people in your community by compromising some values? Or would you rather be a hardliner but never reach those people?

    Most of the time you have to pick somewhere on that spectrum. It’s a question of pragmatism and utilitarianism.

    Does it do more good for lots of people to be slightly more privacy-aware, or is it better to have a very small portion of the population that are super privacy-aware?

    You have to decide, and the debate rages on all the time.

      • RQG@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Not compromising at all would be not using the internet though. Probably live in a cottage somewhere in the middle of nowhere too.

      • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        We all compromise somewhere, it’s just a question of where the line is. Even Richard Stallman makes concessions for things like Firmware and hardware being closed source.

    • Enigma@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Are you able to at least bridge you matrix to the discord? You should, at the very least, be able to do that while also promoting matrix.

      • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        The issue becomes moderation at that point, not a big problem for a larger community, but small communities tend to struggle with moderation with just one hub of communications.

        Also, the hardliners wouldn’t be interested in co-existing, that’s against their ethics generally.

        • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You also split your intended audience and every discussion. It’s one of the big issues with Lemmy and federation right now. People create multiple copies of the same community across different servers.

    • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah it quickly becomes a dick measuring contest and shunning people for using different things. It becomes very black/white views, and have some crazy out of touch takes, like expecting your grandma to self host lol. They also confuse anonymity with privacy, like how not being able to sign up for something with tor and monero is a privacy violation, it’s not.

      • funnystuff97@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I think it falls into the same pitfalls as most super niche communities, like a lot of subreddits did.

        For example, the shaving subreddit (/r/wicked_edge I think?). Its mission statement was to introduce people to cleaner, safer, and more efficient shaving methods. And for the most part, with all of its resources and wikis, it successfully did it. But if you choose to stay after you’ve made your informed purchases, the posts were mostly braggarts showing off their latest hundreds-of-dollars handles, supreme razor blades, brushes made from actual gold, that sort of thing. My point is, the average person (by my guess, like 90% of people going to the site) gets the information they need and then never participate in the community again. But those who stay are those who really want to stay– people who are most likely to brag and boast. So over time, it falls more and more into plain old dick measuring contests.

        This obviously isn’t true of all communities, but I think it’s a common pitfall for a lot of them. I can imagine privacy is very similar: take all the steps you can to learn to protect your privacy, and then… you’re good, for the most part.

        • online@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Wow this is great I am surprised to see people talking about this (let alone even being aware of it).

          Really refreshing to not have it to be a contest to follow random dogmas.

          Lemmy is refreshingly smarter than I was used to seeing on Reddit.

          • denkrishna@sh.itjust.works
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            7 months ago

            Hahahaha

            Not have it be a contest to follow random dogmas

            Lemmy is refreshingly smarter than… reddit

            I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but either way this was hilarious!!

      • Ferk@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        like how not being able to sign up for something with tor and monero is a privacy violation, it’s not.

        Note that “secrecy” and “privacy” are often understood in Security lingo as different things. One protects confidentiality, the other one protects anonymity.

        It’s possible to have one and not the other…

        You can have a very private system through onion routing but have the contents of the messages exchanged be in plaintext, open to the public. Nobody will be able to know the one who wrote the message was you. But they can see the message. (then there is privacy, but not secrecy).

        Or you can have very strongly encrypted communications (say HTTPS) but have the DNS exchanges (or the TLS handshake, or the IP addresses) be in the clear, so people in the middle (eg. your ISP… or your workplace tech guys) can know exactly that the packages are sent by you and where you sent them, even if their content is encrypted. They can know which service you tried to access to, for how long and how many times (so you have secrecy, but not privacy).

      • AtmaJnana@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        it quickly becomes a dick measuring contest and shunning people for using different things. It becomes very black/white views, and have some crazy out of touch takes

        In other words, it’s just like literally every online community in the history of the Internet. When Sir TimBL created the first web page, people probably used it to bitch about how everyone else was doing it wrong.

  • gasull@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Most cryptocurrency communities use Discord or Telegram. It’s such an embarrasment.

    • HiramFromTheChi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’ve never understood this either, given the whole notion and enthusiasm behind decentralization. I get the trade-offs regarding privacy, security, and convenience, but if you’re really tryna start a movement, and you really believe in the concept and principles of something like cryptocurrency, it seems like your communities and communication channels should also reflect similar values.

      • Chunk@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Crypto enthusiasts don’t really care or understand decentralization. If you talk to crypto bros you will realize pretty quickly that a lot of them are very very low IQ morons.

        I was at an event and met a crypto bro. He tried to explain to a group of us that btc is like moss and the world is the forest. A couple people legitimately “got it” and began to get excited about crypto.

        • corvus@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Crypto enthusiasts don’t really care or understand decentralization.

          I wouldn’t criticize others for their low IQ while making such a dumb generalization.

    • rbits@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Oh I hate communities that use Telegram. I mean, sure, I guess there’s better privacy, but Telegram was just not built for that. Messages always get lost, and there are no channels, which means no info channel, so they have to try and cram everything into the description.

    • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Should be telling the only two services they use is one infamous for fuck tons of child grooming and one infamous for fuck tons of terrorism.

  • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    A majority stake of Discord is owned by Tencent, which is a Chinese data collection company required by law to pass personal user information to the CCP. Discord runs on an unencrypted network.

    I’m just stating some facts. Make your own judgement call.

    • Zastyion345@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      This, discord saying no to Microsoft’s offer to buy them out few years back shows they know what they got.

  • azenyr@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Because privacy and convenience are two extreme opposites and you can only go so far in the privacy direction before you start losing everything. Discord just works a million times better as a public forum/community than Matrix and is much more easily accessible to everyone.

    There is a limit. I am privacy conscious but I still use all Google Services for example, because they actually provide me with a better web, work, mobile and entertainment experiences. Similarly, I prefer Discord for big communities with channels, server bots and topics, over Matrix.

    Edit: all those people saying we can’t be privacy conscious and use Google Services at the same time: yes you can. Their services literally make my life better so I will keep using them, but I keep what I share with them to the absolute minimum. I go into their settings and disable everything I can about tracking and ads personalization (even if they still track me, I do my best not to be). You can surely still be privacy conscious using non-private products. Being extremist is not how you convince average joes to think about privacy, nor by telling them to give up all they use for unknown (for them) alternatives.

    • jackalope@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Matrix is pretty convenient. They’ve got a great mobile and web app experience.

      What exactly does discord have that mateix doesn’t? They both have threading, replies, reacts, etc.

            • jackalope@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Each matrix chat is it’s own channel. To admin multiple channels as you would on discord you just have to set up multiple matrix chats held by a common owner.

              There is a mod role but you’re right that you can’t make custom ones though I honestly don’t see much need to for a simple privacy community.

              And I think matrix has voice now.

              But yah I get what you’re saying. Thank you for the elaboration.

    • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Yes, Google even read your mails, it’s sooo private. Its right that Google offers good services respect quality, but its a privacy nightmare and nowadays there are very good alternatives out there, even when they are also propietary. Eg, YT is maybe the best streaming platform, but full of ads, clickbaits, tracking and other crap, now even blocks videos if you use some adblockers. Because of this a lot of people translade subscriptions and playlists to Odysee, also privacy but way better respect privacy and few ads (online service of IMDB)

      Discord is certainly not the best but also not the worse (see Reddit, X, Fakebook, WhatsCrap, etc), but offers a lot of features which other platforms don’t have.

      Privacy in internet finish when you go online, the user can only patch the worst leaks more or less succesfull, beginning with the worst privacy and security hole, himself. Read the TOS and PP of an soft or service you want to use, check the sites with Blacklight, Webkoll, UrlVoid, Exodus Privacy, AV or similar, even if it is FOSS, which no neccesarly is a security or privacy feature, tracking APIs from Google, Amazon, Facebook and M$ are also FOSS and included in a lot of FOSS in this Microsoft site called GitHub.

      You don’t need a tin foil hat, but common sense in the internet.

      • utopiah@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Well they’re privacy “conscious” but still feel trapped. IMHO the first sentence is even more telling namely “privacy and convenience are two extreme opposites” as a justification. It’s not necessarily true, namely one can use… well pretty much anything BUT Google or Meta product and have a perfectly convenient experience. They are just used to it, so amalgamating what they are used to to what is objectively convenient for all.

        Maybe some day in the near future they will decide to go from being conscious to active about it and I can tell in advance, they are going to feel a lot better, but it requires more than introspection, it requires action.

  • WereCat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What benefit is there to use Matrix for a public community? It’s not like there is extra privacy since anyone can see the messages.

  • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Another person who thinks Discord is the equivalent of PRISM for China because Tencent helped with funding them? You’re welcome to go work for them. They mostly live in Sanfranciso and got a whoping ~5% of their startup money from Tencent.

    As a light reminder, Discord has been blocked in China since… 2018?

    https://discord.com/careers

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discord

    https://discord.com/open-source

    https://venturebeat.com/games/hammer-chisel-pivots-to-voice-comm-app-for-multiplayer-mobile-games/