this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
307 points (98.7% liked)
Privacy
1301 readers
135 users here now
Protect your privacy in the digital world
Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
Rules
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
- Be nice, civil and no bigotry/prejudice.
- No tankies/alt-right fascists. The former can be tolerated but the latter are banned.
- Stay on topic.
- Don't promote big-tech software.
- No reposting of news that was already posted. Even from different sources.
- No crypto, blockchain, etc.
- No Xitter links. (only allowed when can't fact check any other way, use xcancel)
Related communities:
- !opensource@programming.dev
- !selfhosting@slrpnk.net / !selfhosted@lemmy.world
- !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
founded 4 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Moral of the story? Use ~~selfhostable~~ decentralized messaging instead.
Milk is getting more expensive. Moral of the story: Buy a cow.
I really wish people would stop being so delusional about the average person’s technological abilities. jUsT TeLL grAn To sPin Up a mATrIx SErvEr.. stfu
"Everyone should be hosting a server" was NOT my point, sorry if I got misunderstood. My mother could in no way host an XMPP server on her own - but I could register her an account on mine.
Rather, I meant: a) if you can host it, suggest your friends and family to use your server; b) if you can't - that is still better: with multiple public servers available, there is no single point of failure, you can choose a server in whatever jurisdiction you want, or even an onion/i2p one.
Sorry for being harsh at the end. I just see this notion too often.
But still, your option b) is not self hosted. Maybe a better word to use would be decentralized then?
Selfhost able. But yeah, "decentralized" would be indeed a more fitting term.
That's just pedantry. 'Selfhosted' never meant that every single user has to host it themselves.
It’s not pedantry, it’s using the right terminology.
And yes, self hosted means hosted by yourself. It’s in the name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hosting_(web_services)
The promise of self hosting is that you own your data which may be better for privacy/security if you know what you are doing. The same doesn’t apply if you have to trust a third party, even if it is a friend/family member who provides you with a service they host. They become a service provider to you.
A lot of selfhosters share with family. I'm not gonna make my wife spin up her own servers when she can use mine.
And what would you call your wife in this scenario? A selfhoster? Or a user of a service hosted by boonhet?
She’s not using a selfhosted service, she’s using a boonhet-hosted service. Because she has no control over the service or her data.
That's just being overly pedantic.
That's called 'peer-to-peer', not 'hosting'.
i rather talk to my grand parents over ham radio than giving them a smartphone
Are you the only one who decides that? My grandparents have a bunch of children and grandchildren, if I tried to take their smartphone away the others would just call me an asshole and give them a new one.
No way in hell my relatives are going to use a messenger I selfhosted. My brother doesn't even use Signal for whatever reason, even though even my grandmother has it.
That is the problem of getting another person to change something... A very valid problem but not inherent to decentralization.
Kinda is, though - regular people have a lot more trust in centralized services, and Signal has a very large userbase compared to anything selfhostable. And IME they really, really hate installing new messengers.
Plus, selfhosted E2EE would still be just as illegal as Signal. Many people won't be willing to participate in illegal activity, and if you just don't use E2EE on your selfhosted solution the usefulness seems rather dubious.
I don't think any ban on such selfhostable servers is enforceable at all.
What if the government shuts off the app source (and source code) and makes it illegal for anyone to download or redistribute it?
It doesn't necessarily have to be enforcable to deter most people. At minimum, with such a ban there's zero chance to communicate with government agencies with E2EE.
well in the end it's just HTTPS traffic.. police has to search your phone to know if you are a user.
but if you federate (on clearnet), that could give away that you host it
Well, technically, they could MITM the traffic similarly to how they did to jabber . ru. But a) there are mitigations for this and b) more importantly - they would need to bother. No one's going to bother doing it to a random family server that has attracted no previous attention.
We have never come across one that is as easy to use as Signal and has no problems with encryption, either that it can have its encryption turned off, it breaks easily or that it makes dubious claims with few-no audits to back them up.
Plus the common person enjoys the fun features of Signal or other easy messengers, most decentralised messages do not have these features, are indefinitely working on them or make them not as easy to use, leading to most being uninterested in those messengers.
We have tried most if not all of them, than most and they are definitely lacking as much as we wish they were not. Decentralised encrypted (or partially encrypted) messengers always seem to have problems whether it's with their encryption, moderation tools, connectivity or the lack of other features.
true but this is not yet easy enough for normal humans. selfhosting anything is not yet easy enough
And is potentially even less secure if someone who has no idea about managing a server at all tries to spin up an online service.
yeah, with e2e encryption i guess you're ok as long as your mobile with the keys doesn't get hacked, but that's equally likely