@scy ok, you don't like the police. and you don't like companies selling products to the police
i think element (matrix) is the best messanger we have overall and your ACAB virtue signalling post hurts those that need privacy-respecting communication and might use something worse because of your post now
the CW can easily be understood as the communication is not secure and they hand over data to the police. please be more precise with your criticism or you might hurt those you try to help
@davidak You know what: You actually have a point.
Now, if you were able to bring it across in a constructive way (maybe even suggesting an improvement!) and without baseless insults, that would be even better.
suggestion: why a CW at all? if any, it could just be "Element, police"?
also, you could add that matrix is still good (if you believe that) and that other server providers and clients exist, to prevent people to move to less secure messangers (someone suggested IRC 😬)
while we debate over such details, people keep using whatsapp and discord. that's what frustrates me and why i see the post as virtue signalling more than a constructive argument for the better messanger
@davidak You might want to read up on the definition of virtue signalling. This is the second time you’re accusing me of it, and frankly, I’m offended. Cancelling my account is the exact opposite of virtue signalling.
@scy the second time i said "i see the post as virtue signalling" and tried to explain why
but you are right. at least the first time it's an accusation and i'm sorry for that!
i was offended by the post, because it seemed to me that it's more important to you to state that you don't like the police than promoting privacy-respecting communication (because such a post hurts element and matrix). but i actually don't know your intention, so i shouldn't assume
@scy Just to make sure I'm reading this correctly:
They're taking their platform, that the German government, iirc, has already shown interest in, to promote it as a secure messaging platform.
So we're now gatekeeping privacy-focused apps from law enforcement? Especially since I find it a bit of a stretch to say that presenting your app as a thing that exists during a conference as "collaboration"
@tek_dmn All other major apps (bar Signal) 'collaborate' with the police in the sense that they actually provide user data. Element/Matrix do not and are only presenting their app as a European and privacy-focused alternative to those apps. The only thing they can provide, if they do receive a warrant, is user metadata and unencrypted chat, and that's assuming the user is on the Matrix.org homeserver.
@Nour@tek_dmn Yeah, I’d have reacted earlier if you had tagged me ;)
While I still think that “we’ll legitimize, endorse & advertise for your event” counts as collaboration, I’ve now changed the CW to say “endorsing” instead of “collaborating with”. Not because my definition has changed, but to prevent people from getting the impression that Matrix is somehow becoming less secure because of that event.
Also, it still says a lot about element’s morality and values.
@scy@tek_dmn Thanks, the original wording causes FUD so this makes it clearer. I totally understand people not wanting to see any association w/ police. At the same time personally my view of Element has not really changed since they've always marketed themselves as secure messaging that governments can use (as a replacement for WhatsApp etc) and help them manage comms infrastructure. I believe in their mission and that they wouldn't sell out users, but I don't use their homeserver regardless.
@scy@tek_dmn As you mentioned, dislike is fair, but there is no reason (or at least evidence) for distrust given Matrix's record and mission. Although it's also understandable if dislike leads to distrust.
@Nour@scy Unfortunately there's already some FUD around Matrix already for... well let's just say a few paranoid reasons. At the same time, yeah, Element / the Matrix platform as a whole has always shot for marketing themselves towards governments and the like, not just for individual users.
And yes, part of keeping a decentralized system decentralized is not all grouping onto one server. See also: mastodon.social.
@Nour@tek_dmn#Cloudflare sees everything that happens on the matrix·org server, so there’s that. Speaking of CF, #Element has also put their website under control of the web’s police (Cloudflare indeed). Which makes them despicable enough even before the OP’s revelation.
@koherecoWatchdog@Nour@tek_dmn While CloudFlare may be problematic, saying that they “see everything that happens on matrix.org” is simply not true. End-to-end encrypted conversations are encrypted, with or without CloudFlare.
@scy@tek_dmn@Nour Are those e2ee chats happening over http(s) on the matrix.org website? If yes, then it’s incompetently designed. E2EE does not need the web so it’s foolish to expose the metadata of who is talking to who to Cloudflare. They don’t even get the benefit of performance, b/c CF would have to pass every e2ee packet through to the host which defeats the purpose & gives CF metadata.
I’ve edited the CW in the original post to say “endorsing the police” instead of “collaborating with the police”.
While I do think that them participating in such an event and being proud of it says a lot about their company’s morality and values, “collaborating” can be understood as “providing access to user data”, and I have no evidence that this is happening or planned.
Matrix is still one of the best end-to-end encrypted standards we have.
And, to quote myself from somewhere further down in the thread:
> While I still think that “we’ll legitimize, endorse & advertise for your event” counts as collaboration, I’ve now changed the CW to say “endorsing” instead of “collaborating with”. Not because my definition has changed, but to prevent people from getting the impression that Matrix is somehow becoming less secure because of that event.
I don’t distrust Matrix because of it, but I certainly dislike Element now.
@scy I was using Element for connecting to Matrix costs but I had also grabbed another Matrix client bc Element wasn't supporting multiple Matrix accts (easy acct switching).
I been trying to promote Matrix as an alternative to Telegram and Whatsapp, esp bc Matrix doesn't require signup with a phone number and might be better on privacy. The news of Element endorsing police/authority does have me :-/ right now.
@Catwoman69y2k Same. But Matrix is still one of the best encrypted protocols, for the reasons you’ve already stated. Element being dicks doesn’t change that. At least, not yet.
@scy they already developed strange solutions for the french government to break up e2e for audit and backup purposes.
That's about the worst stuff you can do to any messenger protocol.
But they didn't had to embed that into the publicly used matrix protocol.
So yeah, I guess we dodged that bullet already years ago.
Also, be aware that by now, I’ll probably block anyone replying with one of the clever takes that have been discussed in the thread multiple times already, like
• So you’d prefer them to use closed source instead?
• It’s open source, you can’t stop the police from using it!
• You mind telling me what the police has done wrong?
• It’s not up to you to decide who Element does business with.
This long post by @joepie91 is very relevant to those of you who have been asking “okay, so, if Element starts to become problematic, how much will that influence Matrix, the protocol?”
While there’s absolute radio silence from @element about the topic now (not surprising, they’re simply being very corporate, as usual), there’s been a reaction by the @matrix account, and instead of being like “don’t worry, we won’t let corporate or governmental interests influence Matrix in a negative way”, they’re just being sassy about it.
Okay, I finally took the time to set up my own #Synapse server. Took me the better parts of two days, but that’s because I wrote the setup in #Saltstack instead of just typing commands. Also, setting up #Postgres and a resizable volume complicated it a bit further.
Now waiting for #Element’s support to provide me the data dumps, keys etc. from my #EMS instance they are currently still hosting.
If I didn’t need to import existing Synapse data, I probably would’ve gone with #Dendrite.
Also, the easiest part in the whole setup was – as always – #Caddy. Took like five minutes to set it up as the reverse proxy, including fully automatic HTTPS certificates.
Honestly I haven’t been using Apache or nginx for years, and there’s nothing that I miss. Caddy is so easy to install (single binary), set up (five lines of configuration often suffice) and just works. Check it out if you’ve never used it, you might be never going back to anything else.
In case you’re trying to reach me via Matrix: Sorry, my EMS-hosted instance is offline now, and Element hasn’t managed to provide me with a dump of my data, or even get back to multiple support requests, in the last 48 hours.
I’m curious whether they’ll do it at all in the coming days, or whether I just have to start from scratch.
Just in case you should ever be considering their service. Seems like they’ll simply hold your data hostage. Appalling.
It's now over a week. @element still has not reacted to multiple support requests both via their contact form and via email. I still don't have the data required to migrate off of their service and to a self-hosted setup.
By now, I must assume that #Element and the #EMS hosted #Matrix service are either on the brink of collapse, or don't give a flying fuck about paying customers when they're not cops or governments.
Folks, don't use their service. They won't let you leave.
Oh look, pretty much exactly two weeks (minus a few hours) after my initial request, Element manages to react (and provide an export).
There had been an “issue with the export”, which “has been resolved”. Apparently there also was an issue with their emails, because otherwise they could’ve told me that two weeks ago.
Let’s see how well this is going to work. Of course I’ll need to create a temporary new Matrix account to be able to actually complete the process. 😩
Yeah, I agree, it’s not that inappropriate to see fascism in some of the police behavior; however, that still doesn’t put it on the same level as the Third Reich.
@santiago@scy referencing police an fascism is fine with. The history proves it. But "Heil" is referencing not facism. It's more specific Nazis. And I just think it's not worth the "joke".
Thanks for deleting it.
@scy I remember using it briefly while at CCC, the last one held in Hamburg before they shifted to Leipzig as it grew more and more white supremacist and hostile to a non-white, non-Christian, non-academically-affiliated, dark-skinned immigrant like myself.
@calotriton I’m not too deep into the internals. To me, it looks like while Element is the child of some of the original authors of the protocol, the Matrix protocol itself is at least not officially controlled by Element.
Of course, with Element being the biggest player in the ecosystem, they might still have a significant degree of unofficial power over it.
@scy I know but I've been looking for something thats similar to discord with the rooms and one on one chats and video and voice and file sharing with a focus on security and privacy.
I'm not happy with that, but is working with the police (without compromising the security of the network) really a bad idea if it allows to advance the argument that there's no way to have encryption "only for the good guys" ?
@scy sorry, but that is how business works. That is PR content targeted at police people. Microsoft, Discord and Slack are happy to make some PR content telling how great the people at the police are.
One could argue, that there are no police people in the fediverse. Are we sure? That might be true for Germany, but people in Tech in e.g. the US are easier with the police/military than the average German techie in the fediverse.
@hikhvar It’s much more simple than that: They’re free to address their PR to whoever they like. However, I’m free to react by stating my disapproval, and by no longer supporting them financially.
Nothing more is happening here.
And if you’d made an effort to really read my toot like I’ve asked you to, you could’ve realized that on your own instead of trying to explain fucking capitalism to me.
@scy@element In theory matrix is federated, but the majority of matrix accounts I see are on the server run by Element. That situation had already made me hesitant to recommend matrix.
This is also why I'm concerned about efforts to make mastodon.social a default server. Centralization is dangerous.
I don't see the police disappearing any time soon, and I think a reduction of the power of the US government over them (as I assume they use communication systems like MS Teams) would be good. This will also help to redirect funding from closed to open source development.
However, I don't think the police needs E2E, they need more public, more accountability. And E2E is clearly Element's focus. (1/2)
@scy@element
Police abolitionist here. This is of course repulsive, and not the first unsettling signal sent by Element. That said, one wonders if there's a strategic aspect to this gambit of theirs. Reactionary elements in the US, UK and EU governments are again coming for encryption. Element may be thinking that the more intelligence and law enforcement agencies are reliant on their tech, the better argument they have against this legislation. But this all presumes against a technical bifurcation in which the state gets real encryption and the rest of us get backdoors
@ophiocephalic Interesting idea, but what exactly do the cops lose if they can backdoor into their own conversations? In other words: Will “oh wait that’s the service we use” really be an argument about backdoors? I doubt it.
@scy
I think the argument would be more about government and law enforcement's ability to defend against other states or malicious actors, not themselves
@mxk Nobody's saying that! Why are like 20% of the people in this thread assuming that I'd rather have public services run on Teams?
The thing is, if you produce privacy-related software, or are a FLOSS project, I'd expect you to be, in 2023, socially conscious enough to understand that "oh btw we spoke at a police congress" is not something to brag about.
@scy but they don't talk about intercepting their service, matrix is providing infrastructure for the police and literally the whole french state and I fail to see anything wrong with that.
I want those institutions to run matrix and for 90% of society being trusted by the police is something to brag about.
@scy@element this is such a wrong take. I don't see anything in the shots saying anything about supporting any specific views or any implication about breaking the security of the protocol.
It's about selling open source, private and secure communications using an open protocol which really needs to be properly advertised to the right groups of people. And this is one.
@vascorsd I’ve amended the “take” at the top of the thread, you might want to have another look at it.
Also, I consider adding links to seemingly unrelated YouTube videos without any further explanation to be spam. Please remove it or explain why it’s on topic.
@scy the video is relevant in explaining how it's needed to approach the same concept - in this case secure internet communications - to different stakeholders in a way they understand why it's important to them.
The way one approaches governmental entities is different to the one taken when trying to bring the common people or a normal organisation to use the platform and making it important.
Add comment