Privacy

41696 readers

885 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Signal needs a phone number. Why are we dismissing this as privacy versus anonymity when governments are blocking the registration SMS? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by autonomoususer@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

50 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I really don’t get why so many people are turning this into a privacy versus anonymity debate when the real problem is censorship.

Yes, Signal needs a phone number to sign up, but replacing that with an email or username doesn’t make it anonymous. The real issue is that governments are blocking the registration SMS, so people can’t even sign up for the app in the first place.

Sure, there are workarounds, but most people aren’t going to jump through all those extra hoops just to use an app. If we want to spread privacy, how do we do that when Signal's phone number requirement is actively working against us?

Instead of arguing over privacy versus anonymity, shouldn’t we focus on making sure everyone can access Signal without issues? What do you think?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml -3 points 3 days ago (3 children)

SimpleX is promising, but seems very new.

Telegram is better than Signal on many angles, but has other problems.

I don't think there is a perfect app yet. But Signal's aggressive marketing is security-theater, not real security.

[–] Schlemmy@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Telegram as a platform is amazing. Feature rich while still easy to use. Easy to create useful bots too. Sadly the rest is questionable.

[–] herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 days ago

Telegram is what Signal is pretending to be. Telegram has other serious problems, but still lightyears ahead.

[–] Lychee@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

Using SimpleX for some time now, can only recommend.. only had an issue in France, though last time it just worked.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

There's a lot of dead accounts downvoting you BTW.