sovereignty

dropglobalnews

I highly recommend people use encrypted email and messaging apps for communications. Years ago, I worked on the Edward Snowden NSA document stories. As part of this I learned very intimately how damaging that surveillance can be. The ability to read someones messages is really the ability to have full power over their life.

Most people's respond to this by thinking that they have nothing to hide and are not that interesting. But no one really knows where their life may be headed in future, or where their children or others around them might head. Having a giant database of your information sitting out there allows that it might  one day be weaponized against you. There is a concept of "databases of ruin" which means that if someone has full access to all your messages they can cherrypick any image of you that they like, even if you feel its mostly false. I've seen that done in courtrooms.

Use Signal and use ProtonMail. They're easy, and it'll let you and those around you fight tyranny with one small step.

some fun facts:
- every email provider (even protonmail) can read your emails unless they’re encrypted using pgp (you probs aren’t using it)
- telegram chats, discord DMs and warpcast DMs are marketed as private but aren’t since they’re not e2ee.
- a reputable open-source e2ee messenger is the best way to ensure private communications stay private (outside of whispering sentences into your friend’s ear).

encrypted messaging for farcaster communities / https://comm.app/download

1to1 telegram chats can be encrypted
other than that I fully agree. Better use xmpp (with OMEMO) or probably more known: Signal for encrypted interactions.

Re Email: protonmail is not perfect, but still kilometers better than most services by default IMO

1. people don't use e2ee messengers bc they have worse UX. shitty search, no cloud backups, confusing UI, etc. are features they take for granted on telegram, discord, etc.

2. people don't use social apps that their friends don't use. that's why new social apps these days start by asking you to import your contacts and share it with friends.

3. drawing awareness to surveillance and the end of privacy is crucial. we went from stranger danger to putting our entire lives online in a decade and it's weird and jarring to people that we're never going back. the younger generations have forgotten it entirely, but they'll embrace it once the ux catches up and their friends are on it (see: snapchat). also note all the points murtaza mentions - there's demand, it's just that building the product is hard. luckily our team is cracked.

I think the biggest issue with private comms is most people don't use it, because they think you're weird if you want privacy (what are you trying to hide?)

I do believe there's an opportunity to sell these to normies with deep crypto integration, and market it as a way to stop companies selling your data. It's not that Google can read your emails, but it's that they are using it to train their marketing algorithms and make more money off your communications, without giving you a cut.

This probably resonates with people more than "hey, they can read your emails".