flori_ava_star:~:cursor_blinking: :made-with-estrogen: (@star)

@zenmaya @collectifission @delta The article says a lot of things, but also seems to mislead on purpose, which is why I don't really trust it

For example: They make a big point about how the OTF was created as a cold-war propaganda outlet, which really doesn't say much by itself. Many things that are now properly useful tools in the essential digital toolkits of marginalized people around the globe have had their roots in some sort of imperialist government involvement, but that's not a reason to discredit the tool on its own. Tor is also such a project, for example, having its roots in the U.S. Naval Research Labs and the CIA; organizations, which both aren't... quite neutral in selecting a project to pursue, one could say /lh

(I also like how the article specifically makes sure to call the Biden and Obama administrations genocidal, as if that weren't a truth about... virtually all administrations, I guess. And while it's good to highlight that, I don't really see how that fact connects to anything the article is trying to say.)

Oh and, for all the excellent research this article makes, which sounds fine to me at a glance, it conveniently forgets to mention things like

- The Signal Foundation was established in 2018. OTF funding for Open Whisper Systems ended in 2016
- Yeah, Whittaker gets paid much more than she could ever be worth, but compared to similarly sized organizations in the for-profit sector, she is well undercompensated. Still critiqueworthy, but not like she eats up a whole big chunk of Signals funding alone
- The post tries to characterize Signals operation as not lean, while Signal itself claims that it is. The sole reason the article gives for this characterization is how much the CEO earns, which is a very fair point of critique, but negligible compared to the rest of Signals operating cost, which is also fourth or fifth of the budget WhatsApp had used annually before it had been acquired by Facebook, which I bring up as a point because at that point, WhatsApp had comparable user counts to todays' Signal. I'd say that this makes Signal look pretty lean, and I'll also agree, that executives should not be taking 12% of the orgs' revenue to themselves. But I think the framing that Signal is apparently financially bloated is bullshit.
- They say "Signal stores metadata about its users" and don't elaborate further, instead linking to a comment by a random user on Lemmy. Sweet. And having looked at that comment, yeah, it seems accurate that metadata exists about those who use the service, because that is just a technical necessity of how the internet works, I personally choose to believe the people who work and have worked at Signal who are saying that Signal does not retain any of this information. Sure, you could now make a point about "but your ISP or Amazon could still track this, and therefore the government could, too", but you cannot be seriously framing a chat app as bad or critiqueworthy because it isn't a magic tool to complete privacy and online anonymity.

I think the article does have good points. And there doesn't seem to be factual inaccuracy in the article, if you disseminate it and analyze each statement piece by piece. But I also think the article is written in a heavily opinionated way, which purposefully hides or misinterprets/skews facts, which seems veeeeeery fishy to me