The downside of Signal is that it’s centralized, and thus at the whim of those who run it. Structurally, it’s not really different from Whatsapp or Telegram except for who owns it.

Mostly just that it’s still pretty new and thus hasn’t been as polished or scrutinized yet. Haven’t tried it myself. For the sake of the OP’s question, it may also be notable that it’s a UK company.

The two encrypted messaging platforms I currently suggest are XMPP or Matrix. Both are usually fine and are decentralized. The main thing with them is to either self-host or choose a server you trust to set up an account — which applies to the Fediverse in general.

The quote from the email isn’t her words. They were given to her (and all agency heads) to send out to their workforce to implement the EO. It should not be taken as “embracing the new regime”.

But you can already message/DM someone through Mastodon, Lemmy or whatever, and that’s fine. I don’t see the value proposition of sup.

Not sure I understand the motivation for an ActivityPub messenger like sup. Seems like XMPP and Matrix already take care of the federated messenger space.

Corruption

Sure, but profit may not be the most important factor for Bytedance here. They say they’re more willing to shut down than negotiate divestment.

It’s a lot easier to scan for very specific code behavior than it is to scan for “anything useful for espionage”. And that still wouldn’t solve the question of what their server software is doing or where the collected data is ending up.

If the code were static and unchanging, sure. But it’s not possible to conduct such analysis every time an update is issued on a continuing basis, without fast becoming a hundreds of millions of dollars or more program.

So the better question isn’t whether it’s possible — it’s whether it’s feasible. And the answer is no, it’s not.

It also can’t track the users nearly as well.

That this thread became a mixture of They Might Be Giants and Mitchell & Webb is hilarious and i’m here for it.

Oh, so that’s why I give people cop vibes, when I’m really just colorblind.