So many thoughts on this...

The platforms and their convenience that one "only" has to write the post yet the internet needs so much metadata, so it tried to autogenerate it, instead of asking for it. People are put off by need to write a bloody subject for an email already, imagine if they were shown what's actually the "content" is.

About convincing: get the few that matters on deltachat, so they don't need anything new or extra - it's just email on steroids.

As for Mastodon: it's still someone else's system, there's nothing stopping them from adding AI metadata either on those nodes.

How is mastodon someone else's system? You can host your mastodon server just like you can host your email server or matrix server.

And other mastodon servers, just like other email servers, can of course still modify the data they receive how they'd like.

Use them as the public toilet they are. Never put in any effort in anything you upload.

Why deltachat, an app I've never heard of before instead of Signal, which is also open source and at least has a bit of traction?

Delta.Chat is really underappreciated, open-source and distributed. I recommend you at least look into it.

Signal, on the other hand, is a closed "opensource" ecosystem (you cannot run your own server or client), requires a phone number (still -_-) and the opensource part of it does not have great track record (I remember some periods where the server for example was not updated in the public repo).

But yeah, if you want the more popular option, Signal is the one.

Not even knowing what deltachat is, however Signal was suspected from the start of being developed by the NSA (read the story about the founder and the funding from the CIA) and later received tens of million USD each year from the US government to keep running. So it is never advisable option when the goal is to acquire some sense of privacy.

This is the internet, you can use hyperlinks instead of making vague references.

"read the story about the founder and the funding from the CIA"

And where can I find such a story from a trusworthy source? Quick google search rather turned up this:

https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/us-intelligences-services-cont...

(Debunking it as russian information warfare)

This is such a recurring topic that it might be better for me to one day write a blog post that collects the details and sources.

In absence of that blog post:

Start by the beginning, how Moxley left Twitter as director of cyber over there (a company nowhere focused on privacy at the time) to found the Whisper Foundation (if memory serves me the right name). His seed funding money came from Radio Free Asia, which is a well-known CIA front for financing their operations. That guy is a surf-fan, so he decided to invite crypto-experts to surf with him while brainstorming the next big privacy-minded messenger.

So, used his CIA money to pay for everyone's trip and surf in Hawaii which by coincidence also happens to be the exact location of the headquarters for an NSA department that is responsible for breaking privacy-minded algorithms (notably, Snowden was working and siphoning data from there for a while).

Anyways: those geeks somehow happily combined wave-surf with deep algo development in a short time and came up with what would later be known as "signal" (btw, "signal" is a well-known keyword on the intelligence community, again a coincidence). A small startup was founded and shortly after that a giant called "whatsapp" decided to apply the same encryption from an unknown startup onto the billion-sized people-audience of their app. Something for sure very common to happen and for sure without any backdoors as often developed in Hawaii for decades before any outsiders discover them.

Signal kept being advertised over the years as "private" to the tune of 14 million USD in funding per year provided by the US government (CIA) until it ran out some two years ago: https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/signal-faci...

Only TOR and a few new tools remain funded, signal was never really a "hit" because most of their (target) audience insists on using telegram. Whatsapp that uses the same algorithm as signal recently admitted (this year) that internal staff had access to the the supposedly encrypted message contents, so there goes any hopes for privacy from a company that makes their money from selling user data.

Not discounting the suggestions and implications there, for all we know all of that could be true, but that's still a tremendous amount of speculation. And the fact itself that the US gov and US institutions have invested in cryptography or anything at all doesn't automatically make those investments "tainted" (for lack of a more inspired word).

I'd be interested in reading that blog post eventually.

> it is never advisable option when the goal is to acquire some sense of privacy.

Would this depend on threat model?

Nowadays even YouTube comments are more anonymous than using a "deltachat" or "signal". On the first case there is zero verification on their claims, on the second case there is plenty of evidence of funding from the CIA.

At least commenting from an unknown account on any random youtube video won't land you immediately at a "Person of Interest" list and your comments will be ignored as a drop of water inside an ocean of comments.

It's been a while since I looked at it but as far as I know delta chat is just email so it's as anonymous as your email account I'd gather.

The OP is also on Mastodon already, but social networks are ruled by their gravity well, unfortunately.

Individual actions like this will never do anything, because the average person is not going to spend hours upon hours investigating platforms. They just want an easy way to connect with their friends and family, follow artists, etc.

Which is why I think the only solution has to come at the governmental regulatory level. In “freedom” terms it could be framed as freedom from, as in freedom from exploitation, unlawful use of data, etc. but unfortunately freedom to seems to be the most corporate friendly interpretation of freedom.

>They just want an easy way to connect with their friends and family

You'd be surprised how many people in your life can be introduced to secure messaging apps like Signal (which is still centralized, so not perfect, but a big step in the right direction compared to Whatsapp, Facebook, etc) by YOU refusing to use any other communication apps, and helping them learn how to install and use Signal.

Correct. I was shocked when one of my non-technical family members moved over to Proton Mail. I was super proud of them even if it came from left field!

I got my parents and siblings all to use Signal by refusing to use WhatsApp myself. And yet all of them still use WhatsApp to communicate among each other. They have Signal installed, they have an account, they know how to use it, and yet they fall back to WhatsApp. Some people really do want to choose Hell over Heaven.

Great first step either way! The pressure for social conformity is a hell of a drug and I try to have compassion for those suffering from it, even as I try to gently encourage them to grow past it.

The primary and most important feature of a messaging app is the ability to message a lot of people.

Signal is the best messaging app, but not by metrics people use to measure messaging apps, because not a ton of people use it. I use signal, but I also still use SMS (garsp!) because ultimately sometimes I just need to send a message.

It sucks and it's stupid, what we need more than anything else, more than any app, is open and federated messaging protocols.

This is correct. Which is why "vote with your wallet" is also a flawed strategy. At the scale these companies are operating, individual action does not move the needle, and it is impossible to coordinate enough collective action to move the needle.

There is no feasible way for a normie like me to convince enough people to take any kind of action collectively that will be noticed by FAANG.

I think we like to pretend otherwise, like oh if enough people stop using Instagram, they will fail. This is only true in the most literal sense, because "enough" is an enormous number, totally unachievable by advocacy.

"Vote with your wallet" implies that the rich deserve more votes. Individual action in dollars per vote simply can't matter against the rivers of wealth in ad spend and investors. It's not just a flawed strategy, but sometimes believing in "vote with your wallet" signifies consent or at least complicity that the advertiser buying a lot of ads or the rich idiot with a lot of money invested in gaining your private data "should" win.

We need far better strategies than "vote with your wallet". I think it is at least time to get rid of "vote with your wallet" from our collective vocabularies, for the sake of actual democracy.

Sayings like "Vote with your wallet" come about as a byproduct of living in an economic system that is on its face democratic and capitalist yet somehow still concentrates political and market power in the hands of a few.

If something is bad, it's said that the free market will offer an alternative and the assumed loss of market share will rein in the bad thing. It ignores, as does most un-nuanced discourse about economy and society, that capitalism does not equate to a free market outside of a beginner's economics textbook, and democracy doesn't prevent incumbents from buying up the competition (FB/Instagram) or attempting to block competition outright (Tiktok).

Most people write to be read. Surely I can write on my own blog, but no one would read them (not that my social media is much more worth reading though.)

Plus, what about videos? How is a non-tech savvy creator going to host their content if it's best in video format?

> I keep trying to convince people not to use Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter/X,

I'm with you, but WhatsApp is tough. How do you keep in touch?

I left Insta the day FB bought it; closed my FB, twitter, and Google accounts a couple of years later; WA was the hardest to leave, I'll grant. Since I left, I've used: phone; email; Signal; Telegram; letters; post cards; meeting up in person; sms; Mastodon; tried a couple of crypto chats. There are so many options it's not worth worrying about.

In the cases of special interest groups (think school/club/street/building groups), I just miss out, or ask for updates when I meet people. I am a bit out of the loop sometimes. No-one's died as a result of my leaving. When someone did actually die that I needed to know about, I got a phone call.

Honestly... just leave. Just leave. It's not worth your time worrying about these kind of "what ifs".

How about close friends who live on the other side of the world?

Telegram and Signal are, to me, about as trustworthy as WhatsApp. Well, actually, nobody really uses Signal, and Telegram is about the same as WhatsApp so who cares.

Waiting to meet my friends once every 1-2 years is not enough. I want to chat daily with them, because they are my close friends.

Daily telephone conversations with a group of them? Nope. Snail mail? It doesn't work for daily conversation.

So WhatsApp it is!

Yea, WhatsApp is the one that's difficult to leave behind.

Fine. Allow Zuckerberg to mediate your conversations and profit from your relaationships and emotional labour. That’s your choice.

Mediate how?

And what's the alternative? How do I keep in daily touch with my close friends that live across the world?

Mediate? By being the medium through which you communicate.

At any point they might insert an advert, a bot, change the UI or the share features, some AI slop, etc. you will have no recourse.

Just by using their platforms they’re able to update their models of you, your family, your friends. The timing of chats, the data they have on you through Insta or FB, all flesh out and refine their model of you. You are doing their work for them, helping them get richer, all whilst they oversee everything you do.

As for alternatives? I already listed several. You rejected most of them for whatever reasons you gave. Those were primarily your choices rather than firm barriers.

Here’s some more options: Discord, Matrix, blogs +RSS, your own mastodon instance, mailing lists, FaceTime, Zoom, WhereBy, MS Teams, irc, Slack, Mattermost, a custom chat server you wrote yourself.

I'd never considered a custom chat server.

... which means you're a normal human being. Who would go to these lengths just to keep in touch with friends, over some deluded sense of "avoiding mediation"?

Owning your own site and using federated spaces like Mastodon is absolutely a healthier model, and I wish it were more viable for more people. But until discovery, reach, and social norms shift in a big way, a lot of folks are going to be stuck straddling both worlds