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Re:AI Slop Is Killing Online Communities by michaelt on Thursday May 07, 2026 @07:33PM (#48056507)
> The IRL social network is actually the important part of the trust structure.

For Debian-style applications that are 100% about openness and 0% about secrecy, sure.

But if you want to secure communications between pro-democracy activists in China, or you're a Snowden-like whistleblower wanting to securely communicate with journalists - y'all probably don't want to be vouching for one another's keys.

Re:AI Slop Is Killing Online Communities by 81AB24FB on Friday May 08, 2026 @02:07PM (#48066708)
I participate in developing anti-censorship tools. Chinese are a significant population, and it has some overlap with activists there. In practice, identity settles at "who controls this email address".

Self-signed PGP is very occasionally used to prove continuity across channels or addresses. Cross-signed basically never.