So it has nothing to do with the trees?

They go together though. Like what’s scary about the surveillance is how much censorship there is. Because it would be dead easy to arrest someone for thought crime if you are constantly surveiling them.

Touch grass /j

Yeah I ended up installing it in an Android work profile using Shelter, and it is a disaster of an app. I expected a lot more of a professional looking app given how popular the WeChat service is and how big of a company Tencent is, but it’s like a shittier WhatsApp. It’s not even localized properly, a bunch of strings in the app (like error screens and stuff) are in Chinese, and the English is poorly translated. The mechanism to reply to someone’s message is unclear (it’s not just long pressing or dragging on a message like in other apps), and you can’t send a reaction emoji to a message.

switch from that chinese spy tool or we better break up

“Hey babe, you know that app which is your only way of communicating with your family and friends back home? Yeah well I’m breaking up with you if you don’t ditch it.”

I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. If I’m going to do that I might as well buy the burner phone once I’m actually in China rather than preemptively get one now. I like her a lot but I’d say we’re at least a year away from going to China together.

Yeah I was considering Waydroid but then I lose the ability to connect outside of my PC

We’ve only been dating for about 6 months, but I agree with the sentiment of what you’re saying. In any case, we care for each other a lot and want to see the relationship last a long time.

Relationships (of all kinds) are about compromise. You have to recognize that outside of the echo chambers in communities like this one, literally nobody cares about digital privacy to the extent that us nerds do. So you can choose to be dogmatic in your approach and alienate yourself from the >99% of people in the world who don’t care, or you can recognize that your own desires for digital privacy need to be weighed against your desires to form meaningful connections with other people.

Personally I prefer to be pragmatic in my approach. I do what I can to look after my privacy within the constraints of actually doing what I need to do to connect with other people. That’s why I made this post. My mind is made up that I’m going to at least try to use WeChat, but within that constraint, I want to do everything in my control to limit the app’s visibility into the rest of my system.

Was considering Waydroid, but ideally I want something that I can take with me on the go. Some folks have suggested the app Shelter on fdroid though and that seems like an ideal solution for the time being.

Maybe get a girlfriend that isn’t a brain washed spy? \s

Listen here, I like my qt tankie sleeper cell gf. As long as she doesn’t hear anyone say the activation phrase, she’s very sweet.

For real though, this app is pretty culturally ingrained over there and so I don’t really have the option of pushing something else (we all know how real messaging app fatigue has gotten these days). Especially when other apps will be restricted whenever she travels home, and we want something that can serve as a backup when other communication methods aren’t an option. I’m pretty sure WeChat will work through The Great Firewall, so it’s ideal for our purposes. I have no idea if the same can be said for WhatsApp or Signal.

Thank you! This is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for!

I’ve heard of matrix bridges before but I’m unfamiliar with how to actually set them up and use them. I understand the basic idea is that they relay messages out of matrix and into some other messaging service, but I don’t understand how to actually enact that onto the element client on my phone. Matrix is so complicated 😅

Yeah she’s an iPhone user. And she wants to use WeChat because it’s like second nature to Chinese people. It’s as normal to them as email is to us in the west. They are totally desensitized to the digital privacy concerns.

She has WhatsApp as well, but it’s not set up properly on her phone so she doesn’t get notifications for it. Plus I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t work if she traveled back to China.

I’m not in the US, but what is this Shelter you speak of?

She’s not very tech savvy at all. It would be asking a lot. I’d rather stick to something she is comfortable with.

That’s a great point, thanks! I will definitely be using the international one. I expect since I’m getting it through Google Play it’ll be constrained based on the OS permissions I give it. And I don’t intend to give it any permissions

To answer the question: GrapheneOS and a separate profile would be the safest

I appreciate the suggestion, but maybe I should add that I’d like to not have to change up my phone too much. It’s a Fairphone 4 running the OEM Android and my preference would be to keep it that way. Are separate profiles like that a thing on stock Android?

If you are both outside of china there really is zero reason (other than preference) to use that piece of spyware.

She travels back to China sometimes, uses it to contact friends and family back home, and uses it to chat with lots of mainlanders here in Canada. For her it’s not weird at all.

In fact, she expressed to me that she’s perfectly comfortable with the fact that they use WeChat combined facial recognition technology in China for payment processing. When you get on public transit, you can have them scan your face and it will automatically charge you the bus fare. It really skeeves me out, but it’s simply not the hill I want to die on in this relationship. I’m crazy about her in so many ways, it’s okay with me if we don’t see eye-to-eye on digital privacy.

2fa can be handled by a cycling number like authenticator apps

Might be to reduce risk of legal action by Microsoft (not that they’d have a legal leg to stand on, but that doesn’t seem to matter these days)

Oh, I see. Haven’t been following this story that closely tbh.

Tbf they’re probably rare because of the rootkit anticheat right?

Don’t worry, it’s not real. It’s just an AI generated image for the scam

Honestly a good change. Defaults should be handled by the OS. If a software wants to be your default, it should ask the OS to present the selection screen and allow the user to choose the option.

I didn’t get past the sign in page because I was having too much fun looking at all of the localization options for their website.

The default is “🇺🇸 English (Simplified)”, but they have “☠️Pirate”, “Toki Pona”, “🥹Bottom”, “😸OwO”, “🪄 Enchantment Table”, and many other funny options.

To be fair, there was a time before Discord. People once used MSN, Skype, Teamspeak, IRC, etc.

They shouldn’t get too comfortable with the idea that people won’t just up and leave.

My understanding is this: The model of Nebula is basically like a co-op. Everyone gets paid according to the views they get. And the higher Nebula’s total monthly revenue, the more each view is worth.

Content creators won’t follow because there isn’t any monetary incentive to do so

Look up Nebula

I don’t recall The Wire ever showing someone innocent getting wiretapped. They always need a judge to sign off that there is probable cause for every single wiretap they get. It’s even a plot point a few times that they aren’t sure how to prove probable cause for a particular SIM card. Obviously there’s the question of whether or not drug trafficking should be illegal, but you have to accept the premise that the characters in the show are fighting the war on drugs.

My understanding is that Activitypub federation and that sort of privacy are somewhat incompatible. Because someone could always just create a new instance and then federate the stuff you don’t want shared with them.

option to hide your personal data until you approve a future employer

I think this is impossible in a fediverse context. Data is either shared publicly or only shared with your home instance’s admins. There’s no other sharing model as far as I know.

Sounds like you had an XY problem

What exactly is the issue preventing them from updating the Android version?

Also, if that’s the case, it sounds like “App stores were a mistake” is a bit misleading, since the particular app store isnt the problem.

Reminder that VLC is on F-Droid

$2.4M is 8 years’ worth in that case, assuming they were making that much the entire time. And of course a lot of that money was probably for the devs to afford basic living expenses.

Where does a FOSS project find $2.4M? They weren’t selling anything were they? They can’t really have that big of a war chest can they?

Non, putain

Doesn’t triangulation get fucked up by the presence of buildings? I don’t imagine these give much more precision, even in the ideal situation you describe.

People usually call in shots fired. So all they’ve done is create an expensive device that maybe tells them a bit sooner than a concerned citizen.

Luckily there are relatively few countries that look at Vietnam as a role model.