true

indeed, it’s basically a spyware company at this point

That’s what happens when you abandon the alphabet that has letters designed to express the way your language sounds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Church_Slavonic

What part of the government is making information illegal are you struggling comprehend? If there was some magical anti-censorship platform that was usable by regular people then it would just be banned, and then people using it would be arrested. This is not a technology problem.

It’s incredible that it needs to be explained that the issue is with the censorship regardless of what particular service is being censored or what you personally happen to think of it.

continuing to miss the point I see

Kind of hilarious how people in the west would always claims that the differentiating factor between them and countries like China was freedom of expression. Turns out what was really happening was that majority of people in the west were just swallowing their state propaganda uncritically, and there was no need for heavy handed censorship. Now that the state is losing control of the narrative heavy handed measures are promptly introduced.

As always, the west is no different from its adversaries, but people in the west are gullible enough to think they’re special.

how to miss the point entirely

agreed

Ah gotcha, you could just omit but in this case and the sentence would have the intended meaning.

Why the but? GPL 3 is the correct license to use for open source projects to ensure they stay open and corps don’t freeload on them.

I believe this is a wrong solution to the problem. Narcotics are fine, but that should be addressed through legalization. Creating a black market for narcotics creates its own set of problems.

And that’s a very good thing too.

I mean, you could set up your own VPN on a VPS and ensure it doesn’t keep logs. You could also get a VPS in a different legal jurisdiction from where you’re at.

Subjugating the working class majority is literally the whole point of establishing a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

Firefox here

Plenty of polls were done after USSR fell and scumbags who took power tried to prove how terrible it was. The majority of the USSR never shared your sick views. Meanwhile, it’s absolutely hilarious how you pretend your capitalist paradise has no repression while UK jails people for tweets and French police brutally assaults protesters every single day. And of course, Poland is going back to its fascist roots now that your ilk is in charge. You deserve everything that’s coming to you.

Pretty much every poll shows that majority of people were perfectly fine living in USSR, and polls show that majorities of people who lived through the collapse agree that life was better during Soviet times. But there will always be people like your family. People like your father were a cancer destroying the society.

lmfao of course your family were anticommunist scumbags

Do tell what horrors your family lived through. I bet your family was subjected to terrible things like free education, housing, healthcare, and guaranteed retirement. Must’ve been absolutely terrible for them.

one of us actually lived in USSR, but do tell me what it was really like

Privacy is for the elites, what needs do the peasants have for it anyways?

the fantasy land you inhabit sounds fascinating

I don’t think you really have to qualify that, they just don’t read period. Their whole world view is based directly on Marvel movies.

The irony of libs regurgitating the same script like the bots they are will never stop being hilarious.

The illusion is that transition to capitalism actually improved the lives of the majority.

Meanwhile in the real world. Russia went from a backwards agrarian society where people travelled by horse and carriage to being the first in space in the span of 40 years. Russia showed incredible growth after the revolution that surpassed the rest of the world:

• https://wid.world/document/soviets-oligarchs-inequality-property-russia-1905-2016/
• https://wid.world/document/appendix-soviets-oligarchs-inequality-property-russia-1905-2016-wid-world-working-paper-201710/

USSR doubled life expectancy in just 20 years. A newborn child in 1926-27 had a life expectancy of 44.4 years, up from 32.3 years thirty years before. In 1958-59 the life expectancy for newborns went up to 68.6 years. the Semashko system of the USSR increased lifespan by 50% in 20 years. By the 1960’s, lifespans in the USSR were comparable to those in the USA:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union
• https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB5054/index1.html

Quality of nutrition improved after the Soviet revolution, and the last time USSR had a famine was in 1940s. CIA data suggests they ate just as much as Americans after WW2 period while having better nutrition:

• https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp84b00274r000300150009-5

Good idea

Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an “illegitimate state.” In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.

Yeah it does, because the standard of living in Germany and the Nordic countries is based on the brutal exploitation of the Global South.

Kulaks got exactly what they deserved, and anybody who defends the kulaks can get fucked.

well here’s what the CIA declassified documents have to say on that

Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by a lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist’s power structure.

http://web.archive.org/web/20230525044208/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf

I did give you a very clear answer with examples. If you lack reading comprehension to understand it, that’s entirely a you problem.

I didn’t ask you about socio economic background of the first generation of the Communist elites.

These aren’t “first generation elites”, these are literally all the leaders of the USSR throughout its existence. All the people in the party came from regular working class background. Having an elite or a ruling class means having a group of people who are wealthy and separate from the working majority the way politicians in the west are. You clearly don’t even understand what basic terms like elites mean.

In later years, nepotism was also was wide spread where children of the connected enjoy privileged status for employment and career advances and small things like vacations subsidies.

Sure, USSR had corruption just like every human society. That doesn’t mean USSR had a ruling class which was your original attempt at an argument.

Mentioning that some guy was Ukrainian with in the regime while not mentioning Holodomor is OG 🤡

Sure, let’s look at the whole holodomor narrative of yours from a perspective of an actual historian who studied it. During the 1932 famine, the USSR sent aid to affected regions in an attempt to alleviate the famine. According to Mark Tauger in his article, The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933:

While the leadership did not stop exports, they did try to alleviate the famine. A 25 February 1933 Central Committee decree allotted seed loans of 320,000 tons to Ukraine and 240,000 tons to the northern Caucasus. Seed loans were also made to the Lower Volga and may have been made to other regions as well. Kul’chyts’kyy cites Ukrainian party archives showing that total aid to Ukraine by April 1933 actually exceeded 560,000 tons, including more than 80,000 tons of food

Some bring up massive grain exports during the famine to show that the Soviet Union exported food while Ukraine starved. This is fallacious for a number of reasons, but most importantly of all the amount of aid that was sent to Ukraine alone actually exceeded the amount that was exported at the time.

Aid to Ukraine alone was 60 percent greater than the amount exported during the same period. Total aid to famine regions was more than double exports for the first half of 1933.

According to Tauger, the reason why more aid was not provided was because of the low harvest

It appears to have been another consequence of the low 1932 harvest that more aid was not provided: After the low 1931, 1934, and 1936 harvests procured grain was transferred back to peasants at the expense of exports.

Tauger is not a communist, and ultimately this specific article takes the view that the low harvest was caused by collectivization (he factors in the natural causes of the famine in later articles, based on how he completely neglects to mention weather in this article at all its clear that his position shifted over the years). However, its interesting to see that the Soviets really did try to alleviate the famine as best as they could.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2500600

On top of that, the famine was exacerbated by the fact that kulaks slaughtered livestock rather letting it be collectivized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak#Dekulakization

The reality is that famines were common in Tsarist times, and they were a major drive for the revolution in the first place. After the revolution, lives improved dramatically and famines stopped.

Must he nice being a communist while enjoying benefits of western society lol

you are the living embodiment of the meme 🤡

USSR demonstrably did not have a ruling class. If you look at the background of all the leaders of USSR they come from regular working class families.

Stalin’s father was a shoemaker and his mother was a house cleaner.

Malenkov’s father was a farmer and his mother was a daughter of a blacksmith.

Khrushchev’s parents were poor Russian peasants.

Brezhnev’s father was metalworker.

Andropov’s father was a railway worker and his mother was a school teacher.

Chernenko was born to a poor family of Ukrainian ethnicity in the Siberian village.

Gorbachev’s parents were peasants.

This clearly illustrates that USSR was a system of meritocracy where anyone could rise to the top through skill and work. And the reason this was possible was because USSR provided equal opportunity to all. Everyone had access to education, healthcare, housing, and work.

Did USSR not make millions of people die for the benefit of the ruling class or just plain old genocide so they can maintain their power?

USSR had no ruling class as I’ve explained above, and USSR did not make millions of people die for anything. Maybe try engaging with reality instead of regurgitating nonsense uncritically. The fact that you chose to argue about a subject you’re woefully ignorant about says volumes.

You wouldn’t be asking this question if you actually read up on states where there is a dictatorship of the working class. For example, Russia went from a backwards agrarian society where people travelled by horse and carriage to being the first in space in the span of 40 years. Russia showed incredible growth after the revolution that surpassed the rest of the world:

• https://wid.world/document/soviets-oligarchs-inequality-property-russia-1905-2016/
• https://wid.world/document/appendix-soviets-oligarchs-inequality-property-russia-1905-2016-wid-world-working-paper-201710/

USSR provided free education to all citizens resulting in literacy rising from 33% to 99.9%:

• http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PubEdUSSR.htm
• http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/anglosov.htm
• http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0000/000013/001300eo.pdf
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbez

USSR doubled life expectancy in just 20 years. A newborn child in 1926-27 had a life expectancy of 44.4 years, up from 32.3 years thirty years before. In 1958-59 the life expectancy for newborns went up to 68.6 years. the Semashko system of the USSR increased lifespan by 50% in 20 years. By the 1960’s, lifespans in the USSR were comparable to those in the USA:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union
• https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB5054/index1.html

Quality of nutrition improved after the Soviet revolution, and the last time USSR had a famine was in 1940s. CIA data suggests they ate just as much as Americans after WW2 peroid while having better nutrition:

• https://www.scribd.com/document/430076844/CIA-RDP84B00274R000300150009-5-pdf
• https://artir.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/compar1.png?w=640

USSR moved from 58.5-hour work weeks to 41.6 hour work weeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960:

• https://books.google.com/books?id=x8JYjwEACAAJ
• https://b-ok.cc/book/2669908/77497f

USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996:

• https://www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/1994/94B09_66_englp2.pdf
• https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm

In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67 and the average (not median) retiree household in the USA could expect $48k/yr which comes out to 65% of the 74k average (not median) household income in 2016:

• https://www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/1994/94B09_66_englp2.pdf
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/could-you-get-by-on-the-average-americans-retirement-income/

GDP took off after socialism was established and then collapsed with the reintroduction of capitalism:

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soviet_Union_GDP_per_capita.gif

The Soviet Union had the highest physician/patient ratio in the world. USSR had 42 doctors per 10,000 population compared to 24 in Denmark and Sweden, and 19 in US:

• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0735675784900482 (sci-hub for access)

• USSR defeated a smallpox epidemic in a matter of 19 days https://www.rbth.com/history/331857-how-ussr-defeated-black-smallpox

• The Social Consequences of Soviet Immunization Policies https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1997-812-03g-Hoch.pdf

Professor of Economic History, Robert C. Allen, concludes in his study without the 1917 revolution is directly responsible for rapid growth that made the achievements listed above possilbe:

• https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.507.8966&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Study demonstrating the steady increase in quality of life during the Soviet period (including under Stalin). Includes the fact that Soviet life expectancy grew faster than any other nation recorded at the time:

• https://www.jstor.org/stable/2672986?seq=1

A large study using world bank data analyzing the quality of life in Capitalist vs Socialist countries and finds overwhelmingly at similar levels of development with socialism bringing better quality of life:

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/pdf/amjph00269-0055.pdf

This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development.

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2430906/

This study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.

• https://academic.oup.com/cje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cje/beac072/7081084?guestAccessKey=01c8dd9f-af1c-48b3-b271-eb5d3a45017c&login=false

So, how do people who lived under communism feel now that they got a taste of capitalism?

• A remarkable 72% of Hungarians say that most people in their country are actually worse off today economically than they were under communism. Only 8% say most people in Hungary are better off, and 16% say things are about the same. In no other Central or Eastern European country surveyed did so many believe that economic life is worse now than during the communist era. This is the result of almost universal displeasure with the economy. Fully 94% describe the country’s economy as bad, the highest level of economic discontent in the hard hit region of Central and Eastern Europe. Just 46% of Hungarians approve of their country’s switch from a state-controlled economy to a market economy; 42% disapprove of the move away from communism. The public is even more negative toward Hungary’s integration into Europe; 71% say their country has been weakened by the process.

• The most incredible result was registered in a July 2010 IRES (Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy) poll, according to which 41% of the respondents would have voted for Ceausescu, had he run for the position of president. And 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism, while only 23% attested that their life was worse then. Some 68% declared that communism was a good idea, just one that had been poorly applied.

• Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an “illegitimate state.” In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.

• A poll shows that as many as 81 per cent of Serbians believe they lived best in the former Yugoslavia -“during the time of socialism”. The survey focused on the respondents’ views on the transition “from socialism to capitalism”, and a clear majority said they trusted social institutions the most during the rule of Yugoslav communist president Josip Broz Tito. The standard of living during Tito’s rule from the Second World War to the 1980s was also assessed as best, whereas the Milosevic decade of the 1990s, and the subsequent decade since the fall of his regime are seen as “more or less the same”. 45 percent said they trusted social institutions most under communism with 23 percent choosing the 2001-2003 period when Zoran Djinđic was prime minister. Only 19 per cent selected present-day institutions.

• 75% of Russians have expressed increasingly positive opinions about the Soviet Union over the years. Only a small portion of those surveyed said they had negative associations with the Soviet Union. The economic deficit, long lines and coupons were named by 4% of respondents each, while the Iron Curtain, economic stagnation and political repressions were named by 1% each, the Levada Center said.

• Adult mortality increased enormously in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union when the Soviet system collapsed 30 years ago. https://archive.ph/9Z12u

• Former Soviet Countries See More Harm From Breakup https://news.gallup.com/poll/166538/former-soviet-countries-harm-breakup.aspx

The Free market paradise goes East chapters in Blackshirts and Reds details some more results of the transition to capitalism.

LMFAO

That’s what it means to have a democracy for the ruling class.

I think that the operations of US government are very opaque, and it’s perfectly possible that Signal has to work with authorities like the NSA, while they don’t have to cooperate with other authorities. However, even in case they currently don’t cooperate that can’t be used as a guarantee that this will continue to be the case going forward.

The key point here is that if data is leaked it has to be assumed that it is used maliciously, privacy assessments cannot be trust based. And the motivations of the government funding and promoting Signal do matter in the calculus.

That’s right, Signal only holds phone numbers for some unspecified reason.

Exactly, it takes a lot of credulity to believe that the US government would just altruistically develop and fund a messaging platform that genuinely respects privacy. I recall somebody was talking about how collecting metadata is basically equivalent to having a private investigator follow you around, and I think that’s a great analogy. People tend to fixate on the content of the conversations, but the reality is that knowing who talks to whom is just as valuable.

I do think we can agree that SimpleX approach is the way to go long term. Cheers.