[liberationtech] Time to Switch to Discord & Mozilla Firefox?

Tue Jun 25 12:41:05 CEST 2019

What are your thoughts in terms of usability between setting up mattermost
and riot for developer and non developer audiences?

On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 10:12 PM Julian Oliver <julian at julianoliver.com>
wrote:

> ..on Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 12:28:26PM -0700, Yosem Companys wrote:
> > Internet Freedom Festival uses Mattermost:
> >
> >
> https://medium.com/iff-community-stories/were-not-a-conference-9cf252199652
>
>
> Definitely go with self-hosted Mattermost or RocketChat or RiotIM. The
> former
> FLOSS 'team edition' is *astonishingly* performant. I installed and
> sysadmin a
> server with many thousands of members (at risk groups) spanning over 160
> teams.
> It's extra-ordinarily fast - barely expresses any load on the system, and
> is
> used heavily day in and out.
>
> Discord has among the worst privacy ToS in the chat space, openly
> presenting
> their service as a data harvest for downstream buyers.
>
> "By uploading, distributing, transmitting or otherwise using Your Content
> with
> the Service, you grant to us a perpetual, nonexclusive, transferable,
> royalty-free, sublicensable, and worldwide license to use, host, reproduce,
> modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from,
> distribute,
> perform, and display Your Content in connection with operating and
> providing the
> Service."
>
>     https://discordapp.com/terms
>
> Discord are actually even worse than Slack as regards our basic rights
> online,
> which is itself quite an achievement. Not sure I can think of a worse
> partner
> for mass team chat!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Julian
>
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 12:14 PM Petter Ericson <pettter at acc.umu.se>
> wrote:
> >
> > > On 24 juni, 2019 - axel simon wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Sun, Jun 23, 2019 at 10:17:02PM -0700, Yosem Companys wrote:
> > > > > Discord: what Facebook is trying to become.
> > > > >
> > >
> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/how-discord-went-mainstream-influencers/584671/
> > > > >
> > > > > Why to switch from Google Chrome to Mozilla Firefox.
> > > > >
> > >
> https://www.siliconvalley.com/2019/06/21/google-chrome-has-become-surveillance-software-its-time-to-switch/
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > Hi,
> > > > Discord is interesting in that it's popular and offers people the
> > > possibility to have their own community (which they call "server", I
> > > believe), but there's nothing free and open source about it.
> > >
> > > As of this writing, Discord has, as if to prove this point, been
> globally
> > > unavailable due to Cloudflare issues.
> > >
> > > > Matrix, and its main client Riot, are much more interesting to me
> > > currently, as they are (ambitiously) trying to solve multiple problems
> at
> > > once: a modern chat system, with voice and video and file sharing, with
> > > end-to-end cryptography, while maintaining a decentralised network
> > > architecture so that anyone can run their own instance, join and
> federate
> > > with the rest.
> > >
> > > Well, to harp on about long lost battles - XMPP did it first. I firmly
> > > believe that if all the effort spent on Matrix clients had instead
> been put
> > > into improving XMPP, then it would far surpass the current standards of
> > > both. Even so, XMPP is the protocol with several independent and
> mutually
> > > compatible server _and_ client implementations, as well a
> well-established
> > > protocol (and protocol extension process).
> > >
> > > > Current versions of Riot might not be entirely as slick as Discord,
> but
> > > they are getting better and they are very usable.
> > > > Incidently, Matrix has bridges to connect to other chat network (and
> > > ideally, bridge them together, hence the name), and can bridge to
> Discord.
> > > So there's a possibility of getting everyone to play nice with each
> other.
> > >
> > > Bridging has, time and again, shown itself to be a Much Harder Problem
> > > than may be apparent, with massive amounts of boring corner cases and
> > > exceptions. We'll see.
> > > >
> > > > Regarding Firefox vs. Chrome, Firefox has been the only browser (with
> > > any relevant market share) that isn't the product of a for profit
> company
> > > for a while. While Mozilla have made questionable descisions at time
> (and
> > > outright mistakes at others), that alone should be a strong argument to
> > > consider where one gets their browser from. I recall reading a
> statement in
> > > an article around Chrome's release about 10 years ago by then-CEO Eric
> > > Schmidt explaining that at the end of the day, if you want to be able
> to
> > > really control and see what users are doing, you need your own browser.
> > > This was when people couldn't quite understand why Google would build
> its
> > > own browser when Firefox had manage to end the Internet Explorer dead
> lock
> > > and they had a good relationship.
> > > > That passage really stayed with me (and if anyone were to find it,
> I'd
> > > be very greatful, I can't seem to do so).
> > > >
> > > > So yes, it's not that surprising that, when push comes to shove, the
> > > engineering teams working on Chrome have to bow to the business
> priorities
> > > of Google, the world's (more or less) biggest advertisement company.
> > >
> > > I'm in complete agreement.
> > >
> > > > Cheers,
> > > >
> > > > axel
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > axel simon
> > > > mail/matrix: axelsimon at axelsimon.net
> > > > twitter: @axelsimon
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major
> > > commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you
> > > moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe,
> > > change to digest mode, or change password by emailing
> > > lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Petter Ericson (pettter at acc.umu.se)
> > >
> > > --
> > > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major
> > > commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you
> > > moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe,
> > > change to digest mode, or change password by emailing
> > > lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org.
>
> > --
> > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major
> commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you
> moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe,
> change to digest mode, or change password by emailing
> lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org.
>
>
> --
> Julian Oliver
> https://julianoliver.com
> https://criticalengineering.org
> PGP https://julianoliver.com/key.asc
> Beware the auto-complete life
>
>
> --
> Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major
> commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you
> moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe,
> change to digest mode, or change password by emailing
> lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ghserv.net/pipermail/lt/attachments/20190625/9119e262/attachment-0001.html>