Simona [has moved]

After about a month of researching, documenting, and writing, this piece is out. Out of my brain, out of my soul.

Knowledge hurts sometimes. Acting consciously is so empowering though, and liberating.

Thanks @Ullilust and @Xeniax for allowing me to include your images and words.

My and @davidrevoy's illustrations in the article are CC-BY 4.0.

https://www.illugination.com/not-in-my-name/

#degoogle #notinmyname #surveillance #surveillancecapitalism #privacy #security #opensource #fediverse #movetothefediverse

Not In My Name

I won’t contribute to the richest-men-on-Earth’s wealth: wealth should be distributed. I don’t accept the Internet content being filtered by algorithms: content availability should be its owner’s choice. I refuse my data being used for ads overload: the world needs to degrow. And I deserve privacy.

Illugination
Mar 31, 2025 at 9:28amWeb
Show threadxeniax ⏚Mar 31, 2025

@symcasolari @Ullilust @davidrevoy thank you dear Simona for this great blog post. I have seen that you also talk about Signal there. To match with the decentralization vibe that I can feel throughout in your text, you might be interested in looking at Delta Chat @delta

Delta Chat is federated (decentralized) end-to-end encrypted messaging suite and collaborative tool. An interesting alternative or complimentary choice to Signal. The latter is unfortunately also dependent on big tech (as it uses AWS and Cloudflare for CDN), even if the cryptography behind is top notch.

Delta Chat is also an "archipel", as you nicely put it in your text, as it relies on a multitude of instances called chatmail servers. This helps avoid central points of failure and makes it quite a community-size project. Might be worth a further look.

Thanks for the work and care you have put in this text that, I am sure, will help many newcomers to get familiar with the Fedivers ✨

Show threadSimona [has moved]Mar 31, 2025
@Xeniax @Ullilust @davidrevoy @delta Hi Ksenia, thanks so much for your precious and valuable feedback! I must admit I had already checked Delta out but haven't found in my network someone willing to try it yet :/ I'm still in the process of convincing them to move to Signal. About the latter, it's useful to know the technologies they use (and the fact they rely on tech giants too). Will keep this info in mind for future considerations. I will find a way to give Delta a try!
Show threadadbMar 31, 2025

@symcasolari a thing that has lot of potential for convincing people is the in-chat mini-apps of #DeltaChat which Signal doesn't have, with them you can have shared to-do lists, shopping lists, split bills (I am using it right now to split expenses with a friend while traveling and it is super cool), mini-games, collaborative editor, polls, etc. There is much more than just chatting and could replace dependency on several centralized services, also kids can use it without SIM cards

@Xeniax

Show threadadbMar 31, 2025

@symcasolari main downside at the moment is the lack of ringing calls and yeah if you just made a fuzz to move everyone to Signal it is a bit annoying you now ask once again to jump, a bit unfortunate you went from a centralized service to another, maybe at least consider something else for other people that are still on WhatsApp instead of moving them to Signal, any centralized service is bound to get hit by enshitification eventually

@Xeniax

Show threadSimona [has moved]Mar 31, 2025
@adbenitez @Xeniax thanks for the feedback, I’m just starting out on @delta (thanks Ksenia) and I see I have so much to explore. Will definitely dig deeper into this topic, and the time to do that might actually be right now.
Show threadSebastiaan Ammerlaan 🇳🇱Mar 31, 2025

@symcasolari

"They not only collected personal data, but also managed to exerce an unprecedented power on us:", I think you meant either "exercise", or "exert".

Thanks for the article, it was a nice read! For what it's worth, I think Signal is already an excellent step in the right direction. There's still the thing about it being a company. With a non-profit attached to it, but still a company. Similar to how Mozilla works, I think? It's difficult, I need to look into it a bit more.

Show threadSimona [has moved]Mar 31, 2025

@bammerlaan ooh thanks so much for spotting that, I admit that not being English mother-tongue (and refusing to use AI) make my articles colourful in terms of unusual wording sometimes :)

I get what you mean about @signalapp. Feeling the same need to dig deeper and investigate a bit more–especially after I found out about @delta.

Show threadWandering ThinkerApr 1, 2025

@davidrevoy @Xeniax @symcasolari @Ullilust Good article. Thanks for the great job you've done!

But yes, I agree with the “poor description of what FOSS means”. FOSS is not only “no cost”, it is primarily open source code and freedom for forks and change.