Checklists Are The Thief Of Joy - Dhole Moments
soatok.blog
I have never seen security and privacy comparison tables (henceforth referred to simply as “checklists” for brevity) used for any other purpose but deception. After pondering this obser…

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/20989376

Where Soatok goes over why checklists are meaningless when trying to figure out if something is private or just for comparisons in general.

  • Sophocles
    61·
    9 months ago

    My lithsmus test for a good checklist is how they rate the Brave browser, Telegram, and popular VPNs. All three have marketed themselves as privacy friendly and secure, but all three are absolutely terrible if you do your homework on them. I’ve seen Brave or Telegram in the top tier on so many lists it isn’t even funny

    • Lime Buzz (fae/she)@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
      12·
      9 months ago

      Yeah, more tech and privacy enthusiasts should really look into things before declaring them secure or private. Even those that market themselves as such. Like, a lot of them hark on about SimpleX without really understanding that it’s not a good choice.

        • Lime Buzz (fae/she)@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          Well, it’s not exactly about privacy. But it does need a lot more time to develop before it is ready for ‘mainstream’ use, right now it’s very niche, they haven’t figured out how to get the same profile on multiple devices, there’s no proper ipad support and because it’s niche only tech people use it and thus I’m not interested in it until the average user can and will use it easily as I like all my friends etc to be on things I use.

          Plus it doesn’t have as many audits, as say, signal, so that’s a big hmmm in my book. Yes, it’s not been around as long, so that might not be fair, but it has a lot of things to fix before it’s worth using.

          Also, it really needs more ‘fun’ features, like signal has before most average people will use it. I think it also needs to figure out things like calling, especially group, but I cannot remember if that’s still accurate or not.

          Oh, also, I remember there was a big concern about funding because they went commercial instead of doing the right thing and starting a foundation or some such.

        • Lime Buzz (fae/she)@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
          3·
          9 months ago

          A big thing they could do to convince more of us is to set up a transparency report like Signal has, so we can see any requests for information or legal orders they get, and their replies.