I struggled finding a source for this, I’d like to understand it fully. Do you have one?

Could you share some sources on your claim that states are encouraged to incarcerate journalists?

This is incredibly important. Signal is considered the “gold standard” of encrypted and private communication for a reason.

Some photographer took a picture of a politician in the Trump admin using a Signal clone. That signal clone allowed the user to archive chats to a third party.

While I agree in theory, in practice open source has a similar amount of expected trust as closed source can have in many cases. I use all sorts of open source software without reading the code. I ain’t got time for that.

I can trust that software from a lot of organizations are trustworthy even if it is closed source, but I can’t trust any open source repo without reading the code. I habe to use other ways to evaluate it, is it probable that someone has audited it? Is it popular? Is it recognized as safe and trustworthy? Is the published and finished build the same as the one I would get if I built it myself?

But yes, you can never be 100% certain without open source and auditing it yourself.

I do trust that my travel pass app from a government organization doesn’t install malware / spyware on my phone. I can’t trust a random github repo even if it is open source.

We had some emergency law that was almost passed recently. As in it passed the first of two rounds. The second voting round is just a formality, all laws are just passed after the first in practice. Luckily some law professor raised the alarms and it did not pass the second time. So within a couple of hours margin it was stopped.

The law gave the government the ability to force people to do a lot of stuff, work any job at any place in Norway. If you do not comply you could get up to three years in prison. It would not be a problem with the current or any government in the near future, but it is a law. And we can’t have laws that rely on trusting politicians. Because we might have politicians with anti democratic tendencies in the future

I think certain arguments work, and certain don’t.

I live in a very high trust society, Norway. This has a lot of advantages, but also some downsides.

We trust eachother, our neighbours, our government and our media. Which is fantastic, and well deserved. The government deserves the trust.

This makes it hard for me to make people realize how important privacy is, because they trust organizations with their data.

During COVID, Norway made their own app for tracking who met to prevent the spread. Of all the apps in the world, Norway wanted to push about the least privacy friendly app in the world. This from a country with the highest press freedom and rankings for democracy. Most people though it was fine, because why not? We trust our government.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/06/norway-covid19-contact-tracing-app-privacy-win/

Luckily someone protested enough, and it got scrapped for something better.

When I try to convince someone I have a couple of angles:

1. You trust the government and organizations with your data today. But do you trust the government in 30 years? Because data is forever. The US has changed a lot in a very short time, this can happen here as well

2. You have a responsibility for other peoples privacy as well. When you use an app that gets access to all your SMSes and contacts you spy on behalf of companies on people that might need protection. Asylum seekers from other countries for instance.

I have been thinking about how or if I would track my own children. I do not have any at the moment though.

I think the only system that would work with tracking and still be ethical is a system with accountability.

They need to know that I would never check unless there was an emergency. So we’d have to have some sort of immutable log that they can check regularly. So they know if I checked their location. It should not be like a panopticon. in which they don’t know if the parent is checking their location or not. That changes behaviour. Even with the trust that I would not check, just me having the option would alter behaviour probably.

Youth and kids are independent individuals with their own rights to privacy, autonomy, right to select their own friends and acquaintences, right to freedom of expression and movement, right to make mistakes, etc. If they are thought right and have a high trust bond with their parents, preferably with little judgement, then it will probably be fine and most issues can be solved.

Oh, I have so many questions 😄 This is super interesting.

It seems to me upon further reading that PRC is a market socialist country, is that a correct assumption?

I read about Huawei and was surprised that it is at least supposedly owned by its 167 000 employees. Considering the size of that company that is really interesting.

There is other stuff I’d like to know more about.

1. The situation with Taiwan (My opinion: Taiwan has the right to decide their own future)
2. Democratic processes / elections
3. President Xi seems to be the president for life now, is that the case?
4. Supression of speech that criticizes the party or makes fun of, satirizes etc. Winnie the Pooh would be one such example.

Without being able to openly speak about systemic problems I can’t see that PRC has found a solution that I see as good enough. To me an ideal situation would both be socialist/communist and democratically governed.

I realize that I have enormous gaps of knowledge about PRC and how the country works. But I really appreciate the time you are taking to explain this stuff to me. Thank you.

Thanks, that makes sense

Tankie is a perjorative word, but it refers to those who support authoritarian communism. For instance by denying documented historical events, or support or defend repression from authoritarian regimes.

Why should I ignore their opinions and block those that use the word? Is it that negatively charged?

I believe Norway still has a lot of good systems to take care of its citizens.

We have free healthcare, free education, very cheap kindergartens (highly subsidized), lots of vacation, retirement is guaranteed, if you get disabled you are guaranteed an income for life, etc.

I’ll check out the podcast!

You are right about the alarm bells. I am skeptical about PRC actually being socialist, I have seen it as a authoritarian capitalist country with a veneer of communism with close to no freedom of speech when it comes to criticism of the party / government.

I know that my views are biased due to my upbringing and the culture I live in.

However, you did say that it can be socialist and still face real issues.

I am critical of the censorship, surveillance, and treatment of the Uyghurs.

But I will try to keep an open mind, and get to know China more. I think that is a good country for me to learn more about. I think the view on publicly owned large firms is interesting. In Norway some of our largest firms are mainly or heavily owned by the government or smaller regions of Norway. For instance Equinor is about 70% publicly owned.

I’ll read about the other countries as well, and I’ll try to remember your point about it not being perfect wonderland, even if socialist.

To anyone reading this, please don’t do a whataboutism here. I can both be critical of the treatment of Uyghurs and the censorship of Tiananmen square massacre AND Guantanamo Bay, US prisoners being treated as slave workers, human rights abuses, immigrants being sent to CECOT, warcrimes, Palestine genocide etc. just so that there is no confusion here.

When it comes to Norway, I agree that it benefits from current capitalist world order, and think your arguments here is valid.

I agree, but am happy that X is losing users to Bluesky, so I don’t try to convert friends and family from Bluesky to Masrodon. I’d rather they start changing other stuff instead that is easier.

I disagree. I believe that in the right hands it sharpens as it passes. If it does not, then you might need to change the way you talk to others in order to get there.

There are many times I have had thoughts that are principally correct or ideologically true to my beliefs, but that has been more moderated as I have heard the opinions and thoughts of others.

In a perfect world my values would be shared by everyone and the principles I hold would be shared amongst everyone. But we live in a world of compromise, and we can not fight every fight. And also, I am not infallible, my core beliefs are probably somewhat wrong.

Take the very current situation with free speech. I used to have a lot stronger opinion in support of absolute free speech, now I am more reserved. Principally I believe in absolute free speech still, but that won’t work in a non-perfect world

404media.co has a really high quality one! They also got a 2024 award from EFF.

“Welcome to the podcast from 404 Media where Joseph, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason catch you up on the stories we published this week. 404 Media is a journalist-owned digital media company exploring the way technology is shaping–and is shaped by–our world. We bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL through investigative reporting, smart blogging, and breaking news. At 404 Media you’ll read, and hear, stories you can’t find anywhere else written by journalists who are leading experts on their beats.”

Why would you want to think independently? I am a collective thinker. I ask other people their opinions and discuss it with them. That’s how I learn and form my own opinions, and how you end up with good solutions to problems. You don’t have enough time to form good opinions on lots of topics, but you have time to curate your sources and who you discuss things with. You should aim for a good signal/noise ratio.

Thinking independently / being a free thinker is overrated in my opinion. A somewhat elitist way of describing oneself. “Not being a sheep” etc.

Identify your core values, sensible opinions can be derived from those. If there is a mismatch between your derived opinion based on one of your core values, then maybe you have to reconsider your core values. The best way to discover those is through discussion with others.

Being truly curious and discussing openly with others is one of the great joys of socializing. It can be done with people from all parts of the political spectrum. It’s much more enjoyable than small talk.

I am curious why you are getting downvoted here. Can someone explain? I was considering putting a rainbow sticker on my laptop for solidarity

Deus Ex

Yeah, I was not able to convince my wife to use LibreOffice instead of Office365, but OnlyOffice was an easy sell. I really enjoy it myself as well.

On their page it says: "## Ascensio System SIA - home of the ONLYOFFICE

ONLYOFFICE is a project developed by experienced IT experts from Ascensio System SIA, leading IT company with headquarters in Riga, Latvia. Originally ONLYOFFICE was designed for internal team collaboration.

An attempt to introduce it to a wider audience proved to be successful: ONLYOFFICE received very positive feedback from the Internet community. As a result, its functionality was considerably revised and expanded that brought about a high and stable growth of users from different countries.

Nowadays, ONLYOFFICE is an international, open source project with employees and contributors in more than 30 countries. The holding company in Singapore unites our offices around the world under the ONLYOFFICE brand. For now, we have departments in Riga, Singapore, London, Dallas, Belgrade, Yerevan and Tashkent. Would like to join our big open source family? Check how to become a contributor or discover job openings."

https://www.onlyoffice.com/about.aspx

Hmm…you seem to be at least partially right.

“In 2009, a group of software developers from Ascensio System SIA (Latvian-based) and New Communication Technologies (Russian-based) launched a project called TeamLab, a platform for internal team collaboration.[32]” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice