Both Snapchat and Whatsapp are a joke when it comes to privacy because the client software is closed source.

I know that to some extent, Facebook saves data on me using private messages I've sent to friends. I know that Google Hangouts does too. Snapchat tells me that nobody has access to messages I've sent to friends except for me and my friend, and that the message is deleted after the message is viewed. I have no evidence to show that they don't, and thus far no precedence not to trust them.

You have no evidence that they do either, so you can't trust them.

Trust by definition is not evidence-based. Even if it were "open source", you would have no proof that the actual production code was the open source version. I understand and even subscribe to the default attitude of lack of trust, but it is not an actionable attitude when it comes to the web and saas.

> Even if it were "open source", you would have no proof that the actual production code was the open source version.

There are ways to prove that. You can provide reproducible builds, where someone who builds the software will end up with bit-for-bit identical binaries to the production version. Then, anyone can verify that the available binary matches the available source.

One could argue that trust is only relevant when evidence is absent.

Why don't people talk about https://wire.com/? It's encrypted and mostly open source. It has the most features I've seen including multiple devices, group chat, audio, desktop app.

Is it really a solution to the walled gardens people are stuck in now? The clients are open, so presumably it would be possible (and encouraged?) to write a custom client. That is definitely a big plus.

But it still looks like a centralized communication protocol that depends on proprietary servers and a private network to use. The issue with the walled gardens we're seeing (this week with this iconic photograph) is that there is no escape valve; no truly open alternative to the social network provided by these services.

With email we can (despite the difficulties) set up our own servers and clients, and communicate with anyone (again, assuming we manage to set up things correctly) who uses email today. We can even use encryption verified and trusted by many independent experts (i.e., OpenPGP). Despite all its warts, there is a safety valve there, and for now it maintains the balance between corporate and public interests.

With these chat services it seems that you are stuck with what their proprietors allow and assert.

Federation is hard to get right, but isn't it simply a base requirement for any truly free and open alternative to the WhatsApps and Snapchats of the world?

I understand that feeling, but it's too idealistic to be practical right now. We have to accept that convenience has won. These types of social networks depend on a critical mass of users. If the choice is to hold onto principles and lose, or compromise for now closer to the direction we want, then I think we should use Wire. It is the best chance we have for a service that could become popular enough, with people behind it who might embrace it being an open standard. There are no realistic alternatives in this mobile dominated walled-garden world. Most don't even have a desktop client, and require a phone number.

Even if we disregard its flaws, why would the masses migrate to Wire? Or Telegram, or Signal for that matter. I don't deny that it's a lot better than WhatsApp, but it still faces the same problem as any other alternative; the masses aren't using it.

The masses have expectations of free services, and there is no way to monetize privatized data (encrypted data) while providing the service for free. Peer to peer networks will suffer heavily from today's infrastructure due to the cost required to track and process millions of different certificates, as well as symmetric sessions.

There are some creative applications that could be useful, like the models used in East Asia through micro payments. However their culture is conducive to the micropayment model (I.e. emojis, etc) whereas the West is not. A micro payment service on privatized data would be ideal if it could be profitable, yet there is no profitable model to sustain it in the West.

Edit: also, no matter what micro payment model you use, if it is successful or trends, the established free non privatized services will exploit it and provide it for free.

I can see this possibly working doing in enclaves outside the US surveillance apparatus, but directly competing against it by taking on their grandfathered companies is extremely difficult.

Short answer: to encourage diversity.

Slightly longer answer now that I have time:

We don't need the masses to migrate now, it doesn't need to be either

- "everyone away from Facebook, Whatsapp, Google, everybody use only GPL and nothing for NSA, ФСБ etc to see"

or

- otherwise utter fail.

Getting people to try alternatives goes a long way. We have seen Microsoft changing massively over the last few years after Apple started eating away at the high end prosumer market for phones and laptops.

Facebook just caved after one head of a nation and a couple of newspapers, one of them in a tiny tiny country, stood up and said NO.

I, and many with me, also think the majority of the police force in most western countries is good hardworking people, (I'm personally in no position to judge eastern or African countries and even my opinion on western police is to be taken with a grain of salt) what we object to is just the warrantless dragnets etc.

And the reason why we are objecing them often isn't necessarily because we distrust our police, but as an insurance against future police and politicians, against future hackers who might get access to a raw dump, against unstable neighbouring countries and the occasional bad apple we see. Oh, and as a matter of solidarity to people like the Turkish who now seems to have reason for worry if they ever said or did anything that might have offended their (somewhat easily offended it seems) president:-|

(BTW: If you have spare time and/or cash consider supporting EFF. They seem to be very focused and reasonable to the point where they are taken seriously by politicians.)

Ah I see. Getting people used to a status quo where having multiple chat networks in use is normal is better than a monoculture in the long term. I can agree with that.

The real issue is the brass tacks. Who can afford to run their own private servers, or pay for data throughput for synching. Not to mention the enormous waste of energy and resources due to duplicated posts kept across millions of peer to peer networks. Convenience is King as usual, and places like Facebook have the motivation and ability to monetize and optimize.

The idea of private data atolls in the day of free services is a luxury and they are exploiting that facet. Cloud services like Gcloud, AWS, etc reflect this from their premium pricing.

Wait, how is LinkedIn any better than Facebook?

Low maintenance, easy to ignore, clear purpose. I can use it to stay connected with colleagues without seeing photos of their wedding or baby pictures. There's no wall where people can publicly write to me, I don't get notified when it's my friend's birthday, my friends can't tag me in photos. I don't like the LinkedIn newsfeed very much but at least on mine I mostly only see people who have changed jobs or see jobs that are hiring.

I guess in general that being connected with your friends is a really useful tool, but Facebook does so much to try to keep you engaged that it becomes draining.

And yes, the more that LinkedIn tries to mirror Facebook or force engagement, the more I resent LinkedIn

Thanks for your reply. I have an account on LinkedIn but don't login often. LinkedIn keeps bombarding me with reminders about people work anniversaries, reminders of waiting invitations, etc. It gets annoying very quickly. Whenever I do login, I see stories that my friends have shared, who they have endorsed, etc. It does appear as irrelevant as Facebook

What, you mean you don't want to add some dude you sold a couch to on Craigslist in 2009 to Your Professional Network?! Why not??? (No thanks, Linkedin. No thanks.)

> easy to ignore... I don't get notified when it's my friend's birthday

LinkedIn is a lot noisier than Facebook. The notifications that I get from it are even more useless: people who you've never worked with who want to connect, people who LinkedIn feels you want to connect to but again you've never met them, ... the list goes on. Back then they also used dark patterns to make it hard to unsubscribe to their email notifications. Facebook isn't the best corporate citizen, but it's still better than LinkedIn

When was the last time you've used LinkedIn? It's essentially become Facebook for adults. It's full of garbage posts unrelated to business.

> Hacker News for news with uncensored commentary

Except not really. Rules and moderation are censorship.

Why would you not recommend whatsapp or another encrypted system?

Would also recommend Whatsapp. But I like the transient nature of Snapchat.

Hacker News is moderated but not censored in any sense that I worry about. With zero moderation you get pretty much just spambots. With bare minimum moderation you get trolls, schills, and harassers, so cohesive conversations don't happen because points can't be made in full. Hacker News is the best source I know of for news + discussion because the rules and moderation censor the noisy, unsubstantive comments that would otherwise derail an important conversation.

That said, I wish there were more forums like HN because I would like to follow the same quality of conversation that I see here on subjects besides computer science and tech companies.

Once upon a time 'censorship' referred to restrictions imposed by governments. Newspapers, magazines, and publishers curating the content of their publications was considered editorial discretion (rules and moderation) and distinctly different than government censorship.

Unfortunately all these activities are now simply tossed together into the general category of 'censorship' and as such we've lost the ability to clearly communicate some important distinctions in the process. I would also argue that this loss of clarity has resulted in the negative connotations of government censorship being attributed to private editorial activities with the deleterious effect that private entities are vilified for completely reasonable editorial policies.

Counterexample: zuccotti Park. It's privately owned, but the place for Occupy Wall Street.

It used to be that life happened on the streets, i. e. public property. If you get a hundred people to walk down Main Street at noon, 2/3 of the city will see it.

Over the last 50 years, life has moved (a) indoors, (b) onto private commercial property (mall, airport...) and (C) online, while some properties that used to be public are now private (parks, even the mayor's office is now often a lease-back arrangement.

That's why the rules need to be updated. Otherwise we'll be left with a Free Speech Zone(tm)(sponsored by McDonalds) on some empty parking lot for each city.

Public spaces and public accommodations are an interesting topic, but I think that is somewhat different from the idea of government blocking publication or other dissemination of information.