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Comment by grey_earthling | Hacker News Reader

> In social science, agency is defined as: the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.

> built-in integration for Signal and WhatsApp calls

Signal and WhatsApp are both fully centralised, tied to a single organisation each — they are antithetical to agency.

Why not use open protocols like DeltaChat, Matrix or XMPP instead?

> built-in free “Virtual Private Network” services from trusted organizations protect you from being spied on

Trusted by whom?

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> Why not use open protocols like DeltaChat, Matrix or XMPP instead?

Because Signal and WhatsApp are text/messanger replacements and Matrix is a slack/discord replacement? I'm not sure why there's the constant Signal vs Matrix battle here on HN, I see them as different tools doing different things. I'm not going to create or get all my friends to join a server with Matrix. Or even coworkers or random acquaintances I meet. But I can get their phone number and quickly communicate with them on Signal/WA. I don't see why Signal and Matrix have to be in competition. Just the same way I don't see Slack/Discord in competition with Text Messaging or FB Messenger.

> I don't see why Signal and Matrix have to be in competition

Because people here only care about security and privacy, and Signal/Matrix offer some of the best user accessible encryption.

Yeah, I agree, but I don't see why they are in competition and not complement an ecosystem.

I don't see why they would complement themselves, and especially why you put Matrix into the slack/discord corner: Matrix is a protocol that is not designed to a specific use case.

> Trusted by whom?

Calyx VPN uses the same tech stack as Riseup VPN, which are branded versions of the Bitmask client - CalyxOS is a part of the Calyx Institute family. You can instead use the Bitmask client from the F-Droid repo and choose to connect to either service with the same app (rather than using branded apps for each service).

Well, I don't trust them either. Does it run Wireguard?

The tech stack matters far less than the trustworthiness and competence of the operators running it. And the hard part with VPN services is that it is very difficult to prove those things to others.

So the organizations that provide the VPN service are Calyx VPN and Calyx Institute (have I understood correctly?)

The site says these organizations are “trusted”, but I'm still not sure who are they saying is doing the trusting.

It's very easy to label something “trusted”, but trusted by whom?

Curious, does anyone know what's their business model to monetizing the "free" VPN service? How do they make their money back or is it a donation kind of thing?

I gave them some money at DEFCON 2019 for an unlimited personal hotspot

https://boingboing.net/2016/09/22/i-have-found-a-secret-tunn...

It is all based on donations, see https://calyxinstitute.org/projects/digital-services/vpn

The integration is done in the Dialer, and the choices are shown when you make a phone call to a number.

Signal and WhatsApp are choices there since they use phone numbers. How do you make a matrix call to a phone number? :)

The VPN is one of the Digital Services we offer, completely free.

https://calyxinstitute.org/projects/digital-services/vpn

We also include RiseupVPN, and Orbot (which is Tor as a VPN)

> Why not use open protocols like DeltaChat, Matrix or XMPP instead?

I can give you an answer for Matrix and it's usability. It's difficult to onboard users, at least it was ~a year ago. I wouldn't want to expose my non-tech friends to that.

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