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Comment by jagermo | Hacker News Reader

I don't know. I do not like Jack Dorey's involvement. Not a big fan of his.

I'd rather use Briar (https://briarproject.org/)

If you don't like a thing and share that dislike, care to elaborate your reasoning so others can profit from it?

Indeed, it's immature to disclose an opinion without being forthcoming and add some objective rationale behind a bold conclusion as disliking an entire person. It may be something they said, or did, getting specific would help, ideally something that is relevant to the original thread. It's not entirely helpful and potentially a negative impact to just imply you don't like someone. Do what you want obviously, that's my 2 cents.

It is a disease of modern (social) media and personal branding. People also now broadly think that an ad-hominem (attacking the person behind an argument, not the argument) is good argumentative style. I don't know about Jack Dorsey other then he founded twitter, and I don't care much about him. If there is a product, I will evaluate that product by my catalogue, not whether I like or dislike a person.

But the person controls the product, and the product will continue to develop, so the person's character is relevant to the quality of the product.

You are making assumptions about a future that hasn't happened yet. It is open-source, so whatever move the person might do in the future, you can fork it anytime.

I suppose the community around a product is also a reason to bring up an influential character's character. You can't fork the community, only fragment it. "I don't want to join a club with that guy in it" is a time when an ad hominem becomes a valid argument.

It is a self-fullfilling prophecy. If the community would adopt the style of not juding the person but only the product, that community would not care for that person. So the "I don't want to join a club with purpose X because of guy Y" leads to the problem that you are describing. If everybody would just "I join the club because of its purpose X achieved by means Z", that community split won't happen.

Yes, if the community would not be influenced by the guy, he wouldn't be influential.

You can fork, but will you want to fork and spend time and effort, potentially in huge amounts, on that fork? There are reasons to be wary. Choosing an alternative, where that particular reason for forking might not exist, is a valid choice to make.

No they don't, it's permissionless technology. Read the web site.

Thinking that good reputation in a law translates to a good lawyer is just as mature as thinking that a bad reputation translates to a bad lawyer, just two sides of the same coin. Credibility can be so cruel, it can make a brilliant mathematician like Terry Tao preemptively decline to read your mathematical arguments basically forever.

In both cases I think these may be characteristics of healthy judgment.

Obviously because he was one of the architects of the censorship regime of the late 2010s and early 2020s that nearly changed the internet into a three-letter-agency controlled space. If that isn't a risk for a censorship-resistant app, I don't know what is.

Is this true? My understanding was that Twitter was not really moderated, because of Dorsey?

There’s no app for Apple platforms making it a lot less useful.

fair point, especially in the west. But looking at the market share, Android is probably the platform to build for, especially if you have an additional phone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...

That's probably because AFAIK Apple doesn't allow process forking, making any Tor-based messenger almost impossible to run as Tor would have to run as part of the main thread.

but having the bluetooth part working on iOS should not be an issue right?

This is entirely false, Apple allows the use of threads in their applications.

Oh I found a better explanation

>iOS doesn’t allow apps to fork subprocesses. While on the desktop Tor is running as a separate process, on iOS Tor is hacked to run as a thread inside the app itself. Therefore, you can’t have a system-wide Tor process like desktop and Android. If Tor is running in one app, and you open a different one, it’s not automagically going to start using Tor.

https://www.quora.com/How-effective-is-the-Tor-app-for-iPad-...

It's because iOS needs push notifications to resume background apps, and there's no secure way to do the push notifications

https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/-/wikis/FAQ#will-t...

Briar has the advantage of being usable with bluetooth and internet so it makes it much more useful.

Bitchat also has internet based chat, in addition to bluetooth mesh.

Apple pulled similar apps from the App Store: https://www.npr.org/2019/10/10/768841864/after-china-objects...

Similar? Very different. The HKmap.live app was build and marketed directly for the protests. It tracked social media and geolocated where the police and protests were happening, etc. This is a big distinction.

True but I assume Apple users understand they exclude themselves by demanding a "benevolent dictator" insuring they are "safe".

How about Berty?

https://berty.tech/features

"Warning: the Android app (including apk) is currently unavailable for download and use due to an ongoing essential security update."

Buy a cheap shit android phone for under $100 and never associate it with a SIM

I personally don't care if its bitchat or briar, I care about the most effective proven implementation in the end. Such a technology is needed now, not later, and if if bitchat started out as dorseys vibe coded side project last year and has now grown into something greater, then so be it.

Also why reinventing the wheel? There is already Briar.

There's also Berty https://berty.tech/features/

I agree, enthusiastically and wholeheartedly. The mere presence of a potentially-cancellable person poisons the entire tech stach, regardless of any other merits. If I were to use such technology I would risk becoming morally tainted by JD's potential-objectionableness, a social risk I am entirely unwilling to take. I simply cannot endorse such technology that is not fully sanctioned by the High Table of Moral Certification & Transactional Stamp Duty. I must therefore distance myself from any such endorsements and withdraw my support regardless of whatever so-called "technological" merits such technology may claim.

Please view my participation in this discussion as certified proof of the objective verification of my moral essence. I hereby claim superiority now and forever over JD and any such users of said technologies. Sincerely and respectfully (without any possible hints of objectionableness), the undersigned.

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