• Kwozyman@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Be that as it may, it’s still an incredibly short sighted decision to use a centralized service that is under 3rd party control for real security sensitive applications.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Yeah, that does bother me. But it’s also a lot easier to build a centralized service like that than to get people on a decentralized one.

      If you really want something private and are willing to jump through a few hoops, Simplex exists. But most people aren’t willing to jump through a few hoops, and even Signal (a pretty low bar) is a hard enough sell as it is. And that’s why I use Signal, because it’s my best chance to get people onto something better. In other words, don’t let perfect be the enemy of better.

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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              2 months ago

              Sure, and I use Tuta. Those are outliers, the vast majority use gmail, or at least the vast majority in my circles do.

              It’s the same thing as the network effect, just a little less ubiquitous, people will tend to use whatever everyone else uses. Getting something new like email (SMTP) is a huge endeavor, it’s a lot easier to just build a centralized service and get people to use that, and most people will use the same provider anyway.

              I don’t like it, but I understand why it works and is so common.

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                  2 months ago

                  No, those being outliers means the email argument isn’t particularly strong, especially when talking about a new standard. If most people use a single service anyway, why would a company go out of its way to make something decentralized? And for something like encrypted chat, that’s a lot of extra work.