Comment on Time to get serious with E2E encrypted messaging
mox@lemmy.sdf.org 4 days agoThere are a few messaging systems that don’t rely on internet service. That usually means a peer-to-peer design using some form of radio link, which can work well for local gatherings (like protests), but tend to be impractical for general use.
curious_dolphin@slrpnk.net 4 days ago
Gotcha, so in summary, anything that relies on an internet service, such as Signal, Matrix, or Simplex, is vulnerable to government ordered blocks via black list that ISPs are compelled to enforce. Am I thinking of this right?
mox@lemmy.sdf.org 4 days ago
Thankfully, it’s not that simple.
A centralised service is an easy target for a government. (This is where Signal stands.) A decentralised one is significantly harder, because the government would have to be constantly discovering and processing every node in the network as new ones appear. (This is where Matrix stands.) Fully peer-to-peer decentralisation makes it harder still, because there are as many nodes as there are users and their network addresses might change all the time. (Some of these exist today, but are mostly experimental with few users. Matrix has done some proof-of-concept work in this area as well.)
On top of decentralisation, tunnels like VPN and Tor can be helpful in avoiding ISP-imposed blocks.