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Apple is likely to stop providing its encrypted cloud service to U.K. users

I currently use Telegram for my friends and family, but have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the UK Government is either reaching agreement for backdoors with messaging services, or is trying its hardest to.

I’m also on Element/Matrix. Before I try to get my contacts to join me on there, should I be aware of any privacy issues or is that a good place to head?

  • @rottingleafEnglish
    1•4 hours ago

    Government-ordered shutdowns do not work the way you think. Government doesn’t play by the rules, it makes rules for itself.

    Which means - they may, say, make a list of instances updated hourly, which automatically get blocked by ISPs.

    Free speech or not, it won’t withstand such.

    • moxEnglish
      2•3 hours ago

      Note that I said the network can withstand such things, not that it guarantees your connectivity to it when using a hostile ISP. No internet messaging service can do that.

    • @[email protected]English
      2•4 hours ago

      Are there any other messaging options that are more resistant to government ordered shutdowns than Matrix?

      • moxEnglish
        2•3 hours ago

        There 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 these tend to be impractical for general use.

        • @[email protected]English
          1•2 hours 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?

          • moxEnglish
            2•2 hours 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, although it doesn’t have many public servers yet.) Fully peer-to-peer decentralisation makes it harder still, because there are as many nodes as there are users, with network addresses that often change. (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.