We are starting to see for quite some time big tech trying to get the internet under their control. We have seen half of the internet starting to block proxies. Tor is not usable in the normal internet anymore. More and more services require a government issued id for their account.
And now Google went ahead and did the final blow by announcing WEI. If that gets integrated on all popular sites, there will be no more open web. We try to fight back as much as we can, but the bitter truth is most people are already 'good little pets' of these giants.
Most of the people, are not just okay, but want these big brothers to handle everything for them. They want to get their finances, entertainment, social medias, government services all done for them by these giants without them even knowing. They are ready to live as big brother says. Half of them already don't have individual opinions.
Although the fight still continues, It's time to think about plan B. What if most of internet is blocked for us privacy conscious people? We need alternatives. It's time to build an ecosystem that we people can use without the help of popular services. There are already a lot of softwares, but we need to fill the gaps fast. We need an open hardware, accessible and a fully open software stack including everyday apps for most of our needs and entertainments. On PC it's almost there. Mobile terribly lacks in the lowest levels, but have some apps that can help.
PC
For PC, we can still install linux on most devices, so linux. For browsing, we can use firefox or any forks of that. Proton and skiff are good alternatives for basic email, storage etc. For social media we have federated systems like lemmy, services like odysee, mewe etc. Share services that you think should be in this list
Mobile
For mobile, we miss variety in hardware section. One option might be pinephone or other linux phones. Other option might ironically be Pixel. For OS, we can use graph eneOS, cal yx OS, linux based OS etc. But setting it up is currently very hard. For browsing, firefox for android is good (I use it) which also has extensions support. Above mentioned services like proton, skiff, lemmy, odysee, mewe etc. has android apps. For IM we have briar, Session, simpleX etc. Share services that you think should be in this list
Help me document a full recommended ecosystem. Maybe we can have a recommended guide. Maybe there are better options. Discuss.
Threema for messaging. More private and secure than Signal. I use it for 10 years with no issues.
They had some serious cryptography issues (including no perfect forwards secrecy!!!) but they have promised to fix that. I've not yet seen any paper analyzing the new protocol. But maybe it could be good?
Edit: Here's a paper with some of the issues: https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20.500.11850/623004/main.pdf
They conclude that:
They have redesigned their protocol since then but again i have yet to see a third party look at it but TBH i haven't looked into it.
perfect forward secrecy was added some time ago and is the default now.
How is it more private and secure than Signal?
needs no phone number or any other identifyer to create an ID. you can also always delete your ID and make new ones. you don't have to let it access your phones contact list if you don't want to. like proton, it's a swiss company with the same laws apply to them. you have three levels of verification, that the contact you're chatting/talking with is the actual person - or at least the correct device: first one is none, you just have the ID, that's it. second one would be someone from your phone's contact list and the third and most safe option is to scan the QR-code from your contacts phone screen in person.
don't get me wrong, signal is a good app and i guess those behind it have good intentions, but it relies on phone numbers just like whatsapp and telegram and that's a big turnoff for me.
Thanks!