It's probably also media's fault for this. They only publish when a bad person does a bad thing on the internet with it, not all the millions of users who don't do bad things. That would be boring.

Probably another point is that the encryption for Matrix/Element has undergone multiple audits, one in 2016 and another one of their newer rust library. Whereas telegram just has not. There was this also a not too long ago. MTProto is also used nowhere else, whereas a lot of encryption has been influenced by the Double Ratchet which is well understood.

The other thing worth noting is that Matrix is the foundation for other products which many governments use for secure communications.

I certainly think so.

Even Windows or Chrome OS, provides quite a bit of "control" it's just that a lot of it is "opt out". Google does, for example record what YouTube videos you look at against a logged in account by default. Windows does have targeted advertising enabled by default.

I think privacy is really more about what you do on such platforms. If you use products (sites) that clearly have bad policies in regard to privacy then no OS is going to provide really all that much improvement.

Just a reminder, we specifically recommend against Garuda due to their unsafe usage of Chaotic-AUR.

VPNs are still worth it for that purpose, particularly torrenting.. Not sure who is saying this but they are wrong.

Proton still has it with NAT-PMP which requires the use of py-natpmp on Linux.

There are other providers but these generally don't meet our requirements as they don't have open source clients or have no audits or are generally not as trustworthy.

WIndscribe also has ephemeral port forwarding and we are looking at adding that some time. Audits have now been completed and they are refactoring some iOS code, then it will be good to go.

Its because Burung Hantu (Marco Wollank) always wanted to use it to make money, whereas we just get what we get from OpenCollective, and none of the team withdraws out of that.

For us it's a labor of love, for the topic at hand, for him it's about the money. His blog post should tell you exactly that.

Privacy Guides is the only site you need out of the two. Privacy Tools is run by an SEO farmer, Marco Wollank (Burung Hantu), who has no useful information or ability whatsoever other than parrot he thinks will get him the clicks/followers. Some time ago, someone linked this "exposé" about his history, in our Matrix rooms and it makes complete sense.

It is something I suspected for a long time, as it was his first complaint "MY SEO".

That particular article is full of misinformation, lies and water muddying. There are bald-faced lies within that post including all of the rubbish about the donations which I addressed here and here.

1. Pretty much Crowdin works very well, particularly with it's TM (Translation Memory) and specific terms.
2. We are currently mirroring there but there's no reason you couldn't use git-send-email to one of the team members if you need to really do that. Ideally, just use a VPN or Tor anyway, because you're probably going to need that anyway. Github is available in Iran nowadays https://github.blog/2021-01-05-advancing-developer-freedom-github-is-fully-available-in-iran/
3. Because they often lag behind in security https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNU-Linux-Libre-5.7-Released (for example this allowed the GPU to be used in browser fingerprint.
4. In a lot of cases the site is research, and words we've written based on our experience. There isn't much reason for derivatives to exist based on our content. If there were, those would be a complete re-write. We aim to have the site as accurate as possible, and want changes contributed back there to benefit everyone and be translated. That does promote centralization, but in this case that is a good thing.
5. Libreboot won't ever be recommended, basically because unless you want an ancient laptop from 8-10 years ago it's a non-starter.

A lot of these are unnecessary or actually modify your fingerprint.

• privacy badger

Can be detected https://adtechmadness.wordpress.com/2020/03/27/detecting-privacy-badgers-canvas-fp-detection/

• clearurls

Unnecessary, as uBO has removeparam

• decentraleyes

Modifies your fingerprint making you more unique.

For more information about what not to use see https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions#-dont-bother

I have to admit, I don't really think I would use Reddit if old.reddit.com went away, the "new reddit website" is slow, and ugly, and fits very little content on the page. It seems it's largely optimized for posts which contain shallow content like "cat pictures" memes and other rubbish not meaningful discussions. I appreciate RedReddit, due to the fact I can fit many posts on my screen. Reddit also requires quite a bit of moderation as there is a lot very low quality content posted there. It's quite a tiring process.