Wired's Attack on Privacy

>SimpleX design restricts message visibility and file retention, making it far from ideal for those looking to coordinate large networks.

Telegram's and discord's "news" style channel features have always seemed to attract the wrong kind of usage.

An article criticizing private messaging apps for dedicated features like that which enable hate groups and scammers would be more interesting. Encryption seems like a red herring.

It's silly how privacy detractors try to associate so-and-so terrible group with any software that simply lets people talk without corporate or government surveillance, as if the concept of a private conversation is a strange and suspicious thing now.

Wow what a hit piece from Wired. And not even a month after their article "Seriously, Use Encrypted Messaging".

What the hell happened? Do they hate someone at SimpleX? Or hate Jack Dorsey? This is not journalism...

I guarantee to you that Wired has been an intelligence front for 20 years at this point. This is an absolutely predictable position from them, and it's meant to be quoted in Congress and in courtrooms.

Like everyone working for Wired is an undercover Fed?

> Dozens of neo-Nazis are fleeing Telegram and moving to a relatively unknown secret chat app that has received funding from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.

Isn't Telegram notorious at this point for being the go-to app for people distributing CSAM? Not trying to tar Telegram, and obviously, most people are using it legitimately. But it's crazy that Wired seems more concerned about what messaging service "dozens" of "neo-Nazis" (no doubt generously defined) are using rather than child exploitation. In fact, the article only mentions child exploitation in two paragraphs. It would be like an article about "Roblox Racists" that ignores its much more serious predator problem.

To play devil's advocate: private face-to-face conversations do not allow for effective coordination of actions across large distances. There are plenty of good arguments for keeping the government out of everyone's private messages, but this kind of messaging and a conversation are not the same thing.

Although I have no real need to know about it, it's somewhat useful to read about what extremist groups are doing. I hadn't read the Wired article yet, so I thank the people linking to it (both at SimpleX and Hacker News) for bringing it to my attention.

I don't know anything about wired, but very few people need to be explicit feds for something like wired. Maybe one person high enough just has friends in the intelligence community, and that could more or less be enough - few or none are hired if their perspectives on key issues don't align with management.

It's a conspiracy theory, especially when talking about any specific media organization, but the intelligence agencies certainly did this before, and it came out in the Church committee. There are a few journalists who continue to work at big-name outlets despite being named as assets in the diplomatic cable leaks, for example. So it's not unreasonable to suggest, I'd say.