Welcome to the Linux community. :)

You will probably never understand everything about Linux and all of its included and associated systems. That’s completely fine, no one does! That’s why we are many, and it’s what asking for advice or help is for. You can just learn whatever interests you at your own pace, and know that there will always be interesting things you haven’t seen yet.

It’s hard to overstate what a nothing-burger this article really is! Let me break it down:

• Signal got $3 million from the Open Technology Fund at some point in its development
• Some anonymous source alleges that the OTF’s ultimate goal is to promote US foreign interests
• The current chairman of the board Katherine Maher worked at the National Democratic Institute and Wikipedia before
• The same anonymous source says she was recruited because of connections to the OTF
• She has at some point voiced the opinion that a completely free internet without regulation just reproduces existing power structures, and that balancing regulation and 1st amendment rights is a tough problem
• Signal doesn’t have reproducible builds on iOS (it absolutely does on Android btw)
• Some people feel like Signal chats come up more often than they should in court cases and media reports

That’s it, that’s the whole story. That’s the reason why the Telegram guy of all people thinks you should be careful, and better use his chat service instead, and the Twitter guy agrees.

I mean, reproducible builds on iOS would be nice, but that platform has much bigger problems from a privacy/security/sovereignty/freedom standpoint anyway. And the rest is just nothing turned up to 11.

Cause it’s one big part of why the Fediverse and Lemmy exist in the first place.

We wouldn’t need all this decentralization overhead if centralized sites were trustworthy and focussed on serving their users. The fact that they are not is what leads to privacy violations and enshittification, hence why people created the Fediverse and why we are here (at least most of us I presume).

pay for it with advertising your data

FTFY.

That part is not allowed according to the GDPR afaik, the decision about your personal data cannot be artificially linked to something else. They can absolutely show ads, but without using your data.

From what I understand the GDPR says you have to give users a real choice about the usage of their data, without any unreasonable negative repercussions. Having to pay money (at least as much as they are asking for) is such an unacceptable repercussion, no matter how FB might phrase it.

They are allowed to take money or show ads for access, but they can’t couple that decision with the one about the user’s data usage.

The video is probably factually correct, but very disingenuous with its interpretations and conclusions imo.

Of course Mozilla and Firefox have their own share of problems and bad decisions, and they are pretty well known and talked about from what I’ve seen, but equating it to Google and Chrome is just pure cynicism. Mozilla having to earn money somehow (1% donations!) and Google trying to maximize profits at all costs is not the same thing, even if it might look similar sometimes.

Clickbait headline. The underlying article lists much more reasonable restrictions:

• Anonymous cash payments over €3,000 will be banned in commercial transactions
• Cash payments over €10,000 will even be completely banned in business transactions
• Anonymous payments in cryptocurrencies to wallets operated by providers will be prohibited

So non-commercial transations are fine, as are crypto transactions to non-custodial wallets.

Their ebook support has become quite good as well, it’s like a gift that keeps on giving!

Being able to create issues and discuss merge requests on various source hosting sites without having to create an account on each would be a huge step forward! Especially since M$ has taken over Github and is well on its way to become the defacto centralized Git hoster.

I’ve been removing Google services from my life bit by bit over the past year, and I have to say it is crazy how hard it actually is! They have inserted themselves into so many digital workflows, securing monopoly positions and preventing the rise of competitors and open ecosystems. In many areas the only alternatives are other tech giants, or accepting feature downgrades and having to set things up manually.

I’m really glad that the browser is one area where the transition is actually very simple and straightforward!

It does say “No Virus” in big letters, so what could go wrong?

We have blown the concept of ownership way out of proportion. No one should be able to own things they have absolutely no connection to, like investment firms owning companies they don’t work for, houses they don’t live in or land they’ve never been to.