Totally. It’s worth mentioning Germany in particular.

counter-question: Is it impossible to be private offline?

Yes, XMPP, a long-standing protocol that’s also not a walled garden, doesn’t require a phone number or even a phone. For android I use the Conversations client combined with Dino on computers. Currently logged in to a handful of devices synchronously. You can choose what server to make an account on; conversations.im I found to be reliable. Drawback is Signal doesn’t let you bridge to it from anywhere outside of Signal. So I have accounts on both.

Np

You still need a phone number to register an account as far as I could tell when I did the other day. You no longer need to share your number with any contacts and can set it so noone who has your number can look you up on signal. You can optionally set a unique alphanumeric ‘username’ instead to hand to people to look you up. But yea, Signal still requires you to give them and their authenticatian service (through sms code) your phone number.

Yea, I hear you. I use both.

The Signal servers it connects to run proprietary or unauditable software, no?

Well if only those samsung & ios users that never get my messages until I see them and tell them to open their app had phones that didn’t interfere with it running in the background / push notifications it would be working out for me even better, but that’s not an issue with the protocol or client but with OS’s being hostile to xmpp.

Hmm, I see. But isn’t there an obvious solution to this? One of you just run two different clients side-by-side?

I use xmpp all the time. Biggest hurdle for certain fam/friends using xmpp has been certain android builds (samsung) and ios interfering with timely notifications. User knowlege is not a problem as I can recommend the apps that are compatible encryption protocols with mine.

Molly is just Signal with a different name and on more depositories

Signal does the same

‘backed by mountains of bodies’

is what I read initially…

Look I’m not saying you’re wrong in your assessment of global affairs, but believe me when I say that there is more to life than that. I’d advise you to spend some time each day looking at the world at a different scale than that, for example the life of insects, or the world of classical music or mathematics. Perhaps pick up an interest from your childhood. We’re not dead yet! It may also be advisable to see a doctor and tell them about your wanting to spend all your time in bed and your panic attacks while smoking. Hope you feel better.

good point, but how active are those 2 Million users on Bluesky counted? Even the daily active user count is said to be 2 orders of magnitude more than Bluesky. That’s a lot of people with a very wide range of interests, political leanings and priorities. Most of them have never heard of federated networks and won’t be interested unless their favourite celebrity, jounalist, politician or you name it moves to a platform that just so happens to be federated. By all means, build bridges, but I don’t have the solutions.

I believe Twitter still has hundreds of millions monthly active users. That’s tough competition.

My question is: are 2020’s kids even gonna be upset?

Ok. I’d be interested to know how Bluesky compares in size to Twitter.

I’m not familiar with Bluesky so I don’t know the answer to that. But I don’t think any entity can just ‘take all the celebs & public figures’. They are unlikely to move unless they think it’s an advantage to themselves or their organisation.

Someone recently told me this anecdote:

I overheard on the train home two middle aged ladies talking about their kids mobilephones.

One was saying how they dragged their teen and their mobile phone to the iphone store so they could setup the location tracker and “quiet mode” (parent phone can completly disable the teens phone), and how their child was upset but they are glad it was done.

The other lady was asking how she to can do the same.