This list does not make sense.
Where do I even start with this?
- Privacyguides.org exists for this purpose.
- Why non-US?
- This document is hosted on a US-based tech monopoly website, completely unnecessarily. It’s just a markdown document.
- A lot of these suggestions are just bad. Deepseek? Is possibly the least private service on the web. I realize you can self-host it but that distinction is imperative and yet omitted.
- People in many countries are boycotting US products as a response to their new tariffs.
All three browsers recommended are Chromium-based as well, so they’re dependent on Google and have to suffer from the Manifest v3 problem and the necessary manual intervention. Brave even is known for being maintained by a dick. Some of those recommendations are really bad.
Don’t get your second question though. The reasons for non-US should be obvious.
The reasons for non-US should be obvious.
Well they’re obviously not so maybe you can enlighten me.
focusing on privacy
Rakuten is very privacy invasive imo
Brave browser is on the list and is an American company. Why not LibreWolf and Zen Browser as good Firefox forks.
Brave has always seemed sketchy to me. Now they have a bunch of sketchy crypto, ai, and vpn stuff.
No LibreOffice?
They’re based in Germany from what I know not sure why they were left out
Why wouldn’t this be hosted on something like Codeberg.org or self hosted rather than on GitHub?
Because whoever curated this list doesn’t know what they’re talking about. I got as far as the web browsers and I immediately closed it.
The fact that proton mail is in the first spot for mail providers made me immediately nope out. If that is listed without a massive asterisk, it’s just no list I’m willing to trust in any way, as it clearly can’t be trusted.
Because their CEO praises Trump?
I know you didn’t say that I just wanted to point that out!
Fair shout. I’m not the repo owner but that is a great idea actually
Couple more here: https://european-alternatives.eu/alternatives-to
Thanks for heads up! I’ve shared that link to my circles
While they’re still legal
Is Deepseek “privacy” focused? Where’s Signal?
Signal is in US.
I’ve heard it’s open source and you can run it offline
You’re right, the server, cryptographic library, and all clients are open source.
That said, I have a few personal caveats.
- US government funding and markings are all over Signal.
- The official app doesn’t make it clear how to connect to a custom server. As a self hosting enthusiast myself, I only found out it was possible when checking on your claim that it’s all open source.
I was talking entirely about Deepseek.
I never would have bothered to check because someone already pointed out Signal is US based but that is very interesting.
so thank you.
have you just heard that it is possible (it is, technically), or did you also try it in practice? did you check the hardware requirements?
I’ve also heard some “running it offline avoids all the Chinese biasing and spying” anecdotes. Though I haven’t seen any first hand evidence of this. Needs testing, imo.
the spying, yes, if you make sure and apply a per-process whitelisting firewall on the system.
the biasing, no, that’s in the model.
A local model is just a giant matrix of numbers, so as long as you’re running it locally you can be sure it’s not secretly recording or communicating information with any outside source. Just make sure you trust the software that’s running it (there’s plenty of open source alternatives for that that have nothing to do with China).
Running it offline does avoid some of the censorship, but not all. Let me explain: Failsafes are implimented to check what topics are being talked about (like tieneman square). These are not included inside the model itself (though it does have a type of post-training, reinforcement-based censorship applied to the finished model). This second type of censorship (the kind actually included in the model weights) can actually be removed by retraining using similar reinforcement techniques. This means that the Tldr is: There is censorship baked into the model but because the weights are public, it can be removed /bypassed. In contrast the deepseek web app includes both kinds of censorship (and also definitely steals your data). The local model obviously does not.
My local version spat out this:
Of course, let me explain. In 1989, there were significant pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, led primarily by students and other citizens advocating for reforms. The Chinese government, in response, took actions that resulted in a tragic loss of life and a strong suppression of the protests. It’s a complex and sensitive topic in Chinese history. Do you have any specific aspects you’d like to discuss further?
Deepseek R1 is the least censored model that I’ve tried. It does a lot less of the “As an AI assistant, I can’t help with unethical whatever” compared to the corporate approved US ones too.
Fwiw, chatgpt gave me a full historical account of the incident., after some prodding, so did deepseek local.
Deepseek local is easy to remove the guardrails though.
And since it’s an open weight model, any remaining reluctance to talk about whatever subject can be abliterated or fine-tuned away if it’s really a problem.
In my experience this is true, but I’m also just some person on the screen.
Deepseek is an alternative- no privacy for sure. Signal is us based.
Be aware proton is very likely a CIA honeypot. I thought that was far-fetched till the team at proton started paying vassalage to Trump.
They didn’t “pay vassalage to trump”. They spewed the same libertarian tech bro bullshit that most companies trying to cozy up to a new administration did. And the damage control responses align with that.
It isn’t particularly good. But on the list of “privacy” corporations that are potentially honeypots, they still rank fairly low.
@cyrano @Viri4thus yeah kinda interesting no mention of disroot or something…
deleted by creator
Sorry, just to check: your evidence is “I think I read it somewhere?”. If it weren’t for “weak argument, dismissed” being too “cringe” even for ME…
If you have evidence, please actually provide it. If you don’t, please shut your opinion hole.
And
she was the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council Chair of the Future of Internet Security
That actually seems like a good background to have for working on software/products like this?
Also, people should actually LOOK at what proton “promises”. Mostly it boils down to limited protections and suggested tools to protect yourself. Which is why, as a company, I like them. They aren’t promising to fight all the governments of the world. In fact, they are pretty open that they are gonna roll over because they don’t know you. But what they do claim to turn over? Combine that with some opsec and personal encryption and you are in a really “good” place for someone who has a warrant out on them.
Contrast that with all the companies that DO make wild claims about having zero data and being willing to go to nu-gitmo for their customers and blah blah blah.
The reality is: if you are doing something the CIA should care about, you… probably shouldn’t be doing email at all. That said, there are ways to reduce your risk factor and they almost all boil down to communicating with trusted and vetted individuals where you can actually encrypt communications yourself rather than relying on a company to do so.
But if you are mostly just pirating shit or writing graphic lemons about threesomes involving trump, xinnie, and putin? Meh. You can do a lot worse.
deleted by creator
I am not making arguments for US politics. I am not here to give you “something (you) can use in future discussion with others”
I am telling you that you have no evidence whatsoever but you are spewing bullshit. You are just as bad as trump making up bullshit about how he read a report that nuking a hurricane would solve all problems. Your argument is literally “I think I heard somewhere”
We are all scared. We are all trying to protect ourselves. Maybe you can be an ally instead of an agitator, hmm?
deleted by creator
There was a blog post by a website called Privacy Watchdog (if I remember correctly), I can’t find that website anymore nor the blog post,
Yeah. And trump totally read an article somewhere that black trans people are the root of all evil. He can’t find it right now, but totally trust him on that.
I don’t know if you are just this stupid or if you are actually trying to undermine those who are trying to make educated decisions on what they should or should not “trust” communication wise (you’ll note that I all but say “don’t trust proton. protect yourself”).
But either find that mystery article so that people can make educated decisions or shut the fuck up.
deleted by creator
