Tools of the Trade 1: Encrypted Commnications

So, really, does anyone actually believe that Facebook is looking out for your well being? Trick question: many do, but only because they're not, for whatever reason, privy to policy and development in the tech and comms worlds.

Which is totally cool, I mean, like... sort of. Most things start form a place of ignorance, so having a large population ignorantly assuming that "its just a chat" is, in a very real sense, a good place to start. Thing is, there's got to be forward, progressive movement from that original place of ignorance, and that doesn't seem to happen all that much in this day & age.

Now, of course, I realize that Steemit is probably the worst place to post about this, but whatever: I'm a dinosaur and think weird things that you humans can barely comprehend. Like how am I supposed to grill this Pterodactyl steak with such puny arms? But we're crafty critters, us Tyrannosaurs, and so to that, just like to the problem of secure communications, I say this: hold my beer.

So we hate Facebook and Apple, right? Ok, that means Instagram, FB Messenger, iMessage, and WhatsApp are immediately disqualified.

We hate paying for this shit, too, yeah? K, so Pryvate, Silent Phone, Rokacom, and Wire are out.

And LINE never made any plays for encryption and is just generally a garbage app.

Which leaves a good few contenders. Signals' cool. Viber's neat. Telegram's banned in Russia, and...

::does dino double take ::

Telegram's banned in Russia? That sounds promising. And indeed, I'd say it's a pretty good place to start. Is it perfect? Hell no. Just look at the #crypto community's use of Telegram - its fucking terrible at managing large groups and never should have been given that use case. Besides, everything's got loopholes, bugs, and fuckin' assholes looking to dupe you, and I'm sure that Telegram's much the same.

Point is, we should all start exploring the options available to us in 2018, which happens to be drowning in tech. There's a lot of static out there, and only one sure-fire way of making sure you don't fall prey to it: experiment and find the right solution for you. Telegram's got some very nice features, a great UI for individual conversations, and a pretty decent track record of giving the finger to authority.