this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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signal is a good option for messaging. it is technically american, but i feel like FOSS projects should generally get a pass.
also, as an american who is very not okay with what our (russia's) government (puppet) is doing, wouldn't supporting non-american businesses mean paying the tariffs and supporting the oligarchs? i'm not really sure what us yanks can do besides just trying not to spend ANY money.
Signal is extremely expensive, they pay $15m+ to Google and Amazon because they don’t self-host so around half of their donations go directly to tech oligarchy
That's about to get a lot easier. How do you feel about a $3000 laptop? Car manufacturing might just stop temporarily. They've got a month to figure out how to change pretty major processes that companies may not have the current ability to change.
And let's see if they're going to move into the US or out.
In the context of the parallels now being drawn between post-WW1 Germany's slide to WW2 and present-day USA's situation, I worry that the major quality-of-life hit starting to happen in the US might be at least slightly on purpose.
Aside from the "Krasnov" explanation for such intention (which seems compelling but I haven't yet seen enough evidence to have a strong opinion either way about), another perhaps simpler explanation (either instead of or in addition to that) could be that he is gambling that the same poor, disempowered, uneducated subset of people in the US who end up being easily stirred into a military mindset fever are the same ones who will easily forget that the leader promising them their "national pride and identity" back is the same one whose decisions accelerated that very descent into poverty, disempowerment, and poor education (& undermined press) in order to create that pliable situation.
I vividly remember in history class seeing the photos from the post-Versailles-treaty period, of German kids flying kites made of nearly worthless Deutchmarks, and people with wheelbarrows full of notes paying for bread. Hitler was able to so easily stir up people "with no hope or dignity left" by promising prosperity based on building autobahns, factories, etc - manipulating their despair to hijack rational or compassionate thought. Anyone informed and principled enough to see through that slide to madness and act accordingly ended up running for their lives (along with the many others who had to run just for being born a certain way). It looks a bit like the situation in the US is on the precipice of sliding that way, with the compounding factor that online click-hungry faux-press and automated disinformation/propaganda bots on social networks are able to very quickly create and maintain cult-like bubbles in which a "leader" can manufacture shadows and "instruct" followers to jump at those shadows in the same breath, under the assumption that enough people will be gullible and/or lazy enough to fall for it unquestioningly.
I really think the people in the US who are not part of that subset need to be very proactive (in real-life terms, not just rage-scrolling & rage-clicking) in being the bulwark against that slide to madness, and right now - starting to react months from now might already be too late to avoid dangerous global conflicts escalating, and new ones starting. I am very wary of doom-and-gloom hyperbole, and aware that overstating things can risk fostering apathy instead of overcoming it, but I think this is one of those rare historic moments when such statements are not hyperbole.