this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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I saw some threads here about Telegram and piracy stuff being banned. So, as an experimental alternative, I created a public Signal group for piracy.

Maybe it'll be useful?

Before joining

Signal supports usernames and hiding telephone numbers. Here's a blog entry on how to do so. You might want to:

  • set a username
  • change your profile name (these are two separate things!)
  • hide your phone number
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[–] [email protected] 87 points 1 month ago (5 children)

You might try a Matrix group instead. Doesn’t require a phone number and supports more than 1000 users unlike Signal. Search is bad though unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Why not use SimpleX Chat? If you use Matrix for that you will likely get reported and get banned

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Go ahead and create the group then make a post. Nobody's holding you back my friend.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Some suggest matrix, others simplex. Not sure which one would be better honestly

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago (2 children)

What is even the point of "piracy groups"? What exactly can you find there that you cannot in other places designed for that, e.g., trackers, usenet, forums...?

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Good idea overall, unfortunately they still have your IP and phone number which means Europeans are still implicated

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Signal doesn't collect IPs and therefore can't even hand them out. It's been requested in 2021. Here's a list of requests from authorities they were allowed to publish. I've looked through 3 of the most recent and nowhere do they reveal IPs.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Sure they don't log the IPs, but it is technically impossible to not know the IP when you're running a centralized service.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (3 children)

What are the "popular" alternatives? Telegram stores everything, WhatsApp doesn't allow usernames, Matrix requires IPs too...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Despite their claims of total privacy, I imagine, like any software company, they have full access to their own back end including encryption keys and server logs. Meaning they can and probably will moderate their own platform if there is enough pressure from nation states/IP owners.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You are welcome to audit the source code and host the backend yourself.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You understand that, for everyone except for a complete network pro, that is worse for security and privacy, right?

Don't get me wrong, it's great that you can.

But the reason piracy websites struggle so much with long term stability isn't because they're hosting the wrong software.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

If you don't put trust on someone something, you left yourself to trust and do all the works. However, you don't trust yourself either, sadly I can't offer any solutions.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

TBH I would just use email over TOR and encrypt communication with PGP. Rotate identities every now and then and you should be fine. Yes it doesn't have forward secrecy but it removes the effort to find the "right messaging" service and is instead ubiquitous (and you can sign up for anonymous email addresses online too, which makes it even better).

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The phone number is not connected to the messages. That’s the only thing they have. It is the best app for privacy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Arguable in it being "the best app for privacy". Can you link to a source which shows that phone numbers are not linked to accounts? (Why do they need them anyway?)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (19 children)

They have published requests from the law enforcement and their responses to these requests. The only unencrypted data they have is the phone number, a date of sign up and a date of the last login. That is it, everything else is encrypted and they cannot access it whatsoever.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Is there a simplex group we can join?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Will a simplex group better? Nothing identifiable.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Make it and share it. I don't have simplex.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes, let's talk piracy behind some stupid walled garden. As if public conversations are not fragmented enough as it is

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Signal is a walled garden?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

how is it not?

  • the worst kind of opensource, where you are not allowed to run the software yourself (or even fork it)
  • not indexable
  • requires signup with personal informations
  • forever tied to a single identity
  • not exportable to other services
  • no open formats for its storage

it's a shitty service, by a shitty person. I know Moxie personally, and he is basically Elon Musk if he didn't make it

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Tracker Control is blocking me from joining. Weird that Molly (its a hardened signal fork) is showing amazon is being contacted when trying to join the group.

I can unblock it but its weird. I also noticed the other domains its been trying to (unsuccessfully) contact.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Only for groups? Why thing else has worked fine for the 9months I've had signal.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

I think signal servers may be using aws hosting.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Signal uses Amazon's servers, look it up. It's all encrypted of course.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (10 children)

I thought signing up for Signal required a phone number and phone app -- and all phones have IMEI besides many other nightmare anti-features.

For the normies it's fine but tbh I'm not sure it's as advertised.

What ever happened to that odd old app called tox?

Honestly I could see a version of DeltaChat + GPG make some gains in popularity but I would argue the email relay servers and spam lists are rigged for max surveillance.

Are we at the point where tech from 20 years ago may be the way lmao.

XMPP, IRC, ICQ /s

Matrix is probably the best bet but some of their apps and clients seem like dogshit. And I am saying that as someone who uses them daily. And the whole "server" thing is a PITA, or it used to be at least.

I guess we'll just have to use carrier pidgin and cypherto encrypt the cat gifs /s

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Thanks for doing this

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (11 children)

The problem is Signal supports up to 1000 people group chat, so it's better to find something different

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

I can barely handle chat groups with 100 ppl.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago
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