133arc585

.io is a ccTLD though and is subject to the whims of the British Indian Ocean Territory. They can, for any reason, remove domains. See what recently happened with Mali and .ml.

Ok, two things are happening here.

they offer no reasonable basis for distrusting Signal, the tech that they attempt to vilify.

One, is that they did provide what they considered reasonable basis for distrusting Signal. Given that they thought Signal should not be trusted, the quote you posted is pretty obviously to be interpreted as: thankfully China hasn’t naively adopted a compromised communications platform with a USA intelligence backdoor. Now, if you want to say their basis for distrust is not reasonable, or is false, that’s completely fine. But in doing so it doesn’t change the author’s intent behind the quote which you posted.

Given said dev’s past comments, it is reasonable to infer that the reference to China presents them as an example to be followed here.

Two, is that it should be pretty clear they are saying China should be followed here in a very specific and explicit way: they aren’t saying follow China in every way under the sun. It’s very obvious from context and from what is explicitly said that they mean: China’s distrust and refusal to adopt (what they consider) a platform with USA backdoors should be followed. And I think that’s an entirely reasonable statement to make. No one should naively adopt compromised communications platforms.

There is no honest reading of the quote (especially given the rest of the context of the essay leading up to the quote) that could lead someone to conclude that this particular essay is (1) advocating for and supporting China spying on its citizens and (2) advocating for other countries following China in spying on citizens. It’s pretty obvious the only honest reading of this is: “I believe Signal has USA backdoors. Given that, I’m glad China hasn’t adopted its use heavily. I also think other countries should follow China in not naively accepting such technologies”.

Again, you can disagree with the foundational reasons for distrust, and that could be very useful. But painting the essay and quote the way you (and others here) are is just intellectually dishonest. Disagree with what is actually said, not with what you imagine (or wish) was said.

Edit: My comment below was based on a faulty understanding of how EDDM mailers worked and a faulty assumption I based on that ignorance. What they did in reality is little more than sending out spam mail, it was not a privacy violation.

Purely from a privacy standpoint, however, there has never been an indication they have violated users’ trust in that regard.

That’s simply not true though.

They have sent out direct mailers that basically equated to a customer list leak.

In regards to the mailers, they messed up and passed blame,

In this process, our EDDM vendor made a significant mistake by not excluding names, but instead including names before addresses, resulting in the distribution of personalized mailers.

I hope you consider a customer list leak to be a breach of privacy. And seeing how they didn’t take responsibility but tried to pass blame, they didn’t take such a mistake very seriously or respond in a manner that instills further trust.

Edit: My comment below was originally based on a faulty understanding of how EDDM mailers worked and a faulty assumption I based on that ignorance. What they did in reality is little more than sending out spam mail, it was not a privacy violation. I’ve removed the mention of the EDDM mailers since they aren’t relevant given this.

I’d take a peek at the wikipedia entry about their business model, which mentions some stuff that isn’t the most savory:

… Brave earns revenue from ads by taking a 15% cut of publisher ads and a 30% cut of user ads. User ads are notification-style pop-ups, while publisher ads are viewed on or in association with publisher content.

On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users navigate to Binance

With regards to the CEO, he made a donation to an anti-LGBT cause when he was CEO of Mozilla in 2008. He lost his job at Mozilla due to his anti-LGBT stance. He also spreads COVID misinformation.

As others have pointed out, it’s also Chromium based, and so it is just helping Google destroy the web more than they already have.

“Signal’s use luckily never caught on by the general public of China (or the Hong Kong Administrative region), whose government prefers autonomy, rather than letting US tech control its communication platforms, as most of the rest of the world naively allows.”

When you’re holding up China as an example for the world to follow for privacy

I interpret that quote to say that China doesn’t trust US tech like the rest of the world does. It’s not saying that China has more privacy and the rest of the world should follow, it’s saying that the rest of the world also shouldn’t be so naively trustworthy of US tech either.

Depends on what you call a scam. I am not sure it’s the right word, but duplicitous behavior and definite privacy violations (even if by negligence) are absolutely true.

They have sent out direct mailers that basically equated to a customer list leak; also I’d take a peek at the wikipedia entry about their business model, which mentions some stuff that isn’t the most savory:

… Brave earns revenue from ads by taking a 15% cut of publisher ads and a 30% cut of user ads. User ads are notification-style pop-ups, while publisher ads are viewed on or in association with publisher content.

On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users navigate to Binance

In regards to the mailers, they messed up and passed blame,

In this process, our EDDM vendor made a significant mistake by not excluding names, but instead including names before addresses, resulting in the distribution of personalized mailers.

With regards to the CEO, he made a donation to an anti-LGBT cause when he was CEO of Mozilla in 2008. He lost his job at Mozilla due to his anti-LGBT stance.

He also spreads COVID misinformation.