I agree, but those base technologies are not currently a replacement for WhatsApp. We should have been funding development and integration of a social stack 5 years ago.

It'll need seamless payment and identity validation functionality, and significant user experience and reliability work before it can be a replacement. That all has to be in place before implementation which is a separate major challenge

I use them myself, and i guarantee that they're not a viable alternative, because the average person finds them very hard to use

When I mention this, people around foss communities often say "oh, but it's like email"

Exactly! People don't know how to use email!

For some chat app to be a viable replacement, it needs to register by phone number, without passwords, and find all your contacts automatically. The closest we have is signal, but the server isn't open source, and its nonprofit group is tied to the usa

Matrix is good, but has some serious convenience issues around authenticating new devices. And locking messages on public group chats if resetting your "recovery key".

I misspoke, I just meant to refer to the various countries that have been working on it without having to look up which ones it was. You're right though

Yeah they did, they learned that the public outrage will last a few weeks at best

Sure they did. They fucked around, received no consequences, and found out they're allowed to do that

That was specifically what I was thinking of when I wrote that.

Yes and no. A captured press had a real person attached to it somewhere. Usually one person per article that had to be written. Now it’s ‘virtual’ and exponential.

I mean, I think this is a particularly intriguing case because I've never seen Meta so closely connected to an attempted assassination. If you know of other cases I'd be interested to see them!

I do, but for the most part you'll only see Cambridge Analytica mentioned by independent media, very little in the mainstream. In fact, if memory serves, it was The Guardian (which is independent) that did most of the reporting at the time, such as the article I just linked.

There seems to be a concerted effort by the media to diminish any public recognition of large-scale, coordinated efforts using social media to manipulate elections and voters, making sure that each particular incident is reported in a light entirely separate from the rest, as though it's a one-off and not exactly like a few dozen others.