In which someone's plans involving me were shattered on short notice by blindly expecting me to "do as everyone does anyway". Caution, LONG. You've been warned.
Okay, so I've been invited as a guest on the next episode of @
Mal Burns'
Inworld Review. I got the invitation in late 2022 already.
The episode was scheduled to be recorded this Sunday with myself or rather my avatar showing up in-world and talking to the hosts and other guests. I was actually looking forward to it. It would have given me the opportunity to talk about legal avatar accessories on the #
Hypergrid, ranging from mesh bodies to clothes. Something which most #
OpenSimulator users are absolutely certain that it doesn't exist because they've never seen any of it, and because they're being told again and again that it doesn't exist.
So far, so good.
It was just today that Mal sent me an invite to the #
Discord channel which would be used for voice.
Instead of asking me early on whether I use Discord or nor or whether I'm okay with using it, both he and Thirza expected me to use it like it's the most normal thing in the world. Because literally everyone uses it.
Because everyone uses this piece of #
proprietary, #
commercial, #
ProfitOriented, #
centralised, #
NonFree, #
ClosedSource #
spyware #
BinaryBlob created from #
VentureCapital. The desktop app. On #
Windows, of course. Because literally everyone also uses Windows. Only Windows. Everyone. Okay, except for those who use it on their smartphones.
I've mentioned Windows because the official Discord #
Flatpak app for #
Linux tends to malfunction. And Discord itself seems to fight tooth and claw against any and all attempts at sandboxing. It does, however, run perfectly well on Windows where it can scan the entire machine for any information of value about the user (and anything can be of value) and phones everything home. And the user gives consent buy installing it, consent that can only be revoked by uninstalling Discord and never using it again.
And now I've mentioned Linux because I'm not typing this on Windows. I'm not typing it on an iOS device either. I'm typing it on #
Debian. Which is my main desktop system.
Let me count this up for you: I'm using Linux. I'm using #
Firefox, secured and walled-up. I'm running all my machines behind a WRT router with custom firmware. I'm using free, #
OpenSource, #
decentralised #
Hubzilla for social networking. (Yeah, rub your eyes in disbelief, everyone, this didn't come from Mastodon.) My smartphone is devoid of any traces of #
GAFAM. It doesn't even run de-Googled Android, it doesn't run iOS or Android or Windows at all. Chat services? #
XMPP and #
Matrix only, thank you very much, end of discussion. No #
WhatsApp, no #
Telegram, no #
Threema, no #
Signal. (I have a dedicated Matrix account for this identity, by the way.)
Oh, and I have never been and will never be in Second Life either. (All those of you who follow me through the #
SecondLife hashtag, believing I'm one of you, I wouldn't blame you if you unfollowed me in disappointment upon learning this.) I vastly prefer #
OpenSim, and there I try my best at outfitting my avatars only in legal things, preferably under a free license. I'm one of the few who want OpenSim to be free as in freedom. Free as in #
CreativeCommons. Not just free as in free beer. And especially not free as in pirated commercial payware unlike, again, "literally everyone."
Okay, few people know this, and few who don't would expect this. Or any of this, for that matter. But for those who do, it shouldn't come as a surprise that
I boycott Discord HARD.Seriously, Discord unites almost everything I hate in a communications service and piles even more to hate on top. "Almost" because it isn't only available for commercial operating systems. There's an official Linux client, even though it only works ever so barely. And it probably only exists so that Discord can also spy on those few who prefer security, privacy and data protection over convenience and "it's what everyone uses." Also, accessing Discord via other means than the official clients will only get your account blocked; it won't have you persecuted by the FBI like a criminal ([laughs in Germany]). Otherwise, it ticks the whole list, and it even manages to expand the list and tick the new points.
Even trying it wouldn't be worth it. Of course, I wouldn't be dumb enough to run the Flatpak on any existing machine.
Imagine I'd set up a Linux VM on one of my machines. Linux VM on Linux host. A VM only for Discord. Which I'd run as Flatpak.
I can see two possibilities which might even intersect.
One, the client won't work anyway because Discord treats the Linux desktop like dirt, plus I'd have walled it up too well. I would have registered a Discord account for nothing, and I'm not sure if you can have it deleted. Not worth it. Who knows what Discord would do with my mail address?
Two, the client breaks out of its Flatpak sandbox, scans the system, discovers that it's running in a VM, breaks out of the VM and scans the host machine. Remember it's closed-source. Unless proven otherwise by thorough source code auditing, this thing could theoretically do anything, and there actually is malware known to break out of Linux virtual machines and target Linux host systems.
Yes, I actually expect the Discord client (remember, the source code is treated as highly classified military intel) to try and access all other computers on my network once it discovers them and scan them, too, regardless of counter-measures ranging from not mounting my network shares to blocking access from the VM to anything else on the network. It could probably do this with ease and unnoticed if its root suid managed to break out of the Flatpak sandbox, then out of the VM, assumed root control over the host system, clandestinely mounted all network drives and #
WebDAV, #
CalDAV and #
CardDAV shares it could possibly find, scanned the hell out of them and phoned everything home to be sold to some advertising company (and given to the #
NSA free-of-charge).
Now, if someone suggested I could use the Web client instead, I'd still need an account. And I don't even have a #
Google account, nor shall I ever get me one. Remember that my go-to browser is a very walled-up and secured Firefox. I'm pretty sure that it's too secured and too walled-up for the Discord Web app to work. And seriously, Discord is the last thing for which I'd let the guards in Firefox down. No way, no how. That'd be privacy and data protection suicide.
A different browser would make things even worse. Or do you really, seriously, unironically expect me to install #
GoogleChrome?! And then run it on default settings with no privacy/security add-ons? Not gonna happen. Ever.
And if you should suggest I could use Windows instead and save me all the trouble,
you haven't understood a word.
Seriously, demanding I use Discord is like giving @
Juno Rowland something that was clearly stolen from Second Life and demanding she wear it. In public no less. #
NotGonnaHappen.
As for my appearance at Inworld Review, I can't see it happen anymore.
