Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

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F-Droid has received funds from US Congress (via OTF), just like Signal (f-droid.org)

submitted 8 hours ago by refalo@programming.dev to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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[–] unknown1234_5@kbin.earth 33 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

I swear this community is as bad as a flat earth one when the government gets brought up. why change the title from the original to imply that congress (other than deciding the federal budget) had anything to do with it? That is at best irresponsible and misleading and at worst actively malicious. Yes government entities do sketchy things, but that does not mean something can't be trusted because a government entity interacted with it.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

Well said. And I think there's more. In the Anglosphere and the USA in particular, government and state are often conflated, but they really are two different things. The former is the cockpit, the latter is the airplane.

Things are different in European cultures. In Latin languages, for example, the government is understood to be the body of politicians in control right now, whereas the state is a sort of expression of the people's will and therefore has much wider legitimacy. Two very different things. I believe it's similar in German.

I sometimes wonder if this semantic quirk has exacerbated the general skepticism of English-speakers towards collective action.

[+] refalo@programming.dev -10 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (3 children)

why change the title

As I mentioned, I felt it was more transparent to say where the money comes from and let people draw their own conclusions. Of course there will always be dissenting opinions no matter which title is used, I think that just comes with the territory, and I'm ok with that; I don't think there is a single right or wrong answer. I'm sorry that you disagree with my choice. I encourage you to make similar posts wherever you'd like with your own desired title.

Thank you for your perspective.

[–] x00z@lemmy.world 7 points 5 hours ago

where the money comes from

Well you failed because it comes from the taxpayer.

[–] Hominine@lemmy.world 7 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

The only "territory" that deliberately manipulating a title comes with is that of misinformation. For what other reason would another application be wedged in? Why are other grants left out? It's all very plain.

[–] notfromhere@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 hours ago

OTF receives the majority of its funding from the U.S. government via the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Funding is appropriated for OTF through the annual Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs appropriations and provided to OTF via a grant agreement from USAGM.

For FY 2023, Congress allocated $90.5 million for programs to promote Internet freedom globally, representing a $13 million increase from FY 2022. Of the funds allocated for Internet freedom, $40 million was designated for OTF. Per the appropriations, all Congressional funding provided to OTF is used to support “programs to promote Internet freedom globally.” In addition to helping to further OTF’s mission, this funding increase is also further recognition of the increasing need for the tools and technologies OTF supports.

In addition to funding from USAGM, OTF also accepts funding from other mission-aligned donors for discrete Funds, Labs, or Fellowships. For example, OTF’s FOSS Sustainability Fund is supported in part by funding from Schmidt Futures’ Plaintext Group, Okta for Good, and the Github Foundation.