Building a better web for all of us: hiram.io

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • Nope. I suppose in theory it could, but not necessarily—it’d be up to Apple/Google to make the color decisions regarding that.

    The important thing here is that it’s not about the colors themselves, but about what the colors signify.

    Apple chose blue to denote that the message you’re sending is to another Apple device. By default, this Apple-to-Apple message uses the iMessage protocol. If it uses iMessage, then that implies a certain security standard.

    Apple also made the deliberate choice to denote non-iMessage texts with green. If it’s green, then it’s SMS/MMS, you lose iMessage encryption, and other features like reactions.

    The colors are not gonna change by default—it’s up to them to coordinate what colors are used for what. Apple’s not gonna open up iMessage (at least not voluntarily, and we saw how far they’ll go with Beeper), so Google can’t do anything about that. Which is also why they’re pushing so hard to get Apple to adopt RCS.

    If Apple does adopt RCS, maybe they’ll denote it with purple bubbles, who knows. Then you’d have iMessage as blue, RCS as purple, and SMS/MMS as green.

    But again, this is all about what each color signifies in terms of privacy and security.


  • The thing is… The bubble colors do matter. But people aren’t caring about the colors for the right reasons.

    The color matters because the color has to do with the security of that message.

    Sending a message through the iMessage protocol is more secure than SMS/MMS.

    People should care that their messages are secure and private (and they do care, they just don’t always realize it or know it yet). Unfortunately, the people behind the whole blue vs. green bubble culture war don’t seem to focus on this security aspect, which is actually what/why it matters.

    As an Apple investor who would benefit from more iPhone sales, “Buy an iPhone” is not the right response/solution to this problem, despite what Tim Apple says.

    Choose open source. Say no to walled gardens.

    Use—and donate to—Signal.

    Greetings from GrapheneOS, as a former iOS and stock Android user.









  • Indeed. It has always blown my mind how much people disclose on Reddit because they think they’re anonymous just because they’re behind a username.

    With that said, it certainly requires more effort to try to dispel who you are if you scatter some interests, and, to your point, write differently across those accounts to maintain different personas—at least to most people.

    Of course the entities with the resources to scrape, analyze, and dissect exactly who you are across multiple accounts are entities that should theoretically be outside of your threat model if you’re using Reddit.

    The first adversary in that scenario is Reddit itself. Of course they know who you are, even with your gibberish username. That’s not even considering the fingerprinting and all the other tracking techniques that make us unique.




  • +1 here 🙋🏽‍♂️

    I also finally received my data archive from Twitter. For weeks, the verification emails weren’t being delivered. When they were, the codes had expired. Repeat. I have no proof to indicate this was a way of locking me in, but it seems suspicious because it had never happened before.

    For me, it’s not about being petty or spiteful against these platforms just for the hell of it. It’s just that I’m tired of their unethical business model. Hostile practices. Their lock-in. Lack of interoperability. The user hostility.

    It’s not good for us, it’s only good for the platform, which then only serves to give that platform more power, which means more user abuse, enshittification, etc.

    Feels good to not contribute to that and not continue digging that hole, as well as invest in a better web for all of us.