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Comment on Unfortunately, the ICEBlock app is activism theater

It sounds like he’s just a dev who’s in over his head but either doesn’t want anyone to take his baby or doesn’t want people to see his sloppy and possibly insecure code. It’s probably a hack job behind the scenes and he’s not really as sure of its security, so he might be opting for security through obscurity.

But this isn’t really taking up space. Someone else can make a better app. If this guy isn’t the one to really make a useful crowd sourced anti ICE app, that’s not a problem. Let’s get that OS crowd together and work with local groups and make something better. In the meantime, this is a statement.

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Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The problem is that people are falling over themselves to help him and he keeps declining while looking at them like they’re the idiots.

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- Zaktor@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  So what’s the complaint here, that he’s being rude? The only thing lost if people build an alternate app rather than being allowed to work on his app is him.
  
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  - jarfil@beehaw.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    The complaint is: Narcissistic incompetent dev spreads FUD while putting vulnerable people at risk.
    
    It’s rather concerning, if true.
    
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    Zaktor@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    The risk appears to be anxiety, not an active threat to their safety. The black box security analysis did not indicate any direct data leakage. We don’t know the app is safe, but we also don’t have any indication it’s doing anything particularly risky.
    
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  - Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    No, the thing that’s lost is all the vulnerable people using an app filled with vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited by a vindictive government.
    
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thejevans@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I agree that there should be an alternative, open-source project, though I know I’m not all that qualified to support outside of financially, (which I would).

I disagree that this isn’t taking up space. Notoriety is a huge asset, especially for tools like this that rely on crowd-sourced information. It would be far better, all other things being equal, to start with the user base and name of ICEBlock than to make a competitor and need to promote it enough to get people to use it over ICEBlock. I highly doubt that a competitor will get anywhere close to the same media attention that this got.

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burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

It sounds like he’s just a dev who’s in over his head but either doesn’t want anyone to take his baby or doesn’t want people to see his sloppy and possibly insecure code

I’d bet it’s a LOT more along the lines of the second guess, because it’s now cost his wife her job and has gotten him quite publicly tagged along with it. He’s got a large portion of himself invested in it, and of course it will sting and suck for a bunch of folks to come along and point out, both gently and horribly, knowing OSS folks, all the shortcomings and then make changes.

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