Unfortunately, the ICEBlock app is activism theater

Comments

• vzqq@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  An important part of the effort is culture and esthetics. “ICE SUCKS DONKEY BALLS AND YOU SHOULD AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE INFESTED RAT FASCISTS THEY ARE” is a message worth amplifying, even if the tool to actually do the avoidance is flawed.

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• Zaktor@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨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. 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 ⁨2⁩ ⁨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 ⁨2⁩ ⁨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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  • thejevans@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨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 ⁨2⁩ ⁨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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• prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  It doesn’t really seem like there’s any “secret sauce” there. What’s to stop someone who knows more about development from making a better version?

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  • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    There are lots of better versions that exist. Unfortunately they haven’t received the same amount of traction, which is important for this type of app. Here’s one: fire-app.net

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    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      How is this any better? From the site it appears to also be closed source with no security audit and using push notifications.

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  • AlecSadler@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I’m down to do it, I just need to figure out a way not to get deported over it.

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• interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  All activism is activism theater if it does not serve to direct counter-battery fire

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  • orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Mobilization is the spark; organization is the fire. If you have the first and not the latter, you’re not moving the needle. Governments love mobilization because they can co-opt it. They can waste people’s energy via constant mobilization without established organizations.

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    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Aren’t they going to dismantle any organization that works to undermine them ?
      Maybe even shortcircuit it covertly to serve their own ends ?
      I think the mobilization has to point toward something self-organization, an air-tight logic of action that operated randomnly enough that they don’t see it coming and therefore their bureaucracy can’t stop it or recuperate it

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• icelimit@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Has anyone else already read the whole thing and could save us a little time?

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  • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    • The creator is not an immigrant
    • Nothing preventing malicious users from flooding the app with false reports
    • Estimated 98% of reports are false positives, whether malicious or not
    • Dev doesn’t seem to understand much about privacy or security
    • Doesn’t distribute Android version due to previously-mentioned lack of understanding
    • Overall does more harm than good

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    • otter@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Jen asked:

      There’s a lot of secure software, that probably people in this room work on, that is developed in the open, and that is used primarily by at-risk users, including things like Tor, Signal, SecureDrop. That’s great, because it makes it easy for folks to contribute. Maybe you don’t want that, I understand that can be hard. But it also makes it easier for people to audit and gain assurance that the app is doing what you claim without having to have, you know, EFF reverse engineer it. Would you be open to making the app open source?

      His answer: “Absolutely not.”

      Why? “I don’t want anybody from the government to have their hooks in how I’m doing what I’m doing. Once you go open source, everybody has access to it. So I’m just going to keep the codebase private at this time.”

      He also claimed that the government can’t learn everything about how an app works by reverse engineering it, which isn’t true.

      I agree with Jen. His answers are very concerning.

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    • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      The first one seems irrelevant. The second is sort of inevitable without making it hard to report anything.

      Everything else is just exactly what people were saying from the start. I dont know why people keep defending this privacy nightmare of an app.

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• Luffy879@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Isnt that they same App that got completely obliterated by a single Mastodon post by GrapheneOS?

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  • princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Doesn’t seem like it? grapheneos.social/search?q=iceblock&type=statuses

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    • thejevans@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      It was BlueSky, not Mastodon and is linked in the article: bsky.app/profile/grapheneos.org/…/3lt2prfb2vk2r

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