And other things people saw coming from a mile away…
“This app just gathers all the data and logs it. I don’t remember seeing that in any messenger app,” they said. “Max is not secure at all. There is no cryptography, unless it’s hidden very well, but I doubt that. It is insecure by design to serve its purpose: people surveillance.”
So more secure than Telegram then? (/s)
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Why would anyone use that garbage over Signal?
“Why would anyone in China use that WeChat garbage instead of Signal?”
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they are going to make access yo all government services possible mainly through that new messenger (hopefully not “only through”).
also signal is “blocked” (thankfully not very effective)
You couldn’t pay me to use WeChat either, in China or elsewhere.
Because they want to make an analogue of WeChat and without its installation you become a social pariah. You become very suspicious to the FSB: “Do you have something to hide, comrade?”.
Registration in services, state services, payment for services, doctor’s appointments, entry to the bank and other things will be impossible without this messenger. It will also be mandatory in schools for communication between parents and teachers, as well as with representatives of government agencies.
I certainly hope for the Russians that this “app” that looks like malware won’t be the only way to make an appointment with a physician. Does everyone even have a “smartphone” in Russia? What about those who don’t? My freedom is more important that the convenience afforded by any app.
Don’t even doubt it - it will definitely become compulsory. And pensioners from the Soviet era will go to a therapist in the old-fashioned way to a rundown rural clinic or a shabby hospital in some Kostroma.
i don’t think you quite understand what it means to live in a dictatorship)
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No, I don’t, since I live in what is nominally the “land of the free,” and I can’t fathom how, practically speaking, a government can force such an app down people’s throats. With an OS like Graphene, the malicious app can be sandboxed and solely used for required official purposes, effectively turning it off when it is unused. The rest of your personal business can be conducted through Signal or self-hosted alternatives like Matrix or Nextcloud. Trivially, you can accomplish the same thing with two separate physical devices. The real issue here is access to privacy-respecting alternatives such as Signal. I hear that it is an open secret that VPNs are very widely used in China for example.