cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/36376926
On June 4, during a meeting with government officials, Vladimir Putin stated that all public services must be moved to the national messenger app called Max. According to Minister of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev, the multiplatform system is already operational.
[…]
The Max app — a Russian equivalent of China’s WeChat — was unveiled by the tech giant VK in late March. At present, it features a messenger, a chatbot builder, a payment system, and mini-apps. On June 5, VTB’s digital bank launched on the platform.
To register, a Belarusian or Russian SIM card is required — which, as The Insider noted, foreigners can no longer obtain without submitting biometric data.
As stated in the Max app’s privacy policy, the platform will collect data on:
- user devices
- IP address
- operating system
- browser
- location
- internet provider
- contacts from the address book
- all user activity within the service
- information obtained through the camera or microphone, if the user grants the app access (most users will, for example, in order to record voice messages)
Other messaging apps collect such data as well, but there’s a catch. The Max app’s privacy policy explicitly states that it may share this data with the “company’s partners” as well as with “any government or local authority.”
[…]
We’re so lucky to live in democracies where our elected representatives don’t try to do a very similar thing by, say, weakening encryption and forcing the use of backdoor.
Though to be fair, they’re trying to do what China has done for years, and are only stymied by the representative process and a far greater division of state and production.
You forgot the /s at the end !!!
Hotznplotzn only spams “Russia bad” and “China bad” slop, doesn’t care about the accuracy of their sources, and will stoop to spamming conspiracy websites if the article supports their narrative.
Any apps to auto downvote [country] bad slop?
Block Hotznplotzn and you’ll be 90% of the way there.
Dumb Russians use Max.
Average Russians use Telegram.
Smart Russians use Matrix.
Very smart Russians use SimpleX.
How SimpleX is better than Matrix? It’s way less known than Matrix (it does not even have a Wikipedia article), that means it’s way less reviewed. The fact that it does not have IDs does not make it much better, because people usually talk with people they already know.
Matrix stores everything across redundant servers, with optional encryption (while some things like room names and ranks are never encrypted), while SimpleX uses encryption for everything.
Basically SimpleX is decentralized Signal.
I’m not sure why jump to mentioning it because it’s lesser-known (and still not as feature-complete as Signal), but IIRC the lead developer may be of Russian heritage.
so … just like the lots of the apps these days, the world over?
