BriarTalker

Can you extinguish a protocol nobody owns?

Tape will work. But if you are opening up a laptop anyway, you might as well just do a physical disconnect and plan on relying on a webcam when needed.

Slashdot has a comparison of a few alternatives. My preference is Briar as my user name would indicate!

I distrust the microphone more than I do the camera. They can gather a LOT more information using the microphone. When I got my computer, I opened it up and physically disconnected both the camera and microphone. Now, when I need to be on a video conference, I use a webcam to plug in to my USB. Otherwise, all that is off by physical impossibility.

IMO, Briar is the best option. I recently started a project to connect users in the Briar private groups and forums. We just need to get enough users active to get the network effect working for us and not against us.

It'll sync history for forums and private groups. Since there's no "login" it is a different account on every device you use, so there's no history on individual chats to sync. I think this makes private groups a little more useful because you can have multiple logins on a single group to communicate with others on that same group. A little clunky but way more secure than anything else out there.

Now I'm wondering how much of the price we pay is due to the cost of manufacturing and how much is just a bunch of middle-men driving up prices. Maybe this is just a case of a bunch of shell companies organized for military purposes but I'm going to guess that the practice is relatively normal enough that it didn't raise any red-flags among the other firms involved.

So what is the best way to store things for the very long term?

IMO, organizations like Mozilla should have their own Mastodon servers with closed sign-ups so that employees and volunteers can have a space to publicly discuss and promote their work in the organization. This should especially true of media organizations. In this case, I am almost sure the guy who was running it just got too busy or lost interest.

There is a desktop app. I am hopeful with EU cracking down on Apple will eventually result in Briar becoming available on that platform. I am working on an idea to connect people on Briar for use of the private groups and forums so you might check back with me in a few weeks to see where that's at.

Now that most of my friends and family are using it, I'm on Briar Messaging every day. Since there are no central servers, is entirely encrypted, and runs on the Tor network, I think it is probably the most secure messaging platform out there. It also has private groups and forums but I am not yet involved in any of those outside of a couple of small ones that are just for sharing family news.