* Pedro Lucas Porcellis <porcel...@eletrotupi.com> [2020-09-09 18:44]: > > In the predicament when the doctor's office offers "zoom" for > > teleconferencing with patients from home what can a somewhat informed > > patient suggest instead of "zoom" > > You can simple recommend to use alternatives, like Jitsi. Although, I > think you should do with common sense in mind.
I know that people use the word "alternatives" yet I think there is no alternative to free software. For experiment, I have installed Android OS on one spare notebook, just to try the WhatsApp and to see what is it doing, as I never use it, I have my own page why not to use WhatsApp and I give to people explanations. And result of the experiment is that it will not work well if I do not allow WhatsApp application to get access to all my contacts, so all my contacts are moving to WhatsApp servers. It will be obvious that WhatsApp will take any contacts I have and I do not know what all is taking, is it taking notes, addresses, vCards, or just phone numbers, I have no idea. What I know is that I do not know anybody in that company. So what is common sense to me is to think about it and not to give away my contacts to unknown foreign companies where I do not know anybody face to face, neither I spoke with them on phone. So by common sense, I will tell this same to my friends, and never had problems in understanding, in fact they understood that Whatsapp is doing emotional threats to lose all your friends if they are not on Whatsapp. And I let them think. There is no force involved, everybody can think for themselves. And for the reason above explained, which is common sense, as giving away list of contacts to unknown people is outrageous, or grossly offensive to decency or morality, as anonymous asking for the list of contacts is not decent and not moral, for this reason, there is no alternative to proprietary software neither to centralized abusive networks. Apropos "alternative": https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Alternative > I'm slowly teaching my therapist to use alternatives (she has only used > Google's Duo or WhatsApp for video-calls), like using Duo on the Web, > then proceeding to teach her to know other tools, like Jitsi. In my opinion, people like therapists should respect privacy of others, that is foremost priority, and by using WhatsApp, they give away list of contacts to unknown company, and contacts did not agree to that, and nobody asked them. Why would a therapist give away all contacts to unknown company? The unknown company, without proper due diligence have taken contacts, and we do not know what are they doing. At the day D, the contacts can as well be used for extermination of certain groups or friends, which have been done throughout the last 100 years with success, including in Rwanda, Bosnia recently and Europe in second world war. It was myself, who have asked a criminal organization in defense of a war criminal to remove the racist lists they made for extermination of thousands of people based on their names or nation belongings, and they did remove it, as they had to comply with certain privacy laws in Europe. Contacts inside of Whatsapp will be abused as they can be abused, as simple as that. > Being an activist for free software does not mean that I will force or > shout at people to use GNU / Linux or to join the cause, but every time > I feel that I have the opportunity *and it makes sense*, I will try to > give the hint. I have never encountered resistance and that may be due to fact that I do not put attention, and I do leave people decide how they wish. And I have never use any force, neither encountered resistance. I simply say what I use, why I use it, and I explain myself well what means freedom so that there is no misunderstanding between free of charge and freedom of using software. Free software makes sense all the time, proprietary software does not make sense all the time. There is this Aurora APK for Android OS, from F-Droid.org and inside there are those Exodus reports, try researching those Google Playstore applications, they are as abusive as they can be. For example simple keyboard application made by Google itself and by other provides as well is going to ask users for contacts, for Internet connections, for location, to read SMS and write SMS, and to read storage and so on, why would keyboard application be able to do that all? So it makes sense to warn people about the abuses and offer them abuse free operating system and software. > People need to understand why free software is better, and they will > naturally choose if they fully understand. That is right, and you may explain it better and with more details. Myself I stress privacy in first place. Jean _______________________________________________ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss