I was going to reply to @nemesis, but I believe it makes more sense to turn this into a thread.
I said this years ago, but I firmly believe we will one day have our entire net and ecosystem separate from normieland. That is our current trajectory with AI acting as a catalyst accelerating the process. I was thinking of making a new site — something like "AnarchyTech" or "AnarchyWare", shortened AnTech or AnWare. We have to begin analyzing and scoring software based on specific characteristics and criteria to identify the ones that actually fit the bill.
The way I see it, there are a few labels we can apply:
- NormieWare: Software made by total normies, some of who may even have IRL developer jobs. These projects feature generic technologies, such as Tailwind, React, Node.js, Firebase, and other third–party integrations, which allow the developer to outsource most of the functionality. They have generic UIs using extensive JavaScript, may block Tor exit nodes and VPNs, and require major adjustments to the Tor Browser's safety settings just to be usable. They are also highly unlikely to take privacy, security, and anonymity into account. Examples: Matrix Clients, Mastodon, Rocket.Chat, Discourse, NodeBB, Proton
- CorpoWare: Projects designed by big corporations for the normie consoomers and sometimes made exclusively for the enterprise sector. While they tend to have a great user experience, they are riddled with analytics and telemetry, always share your information with third parties, and only feature security functionality for enterprise compliance. Examples: Android, Salesforce, Oracle, Red Hat, Apple, Zapier, Zendesk
- GlowieWare: Government–made or sanctioned software with the intend of gathering intelligence for the glowies. This software may also be corpoware or normieware, but implements back doors or streamlined data sharing pipelines for governments. This software should never be used! Examples: ANOM, Windows, Amazon AWS, EncroChat, Freedom.gov (lol)
- SlopWare: AI coded slop projects, which heavily rely on AI for their development. The "developers" likely have either no experience or only a very rudimentary understanding of programming, syntax, architecture, and logic. It is easy come and easy go software, which won't be around for long. It is deemed highly insecure and vulnerable and faces major challenges in finding active maintainers. Examples: Just go on github or check virtually any community these days. You'll find plenty.
- AnarchyWare: This is the real software we should endorse, make, and use. This is software made by and for anarchists to protect their privacy, security, anonymity, and freedom. The developers themselves protect their anonymity, in order to avoid being compromised or extorted into doing something they would not otherwise do (see Samourai Wallet or Tornado Cash). This software is largely hand–crafted by developers who are driven by passion and rage (or passionate rage), who desire nothing more, but to make high quality and censorship resistant software. They feature no analytics, no tracking, no telemetry, and they put the end–user in control. Privacy, security, and anonymity are not afterthoughts, but built into the software right from the beginning. Examples: Tor (I know some people consider it GlowieWare), i2p, Qubes OS, Whonix, Tails, XMPP, Mitra, Monero, GnuPG, VeraCrypt, KeePassXC, GrapheneOS
Some labels may overlap and final scores may vary.
Criteria I thought of (with the desired answer in brackets):
- Can the software be run entirely offline? [Yes, unless it is specifically design to run online, such i2p or the Tor Browser]
- Does the software rely on a centralized system? [No]
- Does the software support or is it accessible using anonymization networks? [Yes]
- Is the software fully open–source? [Yes]
- Was the software heavily developed using AI? [No]
- Are the software devs protective of their own identity? [Yes]
- Does the license limit extension or modification of the software? [No]
- Is it truly free as in freedom as in libre? [Yes]
- Does it require a license activation? [No]
- Does the software feature any form of telemetry or analytics? [No]
- Is the user fully in control of the software on their end? [Yes]
- Can the software be run on libre operating systems? [Yes]
- Is the software private and secure by default? [Yes]
- Is the software based on Chromium? [No]
- If a web project, does the software require client–side JavaScript? [No]
- If a web project, does the software require SVG support? [No]
- If a web project, does the software require custom fonts to be loaded? [No]
- If a darknet web project, are any calls being made to clearnet domains? [No]
- Is the software censorship resistant? [Yes]
- Is the accessibility of the software limited? [No]
- Is the software made by the corpos or glowies? [No]
- Are the devs engaged in activism within the sector? [Yes]
- Does the software protect or otherwise shield critical data from government or corpo threat actors? [Yes]
- Can the software be self–hosted? [Yes]
- Are the devs employing exclusively ethical marketing practices? [Yes]
I'm sure there are many more questions and criteria we can come up with, but the point is we should come up with specific requirements, in order for something to actually be labeled as AnarchyWare. Those are the software projects we should be supporting and using.