Migration recommendation: WireMin

I have been using it for a week and looked into their FAQ page for technology explanation. Here are some pros & cons:

Pros:

1/ 100% Anonymous:

  • No need for an email/phone number to create an ID.
  • Untraceable IP address.
  • End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) for Direct Messages (DMs), Chat rooms, and Blog posts on the Feed.

2/ 100% Censorship resistance:

  • Accounts never get suspended (at least that’s what they say in the FAQ).
  • Content/Messages can only be deleted by the user itself (chat space too, no one can ban you or remove your message).
  • E2EE, no one can decrypt your message, it’s only viewable by you and the recipients.
  • Decentralized, no one can access your content because data is only kept on your device.

Cons:

  • Not enough users, so the whole network is not stable enough due to its decentralized structure.
  • Notifications are only available for DMs, not for Chat space or - - Updates on the following Feed.
  • App crashes occur.
  • Lacks some small features like polls/GIFs.
  • Not open sourced but it is on the dapp store: https://www.alchemy.com/dapps/wiremin

Anyway, I think it could be a good alternative to Twitter/Facebook, due to their privacy issues and monopolistic behaviors. If you are a privacy-focused member, or if you run a sensitive topic community, I think it could be a good choice too.

The only thing I am concerned about is that they are not open source. As for the overall experience, I know they operate on a decentralized structure and personally, I do believe in the safety level of a decentralized network: 100% anonymous, 0 data leaks.

Here is a PrivacyMatters community, https://i.wiremin.com/invite/?g=k49693987788 mainly about TECH and DIGITAL PRIVACY discussion. If you download WireMin for privacy, this can be your first stop.___

  • etrotta@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    Some things you did not mention that caught my eye, please correct me if I misunderstood how they work:

    • No servers, just P2P. Every user doubles as a server to some degree, akin to seeding
    • Their one and only method to prevent bots is Proof of Work

    …I personally can only really see that as cons,

    • waste storage space and bandwidth on other user’s encrypted messages that have nothing to do with you
    • waste computing power every time you want to send a message to anyone
      (and I refuse to dismiss those as “negligible”, wasting any of that means wasting energy after all)

    Not to mention abuse related issues that come with the “100% Censorship resistance”, from scams and social engineering to abusive texts to illegal content to displeasing images.

    I can see an argument for some sorts of communities, but I would never consider that “a good alternative to Twitter/Facebook” in general.
    If anything, their explicit, by-design lack of moderation may make it even worse for vulnerable/sensitive groups.

    Quoting their FAQ before anyone asks for the source:

    (Security > Privacy and Data Security > Where is my data stored?)

    Your data is relayed and stored in your friends’ devices and other random devices available in the network. All data is protected by strong cryptography algorithms and can be accessed only with the owner’s secret seed.
    (Security > Underlying Technology > On what technology is WireMin built in?)
    WireMin users jointly created an open computing platform for messaging and data storage that serves each other within the network for personal communication. WireMin protects the public resource from being abused or attacked by requiring proof-of-work, or PoW, for every message sent and each bit of data stored. A tiny piece of PoW needs to be completed by computing SHA256 hundreds of thousands of times before you can send a message. Such computing tasks can be done in less than a tenth of a second which is a negligible workload for a user device sending messages at human speed. While this introduces a significant effort for an attack to send overwhelming amounts of messages or data, the actual PoW difficulty requirement of a specific message or bit of data is proportional to its size and the duration for which it is to be stored.

    • Wothe@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I think POW alone can’t prevent bots but rather spams. I understand that not having a high enough level of POW may decrease the ability to prevent spam, but let’s consider it from the user’s perspective. If WireMin has a high level of POW, that might increase CPU processing power consumption, which could harm the user’s device from no matter battery or others.

      From my perspective, I think they eliminate spams in this way: User/Non-user can’t search for a specific space by name, no matter within the app or on other search engin, they have to obtain the invite-link or have someone in their WireMin contacts invite them to view or join the space.

      A tip: we can always create a secret group if we don’t want all users to see the space on the discovery section (as the discovery section only shows public spaces) or to eliminate spams. For the Feed, only the owner of the feed space can post content.

      I agree with you on the concern about wasting storage space and bandwidth on other users’ encrypted messages that have nothing to do with you. This is an issue that mutiple ones reported within the WireMin official chat space before.