3 minutes reading time
Free software for communication isn’t a cult checkbox; it’s the difference between speaking in a public square and whispering through a corporate wiretap. The “four freedoms” are not bedtime stories - they’re a boring way of saying: who controls your tools controls your speech.
We’ve done the loop before: IRC → XMPP → shiny surveillance chat apps → disillusionment → back to protocols that actually federate. People jumped to WhatsApp and Skype, then flirted with Telegram because a free client looked “good enough.” It wasn’t. “Eventually open source everything” never arrived for the server (Telegram FAQ). If you can’t inspect or run the server, you’re praying, not communicating.
So yes, federated protocols matter: XMPP, Matrix, plain old IRC. And yes, community‑run infrastructure matters more than herding everyone into one “pod.” If you use Diaspora*, run your own pod and federate; don’t outsource your autonomy to a random admin (Diaspora pods, Pod Uptime). Otherwise you’ve just reinvented centralization with extra steps.
“But everyone’s on Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo.” Exactly. Three providers sit on the throats of global email. Transport encryption (TLS) keeps your mail safe in the pipe; it says nothing about what happens at rest. Those providers scan mail for “features” and, historically, for ads; they also cooperate with law enforcement and intelligence under various regimes. If you don’t run the stack, you don’t set the rules. Try end‑to‑end options like Proton Mail or self‑host with Roundcube as a client; better yet, control your own domain and keys.
To summarize without the incense:
If this sounds “paranoid,” good. “Paranoid” just means you’ve read a history book. Or any privacy policy.
And since we’re all compost eventually: speak freely while you can - with tools that don’t kneel.