This is a nice example of the "disengage from the system" strategy being really flawed. Interacting in the political arena is the opposite of fun or sexy; but for stuff like this, especially, it's consequential. Perhaps on generational timescales the technological force latent in the world will be too strong to resist, and politics will give way, as with the printing press.

But on the timescale of a human life, plain vanilla political pressure gives high leverage. Ceding control of the political arena means it takes an extra decade or two to unwind stupidity that affects hundreds of millions of people. Bad ROI.

I'm starting to agree. This might have the be settled in the streets

Again, this isn’t even relevant in the first place because it’s not happening.

I’m sorry, but this is just kind of an ignorant argument. It’s ridiculous to say “you’re not allowed to perform a math equation in your code”. All of cyber security relies on that - you wouldn’t just be giving a data to the government, you’d be giving it to everyone.

If you're talking forcing all electronic data transmission to flow through government controlled channels, surely you can see why that’s as infeasible as hacking bitcoin.

Bitcoin works because it’s internet money, and the internet is irreversible decentralized information. There’s no going back on that.

exactly! Fight or silently let friends and family move off controlled messaging app and convince them to use SimpleX chat. Once people understand the power in it, they too will help spread the message. A bit like Bitcoin.

FOSS will continue to exists the same way government try to stop Bitcoin. But we need to let people know about it in an peaceful, kind and self-sovereign way, letting the government and lobby talk about banning FOSS in an empty void.