This may have to do with Snap’s security model. Snap gets a lot of hate but it’s important to remember that Snap apps have the advantage of being properly sandboxed to modern standards.

The location of the profile will be listed after Path= in profiles.ini.

If it’s a Snap app then look in .snap/data/firefox/common/.mozilla instead.

Yes, this is the alternative. And it’s a PITA as you say. And might not even be possible in the future, given the trend towards locking down Android and OSs in general.

The people you know are not representative of the world population, and becoming even less so every day.

Obsessing about this increasingly irrelevant figure is pointless. Most people do not even have desktop computers outside work, and the number is going to keep dropping and dropping. The world has moved to mobile.

As Linux nerds who care about the future of free personal computing, we need to reboot our minds and focus on how to get free software onto mobile devices and into mobile applications.

The FOSS Linux stack is going nowhere on mobile (I have speaking rights here: I once bought an Ubuntu phone). Our last best hope is web apps that use web standards. I say we transfer our obsession to that project instead, rather than worry about this distraction of a statistic.

But it’s a free Europe-based provider that’s not US big tech. A better suggestion?

To be clear, I use a paid service (Mailbox.org) for my main email, as everyone should do.

They are right. Terminology is important in this discussion.

It’s considered a good idea because it runs over omnipresent, already-existent, distributed infrastructure. In other words, for this particular chat app, you don’t even need to create an account. That is at very least an interesting and noteworthy feature.

some issues with many email providers

This turned out to be the deal-breaker for me. GMX kept locking me out of my account because of the DeltaChat messages. They’re (of course) full of cyphertext and to email providers this must look a look like spam.

The open-to-abuse nature of email claims yet another victim.

Absolutely fair.

Interested in the answer too! Of course, you could get the same result from a 5-buck VPS with zero maintenance and rock-solid reliability (my solution). But sure, 5 bucks is 5 bucks. And also, encryption is optional if it’s your own device.

My point was about the social scenario, which is a genuine puzzle because most people want to have friends. I’ve lost some over this.

For the business context (this was the subject, true), I find that’s much easier: “F*** off and send an email.” Impossible? Well then that’s one less customer for you. I have lots of experience of doing exactly this. Almost always the email suddenly becomes possible after all.

It’s owned by Brian Acton

No, he is a founder and a donor. It’s owned by the Signal Foundation, which is a classic non-profit that seeks funding from lots of sources.

Yeah but you see the point? They offer us one option. We offer them ten.

“You don’t have any of them installed? Well, I don’t have Whatsapp installed. So one of us is going to have to go out of our way. Why should you assume that’s for me to do, just because everyone else including you behaved like an unthinking herd of sheep?” That’s what I feel like saying, and occasionally do actually say.

It’s a difficult conundrum. Speaking personally, but at this point resisting the Whatsapp fascism has become a stubborn article of faith for me. I won’t do it.

Good point. Theoretically surmountable because Wikipedia.

But donors are going to have to be convinced that social media is a social good.

While Masturdon was ripe for the picking

which uses the newer AT Protocol

This “newer” seems to be doing a lot of work.

In that case let’s just give up because obviously it will all be far too hard.

You are underestimating the resources that big companies already devote to complying with regulations and avoiding fines. To stipulate that every non-human voice on a social platform must be labeled as such or else, right now, that regulation does not even exist. It’s an obvious place to start and I am not the first person to say this.

Anyway, the conversation has moved on here, nobody else is listening, that’s enough from me. Good night.

Prove it or you get a fine. Where the political will is there, this is all easy-peasy.

It’s a suggested solution