I do use cash when possible indeed! But Monero is for things that you can’t physically receive in a store’s office, like a domain name. It’s not a lot, but it is necessary. Gift cards are not available everywhere, and the ones available somewhere would not necessarily work in other countries.

I think cash-like anonymity is something we do really need in online payments. For me personally it is not critical. But I would still not like my VPS and domain name KYCed to me, for example if, say, something like censorship evasion is prosecuted retrospectively.

That doesn’t have any of the privacy and anonymity features. I’d have to read more on this project, though - did hear about it before. Also, what’s relevant right now is that it’s not accepted as commonly as even Monero (which in itself is sadly not as common as Bitcoin).

Alternatives - like what? I understand the concerns but for now Monero is the closest we have to “digital cash”. Hope there would eventually be a more energy-efficient successor.

If the initial swap is from Bitcoin, there is Bisq - that’s been around for much longer than Haveno. Not tried myself, though.

yes

For me it’s pretty much mandatory because Youtube is normally blocked :/

To be fair, while Microsoft is absolutely vile for such restrictions, I think people overestimate how many people would switch computers just to get Windows 11. It’s probably a concern for big corporations indeed, but regular users? I don’t think so. Most people don’t see anything wrong with staying on an OS that doesn’t receive updates. A lot of them already do so - on their phones, because the support is so short! I am now in the process of switching my father to Linux, and it’s genuinely hard to explain him why he has to get used to a different OS: his reaction to “But Windows 10 would no longer receive security updates!” is “So what?”. Windows 7 probably would’ve still had a high market share if 10 had a similar system requirements change.

It is in Futo’s own F-Droid repo. But there have been license issues so that it is not actually open-source, and I prefer Newpipe (or, rather, Tubular now, because Sponsorblock) anyway.

Less likely to be blocked, both by the censors and by the target websites. Actual flexibility in what obfuscation method to use. Can be a convenient proxy rather than a full-device VPN. Can host other things there, or use it as a static IP to access things hosted at home.

Same, although I use a personal VPS rather than a VPN.

It recently was in the news for refusing to work on degoogled mobile OSes, and the website is not fully-functional compared to the app.

I am using Android until I can find an alternative

You mean you’re considering something like PostmarketOS? Just wonder where people are looking for alternatives.

I assumed that when it comes to SMS 2FA, simswapping is a threat much bigger than interception of the contents…

XMPP is very much a valid option nowadays too! Much easier and lighter to host than Matrix, too. I use it with my mom - Conversations is just as easy to use as Whatsapp, and maybe more pleasant.

It seems like where I live, RCS is not supported on all carriers (not on mine) - but most importantly, not on all phones. The one carrier that has it says it only works on certain Samsungs (I guess also Google Pixel, but they are not officially sold, even if not unpopular). So even though they’re not paid separately like SMS, I don’t think anyone would be switching to it from Whatsapp or Telegram.

I had some! It’s the rescue services warning you that the ice is starting to break and you shouldn’t walk on it.

Yeah, I am very much aware of this. However, I prefer not to trust the encryption that happens on their servers instead of my client, so I’d consider the non-e2e mail as fully open. As for bridge - indeed it solves the problem, but it’s exclusive to paid plans, which is not what I had experience with.

I mean depends on your location. Chances are it is fine for you.

I mean of course you can use mail and other services - but you’d need another VPN/proxy, which is what we’re used to. But I only wanted the VPN, and that is indeed unusable

Blocked by the government I mean. Inaccessible. Somene I know tried Stealth and it doesn’t seem to work either, at least on the free tier.