Thunder has an option to dim read posts.

I recommend downloading it from f-droid if you want full functionality (like self-hosted sync) for free – the one in the play store is monetized (however I do recommend donating to the dev if you don’t want to pay the subscription fee).

That’s because, currently, the community stats that you see in the sidebar are only from your instance – community stats are currently not federated. Afaik, federated community stats are going to be implemented in 0.19.

and see people upvote their own comment.

Upvoting one’s own comment is default behaviour on Lemmy. When a user makes a post, or comment on Lemmy, it gets automatically upvoted by that user.

I have little to comment on regarding the motivation for your post – I am not up to date with what’s happening in the EU – but, for an encrypted messaging-app alternative to Signal, I can recommend Matrix.

I caution mentioning both Matrix, and Element as if they are synonymous – they are not (I’m quite certain that that wasn’t your intent, but the usage of the forward slash could be interpreted as such). It may lead to confusion for newcomers. It would essentially be the same as saying “I recommend ActivityPub/Thunder” to someone who you want to introduce to Lemmy. Matrix is the protocol, and Element is simply a client that interacts with the Matrix protocol.

I personally think that it’s sufficient to recommend Matrix if one is mentioning chat-app alternatives. Of course, nothing is stopping one from also recommending a client, but I don’t believe that it’s entirely necessary.

This isn’t necessarily about the sheer size of population, and has more to do with birth rates, but this Kurzgesagt video also outlines well the need for a higher birth rate.

Almost all countries need to reduce their population.

On the contrary, actually, we need to increase our populations. Assuming that you mean an equal reduction in all demographics, the existence of productive, and hyper-productive people is mostly a game of statistics. A larger population means that more of such people will exist. Such individuals are necessary for pushing humanity forward. A nation with a larger population means a larger natural defence. A larger gloabal population decreases the chances of a mass-extinction event.

it’s stressing the system.

What specific stresses are you referring to? We have no lacking in resources, nor space. Economic activity is proportional to those acting within it.

In that case, the email provider that you use makes little difference at all. Because of the way that email works, it will always be visible in plain text (unless manually encrypted through PGP) by a third party other than the recipient at some point. There is of course the exception of, for example, direct communication happening between two Proton Mail accounts, but this is really hardly worth mentioning in any practical sense.

The long and short of it is that email should never be used for secure communications.

For reference, the article does point out the following:

The United States said it was discussing with relief agencies how “safe areas” could be set up for civilians in Gaza. “One of the things that we did discuss with [Israel] was the need to protect civilian lives in Gaza, the need to establish some safe areas, where civilians could relocate to be safe from Israel’s legitimate security operations,” said a senior U.S. State Department official in briefing reporters. “So we’ve been engaged with the International Committee for the Red Cross, the UN relief agencies to work through the details of what that might look like. It’s still work that’s coming together. The Israelis are committed to it,” the official said.

The article also provides a map of the total evacuation area, which I assume was also provided to the Palestinians. Given that this evacuation area only applies to the north of the Gaza strip, I would assume that the evacuees could flee to the south. I’m not arguing that this is practical given the circumstances, but there technically are places to go.

Please correct me if there is extra information that would suggest that evacuation to the south is also not an option. There’s a lot of information out there regarding this situation, and I am not at all fully educated on the matter.

Are you going to audit all the code you use ? You need to trust some organizations to make the audit. You NEED to trust some entities

While lacking in practicalicy, this is not a new idea. While It is certainly not impossible to have an entity that one can completely trust, I would just argue that such certainty is improbable.

What I’m trying to get at is that one shouldn’t approach this question from an appeal to authority – i.e. Proton is trustworthy, therefore all of their services must be privacy friendly, and secure. The russian proverb “trust but verify” comes to mind.

at the very least, this is unimplementable for an email provider.

If one ignores the collection of metadata, then this is the very purpose of PGP.

I am trusting someone for my data

The point that I am trying to make is that one should never have to trust someone with their data – if all data is encrypted, for example, from a privacy perspective, it really doesn’t matter where it is stored. Of course, metadata can still be gathered, but that is, in my opinion, a lesser issue, and the user has some, if not complete control over it.

I should also say that it depends on what you mean by “trust”. My response, and original comment are under the assumption that “trust” is referring only to privacy.

The issue with email, unless you are comumnicating between two Proton Mail accounts, is that your message will likely be stored on another server which is extremely likely to be unencrypted. The bottom line is that you can never trust the rest of the infrastructure, and you have no control over it. You can end-to-end encrypt using PGP, but this is extremely impractical.

Or, better yet, one should simply not use email for secure communications.

it is also owned by the people who run it

The ownership of a service, ideally, should make no difference to that service’s trustworthiness.

Ill get straight to the question: what should i use?

Are you referring to email?

Do you trust Proton?

For starters, such a question is coming at it from the wrong perspective. One should have trust in the software – if such sowtware is, indeed, trustworthy – and not in the entity that created it. If one seeks privacy, then they should be of the mindset that every entity is malevolent.

It matters because American culture currently prefers everyone to have a college degree as opposed to any other type of education. […] If this avenue was cut off then the attitude of the public would change to allow other means of education.

I completely agree that our favoring of, or requiring of post-secondary degrees for employement is an important cultural issue. I don’t agree, however, that the solution is to make the provision of loans illegal – illegalization is rarely anything else than a band-aid on top of a gaping wound. An argument could be made that the government provision of student loans should be stopped (in countries where that occurs e.g. Canada), but I don’t think the solution is to simply make all student loans illegal.

and then yoke them into debt for the rest of their lives.

Hm, that is an assumption. There’s a few issues with that statement. The total cost of one’s loans are directly related to the cost of the post-secondary institution that they decide to attend. There is little reason to go to a very expensive institution. I do understand that some employers are elitist in that they won’t hire anybody outside of an ivy league school, but I would wager that that issue is not very prevalent – the free market should take up the slack. Furthermore, one’s ability to get out of such debt is related to the income that they expect from employment after attaining their degree, as well as their level of monetary responsibility, and savviness. If one decides to blindly go into student debt for studies that will offer little in return, that is one’s own risk to take. You must also not forget that there is no requirement that one must do white-collar work. Trades do not require such degrees, and are just as well-paying, if not better.

I presume that anywhere where interest-free loans are offered, they are offered by that country’s government. Canada, for example, as of April 1st 2023, offers federal student loans interest-free. Depending on the province, some may not have interest on provincial loans, as well.

What issue are you looking to solve? You state that you believe people are able to seek out, and attain their education independently through resources like the internet. So why would it matter if there are alternatives that cost money which one can pay, and receive loans for?