🔖 Bookmarked: Keybase and the chaos of crypto
“Today, it’s nearly impossible to have a truly private conversation online. Someone is always listening: either the company providing the chat service, or governments (Normcore post), or third parties who want to scoop up data. For example, you could try Facebook Messenger. But Facebook automatically scans these messages for abuse and”
I signed up to Keybase because I remembered it as "just a key directory," and it was pretty easy to use. A few months later, the whole Stellar cryptocurrency thing kicked-off, and my internal alarm bells started ringing about how sketchy it seemed, but I’ve not had much time to dig into things and understand what’s going on. The linked post sets the context pretty well, while highlighting the accompanying – foreseeable – downsides.
I’ve been privileged to not experience the same problems as the author has (so far), but Keybase feels somewhat "compromised" for me. I don’t need or use anything but the key directory, so it’s probably time to move on.
