I’m new to this community and I have a question regarding privacy-conscious methods to send out announcements and push notifications to a large group of people. I’ve been trying to find a solution that meets a few important requirements, and I was hoping you could help me out.
Firstly, I need a platform that is accessible on modern mobile devices. It’s important that everyone in the group can easily access the announcements and receive push notifications without any hassle.
Secondly, I want to ensure that the privacy of our members is respected. This means that the member list should ideally be hidden from others. It’s crucial that personal information, such as phone numbers, remain private and are not disclosed to anyone without consent. (Additionally, it would be great if the platform doesn’t require personal information for signup, further enhancing the privacy aspect.)
Now, I should mention that the threat model for this announcement system is moderate. It can be compared to that of a journalist sharing politically sensitive information. It’s important to consider potential vulnerabilities and ensure the highest level of privacy and security for our members.
Currently, my best suggestion is to use a Telegram announcement chat where the member list is hidden. However, I feel like there must be other, more optimal options available.
I would really appreciate it if you could share any suggestions or alternative platforms you know of that meet these requirements.
Hmm, from looking at your criteria, I’d suggest Session.
The reason I pick this is because it’s accessible to modern smartphones, it requires no personal info to sign up and has group chat functionality. All messages are routed through Tor, so there’s no centralised server for the messages to be collected into.
Briar might be even better, but Briar has no iOS app, so unless everyone in your group is on android, I’d stick with session.
Just to clarify, to have push notification on Android, Session has to be downloaded from Google Play store. F-droid version doesn’t support it.
I’m not sure about the member list though. I have Session, but I have no one there So …
I would stay far away from Telegram. E2EE is not default thing, they store backups on their servers and they collect a lot of meta data (which they happily hand over to the authorities).
This may not be along the lines OP was thinking, but Mastodon could fulfill this need. Post to your Mastodon account as needed and the people who want it can enable notifications for your profile. They can chose to make an account in order to follow, watch your profile without an account, and even follow from RSS. If they want to make an account, their options are also privacy respecting for signing up with a pseudonym and you can free yourself of the worry of having to protect anyone’s information.
Hey love the concept of this post. We’ve been building the backend of a platform that could serve this same purpose, but it does need some “easier” user interface for more widespead audiences (on our roadmap). I’d strongly suggest you check out our project https://sarcophagus.io We’re building a decentralized dead man’s switch that people can pass any type of digital data (messages, photos, pdf, etc…) Some of our targeted use cases are: whistleblowers, digital estate planning/will&trust, password recovery… Would love your opinion and/or if it’s something you’d interested in exploring!
So … 