Maybe I am being too simplistic here. But I have never received a spam message to my XMPP account and I don’t know how a spammer would find it.

In a phone-based system a spammer can spam a list of numbers, or use contact lists that are easily shared via phone permissions. There are several low-effort discovery processes.

For e-mail, you get spam when you you input your personal e-mail into forms, websites, or post it publicly.

But for something like XMPP… It seems rather difficult to discover accounts effectively to spam them. And, if it is an actual problem, why not implement some kind of ‘identity swap’ that automatically transmits a new identity to approved contacts? A chat username does not need to be as static as an e-mail or a phone number for most people.

I just don’t see ‘spam’ as such a difficult challenge in this context, and not enough in my view to balance out requesting a phone number. Perhaps a spammer can chip-in?

Step 1 of installing GrapheneOS for de-googling your life: Buy a Google Pixel phone

Look - I know, I know. I get it. Google allows you to unlock the bootloader while maintaining the phone’s unique and excellent hardware security features. The argument makes sense. It is compelling. Other manufacturers do not give you this freedom. I am not arguing about that. I have a Pixel phone running GrapheneOS myself.

However… It is just so very obviously ironic that one needs to trust Google’s hardware and purchase a Google product to de-google their life through GrapheneOS. I think that it is a perfectly valid position for someone to raise their eyebrows, laugh, and remain skeptical of the concept either because they do not want to support Google at all, or because they simply will not trust Google’s hardware.

The reason why I think that this is “controversial” is because I have seen multiple instances of someone pointing out the irony, followed by someone getting defensive about it and making use of the technical security arguments in an attempt to patch up the irony.

I have a habbit of searching my own name a few times a week and sorting by new, to check if my name appears somewhere. It makes sense to me, but I would be self-conscious about it if someone asked me why tf I am looking myself up so often as if I’m famous

One way is to use iptables to forward the connection from the wireless interface through the ethernet interface. But I am not sure whether this is better than using the NetworkManager or a more specialized solution. I have used iptables for configuring WireGuard VPNs, but not for this specific use case.

I pull the lever and invoke Zeno’s paradox to ensure the trolley’s position remains < 1 for eternity.