Third Parties Used in Loomio.org - Implications for Users

Sorry to hear you had problems doing this.

I've never thought about running a Tor node before. If that would be worthwhile then I'd be happy to do it.

But.. we're quite tied to our urls right now, in terms of system architecture. Mostly because we allow some groups to have subdomains, which means we need to write a full url when we link to internal pages. This prevents things like direct.loomio.org from being a work around to this problem also.

Perhaps the solution could be worked out with CloudFlare? Are they able (and keen) to turn off the captcha feature selectively?
When testing tor access I realised that this is their way of handling anonymous access to domains they cache. But perhaps it can be switched off case-by-case.

I don't think there is anything I can do at this stage, sorry.

Corporate internet "services" like Twitter discriminating against users who protect their privacy (with TOR or VPN etc) is becoming all too common these days. Cloudflare is proprietary software, and they are in direct competition with TOR, which is free code running an open standard, so it's no wonder Cloudflare breaks net neutrality by treating TOR users like second-class netizens.

Forcing people to use proprietary software like Cloudflare when they think they are signing up for a fully free code platform is highly unethical. Please turn it off, or put a bight, flashing warning label on the sign-up page warning potential users that when they use Loomio, they are also using proprietary software provided by Cloudflare which discriminates against users who protect their privacy.

@strypey , We're not forcing people to use Cloudflare.

You do not have to use Loomio.org to use Loomio.

From our https://www.loomio.org/third_parties page you can see that we've chosen to use proprietary software as a means to develop our free software. We feel this is necessary to achieve our goals within the budget we have.

As a team we have acknowledged that focusing on developing a super private service would take expertise we don't actually have and distracts us from developing the best UX we can. Intercom for example is super helpful for talking with customers about their needs - not using it would us back a year of development easily. Cloudflare protects us from DDOS attacks and improves performance of the site - I'm the only sysops person on the team and I need to be writing code not configuring servers (badly)

Should the police knock on the door, we have to comply with the law and we do not run an encrypted database or anything that means we are unable comply.

So the answer to all this is that you'll need to use Loomio on your own privacy compliant infrastructure if your needs are for secrecy of the kind you describe. We know our own limits and we can't do everything.

Also.. I want to mention that TOR does not guarantee privacy as we've seen recently with Silk Road - it's SUPER hard to get privacy you can truly depend on.. and it takes resources we do not have at the moment.

I'm not against privacy at all - I think it's great and everyone should have it, but I don't want to take actions that hurt our overall progress in the name of privacy that we can't actually deliver.

@robertguthrie I hear your pain bro! Firstly, I just want to make it clear that I don't see the solution to this involving @robertguthrie working twice as hard as he does now, or on things that he doesn't want to work on :)

That said, the hard truth is, with a few exceptions, the list of proprietary dependencies you provide reads like a Who's Who of the most unethical and user abusing tech corporations (Stallman's list of reasons is as well referenced as any). Your comment implies that you are content to sell your users to these corporations to save money. This doesn't gel with the cutting edge, democracy-promoting, cooperative social enterprise whose software I've been actively using, and endorsing, since the first beta became available.

I may be "spray-free" in own garden, but if I know full well that by the time it gets to market my produce has been inter-mixed with sprayed veges so I can save money by using the corporate supply chain, selling it as "organic" is false advertising. Similarly, if you promote Loomio as an "open source" platform, and a "social enterprise" (where ethics matter more than money), and the app boils down to a layer of Ruby jam sandwiched between a huge cake of proprietary dependencies and "cloud" spyware, you are openwashing. To avoid this, the Loomio project needs to be actively seeking free code alternatives for all of these proprietary hooks. I assure you they exist and other free code projects use them.

Thanks for you opinions.

Just to clarify - We offer our software for free, to anyone, without proprietary dependencies. Your reply seems confused about that fact.

The third parties listed are used by the Loomio.org instance but are not depended upon by the software, should you choose to run it yourself.

We clearly publish the fact that we use these third party services and offer an alternative (run your own Loomio) if you don't like those services.

Additionally you're free to use uBlock and Privacy Badger if you would like to opt out of those third party services while using Loomio.org.

Maybe we should say that on the third parties page?

I don't feel like I'm being heard.

A new user creating an account on Loomio.org is not warned that they are being subject to the well-publicized bad behaviour of the various third parties the site integrates. This information can only be found if the new user:
* clicks on the 'terms of service' link at the very bottom of the page
* then clicks through to the 'Loomio's privacy policy' link
* then scrolls all the way down to the second-to-last item on that page, and clicks another link

Given that a user cannot reasonably be expected to know they are being subject to unethical third parties, and would not expect it from the way Loomio promotes themselves, it is totally unreasonable to expect your users to solve the problem by installing browser add-ons.

The Privacy Policy says:

Loomio will not sell or rent any information you share with us.

You are allowing these third parties to collec information from your users in exchange for cheap or gratis services from these third parties. I believe this does "sell or rent information you share with us", so the practice violates your own policy.

If I do not feel that this issue is at least being taken seriously, I cannot in good conscience endorse Loomio.org, or encourage people to use it (whether unpaid or paid). If I feel that Loomio.org has violated my trust in it as an ethical host, that loss of trust also applies to the loomio codebase. I want to keep supporting Loomio. Instead of circling the wagons, please help find a resolution so I can do this.

hi, while maintaining our own loomio we've noticed some of these third party services too, and we went ahead and just removed them from the code. the main issue is that they're not optional for loomio instances other than loomio.org, maybe making them optional would solve this problem, at least for non-loomio.org instances?

we can provide some patches if needed :)

cloudflare is very annoying for tor users because it asks to resolve a captcha everytime. i've recently discovered a project called cloudflare-tor-whitelister that allows servers behind cloudflare to whitelist most of tor exit nodes. you can also provide a loomio.onion service if you want, they can be configured in two minutes.

i'm puzzled by this:

Should the police knock on the door, we have to comply with the law and we do not run an encrypted database or anything that means we are unable comply.

is encryption banned on NZ? afaik if the police knocks the door and you don't have anything to show they can't tell you anything. maybe you need to be more clear on this, at least. (this is why i was surprised when i discovered ip addresses were logged on the database...)

Sorry @strypey .. Some of the stuff you're saying is really making it hard for me to respond calmly. I don't share the same views as you on this stuff and I feel like you're not allowing space for that. So I tend to disengage.

Thanks for highlighting that our privacy policy is misleading - I do think we need to fix that.

I don't feel like I can respond about the rest of what you've said without a bit of time to get objectivity.