Discord community is building at
We are welcoming all contributors to help us build a series of privacy focused, mobile friendly apps without a profit motive!
Look, straight up- if you’re unable to work on a project without being a sexist, racist, transphobe- that’s a you problem.
If the thought of people having their pronouns respected upsets you, stay away
Dunno why that’s somehow a political statement but here we fucking are
If this stays at defcon, we failed.
We would love to come talk about Veilid at your local hacker/dev/tech meetups!! Shoot us a DM. Particularly interested in attending some of the smaller DC groups and hacker meetups- places where folks wouldn’t normally get outside talks!
We aren’t a multimillion dollar corporation with a Super Bowl ad trying to convince you to use OUR service so they we can sell your data.
We’re just a bunch of nerds who are sick of seeing tech (and privacy!) companies participate in a perverse display of capitalism
Privacy isn’t a privilege, it’s a right.
You shouldn’t have to pay for it.
You shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get it.
It shouldn’t be behind a knowledge paywall.
It should be and accessible to everyone.
EVERYONE. Period.
Hi not only are we pro privacy, but we’re also pro choice, anti Nazi, pro trans rights, and anti capitalist.
Also, sex work is not only work, but it’s awesome.
Also, gif is pronounced with both a hard and soft G, depending on mood
Just in case you wanted to know those things.
Veilid has been granted entry into Open Source plans. GitLab, Netlify, and Digital Ocean have all recognized our vision and are supporting us through credits and access to high tier plans!
These grants enable our website, code repository, and our build/package/distribution infra
One of the biggest things we announced this weekend is that we are inviting EVERYONE who wants to build a better internet to JOIN US. Devs, hackers, UI folks, tech writers, policy ppl- you don’t have to be a coder. Let’s all work together to take back control of our internet!
Sex workers have always been the canaries for surveillance capitalism coalmine.
Which is why we built Veilid with them in mind.
Because fuck treating ANYONE as the expendable canaries
we don’t say “listen to sex workers” because we like to hear ourselves talk, we say it because we’re the test population for punitive & surveillance technologies that will be deployed against other marginalized groups next
it’s not for our benefit, it’s for yours. headass
This isn’t Elon Musks internet
This isn’t Mark Zuckerbergs internet.
Our internet doesn’t belong to Jeff Fucking Bezos
A VC board doesn’t get to decide what our internet looks like.
Why are we letting them control it?
Sowwy that we might cut into the revenue stream of companies selling all of their user data to other shady companies, ad nauseum, lining c level pockets with the exploitation of workers and users.
We are so vewy sowwy
(Not sorry at all)
Sneak preview of the official Veilid chat app. Creating an account is just that easy. No phone numbers, no contact list imports- just the the things you want to share with the folks you want to chat with.
We love hearing that folks are spinning up nodes- we don’t know the number of nodes, because the whole point is that we can’t see anything- so we love the reassurance of knowing the network is growing!! Keep it going, let’s stress test this shit!
We would like to extend our appreciation for the folks who have added:
-the eicar string
-Rick Astleys “never gonna give you up”
-code source for their unrelated project
-the shrek script
To our DHT.
It’s not going to do anything, but it sure makes us giggle. 🧡 hackers
Just here to say that we are coming for your mom.
No seriously, we’re building this for her. ALL the moms. Because we love moms. Your dad can come too. We aren’t picky.
Were building your mom her own private route.
It’s gonna be so SMOOTH and seamless, she’s gonna love it
We’ve published exploit POC for a patched vulnerability within Veilid, on our repository, along with crediting who found it.
We encourage responsible disclosure, to the point that’s it’s feature, not a bug or a box to check. We celebrate hacking the planet
Law enforcement will continue to seek access to end-to-end encrypted messages. The FBI told me as much, and an agent said they're "excited" for the next version of Trojan Shield, where FBI secretly ran its own chat app
More:
We are actively encouraging people to fuck around and find out. The freedom of not monetizing is that we get to try new things, and no one gets to tell us not to, and we are building a community where we encourage the same.
Signal desktop has its weak points, but as of now- it’s the only secure and completely private mobile messenger available.
As of right now.
This month.
Next month though…
I do not, and have never trusted Signal Desktop. Security colleagues sometimes express amazement that I only use Signal on my phone, and I wonder if they might prefer to use Slack.
We have decided to make literal “fucked around and found out” trophies for two folks who have broken Veilid in creative ways.
We hope the trophies get displayed with honor, because we hacking is an art form, and we encourage creativity!
We already have our first CVE!
Hey so as we gain momentum and attention, we may not last long here! That one guy really can’t handle criticism or competition. Anyway, here’s other methods to reach us!
Hacking is “move fast and break things”
But also, it’s “move fast and build”
Building tools to tear down the status quo, blind surveillance tech, and give everyone the privacy they have not been allowed to embrace- that’s hacking society.
There is freedom in not monetizing Veilid. We don’t have to answer to VCs, or a board, or anyone with an agenda. Our only agenda is free, accessible privacy for everyone. That’s it.
No one is working on Veilid to make money. We all are keeping our day jobs.
We are working on Veilid because it is necessary. We need to remove the corporate overhead from our internet in order to get the privacy we all deserve
At
@defcon
, we invited everyone to come do a hacktivism WITH cDc. That means that you, yes- YOU, can join the community, help make the changes you want to see, and be a part of changing the internet!
Veilid is what we ALL make of it.
The only time we don’t believe in tolerance within our community of builders is when faced with intolerance.
We are pro lgbtq, we love trans folks, we welcome BIPOC, and we have a sex worker on our board.
We are making privacy accessible to EVERYONE.
One of the reasons we are taking so long on the release of VeilidChat is because we are adding in accessibility tools like this FROM THE START.
Users first means ALL users, period
Accessibility shouldn’t be an afterthought.
Accessibility means EVERYONE can use your service.
That means people who aren’t tech literate.
That means people who use phone browsers.
That means people who can’t afford a subscription service or fees.
That means people with disabilities.
Privacy shouldn’t have hurdles.
I know we’ve been teasing for a long time but very soon, we are releasing!!
Meanwhile we are making sure our messenger is beautiful and seamless!
Because security and privacy shouldn’t feel like a chore!!
Adding accessibility and ELEETness into your communication
A lot of our stuff is based on the ideals of IRL mutual aid, idea sharing, and actual community building.
We have tools, we have resources, we want people to make things with them. We are your community workshop.
Together, we can build things that matter for the right reasons
One of the simplest ways that everyone can help save the internet is to have discussions with folks outside of tech about the ways our privacy is infringed upon and monetized, and how they can opt out.
Thanks to a fantastic contributor named DSP, the Veilid network is now on OpenBSD!
We met him at CactusCon, and within a week, he was able to make a huge contribution to the project!
It’s been a wild night. We have a giant list of thank yous, but right now we are still just processing what is happening
we aren’t done.
This is just the beginning
I'm giving a talk on the
@VeilidNetwork
at
@BSidesPhilly
!
"Veilid - so easy, a teenager can do it!"
I will also have my
@GirlsWhoHack
booth there so you can pick up a T-Shirt or a Soldering kit!
BSides Philly is Friday December 8th - See you there!
Even though WE (as in the creators of veilid) are taking a pretty anti-capitalist stance ourselves, that doesn’t mean that those who build apps on Veilid are held to the same standard.
We built this so apps have little to no overhead costs, but money is necessary to live.
“Why are you releasing at defcon?”
Because we actually want to build WITH YOU. We are releasing our code- because we actively want y’all to fuck with it, build on it, break it- so we can all work together as a community to make something BETTER.
We are living in a world where our every interaction online is scraped, and our data sold to shady companies, all so some billionaire can fly to space or have a cage match against another billionaire.
This is wrong, and we’re trying to do something about it
We spent months figuring out the ideals and foundational aspects of the project before we started writing code.
Our foundational ideas are:
Privacy
Accessibility
Freedom (actual freedom, not the dog whistley co-opted version)
If you have skills that you’ve had to use for money- be it coding, testing, education, marketing, etc- you could always use those skills to do something to make the world better in your spare time.
YOLO, use what you have to do what you can to change the world.
What if the cloud was everyone’s computer instead of Jeff Bezos’?
What if people could build apps that have no storage overhead?
What if devs were given access to teams of people like accessibility or UX/UI experts, lawyers, marketing and security professionals to help?
Privacy is a human right.
La privacidad es un derecho humano.
隐私是一项人权
Integritet är en mänsklig rättighet.
Η ιδιωτικότητα είναι ανθρώπινο δικαίωμα.
Soukromí je lidské právo.
La privacy è un diritto umano.
개인 정보 보호는 인권입니다.
IF YOU ARENT PAYING FOR SERVICES, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT
that’s been the norm for a long time
We would like to see more people develop things that don’t require feeding the data machine to thrive.
We believe privacy should be accessible to everyone, even those who aren’t very tech literate. We need to make privacy as simple and approachable as google. If it’s difficult for folks, they won’t use it.
Our project is built on the foundation of:
Privacy for all
Mutual aid
User empowerment
Making the internet an open and accessible place to learn and connect to others
web3 is a perversion of distributed computing
when you try to buy privacy, you just trade one master for another.
No gods, no masters, no shitcoins, no servers, no middlemen, no bullshit.