One of the main reasons sites push apps, is to gather and sell as much information from the users/eyeballs which is harder to block apps from gathering. App UIs are supposed to be better than what a webpage can offer, but I'd rather not deal with an organization or business if an app is the only way to interact - especially apps asking for ridiculous permissions.
I suppose open-source apps would be okay if you check the app and OS' code or know of someone ethical checking the code and all changes.
The functional difference is basically nil, especially if you’re using things like Facebook messenger.
They have you fingerprinted and profiled to death and I believe will have access to every word you say. Kinda like worrying about a paper cut instead of a stab wound.
If you sincerely care about privacy it’s miserable because you need the others you want to communicate with to care too
It's a tradeoff. Webapps tend to be better sandboxed than their native equivalents on desktop, and you also don't need to worry about falling back on electron/chromium versions.
On the other hand, it does lead to issues with end to end encryption where the server could serve you (as in you specifically) backdoored JS, whereas with a native app it would have to be sent to all users, increasing the likelihood of detection. I believe this is also the reason why Signal does not have a webapp, though their own desktop app has issues like disabling the electron sandbox entirely.
One of the main reasons sites push apps, is to gather and sell as much information from the users/eyeballs which is harder to block apps from gathering. App UIs are supposed to be better than what a webpage can offer, but I'd rather not deal with an organization or business if an app is the only way to interact - especially apps asking for ridiculous permissions.
I suppose open-source apps would be okay if you check the app and OS' code or know of someone ethical checking the code and all changes.
The functional difference is basically nil, especially if you’re using things like Facebook messenger.
They have you fingerprinted and profiled to death and I believe will have access to every word you say. Kinda like worrying about a paper cut instead of a stab wound.
If you sincerely care about privacy it’s miserable because you need the others you want to communicate with to care too
It's a tradeoff. Webapps tend to be better sandboxed than their native equivalents on desktop, and you also don't need to worry about falling back on electron/chromium versions.
On the other hand, it does lead to issues with end to end encryption where the server could serve you (as in you specifically) backdoored JS, whereas with a native app it would have to be sent to all users, increasing the likelihood of detection. I believe this is also the reason why Signal does not have a webapp, though their own desktop app has issues like disabling the electron sandbox entirely.
Ironically, Meta has deployed mitigations for this, and their windows app is one of the few to actually work within the currently supported app sandboxing.