• Kalcifer
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    1 month ago

    Signal isn’t federated [1][2][3.1]; it’s decentralized [1][2][3.2]. Though, for all practical purposes, I would generally argue that it’s centralized.

    References
    1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
      • This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
    2. “Signal (software)”. Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-06T09:34Z. Accessed: 2025-02-1T09:30Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software).
      • ¶“Architecture”. ¶“Servers”.

        Signal relies on centralized servers that are maintained by Signal Messenger. In addition to routing Signal’s messages, the servers also facilitate the discovery of contacts who are also registered Signal users and the automatic exchange of users’ public keys. […]

    3. “Reflections: The ecosystem is moving”. moxie0. Signal Blog. Published: 2016-05-10. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:40Z. https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/.
      1. ¶5. to ¶“Stuck in time”. ¶3-6

        One of the controversial things we did with Signal early on was to build it as an unfederated service. Nothing about any of the protocols we’ve developed requires centralization; it’s entirely possible to build a federated Signal Protocol-based messenger, but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all. […] [interoperable protocols] [have] taken us pretty far, but it’s undeniable that once you federate your protocol, it becomes very difficult to make changes. And right now, at the application level, things that stand still don’t fare very well in a world where the ecosystem is moving. […] Early on, I thought we’d federate Signal once its velocity had subsided. Now I realize that things will probably never slow down, and if anything the velocity of the entire landscape seems to be steadily increasing.

      2. ¶“Stuck in time”. “Federation and control”. ¶6.

        An open source infrastructure for a centralized network now provides almost the same level of control as federated protocols, without giving up the ability to adapt. If a centralized provider with an open source infrastructure ever makes horrible changes, those that disagree have the software they need to run their own alternative instead. It may not be as beautiful as federation, but at this point it seems that it will have to do.

      • Kalcifer
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        1 month ago

        it’s decentralized

        No it’s not. From literally your own comment:

        Signal relies on centralized servers

        I was using “decentralized” to mean that there isn’t centralized control over ownership of the service in general — eg anyone can spin up their own server (impractical, imo, pushing it more towards being centralized) and people can use it (making it decentralized, imo (Please correct me if I am wrong, but I do think my usage of the term is appropriate in this way.)), but people who use that server can only communicate with that server (making it not federated). But yes it could still be said to be centralized in that it operates on a client-server model [1].

        This is more an argument of definitions, though. I’m not trying to claim anything in bad faith.

        References
        1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
          • This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
        • @amzd@lemmy.world
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          61 month ago

          That’s just open source, not decentralized. I can’t find a definition of decentralization that would even make it vague. From Wikipedia:

          Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and given to smaller factions within it.

          Signal has a central authoritative server and to use it with any other server you have to modify the source code.

          • Kalcifer
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            1 month ago

            Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and given to smaller factions within

            Imo this fits my usage of the term — Signal can be broken up into many isolated servers [1] all offering the same service.

            References
            1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
              • This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
          • Kalcifer
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            1 month ago

            That’s just open source, not decentralized.

            Depending on exactly how said open source development is occuring, I could argue that open source development is an example of decentralization. It may even be an example of federation (all depending on licensing and development medium imo).

      • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼
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        1 month ago

        That’s not true. Moxie only had a problem with a fork called “LibreSignal” because it was using their name. He didn’t want users to confuse the apps.

      • Kalcifer
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        361 month ago

        My comment wasn’t protesting the use of Signal; it was rather clarifying the misinformation in OP’s post — ie misinformation that Signal is a federated service.

        • Kalcifer
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          1 month ago

          I take the issue of misinformation seriously. I try to be the change that I wish to see.

      • Victor
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        271 month ago

        I wish more people did that ngl 💀

        • @apex32@lemmy.world
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          41 month ago

          I wish Boost understood the collapsible spoilers.

          On my client, it’s all expanded and I see all the formatting characters. It looks/works great in a browser though.

          • Kalcifer
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            1 month ago

            I wish Boost understood the collapsible spoilers.

            On my client, it’s all expanded and I see all the formatting characters.

            Ah dang, that’s good to know (though I’m not sure what to do as an alternative) — I was unaware that the collapsible spoilers weren’t supported on Boost. I guess that means that Lemmy’s markdown formatting hasn’t entirely been standardized across the service. I personally have encountered some inconsistency on the Tesseract UI with CommonMark Autolink [2] formatting where the autolinks don’t even render [1].

            I recommend reporting this to the Boost devs to improve Markdown feature compatibility between them and the Lemmy UI.

            References
            1. “Kalcifer” @Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works. To: [“Happy #GlobalSwitchDay”. @squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de. “Fediverse” !fediverse@lemmy.world. Tesseract. sh.itjust.works. Published: 2025-02-01T07:08:40Z. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:40Z. https://tesh.itjust.works/post/sh.itjust.works/32046509.]. Published: 2025-02-01T09:20:14Z. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:42Z. https://sh.itjust.works/post/32046509/16425699.
              • Raw Text:
                Signal isn't federated ^[1][2][3.1]^; it's decentralized ^[1][2][3.2]^. Though, for all practical purposes, I would generally argue that it's centralized. 
                
                ::: spoiler References
                1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. <https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server>.
                   - This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
                2. "Signal (software)". Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-06T09:34Z. Accessed: 2025-02-1T09:30Z. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)>.
                   - ¶"Architecture". ¶"Servers".
                     > Signal relies on centralized servers that are maintained by Signal Messenger. In addition to routing Signal's messages, the servers also facilitate the discovery of contacts who are also registered Signal users and the automatic exchange of users' public keys. […]
                3. "Reflections: The ecosystem is moving". moxie0. Signal Blog. Published: 2016-05-10. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:40Z.  <https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/>.
                   1. ¶5. to ¶"Stuck in time". ¶3-6
                      > One of the controversial things we did with Signal early on was to build it as an unfederated service. Nothing about any of the protocols we’ve developed requires centralization; it’s entirely possible to build a federated Signal Protocol-based messenger, but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all. […] [interoperable protocols] [have] taken us pretty far, but it’s undeniable that once you federate your protocol, it becomes very difficult to make changes. And right now, at the application level, things that stand still don’t fare very well in a world where the ecosystem is moving. […] Early on, I thought we’d federate Signal once its velocity had subsided. Now I realize that things will probably never slow down, and if anything the velocity of the entire landscape seems to be steadily increasing.
                   2. ¶"Stuck in time". "Federation and control". ¶6.
                      > An open source infrastructure for a centralized network now provides almost the same level of control as federated protocols, without giving up the ability to adapt. If a centralized provider with an open source infrastructure ever makes horrible changes, those that disagree have the software they need to run their own alternative instead. It may not be as beautiful as federation, but at this point it seems that it will have to do.
                :::
                
                • Rendered:

                • In the rendered text there are no links; however, there should be links at the end, as is shown by the CommonMark autolinks in the raw text.
            2. “CommonMark Spec”. John MacFarlane. CommonMark. Version: 0.31.2. Published: 2024-01-28. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:51Z. https://spec.commonmark.org/0.31.2/#uri-autolink.
              • §6.5 “Autolinks”. ¶2.

                A URI autolink consists of <, followed by an absolute URI followed by >. It is parsed as a link to the URI, with the URI as the link’s label.

            • Kalcifer
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              21 month ago

              Dang 😕. See my comment for a related response.

              I recommend reporting the bug to the Sync devs to fix their Markdown formatting to improve feature compatibility between them and the Lemmy UI.

      • Kalcifer
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        31 month ago

        I do my best to cite any claim that I make. I would encourage others to do the same.

    • @namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
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      61 month ago

      but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all.

      The fact that we have a telephone system that works with separate providers contradicts this sentiment. If I want to pick up the phone and talk to my cousin’s puppy in New Zealand, I can do that without creating an account on his provider’s service.

      I don’t understand why we’ve forgotten this as a society. Yes, it was difficult to upgrade the phone systems over the past century, but it’s worth it in my opinion. I really wish we’d start seeing government regulation that says “you should be able to talk to someone on a service without having to create an account on said service.” I thought the DMA would do this, but sadly, Whatsapp still requires an account to talk to people using that service. Very disappointing.

      • @jollyrogue@lemmy.ml
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        11 month ago

        How is the puppy?

        As for interoperability between services… Monetization of surveillance data. The social media companies are Ad companies, and they make their money surveilling people and selling access. It’s harder to build an accurate model of a person when only pieces of data is available, and they need to have more data then the other Ad tech companies they’re competing with.

    • @jollyrogue@lemmy.ml
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      71 month ago

      Yeah, Moxie has openly shot down the idea of adding federation to Signal, and I’ve never heard them claim Signal was decentralized.

      Matrix is federated, distributed, and decentralized.

      XMPP is federated and decentralized.

      • Kalcifer
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        11 month ago

        Matrix is […] distributed […].

        It is? How so?

        • @jollyrogue@lemmy.ml
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          31 month ago

          Matrix servers keep a copy of any remote room an account on the server has joined, and it’s possible to recreate a room from the copies held on different servers. There are more details I don’t remember, but at a high level that’s how it’s distributed.

          Storing messages of remote rooms in addition to local rooms is why people complain about the storage requirements of Matrix servers. They don’t realize it’s distributed.

          • Kalcifer
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            1 month ago

            Interesting — I hadn’t considered it that way.

  • @umbraroze@lemmy.world
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    81 month ago

    I’m not really all that invested in trying out Friendica, because Facebook is basically the exact sort of social network service that I really don’t give a darn about. I wanted to check it anyway, but the only tangible information on what Friendica is about is the project/marketing page. I can’t browse the instances. If I go to your massive social platform, the last thing I want to see is just a brick wall of a login page. Then I looked at fedidb and… um, those aren’t huge user numbers.

    So I guess I’ll keep posting on the services that seem more sensible to me, like Mastodon, Pixelfed and Lemmy.

  • fxomt
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    1 month ago

    Could the software selection be more diverse? There’s also MBin/Piefed, and Misskey/Sharkey/Firefish/Akkoma/Iceshrimp. Just a suggestion tho. (obviously they can’t all fit in the image, but it would be nice to see an alternative to popular software like lemmy/mastodon.)

    PS: Signal is not federated at all, it’s centralized. It should either be replaced with SimpleX or matrix/Jabber.

    • JackbyDev
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      81 month ago

      Could the software selection be more diverse?

      Not if you want people to actually consider switching instead of feeling overwhelmed and confused.

      • fxomt
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        21 month ago

        If only there was a website that helps you choose, instead of inclining users to just use lemmy and only lemmy.world anyway. (also with mastodon and mastodon.social).

        Overall i think more software choices are great but you are right in that it could repel users :/

    • Matt
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      51 month ago

      Signal is better than WA tho.

      • fxomt
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        21 month ago

        True, i’ll take it over wa any day.

  • @chanteoma@lemmy.ml
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    321 month ago

    Hi, I think too many people are focusing too much on the type of software included in this chart. I don’t think the goal of the person that created the chart was to create the ultimate guide to move to the Fediverse or FOSS apps with all the options available for them. I believe it prioritizes simplicity, and it’s clearly directed towards people unaware that these alternatives exist.

    Most people I know don’t even know what the Fediverse is, and I think this initiative is for them.

    I know that debating which FOSS/Fedi apps are the best is a big matter of concern for people that are already aware of the problems some platform have. But focusing too much on this debate not only creates more division among supporters of FOSS/Fedi, but it is also drawing attention from the main point: Bringing more people to the Fediverse.

    • Autonomous User
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      Thank you. Please jump in faster with a tldr of this on other posts like this.

    • Daeraxa
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      Yup, its just called Loops, there is a download link once you log in for the APK directly or to the iOS testflight. (On a related note why does everything keep like this picture keep calling it “Loops.video” when it is just called “Loops”? - we don’t call it “Lemmy.ml”, “Mastodon.social” or “Peertube.tv”)

      • @WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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        21 month ago

        Mastodons have been extinct for millennia and don’t come up in conversation often. Lemmy and Peertube aren’t words at all. Loops is a pretty common word, though, so it needs something extra if you want people to know what you’re talking about.

        • Daeraxa
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          21 month ago

          The problem is the moment there is another instance then loops.video won’t even make sense as that is just the name of the instance and not the application.

    • fxomt
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      191 month ago

      To stop it, disable “Help share videos being played” in your options

  • @DicJacobus@lemmy.world
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    311 month ago

    instead of switching ive mostly just been ditching entirely. I need less time interacting with internet people.

    literally the only thing on this list im still using is facebook messenger, for my work colleagues. and youtube. everything else ive migrated (reddit-lemmy), or abandoned and torched

    • @8fingerlouie@lemmy.world
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      51 month ago

      It’s funny how things work out.

      I’ve spent years checking social media multiple times per day, and due to current (and not so current) events, I initially just deleted twitter. I tried mastodon, but it was a complete echo chamber. Twitter on the other hand was 25% bots and 50% porn, so I just deleted it. Turns out I didn’t miss it.

      I recently did the same with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat. Guess what, not missing those either.

      Facebook messenger is tough to get rid of though. I have kids that attend after school activities, and there aren’t really any easy fixes. I doubt I can successfully persuade 100+ people to migrate to signal just because of my political crusade.

      It’s not being helped by the fact that ~75% of the people here use iPhones, so most communication not going through messenger goes through iMessage. Last I checked I knew a total of 4 people on signal, despite having 50+ people i regularly communicate with over messenger or iMessage.

      • @nyamlae@lemmy.world
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        21 month ago

        I doubt I can successfully persuade 100+ people to migrate to signal just because of my political crusade.

        Don’t know till you try! And if you’re playing the long game, you don’t need to convince 100+ people – the more individuals that join, the easier it will become to convince everyone else to make the switch too.

        • @8fingerlouie@lemmy.world
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          In this specific case, like my kids soccer or swimming team, I would need to convince 15 childrens parents, so 30 people (or more) to switch.

          On top of that, the soccer club has more teams, and since soccer practice is scheduled by the club, the club itself would need to switch their ways of working, and that’s where it gets tough.

          Facebook, for better or for worse, offers a free platform with a built in blog, instant messenger, calendar, reminders, and an easy way to send messages to all relevant people.

          Signal only solves one or two of those problems, meaning they would have to find alternatives for the rest, and I for one don’t miss the time when everybody used some variant of a shared calendar (ie Google calendar) to schedule, and you’d be subscribe to 10+ calendars with notifications going off left and right.

          Nor do I miss every club having its own poorly maintained Wordpress site, with ensuing loss of credentials because the admin used “hunter2” as their password.

          These people are not tech nerds, they’re enthusiasts for whatever sport they’re teaching our kids, and we should make their jobs as easy as possible.

    • @Katana314@lemmy.world
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      21 month ago

      More recently I’ve felt like there’s issues with being completely disconnected from any sort of critical mass. If I wanted to join a protest in my local city, I have doubts any of the fringe social networks could organize that. I can do my part to try to get more people on there.

      It’s part of why I joined BlueSky over X. It’s more popular, and issues be what they are, that counts for a lot.

  • @PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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    121 month ago

    Are any of these actually good?

    I mean, aside from Lemmy. I tried Mastadon and no one was actually on it, seems like everyone is jumping to Bluesky.

    • @dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee
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      101 month ago

      I can vouch for Signal. I got my whole family out of facebook messenger to make a new place for family chat. Even my parents in their mid 60s had no problem changing.

    • @Temperche@discuss.tchncs.de
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      People only move to Bluesky because they don’t want to change their thinking (picking instances is hard!) and keep using “Twitter”.

      • @dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee
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        21 month ago

        I can understand it. I was banned without reason from 3 of the top mastodon instances before even posting anything. Creating new accounts is a hassle, and it’s easy to lose faith in the system when bans happen without reason and none of the instances cared to respond to my appeals. In heinsight, I’m sure the ban was due to my username looking like a hash, but I still find it crazy that the appeals were ignored.

    • Lysol
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      71 month ago

      Depends on how many you follow. Lemmy is way more dead than Mastodon for me.

    • @teohhanhui@lemmy.world
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      41 month ago

      no one was actually on it

      It might feel that way at first, but my Mastodon feed is very robust nowadays. You just need to follow more people.

  • hmmm
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    381 month ago

    Unpopular Opinion Lemmy and PeerTube logo look ugly.

    • @jaybone@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      The Lemmy logo always looks so sad or angry to me. Wished he could look happier.

      The only ones on the right I really like are signal and friendica. (I had never seen the friendica logo before. This is really well done whoever designed that. Good job.)

      All the big guys of course can afford graphic design teams and marketing/PR research.

      The notable exception for me is mastodon. While I’m still not a big fan of that logo either, it certainly looks better than the X logo. I’m guessing Musk DOGE’d his design teams in favor of some yes-men.

  • @Undaunted@discuss.tchncs.de
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    731 month ago

    Unfortunately, the switch from YouTube to PeerTube has not worked for me so far. I can’t find a decent instance (not full of right-wing/conspiracy content) with interesting stuff that also allows me to make an account.

    • FundMECFS
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      471 month ago

      Yes finding the right instance on peertube is a nightmare — and also the general lack of quality content, or subtitling, which makes it as good as useless for deaf people like me.

      • Elrecoal19_0
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        Yeah, it is already hard to find reasons to use it for the average user, so people with disabilities (deafness, blindness,intellectual etc.) probably even have reasons to NOT use them (no subtitles, each instance might have different elements or structure that might be a nightmare for screen readers, it might be too complex for some people, etc.).

  • @teri@discuss.tchncs.de
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    291 month ago

    I support the cause in general but: Signal is not federated at all. It may seem like a decent alternative to WhatsApp but is it really? It still falls under the same US jurisdiction. Let’s say the US gov starts agressively prosecuting dissidents and certain minorities (they already do): can and should we still use signal in this case? I don’t think so. Sadly i can’t name a much better alternative. Maybe matrix. But it has other issues.

    • @Bazoogle@lemmy.world
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      241 month ago

      Signal is open source. They absolutely do always comply with US warrants. They have never provided any information to US law enforcement, because they can’t access it. They literally have no way of accessing the information contained inside the texts. The most they could provide is metadata, but they currently aren’t collecting that. I also think if they started, it would not work well for their user base. You can see all their requests for information, and the responses they gave, here: https://signal.org/bigbrother/

      • @teri@discuss.tchncs.de
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        31 month ago

        I really hope they stand strong. We need some influential entities standing up to the shit going on. Sadly, given the current situation in the US I have to assume that the Trump gang will sooner or later try to crack down on Signal. Who knows, forcing them to give out meta data to identify dissidents etc.

        At least the open-source app makes me hope that there’s a little less nasty things they can do than Facebook/Whatsapp.

    • @EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world
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      Jurisdiction is not that important. Even if it was in Switzerland it’d have to comply with international law enforcement and warrants. The key is that sure Signal is obliged to give out whatever data it has, but the point is that it doesn’t have much useful data to give. It’s the same as Mullvad, and a far smarter approach than “lol we just gonna ignore the warrant huhuhu look at us we host somewhere in Shitzerfuck” (oh btw “We are in X country which is not in N eyes” is just marketing).

      Oh and btw the same goes for instances of the fediverse (which are ran by volunteers you need to trust), and if they don’t comply and the US government really wants to break into them they probably will find a way. Doesn’t even need some complicated backdoors or anything it just needs to find an OPSEC slip-up, do some social engineering, arrest someone or at worst find a bug to exploit, and I can guarantee that unless you have some serious security wizards running your instance you’re not beating the FBI there and if the FBI is really persistent and focused on you for some reason then the wizards won’t be enough you need state actors.

      If your threat model actually includes the US government (aka you’re actually in danger and not some paranoia or just-in-case situation, be realistic with yourself) and there’s credible threats you may be targeted by it or other governments then you’re probably going to be using tor, briar, all that jazz, and wouldn’t be on lemmy. If you’re just some guy who just needs to message your family and shit Signal is perfectly fine, I can tell you that unless you’re a serious threat to the government they won’t waste resources cracking down ways to capture you via signal or whatever you use that is even somewhat secure (so no telegram, no WhatsApp, no messenger, etc), even if you’re a minority or activist, if not because you’re not important enough then because they have other easier ways to do it.

      Edit: oh and btw Signal was banned in Ruzzia (a country way more authoritarian than the US currently is) because the FSB couldn’t crack it so that goes to show it is pretty secure.

      • @nyamlae@lemmy.world
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        21 month ago

        (oh btw “We are in X country which is not in N eyes” is just marketing)

        Why do you say this? There are real data-sharing agreements between the Eyes.

        Doesn’t even need some complicated backdoors or anything it just needs to find an OPSEC slip-up

        This already happened with kolektiva, unfortunately, but from what I hear they’ve since strengthened their security.

        • @EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world
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          11 month ago
          1. There’s data-sharing agreements with more than just the N eyes countries
          2. If there’s an international warrant for that data the company is obliged to comply regardless

          The only countries in which n° 2 doesn’t apply for the US are countries you really don’t want your data in either.

          In short, however: if a government really wants your data it will find a way to get it no matter where you store that data, so the best thing is to simply not store that data at all, Mullvad and Signal don’t do that.

    • @drathvedro@lemm.ee
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      31 month ago

      Let’s say the US gov starts agressively prosecuting dissidents and certain minorities (they already do): can and should we still use signal in this case?

      Definitely no. Russian government already is aggressively prosecuting dissidents and you can’t join Signal there. I don’t know whether it’s due to sanctions or if the government is blocking 2FA SMS messages. In either case, it is impossible to join without a phone number confirmation. At least I wasn’t able to. I don’t see the USA being that far off with all the recent TikTok drama.

      • @nyamlae@lemmy.world
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        11 month ago

        you can’t join Signal there. I don’t know whether it’s due to sanctions or if the government is blocking 2FA SMS messages. In either case, it is impossible to join without a phone number confirmation.

        What do you mean? You need a phone number to join Signal in any country.

        • @drathvedro@lemm.ee
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          11 month ago

          And that’s the problem. The whole privacy thing goes out the window because it relies on an insecure and state-controlled method for authentication. What’s the use of it if it can be killed off in any country at a whim of its, or USA’s government?

    • @teri@discuss.tchncs.de
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      31 month ago

      We should stop being naive. Immersing ourselves as a society into facebook and twitter significantly contributed to the shit situation we are in now. Going to Signal seems like a short term solution. We should have some idea where to go on the long term.

      • @Bazoogle@lemmy.world
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        91 month ago

        Facebook and twitter are not the same as signal. The signal protocol is a free open source project, that WhatsApp, Signal, and many other use. It secures the data so that whatever servers they are stored on, the company storing it does not know what the texts say. Facebook and Twitter are all about getting as much data as possible. Even though WhatsApp uses the signal protocol, they still collect all metadata with the texts (which is really what they want anyway). Moving to open source project is absolutely the long term goal to get out of this shit hole.

    • @JigglySackles@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Is Threema still a good option? Anyone know? I know it’s not a fediverse instance just a secure messaging platform. On that note though, can any federated platform really be used as secure messaging? Or is it too open?

      • @teri@discuss.tchncs.de
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        21 month ago

        My personal opinion is that Threema is still a viable alternative to WhatsApp. The app is open-source, there’s even a ‘libre’ variant on F-Droid. The service is proprietary though. The jurisdiction (Switzerland) seems more trustworthy currently. I don’t really understand the business model of Threema: It seems like they have some revenue from a commercial service “Threema Work”. The initial cost for purchasing an app license does not really contribute to sustainability I guess. I suspect it is more for making scams more expensive. I hope they can be sustainable from that and don’t need to start doing shit.