31–40 of 93 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He is referencing end to end encryption. Google can see Your to/from/subject/metadata headers even if you bother to use gpg
Nothing prevents you from not using Gmail.
So in the beginning of the presentation Moxie brings up some valid cases where it's good that centralized services can rapidly iterate and improve such as WhatsApp being able to roll out end-to-end encryption with a single update, while email is still not encrypted despite the tools existing to do so for years. Basically centralized services can roll out changes quickly and decentralized ones are more or less set in…
I'm still paying for a phone service in a country where I previously lived (5 years after leaving) because I can't move all the stuff that's linked to that phone number. I even had to send them a government issued photo ID recently so I could keep the number.
And to use the number without switching SIM cards I have a separate phone that I'm booting up just for that purpose. I actually bought a third phone to manage all my SIM cards. This time I was smart. I bought an Android phone with dual SIM slots in spite of being an iPhone user.
After listening to Moxie's talk, I realise that many of his arguments sound entirely plausible from a US centric point of view but make far less sense if you live elsewhere.
Building on top of phone numbers also assumes that end-to-end encrypted messaging will always be permitted in the mobile app stores. It's a reasonable assumption as far as the US app stores are concerned. I wouldn't bet on it here in the UK though, and even less so in many other countries.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Does Signal have any advantages over Riot? I think you meant to write Matrix?
Aren't Signal and Riot both chat clients?
This would be like calling all of email "GMail" or "Outlook". Sure, some people do say that -- but it's still inaccurate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because of contact discovery and migration. The success of those apps is directly related to the fact you can instantly see all your contacts with it when it first start. Email wouldn't have the same effect because poeple don't have them saved in the contact list. I think university should have a mandatory course where IT student go and interact with real users and have a budget to manage according to the success of…
Not sure I agree. Although I’m not 100% certain of all smartphone implementations. But I definitely have emails for everyone in my addressbook/contacts list. It’s the only thing that exists which can be anonymised properly and is static through many centralised providers. Otherwise it’s back to usernames and the bazaar that is: does this person /actually/ have their names on telegram/skype/whatever
In this video, Moxie Marlinspike--the developer of Signal, someone who has been consistently extremely negative on not just the idea of federated and decentralized systems but of open protocols and alternative clients for centralized systems (to the point where it shocks me he still does any development as open source, given how hard he pushes on the idea that people who fork his clients are actively doing something…
The monetization of the web went from services fees to advertising supported to subscription. Those closed off subscription pay walls are going to merge into each other and we're going to end up subscribed to one big cable-like service that becomes an institution upon itself. The web will become an institution like the old library, university and newspaper. Only when everybody is ID'd and institutionalized like Brooks in the Shawshank Redemption will the true value of a decentralized web be realized. People will be aching to get out, to play in the fields again outside the FAANG cage. Have non-polite conversations in secret or hold competitive advantages outside the borg.
Signal is the definition of a honeypot from the old days, the thinking around privacy has disappeared people just accept being a database entry on facebook's servers.
So in the beginning of the presentation Moxie brings up some valid cases where it's good that centralized services can rapidly iterate and improve such as WhatsApp being able to roll out end-to-end encryption with a single update, while email is still not encrypted despite the tools existing to do so for years. Basically centralized services can roll out changes quickly and decentralized ones are more or less set in…
The benefits are many orders of magnitude trivial compared to the scam-factor and abuse risk.
Such a shame.
Had it been optional it would have been an entirety different story.
So in the beginning of the presentation Moxie brings up some valid cases where it's good that centralized services can rapidly iterate and improve such as WhatsApp being able to roll out end-to-end encryption with a single update, while email is still not encrypted despite the tools existing to do so for years. Basically centralized services can roll out changes quickly and decentralized ones are more or less set in…
Using phone numbers is such a deal breaker. Never. Ever The benefits are many orders of magnitude trivial compared to the scam-factor and abuse risk. Such a shame. Had it been optional it would have been an entirety different story.
In this video, Moxie Marlinspike--the developer of Signal, someone who has been consistently extremely negative on not just the idea of federated and decentralized systems but of open protocols and alternative clients for centralized systems (to the point where it shocks me he still does any development as open source, given how hard he pushes on the idea that people who fork his clients are actively doing something…
> because decentralization doesn't _automatically and inherently_ solve hard problems _merely due to the technology being decentralized_, we should not waste time working on decentralized systems and instead work on and support centralized ones (one would imagine, particularly his) That is an extraordinary mischaracterization of his talk. What he actually says is that decentralization makes many desirable characteris…
1) It's a reasonable comparison of centralised and decentralised systems.
2) It's a way to discredit decentralised systems so people move to Signal because Moxie is a corporate / government shill or want to be the personal Jesus or something.
Which explanation looks more likely to someone, is mostly based on how they personally trust Moxie. And a lot of people in the community don't consider Moxie trustworthy.
In my personal opinion, this talk made a lot of people angry, precisely because Moxie went to Anarchist club (CCC) and had a talk that can be summarised (again, in my personal opinion) as "give up on decentralisation, give all power to ME ME ME and I'll take care of you, pinky swear." Of course Anarchists don't want to hear that.
But to someone who trusts Moxie or centralised power in general, this might seem like a crazy interpretation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren't Signal and Riot both chat clients?
Signal is also the protocol, and there is only one official Signal client for each platform (and Moxie has been incredibly aggressive towards any alternative clients -- threatening trademark lawsuits in some cases, or just blocking the clients from their network). Matrix, on the other hand, is an open protocol which has many clients (of which Riot is the most popular). This would be like calling all of email "GMail"…