Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Looking back at how Signal works

signal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 301 posts

Re: Looking back at how Signal works

#91

Post by nabla9 »

clarkmoody wrote: post #55

The anti-Signal rhetoric has already started. News articles about Antifa specifically mention that they communicate via Signal. If Antifa is designated as a terrorist organization, then we'll see all the counter-terrorism tools brought to bear against them. If the state can't break Signal encryption, then you'll see renewed energy for anti-encryption / anti-privacy policies.

It's easy to get caught Trump's BS because he makes lots of claims.

It's impossible to designate Antifa as terrorist organization in practise because it's not an organization. It's a movement. It's also impossible to designate white nationalism or alt-right as terrorist organizations.

If they can name actual organizations and name people participating in the movement, it might work work against them, but they are not Antifa.

Re: Looking back at how Signal works

#92

Post by windthrown »

billme wrote: post #18

Anyone have a link to Signal’s 2019 IRS Form 990? Most recent I was able to find was this 2018 version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23431076

The 2019 filing deadline (including Form 990) was extended to July 15, 2020 so it may not be published yet.

Re: Looking back at how Signal works

#93

Post by young_unixer »

Cenk wrote: post #79
troughway wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would antifa result in anti-signal rhetoric? Genuine question because antifa is a mixed bag - there isn’t really any consensus on whether what they do is good or bad. Seems to be all over the damn place.

There is no consensus on wether being against fascism is good or bad? Being against fascism is not a group or organisation. It’s like calling bird watching an organisation. Yes, there are bird watching organisations, as there are antifa organisations, but neither bird watching nor antifa is an organisation.

Sure, antifa is about being against fascism, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is all about democracy.

Re: Looking back at how Signal works

#94

Post by billme »

m52go wrote: post #69
nickthemagicman wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link. There's a subtle threat in there, that they'll move out of the country if they have issues which I think a lot of tech companies would. This bill is so stupid in that tech companies can relatively easily move.

The legal entities can move to other jurisdictions, sure, but it doesn't matter because app distribution still occurs primarily through USA-based Google Play and USA-based Apple App Store—both of which can easily geofence apps as they please (or as they're required). This is one of the reasons I've started to appreciate Matrix a lot more lately. https://matrix.org/blog/2020/01/02/on-privacy-versus-freedom

Putting aside Signal officially declining to the add option to discover or manually add a server via the client, theirs nothing stopping anyone from going to GitHub, downloading the code for the server and client, editing the code however they see fit as long as it follows the legal guidelines.

Re: Looking back at how Signal works

#95

Post by anamexis »

grandmczeb wrote: post #86
Cenk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no consensus on wether being against fascism is good or bad? Being against fascism is not a group or organisation. It’s like calling bird watching an organisation. Yes, there are bird watching organisations, as there are antifa organisations, but neither bird watching nor antifa is an organisation.

This is like asking if there's no consensus on whether "all lives matter". Or no consensus on being "pro-life". Phrases often have context that mean more than their literal dictionary definition. Edit: The comment I replied to originally asked "There is no consensus on wether being against fascism is good or bad?"

Well, there isn't. "All lives matter" and "pro-life" represent specific political views, but they don't represent any specific groups or organizations. Just like antifa.

Re: Looking back at how Signal works

#96

Post by anamexis »

young_unixer wrote: post #93
Cenk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no consensus on wether being against fascism is good or bad? Being against fascism is not a group or organisation. It’s like calling bird watching an organisation. Yes, there are bird watching organisations, as there are antifa organisations, but neither bird watching nor antifa is an organisation.

Sure, antifa is about being against fascism, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is all about democracy.

The DPRK is a specific entity, antifa is not. A better analogy would be "pro-democracy" being all about democracy.

Re: Looking back at how Signal works

#97

Post by chishaku »

EmilioMartinez wrote: post #35

I'm glad to see the discussion about what privacy should look like progress, with increasingly big actors treat data as something too delicate to play warden until the next breach. But it just feels cheap and detrimental to LARP as a tool for revolutionaries. I want a clear concept of privacy for a stable society to rely upon. That even the most trustworthy authority be kept out by design as a security principle. I d…

> feels cheap and detrimental

Cool, pick a new app.

It’s naive to think a small group will work against very powerful forces and against all odds and not be ideologically driven.

Re: Looking back at how Signal works

#98

Post by secfirstmd »

ChristianBundy wrote: post #49
StavrosK wrote: post #45

I love Signal and use it as much as I can, but I'm thinking of switching to Matrix solely because the desktop client is pretty bad. It won't show me messages until it syncs everything (so I can't even see old messages while things sync), and, what's worse, it skips messages, and multi-device just doesn't work. My laptop just shows "Message could not be decrypted" until I delete everything and reset. I'm not sure why…

> Meanwhile, yes, Matrix took years to add encryption, but it works much better than Signal, even with quite a few small bugs. I'm not sure which Matrix client you use, but clients like Riot don't even let you opt out of sending read receipts unless you edit `/etc/riot/config.json` to enable experiments and then go into the settings to disable read receipts. Problems like this (and issues like this [0]) give me the i…

I'm a massive Matrix fan and have high hopes for it but in experiments we've done with activist and journalist partners we've found the Riot.im client often gets a bit complicated for people to use. I think the main issue people have is related to keys. As I techie I love the options but I find many don't like having all the options. Signal of course is a lot easier as it hides many of those issues in the UI/UX.

Re: Looking back at how Signal works

#99

Post by tfehring »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #48
Joeboy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you are massively outnumbered by people who do use it because it integrates with their existing phone book, and is a drop-in replacement for the default SMS app. Without those things it'd be just another niche app for weird nerds.

there is a difference between making it possible to use phone numbers and making it a hard, unavoidable requirement.

The fact that you can reliably add Signal users using only their phone number is a feature for the users who don't care about that level of anonymity, though apparently not a feature the developers care about preserving.

Re: Looking back at how Signal works

#100

Post by grandmczeb »

anamexis wrote: post #95
grandmczeb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like asking if there's no consensus on whether "all lives matter". Or no consensus on being "pro-life". Phrases often have context that mean more than their literal dictionary definition. Edit: The comment I replied to originally asked "There is no consensus on wether being against fascism is good or bad?"

Well, there isn't. "All lives matter" and "pro-life" represent specific political views, but they don't represent any specific groups or organizations. Just like antifa.

I don't understand the point you're making, sorry. I agree with you that antifa is not a specific organization.
Post reply on HN