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Signal is having technical difficulties

status.signal.org

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Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#121

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

schoolornot wrote: post #110
robrtsql wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal is totally centralized. The server is (if I recall correctly) open source, but if you were to run your own server, all of your contacts would have to be using your server too in order to communicate with them. I assume that the hostname(s) of the central Signal servers are hardcoded in the app somewhere, since they're not meant to be replaced.

Server is open source but good luck setting it up. There is no documentation for it. Also, they have intentionally excluded the option for clients to connect to alternate servers. This stance really rubs me the wrong way. I love the Signal protocol, everything else is kinda meh.

> Also, they have intentionally excluded the option for clients to connect to alternate servers.

Since Signal doesn't federate, if you switched your client to an alternate server you would be unable to communicate with the 99.9% of people out there using the official Signal server. Signal isn't going to give a UI option that is certain to cause frustration and bafflement for the vast majority of users. Those wanting to use an alternate server are probably a small nerd niche who already know how to fork the client.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#122

Post by EGreg »

mlindner wrote: post #97
EGreg wrote: post #86

Guess who is not having technical difficulties, ever: Telegram They are going to be the next Facebook. I don't understand why people underestimate them so much. When they rolled their own crypto in some areas, people made fun of them, yet no one could break it. When they published their source code openly, people say they aren't open source like signal. When FB bought WhatsApp, people seriously continued to choose it…

Well first off Telegram doesn't actually do end to end encryption unless you manually opt in. They don't allow end to end encrypted voice or video calls. They don't allow end to end encrypted group chats. Telegram is also a for-profit company that has no guarantees that they'll continue to not harvest your data because they're a pre-profit startup company.

WebRTC mandates end-to-end encryption, but that's for the web browsers. Can you please link me to evidence that Telegram does not have any way to encrypt video or audio calls?

You say Telegram is a for-profit company, but I am not sure how Telegram makes money, at all. It was approached by various government agencies looking for backdoors and claims to have rebuffed them all. Unless the whole thing with the founder of vkontakte having to give up his shares to mail.ru and run, was staged, I'm pretty sure he's an anarcho-capitalist who isn't very happy with states having data. So if that's the case, Telegram (unlike Moxie Marlinspike and Jan Koum) is much less likely to sell out their platform down the line.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#123

Post by zamadatix »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #22
Zash wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried the server-to-server test?

Ahh cripes, I had port 5269 blocked. Whoop! Running the test now, thanks for the help! Edit: Aaand I'm up! Got my first message. Thank you for your help, and for your work on Prosody!

And herein lies the reason decentralized isnt about uptime, when the server you use is down its down regardless how many use it and it doesn't matter to you others still work. It'll probably get more downtime over the years than the mega important one as well.

That's not to say decentralized doesn't have a ton of benefits just uptime for the user isnt one.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#124

Post by corndoge »

sean_pedersen wrote: post #94

Time to jump ship! Use element / matrix an open, decentralized, end-to-end encrypted chat protocol with slick clients for Android, iOS, Desktop & Web: https://element.io/ Also easy to self-host a server, if you need full control: $ mkdir -p ~/synapse $ pip3.6 install --user jinja2 matrix-synapse $ cd ~/synapse $ python3.6 -m synapse.app.homeserver \ --server-name my.domain.name \ --config-path homeserver.yaml \ --gen…

Thanks, I'll send this guide to my mom!

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#125

Post by meibo »

tamiral wrote: post #105
bitcharmer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, and it's not like Signal should be surprised with it. The influx has been happening for a while now and it seems like they were incapable of handling it. I have no idea how I'm going to defend them against all my family members I somehow managed to convert from WhatsApp to stay on this platform.

It’s an FOSS teaM working around the clock to support... let’s not be mean I’m sure they are doing all they can to get this resolved

It's only FOSS by appearance really - it's still a team of well-paid engineers that operate like any other startup, with the difference that you can read the code of their apps and the bug-tracker is public.

They operate on their own schedules and priorities, and it's tricky to get your PR into any of the clients.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#126

Post by dt3ft »

alan5 wrote: post #71

I just donated to Signal after seeing the error banner in the app. I realised I was more than happy to pay WhatsApp's yearly charge back in the pre-Facebook days (think it was 70p or so?). Figured I could give Signal a few quid every now and then, maybe keep a server up for a few seconds :) Donation link should anyone be interested: https://signal.org/donate/

Signal is being used by at least 10 well-paid medical professionals (group chat) that I know of, and one of them proclaimed today that Signal is owned by Elon Musk (probably because he tweeted about it). I did not care to educate them. And this is in a first world country with a rather wealthy population.

Why am I saying this? Users don't give a damn, they expect free things, and they expect things which work. They have been taught to use appstores on their phones where tapping on a button installs an app and everything just works with zero effort on their end, while completely ignoring the work that someone put into creating the very app they depend on. Majority will never, ever, even think about it, let alone click on the developers website to find out who created the miracle they use.

This practice needs to end. I believe that it is time to stop making free products. Developers should unite in this and finally start to value their hard work.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#127

Post by olah_1 »

lucb1e wrote: post #99
olah_1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there are protocols like XMPP and Matrix. But there are also solutions that don’t require everyone to host their own server. Rather, people just host impersonal nodes on the network and everyone uses the whole network together. Examples would be Status[1] (Ethereum) and Session[2] (Oxen neé Loki). I’m sure there are others that use this architecture too. I just like it because I don’t have to be personally…

How does that work, though? You need to have some central database of user IDs, or can you just never have a user ID and will you need to add people by full public key. As soon as you try to map big public keys to a phone number, username, or some other short ID, you need some registration system, probably on a FCFS basis. How does that work in this "you can run but not manage your own server" type decentralized syst…

Status uses public keys, but you can optionally link an Ethereum Domain Name (ENS). So it’s basically like license plates where you can buy a vanity plate if you want. Also, friends can just add their own nickname for you in their contacts.

Personally I think that’s the best way to do it. Public keys aren’t very different from phone numbers at this point. Nobody memorizes phone numbers anymore either. Each person just has their own Rolodex mapping of keys to names.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#128

Post by [deleted] »

bitcharmer wrote: post #76
hcurtiss wrote: post #40

This is not good. I've moved so many people over in the last week. For purposes of getting them invested, this is a truly inopportune moment for an extended outage.

Yup, and it's not like Signal should be surprised with it. The influx has been happening for a while now and it seems like they were incapable of handling it. I have no idea how I'm going to defend them against all my family members I somehow managed to convert from WhatsApp to stay on this platform.

[deleted]

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#130

Post by centimeter »

tamiral wrote: post #105
bitcharmer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, and it's not like Signal should be surprised with it. The influx has been happening for a while now and it seems like they were incapable of handling it. I have no idea how I'm going to defend them against all my family members I somehow managed to convert from WhatsApp to stay on this platform.

It’s an FOSS teaM working around the clock to support... let’s not be mean I’m sure they are doing all they can to get this resolved

Whatever reasonable excuses the signal team has are completely irrelevant from the perspective of casual users.
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