We can do better than Signal • Hacker News Board

Re: We can do better than Signal

#91

Post by walrus01 » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #37

One of the root causes for centralization is that we lost the ability to make our devices talk directly to each other. Before the Internet, people could contact each other directly by just making phone calls, and the phone network was neutral, so any phone or any network could call any other (even internationally) provided they pay the fee. Same with SMS and MMS. With the early Internet, every computer had an IP addr…

> Before the Internet, people could contact each other directly by just making phone calls, and the phone network was neutral, so any phone or any network could call any other (even internationally) provided they pay the fee.

the more you learn about SS7 and the traditional phone network the worse it looks. it's actually held together with the metaphorical equivalent of duct tape and string, and is highly centralized...

Re: We can do better than Signal

#92

Post by Jugurtha » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

The article should be titled "How can we do better than Signal?", because it neither brings nor addresses anything better than Signal. It'd be better as an Ask HN.

The expectation reading it was to find out about a product that is better than Signal. The reply to the assertion after the disappointment will most likely be "Then do it".

Re: We can do better than Signal

#93

Post by Evidlo » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

monokh wrote: post #12

> A common defense in favor of Signal is, “But it’s all open source!”. Sure is, but on what basis do I trust them? ... The open source aspect for me means 2 things. - I can verify the e2e encryption claim. - I can reproduce the client builds ensuring that what I run matches the source [1] Is there a detail relating to the server that would invalidate this? [1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/tree/master/r…

A lot of open source projects are also "open" in the sense community contributions and interoperability, so people often take open source to mean these things as well.

Signal is open source, but hardly open as in the sense above.

Re: We can do better than Signal

#94

Post by Arathorn » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

creata wrote: post #68

Ericson2314 wrote: post #13

As I wrote in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25795575 - WhatsApp: Oh wait, SMS etc. is completely insecure - Signal: Oh wait, WhatsApp is structurally unable to be a force for privacy - Matrix: Oh wait, even benevolent centralization is an unnecessary risk It's not that worse is better, but the general public's imagination can only grow so fast. We need to coax people along. As such, I do think all 3 serve a pu…

Matrix is merely federated, right? Why is it unlikely that a situation like email or the Internet will emerge, where the network still ends up massively centralized because that's just more convenient ?

We're proactively working on P2P matrix, as per https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p-2-p-matrix/, to prevent this risk.

Re: We can do better than Signal

#95

Post by Arathorn » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #87

creata wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix is merely federated, right? Why is it unlikely that a situation like email or the Internet will emerge, where the network still ends up massively centralized because that's just more convenient ?

matrix.org is already 30% of network I read once? For the general public I expect this to continue (at least until we with NixOS making self hosting things far easier someday :P). However, just as regular users want to get off the Facebook ecosystem, business's should want to get away from GSuite (Really, it's embarrassing if you are anything close to a google competitor) and I have some optimism there. The "element…

your causality is wrong here; on day 1, matrix.org was 100% of the network, because there weren't any other servers. since then it's been decreasing steadily - at around 30% atm.

Re: We can do better than Signal

#96

Post by marvinblum » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

I disagree. A decentralized version of Signal might not be necessarily more reliable. What do you do when your Matrix home server is down? Will you still be able to log in? Receive messages? Is this overall system more stable if only 90% of the network work all the time?

Apart from that, most non-technical users won't care about it, and a decentralized solution might not be as convenient for them. It also might open up other attack vectors, like compromised servers in the network and stuff like that.

Signal is probably the best solution for now.

Re: We can do better than Signal

#97

Post by tombert » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #82

tombert wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience with Matrix/Element. I was using the desktop app to chat with a friend, and while we were able to get some end-to-end encryption working, it was a huge pain the butt, and if two software engineers struggled this much to get the damn thing working, there's no way in hell that I'm convincing my parents to use it. To me, we have to accept the incremental wins where we can get them; getting my…

My experience with Matrix/Element and the various standard-compliant Matrix chat clients, in an ISP environment, is that it's totally possible to set up a rock solid replacement for Slack within an organization that has a person on staff to spend some cycles setting it up, and periodically maintaining it. We don't have any major technical challenges or problems running our own Synapse daemon server. It's a debian sta…

An "internally-run-Slack" is definitely a great use case for Matrix in its current form. I don't own a business, but if I did, I would almost certainly consider running my own Synapse server, just to have a stronger guarantee that internal chats stay internal.

Re: We can do better than Signal

#98

Post by op03 » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

bronco21016 wrote: post #18

The issues highlighted by the author, about Signal, and indeed nearly any messenger app or platform, are societal issues that we keep trying to fix with technology. There are promising solutions to decentralizing and anonymizing but there remain to be any real tech solutions to the ultimate de-platforming issue. Signal is at risk of having their hosting or connection removed. What prevents the same thing from happeni…

Tech solutions to deplatforming will involve changes to how reward mechanisms work (ie Likes/Views/Clicks/Followers etc). No one needs to get banned but they can be thrown in the drunk tank (so no rewards ie Likes/Views/Clicks/Followers etc) for some period depending on offense type, seriousness, what have you.

Currently getting agreement on Reward mechanisms when no one trusts anyone is complicated. But it will happen eventually after more and more shit hits the fan.

Re: We can do better than Signal

#99

Post by creata » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

Arathorn wrote: post #95

Ericson2314 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

matrix.org is already 30% of network I read once? For the general public I expect this to continue (at least until we with NixOS making self hosting things far easier someday :P). However, just as regular users want to get off the Facebook ecosystem, business's should want to get away from GSuite (Really, it's embarrassing if you are anything close to a google competitor) and I have some optimism there. The "element…

your causality is wrong here; on day 1, matrix.org was 100% of the network, because there weren't any other servers. since then it's been decreasing steadily - at around 30% atm.

But when Matrix gains massive adoption from the mainstream, wouldn't you expect those people to primarily rush to matrix.org?

Re: We can do better than Signal

#100

Post by tombert » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #77

tombert wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that I think will always give Signal and WhatsApp an edge over something like Matrix is that it's simply tied to a phone number. You don't "make an account" and have to memorize a password or anything, it just falls into place like any other texting app. The barrier to entry is about as close to frictionless as possible.

There's nothing inherent about this to Matrix, I don't believe.

I mean, maybe? There could certainly exist a phone-verified Matrix server, obviously, but unless the default server that is used for Matrix does that, it's still going to be a bit of friction entering in the server information.