Live data from Hacker News

Leaked phone number of Mark Zuckerberg reveals he is on Signal

indiatoday.in

31–40 of 173 posts

Re: Leaked phone number of Mark Zuckerberg reveals he is on Signal

#31
post #9

Is it really surprising that he would have all of the most popular messaging apps? Facebook’s playbook of copying popular features from apps gaining traction is by no means a secret. I’m not totally convinced by the narrative that Mark doesn’t trust his own tools so he prefers Signal.

I’m not totally convinced by the narrative that Mark doesn’t trust his own tools so he prefers Signal.

He has tape over the camera of his own computer in Facebook HQ

Re: Leaked phone number of Mark Zuckerberg reveals he is on Signal

#32
post #19

Isn’t a bit of a privacy flaw that signal exposes who uses the app by phone number?

signal is not without its shortcomings

There was a recent issue where Chinese citizens pointed out that IMEs with telemetry enabled could capture what you type into Signal and it didn't warn you or try to mitigate this; the Signal guy ignored them, then dodged them for weeks and told everyone they were harassing him, then a white guy pointed out the same thing and his suggestions were immediately taken up.

Re: Leaked phone number of Mark Zuckerberg reveals he is on Signal

#33
post #9

Is it really surprising that he would have all of the most popular messaging apps? Facebook’s playbook of copying popular features from apps gaining traction is by no means a secret. I’m not totally convinced by the narrative that Mark doesn’t trust his own tools so he prefers Signal.

He could pay a team of 100 developers to do that.

If he really wanted to that, he would have several phones with separate numbers for exploring other messaging apps as not to cross business and personal matters.

Re: Leaked phone number of Mark Zuckerberg reveals he is on Signal

#34
post #25

These days you need basically all the message apps anyway unless your circle of friends is super homogenous

I mean, I think it would be reasonable for Zuckerberg's friends to assume that he wouldn't want to use a competing product? Nobody would be offended if the CEO of Coca-Cola declined a can of pepsi.

[deleted]

Re: Leaked phone number of Mark Zuckerberg reveals he is on Signal

#35
Perhaps he liked what he found.

"So he put his tongue in, and took a large lick. “Yes,” he said, “it is. no doubt about that. And honey, I should say, right down to the bottom of the jar. Unless, of course,” he said, “somebody put cheese in at the bottom just for a joke. Perhaps I had better go a little further... just in case...”

- Winnie the pooh, Chapter 5 in which Piglet meets a Heffalump

Re: Leaked phone number of Mark Zuckerberg reveals he is on Signal

#37
post #33
post #9

Is it really surprising that he would have all of the most popular messaging apps? Facebook’s playbook of copying popular features from apps gaining traction is by no means a secret. I’m not totally convinced by the narrative that Mark doesn’t trust his own tools so he prefers Signal.

He could pay a team of 100 developers to do that. If he really wanted to that, he would have several phones with separate numbers for exploring other messaging apps as not to cross business and personal matters.

(1) You can't always trust the opinions of 100 developers, even if you can somehow consolidate them. Certain things are best seen firsthand, even if you have opinions of top 20 people you trust.

(2) Lugging multiple phones is clumsy enough that most people won't consider it, most CEOs, even more so. Two is somehow tolerable. And you need competitors' apps always available, to try things while you have an idea, and to easily compare.

Re: Leaked phone number of Mark Zuckerberg reveals he is on Signal

#38
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it is likely that he was just checking up on the competition. I wouldn't be surprised if turned the narrative on this by saying something like the following: "I was curious to check it out.. it wasn't very good, so I reverted back to Messenger/Whatsapp." IIRC, he made similar comments when he was spotted using G+. Disclaimer: My views are my own (and not necessarily shared by my employers).

It doesn't seem like you are aware that WhatsApp hired Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of the Signal encryption protocol, to re-implement it for WhatsApp. AFAIK it is still used in WhatsApp today. I will take this moment also to mention that "re-implement" isn't exactly right in that they modified the protocol slightly to allow for someone in control of the administration server to change a user's private key without…

> I will take this moment also to mention that "re-implement" isn't exactly right in that they modified the protocol slightly to allow for someone in control of the administration server to change a user's private key without their knowing, so that the admin can decrypt the E2E communications using the known key.

Do you have a source for that claim?

Re: Leaked phone number of Mark Zuckerberg reveals he is on Signal

#39
post #9

Is it really surprising that he would have all of the most popular messaging apps? Facebook’s playbook of copying popular features from apps gaining traction is by no means a secret. I’m not totally convinced by the narrative that Mark doesn’t trust his own tools so he prefers Signal.

I’m not totally convinced by the narrative that Mark doesn’t trust his own tools so he prefers Signal. He has tape over the camera of his own computer in Facebook HQ

Everybody should have a shutter over the camera, just to protect from blunders and misclicks.

No matter how you trust your software, some malware may want to activate it, especially at a high-value target like Zuckerberg (or Bezos, or Nadella, etc).

Alas, microphones are not as easy to deactivate.

Re: Leaked phone number of Mark Zuckerberg reveals he is on Signal

#40
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

signal is not without its shortcomings

There was a recent issue where Chinese citizens pointed out that IMEs with telemetry enabled could capture what you type into Signal and it didn't warn you or try to mitigate this; the Signal guy ignored them, then dodged them for weeks and told everyone they were harassing him, then a white guy pointed out the same thing and his suggestions were immediately taken up.

And what was the suggestion? The flow of information is (You typing → IME converts key presses into text → Signal receives text) so Signal can't do anything to prevent a malicious IME from sending the text elsewhere. The best they could do is raise users' awareness that Signal won't protect them if there's spyware with privileged access on their device, and that their IME might be such spyware.
Post reply on HN