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Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

schneier.com

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Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#151

Post by aseipp »

agd wrote: post #35

I think there are 3 attitudes towards Signal: 1. Anger from purists who care about the fact it's not decentralised, and that Moxie runs the show, and that it uses phone numbers etc etc... 2. Indifference from those who have never heard of it 3. Joy from those who are extremely happy a decent, private, alternative to Facebook/Whatsapp exists My worry is that group 1) try and ruin it for the rest of us. Signal is liter…

Maybe it's the American in me, but I have almost no use for a payment mechanism in my messenger, I have too many. Venmo, Cash, Apple's thing, Google Wallet, whatever -- these all provide everything I need when I need to send money to people. Frankly the idea that I suddenly might have to have another goddamn thing is a bit irritating but I've resigned myself to it.

I think the other thing is that it's just a complete misread of how normal people even think about crypto. Literally every "normie" I know who has interest in cryptocurrency, even if they tow the line and say that "crypto is the future of money" or whatever, treat it entirely as a speculative asset when it comes down to it and that's what their usage of it revolves around. It's a thing they put $5 and that $5 becomes $10 later on and now they have $10. Sending it to other people is literally the last thing they want to do. As far as they're concerned, it's the exact same way the stock market works, only faster. None of them care about deflation or border politics or monetary privacy or whatever; it's practically just a way of flipping a bullshit asset into fiat cash, which is what matters. If they want to give people or their drug dealer money in a way that isn't on the record, they don't pull out their instant messenger and say "Let's use a blockchain to preserve our privacy during this transaction", they "pull cash from an ATM and do it in the bathroom of a bar" or whatever. They arrange this over SMS, probably, or maybe Signal already if you're lucky.

Finally there's people like me, people who neither care that Signal is non-federated and don't care that it uses phone numbers, but who just think the cure is worse than the disease here. I'm not even talking about the politics of money exchange or privacy or anything; I just literally mean cryptocurrency invites fraudsters and scammers and all kinds of bullshit along with it, that ends up causing external harm to people. I don't want Signal to expend resources on this stuff because even if it aligns with their goals on paper or is something their competitors might do, I literally think it's turf they shouldn't be on because fundamentally the people who play that game have other goals in mind.

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#152

Post by sneak »

aseipp wrote: post #151
agd wrote: post #35

I think there are 3 attitudes towards Signal: 1. Anger from purists who care about the fact it's not decentralised, and that Moxie runs the show, and that it uses phone numbers etc etc... 2. Indifference from those who have never heard of it 3. Joy from those who are extremely happy a decent, private, alternative to Facebook/Whatsapp exists My worry is that group 1) try and ruin it for the rest of us. Signal is liter…

Maybe it's the American in me, but I have almost no use for a payment mechanism in my messenger, I have too many. Venmo, Cash, Apple's thing, Google Wallet, whatever -- these all provide everything I need when I need to send money to people. Frankly the idea that I suddenly might have to have another goddamn thing is a bit irritating but I've resigned myself to it. I think the other thing is that it's just a complete…

> Maybe it's the American in me, but I have almost no use for a payment mechanism in my messenger, I have too many. Venmo, Cash, Apple's thing, Google Wallet, whatever -- these all provide everything I need when I need to send money to people.

All of those require doxxing yourself to the vendor, submitting to financial (suspicionless) mass surveillance systems, and can be trivially censored without any burden of proof or even probable cause to suspect wrongdoing by the entire machinery of the state. We saw this when Visa and Mastercard and PayPal willingly shut down donations to Wikileaks simply because the state asked - no legal compulsion was even necessary.

I hold US citizenship and don't use any of the aforementioned services for those reasons. I don't like providing identity information to services where I don't have to, because I value my privacy: same reason I use Signal, same reason I pay in cash.

Cryptocurrencies are censorship resistant and are open to use by everyone with an internet connection, just like Signal.

There is a huge benefit to the service provider not having your identity or being able to see the contents of your messages: to the user, to the service provider, and to society.

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#153

Post by sneak »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #43
agd wrote: post #35

I think there are 3 attitudes towards Signal: 1. Anger from purists who care about the fact it's not decentralised, and that Moxie runs the show, and that it uses phone numbers etc etc... 2. Indifference from those who have never heard of it 3. Joy from those who are extremely happy a decent, private, alternative to Facebook/Whatsapp exists My worry is that group 1) try and ruin it for the rest of us. Signal is liter…

I think this is a strawman argument. Can't it be the users from group#3 who's sad to see Signal turn into WeChat? After all the lessons learned from Keybase are open for all to see. WhatsApp doesn't include payment mechanism in many markets, why is Signal trying to waste developer resources on unwanted features?

I offer that if you think e2e encrypted messaging plus a simple cryptocurrency payment system is "turn[ing] into WeChat" that perhaps you are making a massive overgeneralization, or perhaps are unfamiliar with the scope and extent of WeChat.

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#154

Post by Macha »

agd wrote: post #35

I think there are 3 attitudes towards Signal: 1. Anger from purists who care about the fact it's not decentralised, and that Moxie runs the show, and that it uses phone numbers etc etc... 2. Indifference from those who have never heard of it 3. Joy from those who are extremely happy a decent, private, alternative to Facebook/Whatsapp exists My worry is that group 1) try and ruin it for the rest of us. Signal is liter…

I think there are 3 attitudes towards Matrix:

1. Anger from purists who care about the fact it's fragmented, and that a lot of users will use matrix.org anyway, and that they think Signal has better UX

2. Indifference from those who have never heard of it

3. Joy from those who are extremely happy a decent, private, alternative to Facebook/Discord exists

My worry is that group 1) try and ruin it for the rest of us.

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#155

Post by growse »

ddevault wrote: post #143
growse wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone agrees that protecting a brand and controlling who connects to and uses a service you run and pay for is "being an asshole". Lots of people pretty readily made the choice to move from WhatsApp to Signal when the benefits became clear. There's nothing stopping anyone from forking the client/server and running their own network - if there are meaningful benefits to end users of the fork, there should be no…

"Protecting the brand and controlling who connects to your service" is what put Moxie in a position of power from which cryptocurrency garbage could be introduced to scam money from its users. That's all there is to it. I call that being an asshole. Nothing stops you from forking the network, except for the fact that none of the users come along. Signal holds its users hostage. I call that being an asshole. Calling i…

> "Protecting the brand and controlling who connects to your service" is what put Moxie in a position of power from which cryptocurrency garbage could be introduced to scam money from its users. That's all there is to it. I call that being an asshole.

I feel sad that you're apparently so angry about a piece of software.

> Nothing stops you from forking the network, except for the fact that none of the users come along. Signal holds its users hostage. I call that being an asshole.

The users have the choice to use it or not. If you build an alternative and noone uses it, it's not better. Like I said, more than a few people happily wandered over to signal from WhatsApp. Weren't those users "held hostage" by Facebook in the same way?

> Calling it open source and saying "anyone can fork it!", then suing anyone who dares mention the word Signal in their documentation? I call that being an asshole.

Who did he sue?

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#156

Post by moistbar »

growse wrote: post #137
ddevault wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moxie has a history of being an asshole to anyone trying to make a third-party client. They're prohibited from using the OWS servers, which do not federate (so they couldn't talk to Signal users), and Moxie has attacked third-party software over trademark issues, too. Any Signal fork is likely to be DoA, thanks to Moxie's deliberate actions.

Not everyone agrees that protecting a brand and controlling who connects to and uses a service you run and pay for is "being an asshole". Lots of people pretty readily made the choice to move from WhatsApp to Signal when the benefits became clear. There's nothing stopping anyone from forking the client/server and running their own network - if there are meaningful benefits to end users of the fork, there should be no…

If you don't want people to be able to fork your product, make it proprietary. Don't pretend to be open source and then attack people for exercising the rights that development model affords them.

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#157

Post by johnchristopher »

progx wrote: post #106

I need a secure way to control my smart home, please integrate everything that is needed! Oh and i need a secure key for my car. If you had time, i need password manager within my messenger too. A secure todo list would be great. Not everything you can include into ONE app should be included.

Won't be complete until it can send mail though.

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#158

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sneak wrote: post #105
bildung wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but law and regulation doesn't work that way. It's about the intent, not the technicality. That's e.g. the difference between gross negligence, manslaughter and murder, even if someone died in all these situations.

The (IMHO bogus) argument Schneier was making was that it muddles the morality of the situation, not whether or not it is or isn't, or should or should not be illegal: just that it would invite "meddling" (his word).

> it muddles the morality of the situation

For most people, it does. I hold political free speech protections as sacrosanct. I do not have the same view towards dark money.

Putting my views and morality aside, the law treats commercial and non-commercial speech differently. Integrating payments lets the government subpoena records (and more) under AML/ATF law. Those laws are powerful and broadly supported.

Totally separately, if we take the position that money is speech, then fine. Why the hell not make a one-click “send wallet address” option for a variety of coins?

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#159

Post by root_axis »

I'm a big cryptocurrency skeptic, but if they had used a more reputable coin instead of a pre-mined coin distributed in such a fashion as to enrich the founders, they could have avoided most of this backlash. People who aren't enthusiasts already understand that the raison d'etre of the cryptocurrency landscape is to get rich quick, but these guys got so greedy they've even pissed off the enthusiast community. Unfortunately for Signal, the thrust of its popularity is among those users who have a pet peeve for the term "crypto" used as a shorthand for "cryptocurrency" instead of "cryptography". It'll be interesting to see Signal's public statement in regard to this PR disaster.
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