171–180 of 336 posts
Encryption is just a tip of the iceberg here. There are several major problems with Signal: - it is not that private after all since it requires a phone number. Yes, you can override this by using some virtual throwaway number if you are geeky enough but your account will be associated with this phone number anyways. - as a consequence you _will_ receive spam from bots fanning out messages to phone numbers. You can’t…
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Signal is a nonprofit though. They shouldn't be under pressure to create business.
Non profit but still against federation or anyone running an alternative client. Why?
The other answer: They've got somewhat of a "we know best" vibe going for them which also comes in play when you see their response to feature requests - e.g. for usernames instead of phone numbers or for "edit message" functionality like Telegram has.
I do want to hear more about how signal and other companies are working to prevent their apps being used by bad actors, terrorists.
The greatest mystery to me is how anyone can think you can somehow stop 'bad actors' from communicating over the Internet other than banning it as a whole.
Banning encryption doesn't stop bad actors from communicating over encryption, it just adds to the number of illegal things they did.
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I read the linked source. Could not find any reference to any Indian law or Govt. order. Can you please point me to any source with credible information on the supposed provisions which are causing Signal to "exit" India.
Its was a proposed law (to solicit feedback). Signal is not exiting but would exit if such law comes to India. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/govt-proposes-law-... But Telecom Authority of India rules out any immediate intervention. https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/trai-rules-out-reg... I couldn't quote from the article here but looks like they are going to wait till clarity emerges from Internati…
[0] https://www.outlookindia.com/business/proposal-to-curtail-tr...
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The solutions for the most of the issues you are describing comes with great usability costs. It is already hard to make non-tech people to switch from WhatsApp.
> The solutions for the most of the issues you are describing comes with great usability costs. What costs? Element (a popular Matrix client) has recently improved their onboarding greatly! https://element.io/blog/all-aboard-better-ftue-for-less-wtf/ It really is just as easy to onboard to Element as Signal these days, the UX has come a long way. And you'll never have the move them again, because you can choose any c…
Matrix is a great example where you need that one tech guy to create home server. Otherwise nobody of your friend group can use it as intended to.
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Signal is hosted on Amazon
But the backend of Signal doesn't store who talks to who, so Amazon can't have that information. It also doesn't store what groups exist and who is part of it.
Would be interesting to know if Amazon could reconstruct that information without Signals knowledge
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Is the Whatsapp client really a black box? APKs are fairly straightforward to decompile back to Smali or a reasonable approximation of Java, or people on rooted devices can hook it with Frida. Of course source code would be better, but it would be pretty brazen to stick a backdoor in an app store release. App versions for popular apps get archived by numerous third-party sites, so even a temporary backdoor in one spe…
Which reputation? The reputation of a company that doesn't care about privacy at all and we t through dozens of privacy scandals?
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People really have warped perceptions of different Asian nations. As someone that has been a resident of most of them they are mostly all like China... which shouldn't be surprising there is a lot of shared cultural history in the region and by and large they are more collectivist societies. Some are obviously worse (looking at you Myanmar) but most are various shades of authoritarian (Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, e…
This talk by professor Jeffrey Sachs at the Athens Democracy Forum couldn't be more timely. https://youtu.be/Ec2E4k1K52E Different countries have long, deep-rooted political cultures that go back centuries. "Democracy vs authoritarianism" is the wrong lens: different systems are complex and cannot be ranked on an easy scale like we want them to.
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It's propaganda. It's the same reason why a large portion of Indians (even with full internet access...) are fervently pro-Putin in the context of the Ukraine-Russia war.
Saying that people who disagree with you do so because of propaganda isn't a helpful way of looking at the world. EDIT: Just saw the company I am keeping. This is not a pro-war comment.
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It's propaganda. It's the same reason why a large portion of Indians (even with full internet access...) are fervently pro-Putin in the context of the Ukraine-Russia war.
90% world the world (i.e. nearly everybody outside the west) has a similar position on the Russia-Ukraine issue as India though. Is 90% of the world propagandized? Or can they have a legit different perspective on things?
There's no "different perspective" when it comes to slaughtering innocent civilians and other war crimes.