Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism • Hacker News Board

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#171

Post by maxbond » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

bigdang wrote: post #162

> The company’s aggressive pursuit of growth, coupled with lack of moderation in the app, has already led Signal employees themselves to publicly question whether growth might come from abusive users, such as far-right groups using Signal to organize. Lol what? What exactly does far-right mean in this case? Why intersperse irrelevant political digs at another ill-defined faction? Does far-right just mean non-progress…

No, it is not an arbitrary politics dig.

At this current moment in history, in the United States at least, there aren't a lot of armed left wing groups. But right wing paramilitary groups have been on the rise for years, and recently they tried to overturn an election by force.

At a different time in history people would have fretted that the Weather Underground or Black Panthers would be using the app. But we're in 2023 and not 1970, and people are concerned about Proud Boys and Boogaloos.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#172

Post by anonym29 » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:12 PM UTC

FormerBandmate wrote: post #165

bigdang wrote: post #162

> The company’s aggressive pursuit of growth, coupled with lack of moderation in the app, has already led Signal employees themselves to publicly question whether growth might come from abusive users, such as far-right groups using Signal to organize. Lol what? What exactly does far-right mean in this case? Why intersperse irrelevant political digs at another ill-defined faction? Does far-right just mean non-progress…

Theoretically Nazis could use signal. Nazis can also use any other technology, this justification is really stupid

Hitler drank water, ergo drinking water is bad! /s

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#173

Post by maxbond » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:13 PM UTC

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #169

printforest wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I was more talking about this kind of reaction.

If you say something incisive to piss people off and trigger a reaction, and you get the reaction you're looking for, what we've established is that you are willing to piss people off to serve your rhetorical ends. Nothing else.

This of the "stop hitting yourself" form of argumentation.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#174

Post by anonym29 » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:15 PM UTC

hnarn wrote: post #102

upofadown wrote: post #93

> It also required its users to think like engineers, which included participating in exceptionally nerdy activities like attending real-life “key-signing parties” to verify your identity to other users. In fairness to PGP, Signal uses exactly the same method as PGP does for verifying identities. You need to check a ridiculously long number which represents your correspondent's identity. It's a 40 digit hex "key fing…

I think it’s pretty important to point out that Signal allows you to import this number with a QR code, so it’s not very arduous to do to verification.

[flagged]

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#175

Post by stainablesteel » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:16 PM UTC

bigdang wrote: post #162

> The company’s aggressive pursuit of growth, coupled with lack of moderation in the app, has already led Signal employees themselves to publicly question whether growth might come from abusive users, such as far-right groups using Signal to organize. Lol what? What exactly does far-right mean in this case? Why intersperse irrelevant political digs at another ill-defined faction? Does far-right just mean non-progress…

[flagged]

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#176

Post by doublepg23 » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:19 PM UTC

upofadown wrote: post #93

> It also required its users to think like engineers, which included participating in exceptionally nerdy activities like attending real-life “key-signing parties” to verify your identity to other users. In fairness to PGP, Signal uses exactly the same method as PGP does for verifying identities. You need to check a ridiculously long number which represents your correspondent's identity. It's a 40 digit hex "key fing…

When I was actively using signal I tried key signing with people I knew but even the technical folks wiped their key within months.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#177

Post by anonym29 » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:20 PM UTC

foo-bar-bat wrote: post #149

wolverine876 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's part of Signal.

No, WhatsApp is not part of Signal. That's false. The opposite is true: Signal is part of Whats App. The problem is we have no idea what else is.

I've always laughed at people who insist Whatsapp messages are just as secure as Signal messages.

Like, prove to me Facebook isn't logging and storing every single cryptographic key generated in that entire protocol. Oh, you can't because the entire app is closed source? And you just blindly trust that Facebook is doing the right thing and not decrypting every message to scour it for every bit of information possible?

lol.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#178

Post by Gareth321 » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

Klonoar wrote: post #78

mc32 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be Debbie downer but there’s been a cultural shift in the liberal establishment over the years away from protecting speech, even hateful speech to actively espousing and advocating for censorship. It’s clear that principles can shift over time and Wired is toeing the line.

It's not advocating censorship to call for platforms (& co) to combat hate speech. Can you link to anything that actually backs up that claim of yours?

It clearly is censorship. Maybe you're conflating censorship with the First Amendment? The Constitution only protects certain kinds of speech. Only that of citizens with respect to government, and only Americans. When people speak about censorship, they are referring to all kinds of censorship by people all over the world, including private companies censoring individuals.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#179

Post by enragedcacti » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #163

bigdang wrote: post #162

> The company’s aggressive pursuit of growth, coupled with lack of moderation in the app, has already led Signal employees themselves to publicly question whether growth might come from abusive users, such as far-right groups using Signal to organize. Lol what? What exactly does far-right mean in this case? Why intersperse irrelevant political digs at another ill-defined faction? Does far-right just mean non-progress…

The rising intolerance of wrongthink on the left has been written about extensively but I’d love to read a sympathetic, anthropological investigation into it. I say sympathetic because I don’t believe you can understand anything without really seeing how a reasonable person could come to those same conclusions.

The paradox of tolerance gets you a long way to understanding it, but you will also have to be far more specific if you want answers because practically everyone has limits to what they consider acceptable speech, even if they don't call it that.

Beyond that, there is a pretty concerted effort to elevate minor grievances into the national spotlight to portray the left a certain way, e.g. the Oberlin Cafeteria scandal, where story in the college paper about the quality of the food in their college cafeteria became both a national news story and a symbol of just how deranged the left had become.

Is that actually indicative of anything? Is it something the general public should actually care about? Does it even reflect "the left" as a political body?

I think once you start asking those questions a lot of the "wrongthink" stories (not all!) start seeming a lot closer to college kids complaining about bad food than they are to the sands of politics and free speech shifting underfoot.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#180

Post by kornhole » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

bigdang wrote: post #162

> The company’s aggressive pursuit of growth, coupled with lack of moderation in the app, has already led Signal employees themselves to publicly question whether growth might come from abusive users, such as far-right groups using Signal to organize. Lol what? What exactly does far-right mean in this case? Why intersperse irrelevant political digs at another ill-defined faction? Does far-right just mean non-progress…

Far-right or hard-right are terms often used nowadays to refer to any dissident who questions government leadership, the security apparatus, or the war machine. I have learned to ignore these and other labels from the MSM as meaningless. I am not denying that actual fascists exist, but these labels are used to scare us into believing or supporting particular positions such as cracking down on any dissidents.