Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 342 posts

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#271

Post by ralusek »

boplicity wrote: post #269
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rising intolerance of wrongthink on the left Basically, people are fed up with general bigotry, racism, misogyny, and the destruction of the environment -- all of which have real life and death consequences for many people. That, combined with polarization, has made people very reactive to which "side" they perceive things to be on.

People are just now fed up with those things, at their lowest point in history?

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#272

Post by motohagiography »

mcpackieh wrote: post #257
motohagiography wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they sell anything at all, it exposes them to the local regulations of wherever they are taking money, and then the survival of the org and technology becomes dependent on the income, which has conditions attached to it. Saying Signal should sell something is like recommending someone develop a drug habit.

Signal Foundation is incorporated in America, so they're already exposed to American regulations. They could sell things (tshirts or exclusive client features or something) in America without exposing themselves more than they already are.

I thought about merch and things like that, but really, this is an open source project that a lot of people depend on, and it just happens to be backed by a US foundation, which is a pretty good structure.

Imo, the real risk to Signal will come from partisan and intelligence linked agitators from academia taking over its board and stacking the project with people who will add back doors, or acquiesce to state meddling. The more formal and complex the organization becomes the more likely it will be infiltrated and subverted. It's worth having a 5-10 year horizon for planning privacy tech - and organizing to make the arms race in it less necessary by reining in the agencies who threaten it.

I'm optimistic about the bluesky protocol, and what twitter may become, but without mitigating the official powers of privacy's antagonists, it's just a toy distraction. If you aren't using privacy tools to form networks and organize to preserve privacy, the tools only enable timidity.

This is why I was suggesting in another thread that Signal should preemptively pull out of the UK in response to their crypto legislation, as hiding from these people is just a substitute for action.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#273

Post by boplicity »

ralusek wrote: post #271
boplicity wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rising intolerance of wrongthink on the left Basically, people are fed up with general bigotry, racism, misogyny, and the destruction of the environment -- all of which have real life and death consequences for many people. That, combined with polarization, has made people very reactive to which "side" they perceive things to be on.

People are just now fed up with those things, at their lowest point in history?

Of course people are fed up with those things. They also have the ability to organize and make noise about it. That, combined with polarization, as I've said, heightens both the activism and the perception of such activism.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#274

Post by fluidcruft »

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.

I can't say that I have found the right to be any more accepting of wrongthink.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#275

Post by digging »

4bpp wrote: post #243
digging wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly does far-right mean in this case? I thought, just maybe, they're referring to the groups of openly fascist Americans who attacked the US capitol and organized other violent events. But maybe you're right and "far-right" is meaningless. I don't know why you would be right - it doesn't even make sense to raise the questions you raised, but I supposed we should consider your opinion.

In what sense were the capitol rioters "openly fascist"? I have not seen any meaningful political group in the US trying to own the label; it is only ever applied to political enemies.

> In what sense were the capitol rioters "openly fascist"?

In the sense that they are literally Nazi sympathizers who display Nazi imagery, talk about Nazi ideology, praise Hitler, and write/talk about their racist beliefs influencing their political beliefs. I am not going to dig through these articles for you now and I am not going to respond further because I do not believe you are posting in good faith, but this is for the readers. Look up, like, any article about fascists/Nazis at Jan 6.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#276

Post by anononaut »

foldr wrote: post #253
valval wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

When someone says “far right” they usually mean roughly what the Wikipedia article describes. I don’t see any reason to suppose that the phrase is being used in a novel or unusual sense in the article, so I wonder if the question is being asked rhetorically. But if the poster really just wants to know what “far right” means, then the Wikipedia article explains it.

[flagged]

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#277

Post by sneak »

upofadown wrote: post #114
sneak wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is that Signal will cheerfully let the user have an insecure conversation before the user has verified the safety number. PGP makes it very difficult to fail in that particular way. Most people do not use "insecure" in this way. I would venture to say that your usage of "insecure" here is actually incorrect. Approximately nobody ever does this verification[1], so this distinction is critically import…

>Approximately nobody ever does this verification[1], so this distinction is critically important: Signal works out of the box, whereas PGP does not. Then, say, Telegram in non-secret message mode, is just as secure, in the sense that you have to trust a third party. Not clearly informing the user of this trust is dishonest. >...after studies showed non-technical users (reasonably) associate the idea of fingerprints…

No. Telegram in the default mode is not e2ee and allows Telegram to passively log all messages.

Logging messages under TOFU means you are either actively attacking the users (and they get a message when you stop) or you aren't getting the messages.

Most messages are not first messages. TOFU is valid, as evidenced by years of successful use by SSH.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#278

Post by xorcist »

nisegami wrote: post #160
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be unfair of me to rephrase as, "It is possible to do this ridiculous, difficult thing that doesn't even always work in order to get some insight into a situation which would be trivial if the source were available with reproducible builds"?

>if the source were available with reproducible builds Does Signal itself even have reproducible builds?

It does, but you're not really allowed to use it at scale. Open whisper systems has repeatedly threatened to play cat and mouse games with any third party distribution based on reproducible builds and lock them out.

They are fully entitled to do that of course, as it is their system. But that makes it far less useful for hobbyists.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#279

Post by xorcist »

sudosysgen wrote: post #44
mc32 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was about introducing sex ed to third graders. Have third graders put down their toy cars, dolls and blocks yet? And then you have a Cal governor suinf a school dist demanding they teach the curriculum he believes is correct. So you have an example of two governors, one on each side, tellig districts what to teach But, the thing is, liberals _used_ _to_ espouse free speech as long as it was legal and defended it…

I've gone through sex ed in third grade. All I learnt was what the name of the body parts are, that I shouldn't let other people touch them in inappropriate ways, and that boys and girls have different things going on there. I don't see why it isn't appropriate and why a 9 year old shouldn't know this.

Why is this discussion always so nationalistic? It can seem miraculous that other countries can even function. How hasn't countries with working sex ed collapsed long ago, given all the severely dysfunctional things people attribute to it?

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#280

Post by gfdsgvbcd »

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…

today far right means anything that is not in alignment with the sanctioned corporate propaganda
Post reply on HN