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Et Tu, Signal?

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#161

Post by arsome »

tonyjstark wrote: post #62

This article mirrors my feelings toward this announcement well. I spent a significant amount of time trying out different messaging apps and convincing my friends and family to move over from Telegram and WhatsApp. I used my reputation and their trust in my expertise. The whole blockchain industry is just too mixed with scams that I feel comfortable to have my non-tech relatives dealing with it. It's enough that I ha…

I've always hesitated to recommend Signal to people due to Moxie's attitude towards the more traditional security and privacy community where things like federation and open source are respected concepts. Tack this on the list and Signal just seems like a crazy thing to recommend now.

If they can get the onboarding process on Element to be just a little bit easier, maybe a phone number based default, I'll be dumping Signal in a heartbeat.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#162

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

robjan wrote: post #106
nlitened wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember that Skype, before it was bought and ruined by Microsoft, had P2P chat history sync that worked the following way: once two of your devices were online at the same time, they synchronized chat history among the two running instances flawlessly. It was super reliable and predictable. I am sure that Signal could implement the same peer-to-peer sync scheme with full end-to-end encryption without any secrecy c…

One of the features of the Signal protocol is that each message is signed with a different key so that if one message is somehow compromised it's still impossible to retrieve the others. I think this would break with P2P sync.

First people want full security, but when they encounter inconveniences that come with true full security, they start wanting convenience. What works best is a very very very good promise of security without e2ee, as shown by Telegram. It's users just know that Telegram is the most protected messages, and they are happy with it's advanced features.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#163

Post by psychlops »

mikece wrote: post #61

I'm a little surprised that nobody is mentioning that any kind of blockchain payment system creates a permanent, public ledger. One US Attorney called Bitcoin's blockchain "prosecution futures" as it's only a matter of time before the sender/receiver addresses for transactions are correlated with unique individuals. This permanent, public record of a transaction between a Signal account and another user or a service…

While I like your line of thought and agree that pairing meta information from messages and financial transaction might weaken anonymity, the trajectory of cryptocurrency development (like zk-SNARKS) will make this incredibly difficult.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#164

Post by PragmaticPulp »

jerry1979 wrote: post #96

edit I should have prefaced my comment with the fact that I find it odd that people got caught by surprise when the inventor of a cryptographically focused mobile messaging app integrated his cryptographically focused payment system which he unambiguously called mobile coin. Mobilecoin has the same design principles as Signal insofar as it uses sgx enclaves to do its crypto work. While I would not want to rely on enc…

> Also, on a speculative basis and assuming no colossal foul-ups, it appears to me that signal+mob want to distribute the mobile coins to artists and community groups.

When the company holds 85% of the pre-mined coins, they’re looking for any excuse to distract from that fact. The claim that they might give some token amount to artists and communities in the future is a distraction. The CEO of MobileCoin was in HN threads yesterday spamming the link the site where you could buy MobileCoins directly from them.

This is a clear as day pump and dump scheme. Don’t let yourself be distracted by hints of potential future charity. They could give those tokens to charities right now, but they won’t because they would just be sold off and push the price down. Instead they’re spreading claims of future donations so they can cash in on price appreciation without downward selling pressure.

They only want people buying MobileCoin, not selling it. That’s the only way the founders get rich.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#165

Post by kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #151
ElectricMind wrote: post #134

I don't understand what all the all fuss about. How much money people have really that you need 100 payment apps to send money on top of existing banks? I just wise/transferwise for overseas transfer other than that my bank. You think I am poor minority and don't care about payment drama?

It’s not really about payments. The scam is to create a new altcoin, give most of the altcoin supply to the founders, then try to force as many people as possible to use the altcoin by deploying it as part of something popular like Signal. Now if anyone wants to use Signal’s money transfer feature, they have to buy MOB. The CEO of MobileCoin was in the threads yesterday pushing the website where they were selling MOB…

Yes exactly this is just another ICO-like pump and dump.

There is absolutely no reason to not use Ethereum for this, or at worst ERC-20 coin.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#166

Post by viro »

skrowl wrote: post #104
simias wrote: post #20

I definitely agree with the article that it felt a bit like a betrayal. I've pushed some friends and family to use it over Telegram despite significant usability issue, and now I see that instead of implementing some IMO basic features like proper message sync and easy backup when you get a new phone, they prefer to implement a... micropayment system? Based on some niche altcoin which doesn't even exist on mainstream…

Telegram is just so much more usable than Signal. The perceived advantage of Signal over Telegram is LITERALLY not having an option for a cloud-synced chat and ONLY having end to end encrypted chats. That's all. You give up of usability to get that advantage. Explain to your mom why she has to give up Telegram to get basically the same functionality as Telegram secret chats. Signals crypto is used by Facebook and was…

Most non profit work in the US is somewhat funded by the US government via grants and crap ... 80% to be exact.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#167

Post by amarant »

verytrivial wrote: post #49

Yeah ... well the update that includes MOB will be the uninstall event trigger for me. I remember skimming that article from 2018 before I'd switched myself and all my friends (the shame!) to Signal and counted it as a negative for that platforms reputation. I guess my honeymoon is over. On to the next chat platform!

May I recommend something based on matrix? If you keep getting upset by companies changing their product, hosting it yourself is pretty much your only option.

(Apart from hopping from startup to startup every 3 months I guess)

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#168

Post by stevespang »

It's all about the money . . . as is so much of life.

"The sad part of this entire project is that it launched in the UK—likely because it would be blatantly illegal in the United States—where here retail transfers are ubiquitous, instant, and cheap".

You can be sure once the SEC identifies US users summons will be issued to Signal leaders on charges of evading US laws regarding crypto, many have occurred lately, Telegram of note.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#170

Post by acdha »

stryan wrote: post #133
everdrive wrote: post #81

I'm afraid we'll always be jumping to new apps. If we jump ship from Signal to Matrix, as some people suggest, then I fear that in 2-5 years, Matrix will morph into something unacceptable, just as Signal has.

Matrix is an open, federated protocol so something like this can't happen. Worst that could happen is bad stuff happens to Element (the flagship client) at which point people can either fork it or simply use another client.

This assumes that there’s enough volunteer capacity to maintain it and that federation remains open despite business incentives to close it or the maintenance costs (i.e. spam).

That could be true but the track record hasn’t been good and it definitely won’t happen without a concerted effort to support it.

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