271–280 of 283 posts
Not being funny, but when Signal gets enough users, what’s stopping them relenting on their promises of privacy and punting the company to Facebook just like what happened with WhatsApp? It would almost be a good business plan.
Great question! Signal is owned by a nonprofit organization that cannot legally be sold to a for-profit organization.
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I can be wrong, but on Telegram E2E is not default. Those are used only in 'secret chats', which I believe are not recoverable. So you can use regular texting for everything you don't care much about, like sending youtube videos and memes to your friends, and use the secret chat to things that re more sensitive. That's great for most people that currently use Whatsapp
How is that great? On whatsapp everything you do is E2E by default.
* Whatsapp is closed source, so you can't tell if the encryption is true anyway (what if they are transmitting your private key?). Telegram has open source implementation and API.
* Facebook will not have your metadata. The subject of these events is basically FB having too much of data about you.
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Signal isn't meant to be a mainstream one-size-fits-all, even tptacek admits as much: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22371316 He actually seemed annoyed that everyone insisted on using it for everything :-) If you need bulletproof cryptographically verifiable encryption - use Signal. If one wants to plan dinner, use whatever fits your bill. (And if in addition to the same supposedly bulletproof encryption as Si…
The downside of that attitude is that if a chat program is only used for what governments consider subversive activities then it will be targeted to be shutdown. It is much better to have a general-purpose, secure chat program that IS mainstream making it more difficult for oppressive regimes to target.
I don't get why I or anybody should switch to Signal. It's not a good app.
That's funny. People use Whatsapp because outside US and Asia is the worldwide de facto standard for messaging. The new TOS does not state that Whatsapp is going to read your messages, actually even the non-techo-savvy population in Europe knows that Whatsapp uses end-to-end encryption (they just know that "it cannot be intercepted"), so they use it for good reasons, and will continue to do so, because 99% of people…
> So it's not going to happen that there is a mass move outside of Whatsapp anytime soon. I (sadly) agree with you on this. (Ciao Salvatore) I'm surprised you're being downvoted, is it possibly because of the reference to the current POTUS being "silenced" on Twitter (despite you later state that you're anti-Trump)? Anyway, I believe you're incorrect on your stance on the new TOS, but I'm studying it more now because…
About the TOS, to say the final word is impossible because the TOS is written in a very obscure way. But I don't believe they will, at the same time, keep implementing end-to-end encryption and, at the same time, have a TOS that states they can read your messages. Reading your messages would be completely unacceptable: then yes many would switch. IMHO it's just that lawyers tend to fail big time at their work, and that this will get clarified soon.
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The downside of that attitude is that if a chat program is only used for what governments consider subversive activities then it will be targeted to be shutdown. It is much better to have a general-purpose, secure chat program that IS mainstream making it more difficult for oppressive regimes to target.
Or we can use a number of different programs for different purposes like I do: - exchanging passwords? encrypted mail, Signal or something else E2E-encrypted - work: whatever work says. Mostly slack. - discussions with friends and family: Telegram - online shouting competitions: twitter - showing off: Instagram - telling Facebook who my friends are and how often I talk to them: WhatsApp ;-)
- work: Matrix
- discussions with friends and family: Matrix
- online shouting competitions: twitter
- showing off: Instagram
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Or we can use a number of different programs for different purposes like I do: - exchanging passwords? encrypted mail, Signal or something else E2E-encrypted - work: whatever work says. Mostly slack. - discussions with friends and family: Telegram - online shouting competitions: twitter - showing off: Instagram - telling Facebook who my friends are and how often I talk to them: WhatsApp ;-)
- exchanging passwords? Matrix - work: Matrix - discussions with friends and family: Matrix - online shouting competitions: twitter - showing off: Instagram
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I agree: if say the 3 nodes used different implementations, this would basically be an ideal situation. I don't know about Mastodon's case, but in Matrix the extremely low popularity of alternative servers is kind of a big roadblock.
> in Matrix the extremely low popularity of alternative servers is kind of a big roadblock. This sounds like the opposite of the point I was making. What is this a roadblock to?
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I can be wrong, but on Telegram E2E is not default. Those are used only in 'secret chats', which I believe are not recoverable. So you can use regular texting for everything you don't care much about, like sending youtube videos and memes to your friends, and use the secret chat to things that re more sensitive. That's great for most people that currently use Whatsapp
How is that great? On whatsapp everything you do is E2E by default.
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> the Signal team fundamentally does not value chat history the same way a lot of people do This is the core problem as why many projects don't get mainstream. They have 2 options: they can focus on what they think is a priority, or on what the public thinks is a priority. I'm not saying Signal is wrong on doing what they are doing, as they are being successful among some niches (i.e: tech). But to grab Whatsapp user…
Telegram is really good for this, in my experience, and similar to Signal. But you're right, Signal is designed for secure communication between parties. Allowing messages to be exported or archived should at worst leave only your own messages (and remove all others including media) and at best not exist at all. Sure, let me just single handedly backup our conversation and send it to the HK police...
I doubt my mom will send my 'good morning', 'good night' and 'love you' to the HK police.
If you are communicating with people you don't know/trust, then yeah, you want expiring messages that are not exportable