This article seems either very naïve, or fairly disingenuous. Signal is not precariously installed on one box, and if that box goes down, the service dies. It is distributed. It’s running on many machines within AWS, and technologically, there’s no reason it couldn’t be in multiple regions of AWS, or even spread across multiple clouds (e.g. Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle, etc), to improve resiliency to outages. The only way in which it is “centralized” is that there’s one foundation in charge of the whole thing. Are there drawbacks to this? Yes. But self-hosted, distributed, mesh/relay chats also have drawbacks. Servers in the mesh go down, people don’t keep things updated, they don’t necessarily connect to every other instance creating disjointed pockets, etc.
Also, to say “we don’t need the internet” we need “mesh networks” is odd… The internet is a mesh. Hence “inter.” Anything else is just a smaller version of the same thing, again with some benefits and some drawbacks.
Fighting a (relatively) successful platform that champions privacy and security, seems like a bad thing to do, when those are the same primary goals of the platform you support. It would be better to discuss the merits and use cases of each, and beat the privacy and security drum together.
Ive been using Signal almost 10 years and this is the first time I recall it being down.
This writer, apparently: Signal is unreliable and we should abandon it.
It’s almost like there’s a concerted effort to discredit Signal /tinfoilhat
Signal is centralized, on the Signal foundation. It went down because Signal put all their eggs in one basket (data center). This is a (arguably) reasonable and common business decision/practice, and there’s no way to predict outages. However, all users of the Signal app are at the mercy of these business decisions made by the Signal foundation. Whether or not Signal is using a distributed architecture internally is irrelevant.
Compare Signal to Delta Chat, which uses standard Email servers as well as custom optimized chat relays to implement the chat network. That is truly decentralized. It doesn’t matter if all of AWS goes down, delta chat users will still be able to communicate using other email servers.
Yeah, I noted that they are centrally run by a single foundation, and that there are drawbacks to that. My argument isn’t that it is perfect, my argument is that it is good, and people promoting privacy and security shouldn’t be cutting it down. The FUD just keeps people using SMS and WhatsApp.
Well unfortunately you could never have a giant group chat in Delta currently due to the lack of moderation features. XMPP is better for that. I completely agree though that Delta (and Arcane Chat especially shoutout ADB great guy) has many of the privacy improvements that something like Signal ought to. It’s stupendous for handing limited connectivity, the bots and apps are awesome (better than Matrix by far) and unlike the more commonly promoted alternatives that are dependent on US state dept funding (Signal and Matrix), XMPP and Delta Chat use W3C internet standards
Although they are trying to get picked up by the EU who are ignoring them 😅 not much better than state dept. Delta is just so interestingg
Allows multiple (self)hosted relay servers, tor is a supported option, e2ee, no phone number necessary, allows phone calls.
I tried SimpleX but the UX is still lacking. Even worse, as I’ve recently learned, apparently the creator is an antivax conspiracy theorist maga/trump supporter. I cannot support that.
Maybe you need to be a little crazy to write software like that. But I agree, it is concerning because if they decide to slip in some bullshit into their build that aligns with their politics e.g an exploit to delete all files of a person that makes a joke they don’t approve of in their chat or to upload them to a server of their choice, or any other bullshit, then you’re fucked.
I prefer a conspiracy theorist than a billionaire.
The Lemmy devs happen to have pretty extreme opinions too iirc
I too would prefer a conspiracy theorist over a billionaire.
What I cannot do, because it goes against my ethics, is support a trump/maga nutjob.
Lemmy devs, also on the complete opposite end of maga wackos, are the reason I dropped lemmy and jerboa and moved to piefed/voyager.
We don’t have to support weirdos.
For social media yes definitely.
But when it comes to instant messaging where the purpose is to chat privately I’d prefer a developer that hates big government and the ability to chat with their friends about hate without any form of censorship, encryption goes both ways and is by definition non political. Systems are, methods of moderation is, but with a chat app it’s not about moderation it’s about secure communication.
Trump/maga is pro-big government, regardless of what they pretend they are, and more importantly they’re pro-making my friends dead. When the topic is sensitive communications that could lead to such a scenario, that association is very hard to ignore.
Exactly;
- Fascist thugs/ICE want to keep their group chats private for fear that the horrible things they might be sharing are reported/doxed/moderated
- Gay/Trans people are worried of being outed/beaten up/killed
- Pedos are worried of being caught with their disgusting material
- Sex workers are worried of stalkers/police/doxing
- Organised criminals need a way to organise crime securely (I don’t know 🤷♂️)
- Journalists need secure communication for their client safety and their own
Secure communication is not political.
Instead of throwing away the idea behind simplex I would say that building multiple clients, that use the same standard will make it more attractive. I haven’t found a better solution yet than simplex for distributed secure communication, and it would be a shame to let it go to waste.
Tor for example was built by the US government but that didn’t stop Snowden from using it.
I definitely agree that secure communication is not political, but my concern is more about that person’s ability to break the security or implement backdoors. I’m okay with simplex as a concept (warts and all), but I’d need a different client or at least someone else packaging the software so that they can check the commits before building. For most other people’s beliefs I’m not overly concerned with the maintainers trying to maliciously impose them, but people in the maga crowd have completely lost touch with reality, and giving someone like that the sole power to make a git commit and push a client update that can get people killed makes me too nervous long-term. We’ve seen them literally kill each other for not being hateful enough, and this is a problem that’s only getting worse.
Well good thing we have federation because I moved over to piefed (I was on lemmy.world and not on the .ml instance too). Though the move was influenced more on the features.
I have re-read their website twice, I might be too stupid to understand how it works.
Trying out the app first was enough to get it.
They’ve added a good onboarding with defaults for the beginner and easy options for the paranoid.
It’s a messaging app.
There’s only one way to add a contact. They either show you a QR code or they send you … there’s TWO ways to add a contact: They show you a QR code, send you a one time link or have a long-lived… there’s THREE ways to add a contact: You either show someone a one time QR code, send them a one time link or have a long-lived link to be added somewhere.
The server(s) defaults to a centralised service but you can host your own server too, if you want.
How have I not heard about this?
I 100% agree but then why is Matrix so fucking hard to use? The software seems crazy bloated/buggy and for some reason it’s a resource hog and all the clients look like Electron trash too.
If you took Element/Matrix and removed everything from it that is required for federation, then it would perform like Signal. Similarly if you removed everything related to end to end encryption it would become much more performant. The combo of federated + E2EE is just kinda hard, especially once you add big groups/rooms.
There are very minimalistic implementations of the matrix protocol that barely require any resources, but they miss many of the fancy features people want (calls/widgets/etc). Thats not to say its impossible to make a lightweight matrix client with all those features, but the Element company simply doesnt have the luxury of prioritizing that. They are busy at a much larger scale, with things like trying to get Governments and Companies to adopt Matrix to get stable funding and trying to deal with idiot lawmakers in the EU trying to ban E2EE…
At the end of the day the only really hard issue of most messenger solutions is scale. You can make an amazing messenger system, but if nobody uses it, then its useless. Element decided to set scale as their No. 1 priority and then improve functionality later on and frankly it has been working amazingly well.
Most medium to large universities in Germany run their own Matrix servers and this is the kind of thing that will inevitably get it into the hands of young people (i can attest to that because its only been a year and all my uni friends now use matrix and they are not nerds). This is how email came to be the defacto standard too. If you convince universities, the government and companies then you have already won long term.
Why are EU lawmakers trying to ban E2EE?
To “protect the children” under the umbrella of chat control. Element is pretty active as an advocacy group going to EU events as experts on interoperability and such.
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Matrix is inherently slow and unscalable
Thats literally what i wrote you dingus…
My apologies.
Matrix is a bit of a dumpster fire with a good idea, terrible execution. There was a blog post recently by someone pointing out all the problems, but don’t have the link.
I would avoid it.
XMPP is the way! I recently dove in as a replacement to matrix and have really enjoyed it.
I don’t get it, signal worked fine for me all day?
You’re lucky, it was down yesterday for a significant portion of users.
Yessah.
Is it possible to have a new decentralized internet?
it is, its just that there needs to be a universally agreed upon list of hardware/software combinations that everyone uses. people would need to volunteer as nodes. and information would need to be stored locally. you woild have to volunteer your own hardware to complete the node. likely for nothing in return, and you would also risk your data with each node as a user. depending on how its made.
kind of hard to explain to older generations or even younger ones. even more difficult to get corporations that have a monopoly on hardware like cellphones and computer components to cater to a movement that would restrict their access to our data.
people are working on it, its just a complex and difficult issue.
Isnt… Isnt that what we’re doing here? Matrix is the decentralized signal replacement
If uses the same Internet, right?
We only have the one so, yeah, obviously.
Besides, what does it even mean to have “another” internet? Even if you could build something entirely separate, all it takes is one person bridging the two and now you’re back to having one large network. You could use different protocols to transmit data but then you’re using the same underlying infrastructure which makes the concept of separation more philosophical than physical.
But also No, because we have to use it before/so that it becomes simple and easy to use.
I can’t even get anyone to use Signal. People just want to use SMS in the US.
I’ve gotten most of my family, friends, and several coworkers onto it, using a technique I call “refusing to communicate literally any other way”
I pressured all my family into using it.
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Using Matrix because it seems that’s the best option with users. But really I’d prefer distributed networks. SimpleX, Biar, Jami, or similar.
Session seems like a step away from that…
“We?” Þis isn’t !privacy, but I’ll bet a good percent of þis audience already uses someþing better - more anonymous, and less centralized.
Matrix is a bad suggestion as a replacement for Signal. Matrix is competent for group chat, like IRC; it sucks for IM. I tried drinking þat Kool-Aid for years, but it is really, really bad at IM.
but I’ll bet a good percent of this audience already uses something better
don’t you mean “Þis”? 😉
Oh god another one of you’uns.
It’s probably just me’un again.
What do you mean by “really, really bad at IM”?
