Post AzdUxBDYaXnqbIs6VM by xyhhx@nso.group
(DIR) More posts by xyhhx@nso.group
(DIR) Post #AzdHHlu8UzVuoeiEUa by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:40:08Z
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š£THREAD: Itās surprising to me that so many people were surprised to learn that Signal runs partly on AWS (something we can do because we use encryption to make sure no one but youānot AWS, not Signal, not anyoneācan access your comms). Itās also concerning. 1/
(DIR) Post #AzdHHni9mV7UQ57h68 by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:40:18Z
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Concerning, bc it indicates that the extent of the concentration of power in the hands of a few hyperscalers is way less widely understood than Iād assumed. Which bodes poorly for our ability to craft reality-based strategies capable of contesting this concentration & solving the real problem. 2/
(DIR) Post #AzdHHp1Kug3WTr6WdE by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:40:29Z
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The question isnāt "why does Signal use AWS?" Itās to look at the infrastructural requirements of any global, real-time, mass comms platform and ask how it is that we got to a place where thereās no realistic alternative to AWS and the other hyperscalers. 3/
(DIR) Post #AzdHHpw3VnQTJldp2W by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:40:43Z
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Running a low-latency platform for instant comms capable of carrying millions of concurrent audio/video calls requires a pre-built, planet-spanning network of compute, storage and edge presence that requires constant maintenance, significant electricity and persistent attention and monitoring. 4/
(DIR) Post #AzdHHqloPMpHuHr9iC by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:40:52Z
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Instant messaging demands near-zero latency. Voice and video in particular require complex global signaling & regional relays to manage jitter and packet loss. These are things that AWS, Azure, and GCP provide at global scale that, practically speaking, others (in the western context) donāt. 5/
(DIR) Post #AzdHHrQZxnR5wiviFs by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:41:02Z
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This isn't ā'renting a server.' It's leasing access to a whole sprawling, capital-intensive, technically-capable system that must be just as available in Cairo as in Capetown, just as functional in Bangkok as Berlin. Particularly given the high stakes use cases of many who rely on Signal. 6/
(DIR) Post #AzdHHsISjSXOdq8kF6 by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:41:13Z
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Such infrastructure costs billions and billions of dollars to provision and maintain, and itās highly depreciable. In the case of the hyperscalers, the staggering cost is cross-subsidized by other businessesāthemselves also massive platforms with significant lockin. 7/
(DIR) Post #AzdHHtKGuDZxpjzhhY by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:41:21Z
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Meaning that infrastructure like AWS is not something that Signal, or almost anyone else, could afford to just āspin up.ā Which is why nearly everyone that manages a real-time serviceāfrom Signal, to X, to Palantir, to Mastodonārely at least in part on services provisioned by these companies. 8/
(DIR) Post #AzdHHuJFFWLssqWOjw by troed@swecyb.com
2025-10-27T10:53:23Z
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@Mer__edith Agree - if you want to run your service centralized. Neither my Mastodon nor my Matrix-server need anything but my own self-hosting. Of course they won't handle billions of concurrent customers - but a few tens of thousands similar to mine will. Together. I simply don't think Signal being centralized is a good thing. It's your choice, but alternatives do exist and those do not need hyperscalers.
(DIR) Post #AzdHHv2yVUvpAfuv1E by _calmdowndear@mastodon.social
2025-10-27T11:00:38Z
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@troed @Mer__edith I might be missing your point but there does need to be A choice that doesn't require self-hosting; because I promise you my parents are not about to learn to run a Signal-like service for themselves, and I don't want to have to do it for them.Otherwise services like WhatsApp exist, and they just work, so they'll just use that. Which means I have to use it too. The value of a messaging app is (IMO) ENTIRELY derived from who you know on it so it has to be easy to adopt.
(DIR) Post #AzdHHvjVxKxXIbotKC by Adam@social.lein.us
2025-10-27T11:08:05Z
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@_calmdowndear @troed @Mer__edith Do your parents have email... which is required to adopt when you buy any smartphone, laptop, tablet, etc... and has scaled to a larger user base than any other electronic messaging service ever?
(DIR) Post #AzdHI33GkHv7zu7GaW by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:41:29Z
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But even if Signal had the billions needed to recreate AWS, itās not just about money. The talent to run these systems is rare & concentrated. The expertise, the tooling, the playbooks, the very language of modern SRE came out of these hyperscalers, and is now synonymous with 'the cloud.' 9/
(DIR) Post #AzdHIBUVMuSaAgv89Q by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:41:37Z
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o, yes, Signal runs on AWS. It also runs on your phone, which runs on iOS (Apple) or Android (Google). And on Dekstop, via Windows (Microsoft). Each of these presents similar dependencies on large entrenched tech companies, and concomitant barriers and risks. 10/
(DIR) Post #AzdHIJWDWQaD4Jmbvk by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:41:46Z
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In short, the problem here is not that Signal āchoseā to run on AWS. The problem is the concentration of power in the infrastructure space that means there isnāt really another choice: the entire stack, practically speaking, is owned by 3-4 players. 11/
(DIR) Post #AzdHIRQq6J2DbxKQeu by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:41:55Z
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So, Signal does what we can to provide a service w integrity in the concentrated ecosystem we're working in. We protect your comms w end-to-end encryption, so that we can use AWS and others as a highway across which to send Signal data in ways that donāt let AWS, or anyone else, gain access. 12/
(DIR) Post #AzdHIZdBcHfH2ZAP0y by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:42:04Z
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To conclude: my silver lining hope is that AWS going down can be a learning moment, in which the risks of concentrating the nervous system of our world in the hands of a few players become very clear. And that this can help us craft ways of undoing this concentration and creating real choice ā¤ļø 13/
(DIR) Post #AzdIZ5VixMAyV77BEO by wjmaggos@liberal.city
2025-10-27T11:22:25Z
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@Mer__edith looking at your replies to replies here that seem to make sense to me (especially re decentralization), you're telling them they don't know what they are talking about. well I definitely don't.like with debates re #ATproto and #ActivityPub, I have thoughts but I know that we really need to see the experts debate each other somehow. I don't think it happens enough. so I'd say the same re #signal and #matrix etc.
(DIR) Post #AzdJtkQyc6Z1AVJFrM by Mer__edith@mastodon.world
2025-10-27T10:55:56Z
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@troed I don't think you have a clear understanding of this space, but I hope you have a good time digging in and learning more.
(DIR) Post #AzdJtlj5oEeJAynEjg by troed@swecyb.com
2025-10-27T11:23:39Z
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@Mer__edith Thanks for your condescending reply. I used to manage global SaaS within fintech with nodes in GCP, AWS and Azure and on multiple different continents.
(DIR) Post #AzdJtmjq2wq8Ja9LXM by fiery@snac.bsd.cafe
2025-10-27T11:36:49Z
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@troed@swecyb.com Those explanations about how something like Signal is not possible or pragmatic without AWS or the other big players felt like gaslighting and the result is that I no longer trust Signal. Going as far as suggesting "mastodon" (meaning actually the fediverse) also requires AWS is disingenuous at best and malicious at worst, specially considering the CEO was using the fediverse to communicate about the Signal outage as it was happening. Arguing that you need to rely on Android (Google), iOS (Apple) or Windows (MS) to run the client is straight lying as one can use the desktop version to run on Linux and requiring a mobile app to sign up is a choice Signal did, a problem of their own making. Yes I know there is a lot of nuance but the end result is the same: trust has been lost.
(DIR) Post #AzdKMM6m8SU67ZVAfI by xyhhx@nso.group
2025-10-27T11:42:29Z
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@wjmaggos meredith gets a lot of replies that could be answered with a little bit of research or could be answered by anybody, which may explain the short replies; but i can try to answer you @Mer__edith
(DIR) Post #AzdKdeyNFcK1YEp72W by Ra@mstdn.social
2025-10-27T11:45:32Z
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@wjmaggos @Mer__edith This is perhaps a thing @404mediaco could do, a writeup Q&A or a documentary; a long form debate between CTOs of selected messaging services.
(DIR) Post #AzdQKEYfpoarqovFuS by _calmdowndear@mastodon.social
2025-10-27T11:13:13Z
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@Adam absolutely they have email.But if email was able to completely replace all messaging apps then why are there still so many messaging apps? It's almost as if the use case and user experience of email are not the same or something.In my case, I'm an iPhone user with IMAP email so email is not instant, which is a worse experience than a messaging service like Signal/WhatsApp.
(DIR) Post #AzdQKGCliEGAxSgn2m by Adam@social.lein.us
2025-10-27T12:49:36Z
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@_calmdowndear User experience is not a part of the protocol specifications. You can make/install any user experience you want without segregating the entire system like you have to do with Signal. (Example: Spike Mail for iPhone.) The reason there are so many messaging apps is because so many businesses want to take control of and profit off of the users. You can't do that with open protocols. RE use cases, "send messages to people" is almost the same as "send messages to people"
(DIR) Post #AzdTHl3wpMDbeh3tJo by realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social
2025-10-27T13:22:49Z
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@Mer__edith Yeah and this is why when there's something with a use case similar to what #Signal is intended for, I always ask if it's #P2P.
(DIR) Post #AzdUxBDYaXnqbIs6VM by xyhhx@nso.group
2025-10-27T11:50:26Z
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@soop noooo šš@wjmaggos @Mer__edith
(DIR) Post #AzdUxCWNk2SIdygeUC by wjmaggos@liberal.city
2025-10-27T13:41:12Z
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@xyhhx @soop @Mer__edith I appreciate your replies and am annoyed at the trolls replying to you.but there's no substitute for knowledgeable people on different sides going back and forth on a subject, in good faith. hopefully not just in text, with questions and fair moderators.
(DIR) Post #AzdVWoj9gUczGze1wW by xyhhx@nso.group
2025-10-27T13:47:16Z
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@wjmaggos i don't mind a little trolling š i thought it was funni @soop @Mer__edith
(DIR) Post #Azdga4Oaz8cUESmWQq by realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social
2025-10-27T15:51:48Z
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@fiery @troed #AWS *is* necessary if you're trying to make a large-scale centralized system, no? There aren't a lot of alternatives to that when we're talking about the level of scale that #Signal operates at.
(DIR) Post #AzdkB343CJl6gEUpIe by fiery@snac.bsd.cafe
2025-10-27T16:29:39Z
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@realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social @fiery Not only aws is not required to build a large scale centralized system but Signal is also is not necessarily required to be centralized.
(DIR) Post #AzdkB44RSLfLnjgeY4 by realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social
2025-10-27T16:32:04Z
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@fiery @Mer__edith Interesting. I'm not aware of how many #AWS competitors there are so maybe I'm wrong.That said, I don't disagree with you that #Signal shouldn't be centralized, it's one of the reasons I don't think I've ever used it.
(DIR) Post #Azdkt7ssdfiyN1HzpA by fiery@snac.bsd.cafe
2025-10-27T16:39:28Z
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@realcaseyrollins@noauthority.social @fiery Aws is not doing magic. Your compute still have to run on physical machines and the ones they have are not special. They also do not have to sit on Bezo's datacenter for large scale systems to work. Now if you are talking about their distributed systems' architecture, now it is not about centralized systems anymore, is it? Cloud is just a magic word that means other people's computers.
(DIR) Post #Azdmq4dwQqY7MGySA4 by khm@hj.9fs.net
2025-10-27T16:42:46Z
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this post in particular is utter horse shit
(DIR) Post #AzdpLwfVohz9ng2AJE by redstarfish@freesoftwareextremist.com
2025-10-27T17:30:04.794976Z
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@xerz All I see in those posts are corporate talk.
(DIR) Post #AzdycGE3lpg0g1329I by midway@soapbox.midwaytrades.com
2025-10-27T18:38:10.671618Z
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There certainly are cloud competitors to AWS. How easy it would be to use them would depend on what services Signal uses in AWS. Some will have equivalents, some may not. AWS, being around for so long has a boatload of services and itās not in their best interest to make them easily movable. But I absolutely get why something like Signal would use a cloud provider. Could it be done entirely on-prem? Quite probably. However could they do it within a business model that would allow the scale of users to use it as they have today without charging significant fees to use it? I highly doubt it. This would hold true for anyone wanting to build a service like theirs that would operate on the their scale. The bandwidth and other infrastructure would be immense and super expensive to buy and maintain. The only folks able to provide that would be big telco, tech companies.Could it be all decentralized ala the Fediverse? Sure and such services exist. But, much like the Fediverse, getting user adoption would be much more difficult and tour audience would be those tech savvy enough to use whatās already out there. I mean, for example, Matrix/Element exists. Quite secure, very decentralized. But itās not for the general public.
(DIR) Post #AzdycHJ3kjGo1oOXa4 by fiery@snac.bsd.cafe
2025-10-27T19:13:15Z
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@midway@soapbox.midwaytrades.com You are comparing "Cloud" (in this context actually meaning PaaS) to owning your own datacenter as if they were the only options possible, but there is a whole world of options and combinations of options that are not either of these two extremes. I keep getting surprised that so many people actually believe that owning your own datacenter and equipments is the only alternative to so-called "cloud" providers.
(DIR) Post #Aze1UFo5kAIovJm7qy by Suzu@detroitriotcity.com
2025-10-27T19:46:03.362558Z
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@fiery @midway exactly.You could, for instance, just not save any data at all, ever. That way you won't need neither the cloud nor owning your own infra.
(DIR) Post #AzfG2SFvYf5VtZxQK8 by seymour@mastodon.mapf.net
2025-10-28T10:03:28Z
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@wjmaggos @Mer__edith I don't understand the whole discussion. There are plenty of very good decentralized alternatives to #signal . If you want to use a messenger with centralized structures, Signal is a good choice. If you want decentralization, then just choose a different messenger. š¤·š¼āāļø The good thing is that you can make the choice yourself. š #DeltaChat #SimpleX #SimpleXchat
(DIR) Post #AzfkljNPkP4aeOxsdE by midway@soapbox.midwaytrades.com
2025-10-28T00:59:28.500808Z
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I didn't mean to put it that way. I mean peer-to-peer is certainly a thing. And we have systems that do that....and they are WAY too complex and cumbersome for the average user to use...see Matrix as a classic example. Quite secure, very decentralized, but not simple enough for most people to use. Heck, even here on the Fediverse, the user base is quite limited because of the decentralized nature is just too much for most folks to grasp..throw real privacy and zero trust encryption on top of it and your app will never take off. Therefore, if you actually want users, you're going to have some amount of centralization. That means you need to run on something, either your own gear or someone else's. And at the scale that Signal wants to run, cloud makes sense not just for compute and services, but also the sheer amount of bandwidth needed to process the amount of data they want to send.Can it be done a different way? Sure. Will those methods scale to the reach the average user? I seriously doubt it.
(DIR) Post #Azfklkse9leNJYaKx6 by fiery@snac.bsd.cafe
2025-10-28T15:47:23Z
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@midway@soapbox.midwaytrades.com Now you are talking about something else completely. You are making the point that centralization somehow improves UX. You'd have to substantiate that better.