[HN Gopher] Signal increased limits for group calls
___________________________________________________________________
Signal increased limits for group calls
Author : eddieoz
Score : 91 points
Date : 2021-01-12 13:41 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| newscracker wrote:
| Flagging this for an editorialized title, which is against the HN
| Guidelines for posts like this where a change in title is not
| required.
|
| The tweet says that Signal group calling limit has been raised
| from 5 to 8 and it continues to say (pun intended) that now you
| can call it even. I think it's good to have a limit of 8 as
| opposed to 5, but it'd be better to bump this to double it
| further to cover almost everyone's needs, though that'd require a
| lot more effort.
|
| But Signal, as observed over the years, could do better by
| focusing on many other features that users and potential
| switchers consider critical.
| kjakm wrote:
| It's really interesting to see the things people want:
|
| 1. Stickers
|
| 2. Status
|
| 3. Stories
|
| 4. Chat wallpapers
|
| 5. etc.
|
| I guess it shows the different ways people use chat apps but I
| don't see any use case for status or understand why people want
| stories in yet another app. I'm sure they have their reasons
| though. Quite an interesting thread of requests.
| Loic wrote:
| The status is definitely something people using WhatsApp are
| missing on Signal. This is a very easy, low engagement, no
| pressure way to publish news to friends and family.
|
| What I really like about it is that you are not forced to look
| at the status of people, you as a consumer of the published
| status retrieve/pull them only when you want.
| kjakm wrote:
| Interesting. I wonder if it's a regional thing. Not one of my
| contacts or any age group uses statuses. They're left on
| default. The last time I remember setting a chat status was
| using MSN as a teenager to share my favourite song.
|
| Mind sharing an example of something you've used it for?
| Ayesh wrote:
| Not OP, but I use WhatsApp statuses frequently. You can set
| privacy settings down to individual people.
|
| Most of my statuses are photos I take from my phone, when
| I'm out cycling, making some food, or even a link to an
| article in find interesting. I like that they are removed
| after 24 hours, and no pressure to edit the photos beyond
| simple filters. No pressure like when you post a photo on
| Instagram.
| afuchs wrote:
| For anyone who might be confused: WhatsApp's statuses are
| similar to SnapChat/Instagram stories and Twitter fleets.
| This is different than the online/away/etc status feature
| in older chat apps that was text only and usually
| persisted until it was changed to something else
| Loic wrote:
| Sorry for the confusion, I was thinking about the pictures
| one can share as "status", not the status string which
| effectively is not used at all around me (I am in Germany).
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Perhaps I'm stating the obvious but the people saying that are
| all Twitter users.
| eddieoz wrote:
| They announced 'about', and idk if it will be their 1st version
| of status. IMO it is about the first steps to become a social
| network.
| Spivak wrote:
| 1. Stickers are cute. They're more enjoyable ways to send
| canned responses and reactions.
|
| 2. Having had them for so long chats without status feel weird
| now. They turn chat from sending letters into conversations.
| It's the difference between leaving a note on someone's desk
| and talking to someone face-to-face.
|
| 3. Stories are nice for when you want to be like "hey this
| happened" or "look at this cool thing" but don't want to spam
| your friends with notifications.
|
| 4. I hate staring at the same background all the time. I change
| them for the season, things I'm into at the moment, holidays.
| Same with my laptop wallpaper.
| faitswulff wrote:
| I still don't understand the appeal of stories.
| Spivak wrote:
| Stories are a visual version of Tweets as they were at the
| very beginning of Twitter. You want to share something
| interesting that happened in your life with your friends but
| it's not important enough to warrant a notification. So you
| post it as a story which are semi-ephemeral and only seen by
| people who are specifically looking for them.
| avra wrote:
| Stories are implemented to keep the user engaged. I think the
| fact that people are even asking for them in other apps could
| be interpreted as clearly working or even as being addictive.
| randomsearch wrote:
| Agreed, for the average adult I would not have prioritised
| these features, which just shows how easy it is to be out of
| touch.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| Interoperability/Federation, please
|
| A walled garden has no long term future
| hprotagonist wrote:
| _staring in iMessage blue text superiority_
|
| /s
| ruined wrote:
| i'm an advocate and adopter of federation in general, but i
| agree with signal's choice to decline federation.
|
| signal is dedicated to one purpose, and that's accessible e2e
| crypted chat.
|
| federation and interoperability severely complicates
| onboarding. if you have ever tried to get a "normal person" to
| use something like mastodon, you understand this risk.
| federation would also exacerbate spam. moderation is not
| possible in an e2e private messaging app, and spam is extremely
| user-hostile, so it's not an acceptable risk. allowing third-
| party and forked clients introduces a host of problems
| including automated client behavior that's undesirable in
| personal communication, malicious client behavior that users
| may be unaware of, and abandoned clients that lag behind
| upstream.
|
| federated crypto chat exists. if you want that, go use it. if
| federation is really necessary for your use-case, you will be
| able to convince the people you are working with to come along.
| yes, it is the future. but socially, we're just not there yet,
| and a one-size-fits-most solution is important right now.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| The success of iMessage and the entire Apple ecosystem in the
| US proves that a walled garden is exactly what people trust and
| want and are willing to pay handsomely for the privilege of
| being part of one.
|
| Interoperability/Federation is something the average user
| doesn't understand and won't even bother too as long as their
| basic needs are already comfortably fulfilled.
|
| Seriously, get out of the tech bubble for a while and see that
| most people have no idea what the brand of their computer is or
| what their OS is called and they don't even care. They just
| want to click the _internet icon_ and start browsing memes,
| play candy crush or watch youtube.
|
| Even my young friends who are mechanical/civil engineers and
| make good money don't see any issue in having personal
| information in the hands of Facebook and Google controlled
| services or any other free on-line services who make a living
| by monetizing your personal data. They either think people are
| over-reacting about this, as like, if they were truly evil, the
| gov. would shut them down or for them it's just too much
| friction to bother readjusting their lifestyle to something
| else and prefer the comfort provided by these companies.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| Imagine only being able to
|
| - email to the same email provider
|
| - phone only to the same telco provider
|
| - access a website through a dedicated browser
|
| - ...
|
| Still don't understand and bother?
| rglullis wrote:
| This a false dichotomy. There is nothing about
| interoperable/federated systems that make it harder for
| people to fulfill their needs. Or have we already forgot how
| to make a phone call (interoperable) or send an email
| (federated) in less than a generation?
| Ayesh wrote:
| I think this is quite true. Even with federated/distributed
| architecture like web and email, many of the emails are on
| Google Apps (or whatever they call it these days), Office
| 365, or a few other services. Many web sites are on
| WordPress.com, GitHub pages, or platforms like AWS or GCP.
| legacynl wrote:
| >The success of iMessage and the entire Apple ecosystem in
| the US proves that a walled garden is exactly what people
| trust and want and are willing to pay handsomely for the
| privilege of being part of one.
|
| People don't care about open, closed or whatever. They care
| about being able to send a message to others. If only 10 % of
| your friends are on signal, but 100% are on iMessage, most
| will just use iMessage.
|
| So the success of iMessage (and the apple stonewall) is
| arguably just the success of the iPhone.
|
| > Seriously, get out of the tech bubble for a while and see
| that most people have no idea what computer brand they have
| or what their OS is called and they don't even care. They
| just want to click the internet icon and start browsing
| memes, play candy crush or watch youtube.
|
| You're basically making exactly my point. They don't care,
| they want to be able to browse, message, play, watch stuff,
| etc. They also wouldn't care if their messaging app would
| support different protocols, as long as they're just able to
| easily message their friends.
|
| > Interoperability/Federation is something the average user
| doesn't understand and won't even bother too as long as their
| basic needs are already comfortably fulfilled.
|
| This is why it would be incredibly helpful for a big app to
| start supporting different protocols. If signal becomes THE
| app for connecting with friends (no matter if they use icq,
| irc, email, jabber, etc), it might come to a point where
| people rather use Signal, because that's the app that can
| reach ALL your friends.
|
| At this point, iMessage would either die, or also start to
| support open protocols. (Or more likely: Apple will ban
| messaging apps from the app-store)
| pseudalopex wrote:
| You think the average user doesn't understand email?
| eddieoz wrote:
| Integration to Matrix.org... I think we could have a very
| interesting outcome.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Bit of a workaround and I don't know how well it works in
| practice, but: https://matrix.org/bridges/#signal
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| I think that has been made very clear its not going to happen
| https://matrix.org/blog/2020/01/02/on-privacy-versus-freedom
|
| Moxie has made it known on several occasions he doesnt
| believe decentralization is the right approach
| eddieoz wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up.
|
| I just read both (Moxie and Matrix.org) and I will stay
| with Matrix response.
|
| I understand Moxie points and the main one is about speed,
| as I understood. But, as Matthew Hodgson pointed out: the
| governance of decentralisation is hard, but not impossible.
|
| So, in the end, Signal moves are driven by the market. And,
| IMO, sometimes it can be dangerous.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Signal moves are driven by Moxie. He is the driving force
| behind it. For those of us who have been using Signal
| before it got famous, there have been trying times in the
| past regarding the direction.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm not as knowledgeable about federation and decentralized
| systems, but I understand one of the biggest drawbacks is
| keeping everyone running on the same version. Quoting from
| the article you linked
|
| > to elaborate his thoughts on why he feels he "no longer
| believes that it is possible to build a _competitive_
| federated messenger at all."
|
| I think competitive is the key word here. Signal has moved
| fast in the last year, especially in the last few months. I
| can't imagine that happening on a federated system.
|
| The other point is it isn't as trivial to join a federated
| system or create your own node. Signal? Download app and
| you're good to go. Matrix? Well who has a node? Where are
| we going? How do I set one up?
|
| Personally I'll be happy with a bridge (like Matrix wants)
| when Signal is fully featured (I'd argue it is almost
| there. Just a few things like usernames, video scaling,
| channels, etc). But I couldn't imagine the mass adoption
| and moving at the speed they did (are) with a federated
| system. Even email didn't take off until Yahoo and Hotmail.
| Pretty much every federated system people are mentioning
| here didn't gain mass adoption until there was a large
| provider. Which has gone to such a point that rolling your
| own email now is difficult and you'll have a harder time
| avoiding all the spam. So even these examples have moved
| more towards centralization, if not at least a hybrid.
|
| So what am I missing here? What's the big killer feature of
| federation that makes things better and proven?
| [deleted]
| eddieoz wrote:
| Do they really need to be like whatsapp for massive adoption?
| jedimastert wrote:
| Why not?
| edeion wrote:
| As far as I understand, the point of Signal's current move is
| to take advantage of the huge number of people who (for once)
| got interested in moving away from WhatsApp.
|
| Then, I suspect there could be an implicit specific criticism
| underlying your comment but I don't get it.
| eddieoz wrote:
| Yes, you are correct.
|
| From the infosec point-of-view, I believe simpler is better.
| Adding extra complexity always opens the door for issues
| which were not presented before, in the core product and core
| functionality.
|
| From the business perspective, I understand it is a step to
| get the new demand opportunity.
| Reedx wrote:
| Serious question to those cheering on the deplatforming power of
| the big tech monopolies:
|
| Are you still going to be onboard when Signal is banned from the
| App stores? How about when backdoors are required?
|
| Bear in mind, Signal has _no_ moderation - that 's baked into the
| product.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| From a user perspective, I am not sure "App Stores" or the
| leverage used to create them was ever a good thing. As a user,
| if a hardware vendor can choose to "ban" users from running
| certain software (after they have paid for the hardware), I do
| not see that as progressive. Maybe it is a clever "business
| model" but as a user I like to choose software based on
| personal preferences rather than delegate the process to
| someone else, e.g., a trillion dollar company.
| hairofadog wrote:
| I'll bite, but then I have a serious question for you.
|
| I'm definitely not cheering on deplatforming - I think it's
| fraught with problems - but I do think there's a grave danger
| being posed by extremists plotting violent attacks using these
| platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Parler) _right now_. It 's
| complicated! Here are some of my thoughts on the issue (which
| may conflict or have logical inconsistencies - I'm just a
| person trying to think through this stuff, and I don't have the
| answers).
|
| - Private conversations should be private, always, and there
| should be no back doors, ever. The only regulations regarding
| private conversations should be to _strengthen_ them. I think
| it 's okay for law enforcement to try to crack those private
| conversations, but I am vehemently against requiring a "secure
| back door" that (supposedly) only the government has access to,
| or laws preventing tech companies attempting to make
| uncrackable encryption.
|
| - Any rules created about this stuff should be applied equally
| across the board to all people, regardless of political
| persuasion or position in government.
|
| - I'm in favor of internet access being considered a public
| utility or even government funded; nobody should be
| "deplatformed" from basic internet access. Assuming that's the
| case, I don't see what's stopping Parler from setting up a
| server. AWS isn't the only way to serve web applications, and
| Twitter isn't the only way to broadcast messages publicly.
| However, if Parler's primary content is plots to violently
| overthrow a democratically elected government, I'm not sure
| that should be legal.
|
| - I'm troubled by the stranglehold that payment processors have
| on our systems of commerce, and I'd be in favor of more
| decentralized payment methods.
|
| - Broadcast mediums are fundamentally different from private
| conversations, and I don't think free speech should be confused
| with right to Tweet. Trump, in particular, is the most powerful
| person in the world and has the biggest platform in the world;
| he need only step out to the press room and every news outlet
| in the world will report what he says. I don't feel this is the
| best example of someone being suppressed. He chose (and
| arguably drastically increased the importance of) Twitter, and
| he avoids reporters, because he can spread disinformation and
| propaganda there without focused criticism.
|
| - The idea that Trump and his supporters haven't been heard is
| laughable; I feel like we've been living in a Trump theme park
| for the past five years. It's all we've heard about every
| single day. I try to remember what it was like not thinking
| about Obama for two weeks at a time, and I look forward to not
| thinking about Biden for two weeks at a time.
|
| - It feels like everyone on all sides of this issue agrees that
| the big tech companies are too powerful in many ways: as you
| point out, they have the ability to tamp-down public
| conversation, but on the flip side they have the ability to
| propagate disinformation on a massive scale. (There's also
| obviously their anti-competitiveness, but that feels like a
| different topic.) I have no idea what, if anything, should be
| done about this. Just as consolidation of power in tech
| companies is worrisome, so is consolidation of power in
| government.
|
| - Speaking as someone on the left, I'm also troubled by (and I
| hate this term) "cancel culture". In recent weeks I watched
| someone I care about get destroyed for no reason other than the
| tone of a jokey story they told missed the mark. In my mind,
| "Internet Mob Justice" is as worrisome and problematic as
| government or corporate overreach, and I'm extremely skeptical
| of it regardless of which end of the political spectrum it's
| coming from.
|
| - The disinformation thing is a huge and serious problem, and I
| haven't seen many "total free speech at all costs" advocates
| address it aside from saying something along the lines of "let
| each person listen to all the arguments and decide for
| themselves". That feels naive to me; flooding the airwaves with
| propaganda and disinformation is another way to quell free
| speech. I thought this was an interesting article on that
| topic: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/free-
| speech.html
|
| - Facebook in particular allows for a dangerous combination of
| broadcasting and private conversations, which is to say they
| allow broadcasting to specific targets in a way that can't be
| observed from the outside. One thing about public free speech
| (including disinformation) is that everyone can see it and at
| least _try_ to refute it (difficult in this age of 'bubble'
| media, but still feasible). The way Facebook allows the spread
| of disinformation seems especially dangerous in that it's
| secret but also at scale.
|
| -------
|
| I dunno, that's just some of what's going through my head in
| regards to all of this. My serious questions for you are:
|
| - Do you think there's a problem with the way technology has
| enabled the scale and precision of disinformation campaigns? If
| so, do you have any ideas what we can do about it?
|
| - Do you think there should be any moderation whatsoever? In
| other words, should people be allowed to incite, advocate, and
| organize violence in public forums? If not, where is the line?
| If so, what's remedies do we have as a society to the
| subsequent violence?
| pcl wrote:
| > I'm in favor of internet access being considered a public
| utility or even government funded; nobody should be
| "deplatformed" from basic internet access. Assuming that's
| the case, I don't see what's stopping Parler from setting up
| a server.
|
| This raises a really interesting question about where the
| line between regulated utility and free commerce should be
| drawn. I generally agree with what you've written in your
| post, and struggle to come up with an answer.
|
| For some of the reasons you mention, I think that I think
| Facebook and Twitter and the various App Stores generally
| belong on the "free commerce" side of that line.
|
| But what about DNS providers and ISPs? What about browser
| vendors and certificate authorities? And in particular, what
| about AWS?
|
| I could imagine a world in which DNS providers and ISPs are
| regulated and cannot deny service without a court order, and
| in which AWS ends up straddling this: EC2 + Route53 get
| regulated, but S3 and on up are treated as unregulated free-
| commerce businesses.
|
| As an aside, I'm really surprised that the Parler team didn't
| defend against this by hosting with multiple providers. Given
| their positioning, it seems like a pretty obvious risk. I
| wonder if that's an oversight / miscalculation, or if they
| made a decision that getting de-platformed at some point
| would be a good thing for their long-term brand / agenda.
| XorNot wrote:
| How can you possibly include App Stores as required utility
| services when the App Store's founding concept is that they
| can and do reject app's they don't like from appearing.
|
| Apple in particular will reject App's for all sorts of
| reasons (i.e. opinions about your UI was a common early
| one). That's fundamentally incompatible with the idea that
| they can be regarded as a public good.
| Reedx wrote:
| Thoughtful response! Thanks.
|
| > Do you think there's a problem with the way technology has
| enabled the scale and precision of disinformation campaigns?
| If so, do you have any ideas what we can do about it?
|
| Better education. Especially with regard to critical thinking
| skills.
|
| Even if we removed the Internet, there would still be
| disinformation and propaganda that the population would have
| to contend with. Be it from the media, politicians,
| governments, books, friends, family, etc. Just as there
| always has been.
|
| So I think the more comprehensive and sustainable approach
| would be to upgrade brains. Teach critical thinking and
| philosophy from a young age.
|
| > Do you think there should be any moderation whatsoever? In
| other words, should people be allowed to incite, advocate,
| and organize violence in public forums? If not, where is the
| line? If so, what's remedies do we have as a society to the
| subsequent violence?
|
| I'm absolutely for moderation on public forums. They are
| better for it. And by default they have to remove illegal
| content at least. Beyond that, it's up to them what the
| moderation policies are. HN is an example where I think
| moderation is really well done.
|
| This gets a lot harder for platforms that are the de-facto
| town square like FB and Twitter. I don't know how we should
| handle that yet. But I think they should mostly stick with
| removing illegal content and act like a common carrier. If
| that's a problem due to the nature of social media, then
| maybe we should revisit the laws of the land. The fundamental
| issue here is having a few tech giants with a high level of
| control over the nation's discourse. And it's a design
| problem to a large degree. The current platforms optimize for
| engagement (e.g., outrage, anger, bias confirmation) which is
| fueling a lot of hate in the first place. They're not
| optimizing for thoughtful conversation and interaction. Not
| even remotely.
|
| I'd also explore some other kinds of governance. Maybe an
| external non-partisan committee or a crypto governance
| approach. Not sure, but something external from these
| platform holders is key I think.
| jjcon wrote:
| > The idea that Trump and his supporters haven't been heard
| is laughable
|
| A bit of a tangent but - I know what you mean by this and I
| generally agree but I think their concern is not about the
| amount of media attention they have gotten but about how
| their views are represented (or misrepresented) in the media.
| The media tends to take the most extreme in a group and paint
| with a broad brush. Is being in the same camp as racists a
| good look? Not at all, but when someone calls all trump
| supporters or those who espouse beliefs in common with trump
| racists it ignites and incites and misrepresents.
|
| I'll admit to feeling this at times. I'm a moderate left and
| I once voiced support for tarriffs on Chinese goods and was
| called racist by multiple people because I have a belief in
| common with trump on that. It didn't make me more likely to
| evaluate my belief on that it made me angry and sad and a bit
| silenced. How am I to respond to an accusation like that? I'm
| really not sure. If I had more beliefs in common with Trump I
| can imagine being a lot worse off in that respect.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > It didn't make me more likely to evaluate my belief on
| that it made me angry and sad and a bit silenced.
|
| People are very quick to work out whether they're being
| listened to or whether they're just soundboards for
| another's ideology. When they're treated like soundboards
| they tend to get entrenched, when they're listened to they
| tend to listen in return. People listening to each other is
| the only hope of finding a common way forward, everything
| else just ends in sectarian violence. It is amazing that
| simply tolerating a diversity of opinions and listening to
| them has become such a radical notion!
| godelski wrote:
| There's this weird train of thought going around that I don't
| understand. If terrorists or criminals are talking in large
| groups, as they did on Parler, they might as well be in plain
| text. The point is that an average person can get into that
| conversation (be radicalized) and then become part of that mob.
| If the CIA/FBI/NSA can't get into those groups then they should
| be all removed because of gross incompetence and we've been
| overestimating their influence by several orders of magnitude
| for the last 50 years. We hear stories about agents
| infiltrating groups all the time. So what's the issue here?
| That they have to infiltrate and can't passively monitor? The
| only thing this stops is dragnet operations where small group
| terrorists are plotting together. Which historically we've seen
| that this isn't effective because it's just adding more hay to
| the haystack.
|
| I'd contrast this from a platform like Parler where they
| actively encouraged extremists to adopt their platform. It is
| one thing to say "free speech" as a dog whistle and another
| thing to say "free speech" in the true meaning. Parler sought
| out extremists from the get go, Signal has been focusing on
| mass adoption. There's a big difference.
| Niten wrote:
| > Parler sought out extremists from the get go
|
| Can you share evidence of this? Because it clashes with all
| the messaging I've seen from Parler.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm having a hard time finding an ad since everything is
| being pulled, but they advertised to sites like Breitbart
| and Info Wars and even included the enforcements in several
| ads I saw. That's specifically catering to extremist
| groups.
|
| But I'll point to videos I can find which aren't as bad. If
| anyone can find the original ads that I mentioned I'd
| appreciate a link. Here[0] Ingram mentions radicals like
| Alex Jones and Candice Owens mentioning that it is a social
| network specifically for conservatives. It is easy to find
| plenty of videos like this where they consistently talk
| about it being a social media platform for conservatives.
| Here's one where the CEO complains about fact checking the
| president[1]. He does end struggling to suggest that Parler
| is gaining diversity, but also says that Twitter is a Biden
| community in the same sentence. But I've never been one to
| think that Twitter was specifically targeting
| conservatives. But you'll find that a lot of these
| interviews do still focus around the politics of the issue.
| Compare that to Signal's much more neutral stance on the
| matter.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6iyAt1Ydpc
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8IcjsFHwc8
|
| Edit: Downvoters, would you mind explaining? Is it that I
| no longer have a direct link to Parler using Info Wars/Alex
| Jones and Breitbart as endorsements? Or do you not think
| those are extremist websites?
| brandall10 wrote:
| It's literally funded by the Mercer family.
|
| The messaging for this and Gab may thinly suggest
| otherwise, but it's clear what these communities target,
| and it absolutely is the dog whistle version of free
| speech.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > It is one thing to say "free speech" as a dog whistle and
| another thing to say "free speech" in the true meaning.
|
| Saying that free speech doesn't count if you're not using it
| the right away, is literally the exact opposite of the
| concept. It's the same reason the ACLU has spent so much
| money defending literal Nazis.
| godelski wrote:
| Sorry, that's not what I was trying to convey here. "Free
| speech as a dog whistle" is people using the term free
| speech but not actually meaning it. More of a "free speech
| for me, but not for thee," but the second part isn't
| explicitly said. I do mean dog whistle, which is _covert
| speech_. But speech can only be covert (undertone) if there
| is a non-covert overtone (otherwise it wouldn 't be
| hidden). So why I'm criticizing here is because the CEO
| said that Twitter is a place of cancel culture, which comes
| a lot from users, but said that that can't happen on Parler
| and then just targeted extremist right wing groups to adopt
| the platform. He flies under the flag of free speech but
| the intent was to create a network where right wing
| extremists could talk within a bubble. There's nothing
| wrong with that (except for the extremist part) but that
| isn't exactly free speech focused, that's a niche focus.
| There's a big difference if you develop a product and it is
| adopted by a certain group verses if you specifically
| target that group, use their language, go on their
| platforms, and actively encourage that group to adopt your
| platform without even making any attempt to get other
| groups to join. Essentially Parler said Twitter is a left
| wing echo chamber and wanted to create a right wing echo
| chamber. _The intent was never to create a free speech
| platform, the intent was to create a right wing platform._
| Intent matters.
|
| To clarify on the dog whistling part more, let's think
| about a recent example. Conservatives have frequently said
| that free speech is one of the most important things (Fox
| News, Trump, etc, not your neighbor). But then these groups
| also advocated for kicking athletes out of the country for
| kneeling in protest[0]. The president used his position of
| power to lead a boycott against a private organization[1].
| The hypocrisy here is about that _there is no right form of
| protest_ if you don 't agree with me but even extreme forms
| of protest are okay if you do agree with me. _Someone who
| says that is not actually advocating for free speech no
| matter how often they use the term._ You saw organizations
| and the president saying that this wasn 't a protest and
| that if it was they should do it another way. Then you see
| BLM and say that they should have protested peacefully and
| we would have solved the problems. From a different
| perspective you can see this as protesting escalating from
| peaceful to more disruptive and including violence. We see
| the "two sides" arguments (Charlottesville), encouraging
| supporters to run Biden's vehicle off the road[2],
| encouraging kidnapping of a governor[3], and I can go on
| (do we need to talk about the several cases at the Oregon
| capital?). Free speech isn't unlimited. Nor is "free speech
| for me and not for thee" free speech either.
|
| _If free speech is unlimited for one group but not for
| another, that is not free speech it is a dog whistle._
|
| You can call a cat a dog but that doesn't make a cat a dog.
| And it doesn't matter if you take your cats on walks or you
| teach it to play fetch or other tricks or convince a bunch
| of people it is a dog, it is still a cat at the end of the
| day and won't ever be a dog.
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44232979
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/sep/22/donald-
| trump-n...
|
| [2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/31/biden-
| harris...
|
| [3] https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/27/politics/trump-gretchen-
| whitm...
| siver_john wrote:
| I had this exact conversation with some friends yesterday, and
| here was my response to them edited for clarity:
|
| And the difference between Parler and Signal is that Parler is
| a social media platform, Signal is a messaging platform. It's
| the difference of having a group of terrorists[0] in your
| restaurant everyday audibly planning a terrorist attack versus
| being the site of a message drop that occurs discreetly.
| Accessory charges are likely in the former unlikely in the
| latter.[1]
|
| [0]Replace terrorists with criminals or whatever is palatable
| to you, it was the example we were using at the time.
|
| [1]Standard disclosure I am not a lawyer/prosecutor/etc.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > It's the difference of having a group of terrorists[0] in
| your restaurant everyday audibly planning a terrorist attack
| versus being the site of a message drop that occurs
| discreetly.
|
| If we are making a restaurant analogy, I think a more
| accurate one is that the restaurant provides a sound proof
| room where a group can enter and discuss anything they want
| without anybody overhearing. The restaurant does not know
| what anybody uses that room for. It could be people planning
| a birthday surprise, it could be a group of terrorists.
| godelski wrote:
| More importantly there is a difference if you advertise
| that sound proof room to the public (maybe for business
| meetings) vs the mafia. Let's say that anyone was
| technically allowed to reserve the room but you only told
| mafia members about it then it is reasonable to believe
| that the room is intended to be used for nefarious
| activities and not as a general private room. Calling it a
| general private room and saying it is for businessmen or
| government officials to talk in private would be a coverup
| for its real intent.
| siver_john wrote:
| Except for in Parler it isn't a soundproof room? It's
| literally a social media site where the admins (owner of
| the restaurant) can see what is going on. So it is the
| audible example I mentioned above.
|
| The sound proof room would be more apt for the later
| comparison to signal.
| godelski wrote:
| Let's say that the restaurant goes to KKK and Neo-Nazi
| rallies handing out fliers saying that the restaurant is
| where "anyone can feel welcome." But they never advertise
| to the general public or to groups of opposing views. Is
| that restaurant for the general public or is it for a
| specific type of people? They said it was for _anyone_ ,
| but I'm not sure people are going to believe that.
| [deleted]
| HaloZero wrote:
| Wasn't WhatsApp used for forwarding tons of disinformation in
| Myanmar and India? I imagine the same thing can happen in
| Signal no?
|
| https://www.vox.com/2018/7/19/17594156/whatsapp-limit-
| forwar...
| rmsaksida wrote:
| I don't know about Signal, but Telegram blurs the lines
| between a messaging app and a more general purpose social
| network. Telegram has public groups (supporting 100s of
| thousands of users) and channels that feature comment
| sections. It wouldn't surprise me if Telegram ends up getting
| banned by app stores because of their resilience and respect
| of privacy.
| joshxyz wrote:
| I'd say telegram isn't likely to get banned from app stores
| as there is intentionally no support for e2ee in group
| chats, and dm's aren't also e2ee by default.
| unicornporn wrote:
| This. No one I know uses the E2EE chats in Telegram. They
| go with the default and they heard Telegram is "secure".
| To add to the inconvenience the secure chats do not sync
| between devices.
| monocasa wrote:
| Also, you just can't use E2EE on the desktop clients, and
| they have stated that they have no intention of fixing
| that.
|
| https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/118#is
| sue...
| unicornporn wrote:
| Works on the native macOS client though.
| selykg wrote:
| The reason Parler was banned was not being willing or able
| to moderate the content. Telegram would only be banned,
| based on this info, if they weren't going to do the same
| thing.
| siver_john wrote:
| Admittedly, I don't know about Telegram. But I would
| probably guess the distinction is still there because if I
| had to guess Telegram doesn't advertise those groups, you
| have to look for them, which decreases the condition of
| "audibly hearing the discussion." Where as Parler being a
| social media platform first wants to encourage the network
| effect and engagement among it's users, thus encouraging
| this open discussion and connection among potentially
| dangerous elements.
|
| Again in my non legal estimation of the law (not that I
| think anything I'm currently suggesting has been tried in
| court).
| m-p-3 wrote:
| For me, I don't plan on fully switching to Signal unless there's
| the ability to create an identity that isn't tied to a phone
| number.
| godelski wrote:
| This is announced to come out this year. Likely sooner than
| later.
| XorNot wrote:
| I actually really need a web interface to Signal. Family has
| got me stuck into Facebook Messenger for a good while, but the
| desire to use it on corporate supplied hardware is why it has
| stuck around for me. For other things I have some self-hosted
| services on my own domain so I can, for example, grab a common
| set of scripts and the like - but AFAIK I can't use Signal from
| the web.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Figure out how people will continue to donate and not deviate
| from their original mission, given the push from new users for
| feature parity with Telegram and WhatsApp.
|
| I cant imagine that $100mn lasting if people are doing group
| calls, file transfers etc. because those are expensive activities
| with the needs for servers, bandwidth.
|
| Previously they had the luxury to coast because of that donation,
| now not so much.
| eddieoz wrote:
| Agreed. The core services are working very well and business
| decisions because of this new market opportunity can drive them
| to pivot to something totally different.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| the speed at which such a small team is working at is
| commendable but just take a look at the beta forum and see
| the how much faster they are moving in the new beta release
| for Android. Its a far more buggier release compared to the
| careful approach. Keep this up and signal will be a remnant
| of its former self.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Colocation, equipment, and admin time should be no more than
| $1-2 million/year. Reference OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia, similar
| non profit infra expenses in their IRS non profit return [1].
| You most definitely don't want to be at a cloud provider with
| their bandwidth charges.
|
| The Internet Archive runs ~50Gbit/sec, peaking at ~62Gbit/sec
| [2].
|
| [1] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/
|
| [2] http://blog.archive.org/2020/05/11/thank-you-for-helping-
| us-...
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| They are using AWS for their infrastructure. Based on their
| last Form 980, which is from 2018 their expenses were about
| $5 million. That expense was with < 10 mn users and a much
| smaller dev team. Since 2018 theyve added more android and
| ios developers.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Hope they get on to their own gear sooner rather than
| later. Any exorbitant cloud costs they can avoid are funds
| that can go into development, and I'd rather what I'm
| donating goes to said devs and not AWS (not that there's
| anything wrong with AWS per se, but donations are harder to
| come by then business revenue and VC funding).
|
| Would really appreciate if Signal would give rough
| estimates of their infra needs (average and peak bandwidth,
| storage, compute, etc).
| Shish2k wrote:
| > You most definitely don't want to be at a cloud provider
| with their bandwidth charges.
|
| Amen to that, I don't understand how anybody decides to go in
| that direction for this type of project. For my relatively
| small hobby-project (3Gbit/s image gallery) we're renting
| bare-metal servers for $800/mo -- cloud providers would be
| charging $50,000 just for bandwidth, let alone compute and
| storage...
|
| (Incidentally if anybody knows good CDNs with prices in the
| same ballpark as bare-metal I'd love to hear it - looks like
| we're too big for any of cloudflare's entry-level plans, but
| their enterprise support doesn't want to bother with any
| customer spending less than $3,000/mo...)
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| I've used BunnyCDN for small projects and it's been great,
| and their pricing is the lowest I found from any CDN.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| 1. Removal of phone number requirement
|
| 2. Feature parity for desktop app
|
| 3. Improved search and archival features
|
| 4. Full message threading?
| WhoCaresLies wrote:
| - shut down their ties with the CIA
|
| - stop with their aggressive ANTI-everything marketing
| tribaal wrote:
| I think Signal should bundle a simple on-screen keyboard, similar
| to the way banks etc... do it.
|
| It always felt weird to me that while I trust Signal developers,
| all of the text input into the app goes through an on-screen
| keyboard that might or might not be secure.
|
| So basically, on android, while your data doesn't go to Facebook
| anymore, as far as I can tell it still goes to Google via the
| keyboard app. Doesn't it?
|
| EDIT: It feels to me like a missing piece, but maybe I'm wrong.
| Please educate me if I am, it's a genuine question :)
| avra wrote:
| While this does still mean you have to trust your keyboard app,
| you can tell Signal to trigger your keyboards incognito mode. I
| don't think it should include its own keyboard. But this could
| be an extra app in general.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Signal already has problems with pissing people off by having
| annoying user interfaces for security reasons. This seems like
| a pointless measure.
|
| If you can't trust the keyboard software installed on your
| phone then surely you don't trust the os either. But if you
| don't trust the os then what's the point?
| adimitrov wrote:
| If you are concerned about your privacy, you can use an OSS
| keyboard app. Hacker's keyboard is one for android. There are
| some on F-Droid. You may even prefer them to Google's offering.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| The problem is that even if you install one of those privacy-
| protecting keyboard apps, chances are that the person you are
| talking to on the other end is using the stock Google
| keyboard that sends what they type to Google. Even if only
| half of the conversation leaks that way, that is still a
| major blow to the privacy of both parties.
| szszrk wrote:
| There is plenty of keyboards on android, including ones that
| are super-simple like "simple keyboard" from F-Droid, or the
| one provided by Keepass for Android.
|
| Just switch keyboard. There is a lot of choice here, interface
| to do that and so on.
| dmvinson wrote:
| Naomi Wu has been talking about this for a while [0]. She lives
| in China, and has flagged this multiple times on Twitter,
| apparently without much response from the Signal team to her
| frustration. The issue seems to be that Signal simply sets the
| incognito flag when users are typing in the app, which kindly
| requests keyboard apps to not track the input. Unfortunately,
| since most American made keyboards for chinese writing are slow
| and difficult to use, most Chinese citizens use keyboards made
| by companies made in China, which does not provide much
| reassurance w.r.t adherence to the incognito request. Your
| concern seems to be spot on, and it'd be worth Signal at least
| making this clear to users when they first begin using the app.
|
| While the answer from most technical users will be "just switch
| keyboards", it's also widely accepted that defaults matter and
| unless Signal makes an active effort to discourage people's
| default choice, the larger purpose of privacy will be somewhat
| defeated.
|
| [0]
| https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/119769534457579929...
| legacynl wrote:
| use a different keyboard.
| chanmad29 wrote:
| Is there chat syncing across devices and backups on cards or does
| it defeat the app's purpose?
| eddieoz wrote:
| I miss really miss this feature... having 2 devices, I can have
| signal in just one.
|
| I don't believe syncing in multiple devices can be a problem
| for the app purpose, mainly because the new whatsapp features
| they announced.
| edeion wrote:
| Signal syncs fine between my iPhone and MacBook. I don't
| actually understand how, but it does.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| When you first link it up it does not sync history, which is
| annoying.
| skrowl wrote:
| Correct, it's only going forward from that point, which is
| a deal breaker for many. New device = no chat history.
| chanmad29 wrote:
| wow! so I move from a iphone to a new iphone and I end up
| with no history? This is really a deal breaker.
| newscracker wrote:
| If you have the current iPhone and the new iPhone close
| by, you can transfer all conversations from the old one
| to the new one through a direct transfer mechanism built
| into Signal.
|
| But if you don't have both devices close by or if you're
| setting up your iPhone as new due to some issues and the
| restore from an iCloud or iTunes backup, then you're out
| of luck because Signal prevents its data from being
| backed up to iCloud and iTunes.
| rkangel wrote:
| Yes, it's a pain. And I have to install a thing, rather
| than just open a WebApp because I have to write some long
| messages. I've been using Signal for 4 hours though so
| we'll see how it goes.
| abstractbarista wrote:
| It can't, because of this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Ratchet_Algorithm
|
| This gives us the guarantee of forward secrecy. When you
| pair a Signal app, it gets to know the current keys used to
| advance the ratchet. But, it cannot deduce keys used to
| encrypt prior messages. It can only decrypt future
| messages.
| bravoetch wrote:
| Remove the requirement for a phone number. I prefer apps that are
| first class citizens on other non-phone devices.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| They have already announced that they are working on this and
| it will arrive in 2021.
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