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What if you care about control over the system and not being tied to a single vendor?

by Zash 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago
Then you definitely don't want to be using Telegram.
- newscracker 11y ago
  I'm curious about this response. Could you please explain or point to something that explains, for a common person who doesn't code or cannot build code or cannot maintain servers, how Signal would provide more control and avoid being locked to a single vendor when compared to Telegram?
  - Zash 11y ago
    It does not. In practice both are equivalent in that regard. I guess tptacek meant that Signal might have less control over you than Telegram, but that's a different issue from what I was thinking of. Both Telegram, Signal¹ rely on a central server to which all users connect. If that server goes up in flames then nothing will work for anyone. Or if those who run it turn out to be evil or otherwise doing bad things then there is nowhere you can go without losing all your contacts. But in a system that has multiple servers that talk to each other, like email and Jabber/XMPP, you have a choice in who provides the server while still being able to talk to everyone on the network. So then it is at least possible to switch to another server or provider and still be able to reach your contacts. It is also possible to run your own server, or convince your more technical friend to run one for you. This model is called a federated client-server model. A true serverless peer-to-peer system would in theory be even better, but in practice it is much harder to build and maintain, especially on mobile where devices may lose coverage at any time. So for example Skype (before Microsoft bought them) would promote some clients to "super nodes" which other clients would use to communicate ... kinda like having servers but with less control over who they are. (Note, I work on XMPP software so I'm kinda biased) ¹ There appears to exist server software but it is unsupported and might not be useful for more than talking to yourself.
    - Spakman 11y ago
      There was talk some time ago now about Signal server federation. I was under the impression that it was planned and either dropped or de-prioritised for now. Certainly, it seems that while running your own server might not be actively discouraged, it isn't supported by the Open Whisper Systems team at the moment.

What if you care about control over the system and not being tied to a single vendor?

by Zash 11y ago

What if you care about control over the system and not being tied to a single vendor?

tptacek 11y ago

Then you definitely don't want to be using Telegram.

newscracker 11y ago
I'm curious about this response. Could you please explain or point to something that explains, for a common person who doesn't code or cannot build code or cannot maintain servers, how Signal would provide more control and avoid being locked to a single vendor when compared to Telegram?
- Zash 11y ago
  It does not. In practice both are equivalent in that regard. I guess tptacek meant that Signal might have less control over you than Telegram, but that's a different issue from what I was thinking of. Both Telegram, Signal¹ rely on a central server to which all users connect. If that server goes up in flames then nothing will work for anyone. Or if those who run it turn out to be evil or otherwise doing bad things then there is nowhere you can go without losing all your contacts. But in a system that has multiple servers that talk to each other, like email and Jabber/XMPP, you have a choice in who provides the server while still being able to talk to everyone on the network. So then it is at least possible to switch to another server or provider and still be able to reach your contacts. It is also possible to run your own server, or convince your more technical friend to run one for you. This model is called a federated client-server model. A true serverless peer-to-peer system would in theory be even better, but in practice it is much harder to build and maintain, especially on mobile where devices may lose coverage at any time. So for example Skype (before Microsoft bought them) would promote some clients to "super nodes" which other clients would use to communicate ... kinda like having servers but with less control over who they are. (Note, I work on XMPP software so I'm kinda biased) ¹ There appears to exist server software but it is unsupported and might not be useful for more than talking to yourself.
  - Spakman 11y ago
    There was talk some time ago now about Signal server federation. I was under the impression that it was planned and either dropped or de-prioritised for now. Certainly, it seems that while running your own server might not be actively discouraged, it isn't supported by the Open Whisper Systems team at the moment.