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What I'm curious about, and think would be really neat, is if one could take advantage of the shared Signal Protocol to send messages cross-platform. Specifical

by Jarwain 10y ago

What I'm curious about, and think would be really neat, is if one could take advantage of the shared Signal Protocol to send messages cross-platform. Specifically, sending an encrypted message to a Whatsapp user from Allo. Or to a Signal user from Whatsapp. Or any combination/permutation really.

pnathan 10y ago
Moxie's on the record as being opposed to federated services. https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- zellyn 10y ago
  I don't think I'd characterize his blog post that way. The last sentence captures what I got from reading it: "It may not be as beautiful as federation, but at this point it seems that it will have to do." Also, as djb points out: https://twitter.com/hashbreaker/status/732912508089032706 https://twitter.com/hashbreaker/status/732912508089032706
  - mike_hearn 10y ago
    Moxie's essay is strong and djb's point is not: a "federated network" with a centrally controlled app that updates automatically might as well not be federated at all: at that point having multiple servers hardly matters. Who cares about running your own server if you can't run your own client? Moxie has put into words what I've been thinking myself for a long time - the old federated protocols from the 1990s have been slowly dying off (with email being the main holdout, unless you count gmail). And the reason is that they just don't evolve. There's no incentive to evolve them, there's no organisational structure to evolve them, creating them takes huge effort AND they suffer from all sort of hidden ideological constraints that would prevent them from e.g. doing a partnership with Uber beause Uber is a corporation and an open protocol isn't. But users don't care about that.
- mike_hearn 10y ago
  I don't think he's opposed to it, he just recognises that in practice federation and open protocols impose large hidden costs that are typically undiscussed and unrecognised. Federation between WhatsApp and Allo would face some obvious problems: features that don't work the same way or don't work at all, for instance. Moxie's point is that federation is just less important than it once was because there's no real lockin due to the pervasive use of phone numbers as identities. There's no real reason to use Allo to send message to a WhatsApp user or vice versa given you can just install both apps for free anyway.
ianburrell 10y ago
My understanding is that the Signal protocol isn't an IM protocol like XMPP, but a messaging protocol like OTR. Just like you can use OTR with XMPP, Signal can work be used inside IM protocols like Matrix and XMPP. Or with proprietary ones like WhatsApp, Allo, and Signal itself. The former provides federation, the latter do not.

by Jarwain 10y ago

pnathan 10y ago

Moxie's on the record as being opposed to federated services. https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
zellyn 10y ago
I don't think I'd characterize his blog post that way. The last sentence captures what I got from reading it: "It may not be as beautiful as federation, but at this point it seems that it will have to do." Also, as djb points out: https://twitter.com/hashbreaker/status/732912508089032706 https://twitter.com/hashbreaker/status/732912508089032706
- mike_hearn 10y ago
  Moxie's essay is strong and djb's point is not: a "federated network" with a centrally controlled app that updates automatically might as well not be federated at all: at that point having multiple servers hardly matters. Who cares about running your own server if you can't run your own client? Moxie has put into words what I've been thinking myself for a long time - the old federated protocols from the 1990s have been slowly dying off (with email being the main holdout, unless you count gmail). And the reason is that they just don't evolve. There's no incentive to evolve them, there's no organisational structure to evolve them, creating them takes huge effort AND they suffer from all sort of hidden ideological constraints that would prevent them from e.g. doing a partnership with Uber beause Uber is a corporation and an open protocol isn't. But users don't care about that.
mike_hearn 10y ago
I don't think he's opposed to it, he just recognises that in practice federation and open protocols impose large hidden costs that are typically undiscussed and unrecognised. Federation between WhatsApp and Allo would face some obvious problems: features that don't work the same way or don't work at all, for instance. Moxie's point is that federation is just less important than it once was because there's no real lockin due to the pervasive use of phone numbers as identities. There's no real reason to use Allo to send message to a WhatsApp user or vice versa given you can just install both apps for free anyway.

ianburrell 10y ago

My understanding is that the Signal protocol isn't an IM protocol like XMPP, but a messaging protocol like OTR. Just like you can use OTR with XMPP, Signal can work be used inside IM protocols like Matrix and XMPP. Or with proprietary ones like WhatsApp, Allo, and Signal itself. The former provides federation, the latter do not.