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Adding Encrypted Group Calls to Signal
- tW4r 6y agoReally waiting for matrix to add native group video calls without jitsi
- jayp1418 6y agoMatrix is great IRC, slack replacement but signal is WhatsApp replacement.
- szszrk 6y agoBut to be clear it's rather the other way around [0] :) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol#Usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol#Usage
- oarsinsync 6y agoAssuming you’re suggesting WhatsApp is a Signal replacement, rather than what the previous commentor said, I’m afraid you’re mixing things up. From your Wikipedia link: > The Signal Protocol's development was started by Trevor Perrin and Moxie Marlinspike (Open Whisper Systems) in 2013. From the WhatsApp Wikipedia page: > After months at beta stage, [WhatsApp] launched in November 2009, exclusively on the App Store for the iPhone. From my own experience, I was on WhatsApp back in 2009-2010 on my OG iPhone that I got as a hand-me-down from a friend who’d just upgraded to the 3G/3GS.
- szszrk 6y agoWhatsApp integrated Signal protocol to all communication around 2014, so not much is left after the 2009 old school WhatsApp. It's mentioned on the same wiki page. So the branding and history of WhatsApp is longer, but the core is Signal. Also if you used both apps and their desktop clients you can easily see how close these two are.
- oarsinsync 6y agoFair points. The whatsapp backend and protocol may have changed significantly to essentially just be a clone of open whisper systems. The front end, however, remains significantly better on WhatsApp than on Signal. I continue to use both daily, and as much as I loathe Facebook, I still prefer the UX on WhatsApp way more than Signal. That they look similar is more down to the fact that messengers today all look the same (look at facebook messenger, iMessage) than that WhatsApp has taken Signal's front end. If anything, Signal is slowly trying to emulate WhatsApp features, in a more privacy-preserving way, which understandably takes time.
- tW4r 6y agoMatrix is self hosted and more of a protocol while signal is not
- robert_foss 6y agoThe difference is only that signal doesn't allow anyone else to run the host side of the service.
- olah_1 6y agoCheck out Fluffy Chat for a more personal messenger vibe with Matrix https://fluffychat.im/en/ https://fluffychat.im/en/ There are other of these style apps too, but fluffy is furthest along I think. https://matrix.org/clients/ https://matrix.org/clients/
- jayp1418 6y agoThanks for links
- darnir 6y agoIs that on the roadmap? I was under the impression that native video calls will never happen. They might bundle jitsi automatically with the homeserver though
- Arathorn 6y agohttps://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/2359 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/2359
- swiley 6y agoIt has group video calling at all?
- szszrk 6y agoNow it does. Received it very recently.
- axegon_ 6y agoWhile Signal is pretty awful on desktop(not to mention this[1] thing), it is my goto messenger on my phone. Brilliant security and props for being one of the very few to extensively use Rust in production. I was really sad to see they hire in the US only. [1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/1630 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/1630
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- godelski 6y agoThis might help https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/signal-desktop-beta-bin/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/signal-desktop-beta-bin/
- ruph123 6y agoI disagree. Signal on Fedora works very well for me. Even video/audio calls work surprisingly well. And it is available as a Flatpak.
- yuvadam 6y agoI find it odd that packaging for a specific distro is an upstream effort. I never understood why upstream source should include Debian/Fedora-specific files. The way that Arch Linux approaches packaging makes much more sense to me - a single bash-like PKGBUILD file that describes how the upstream source should be transformed into a package that the distro knows how to deal with.
- gspr 6y ago> I find it odd that packaging for a specific distro is an upstream effort. I never understood why upstream source should include Debian/Fedora-specific files. This is generally frowned-upon in Debian too. Upstream's effort are nearly always wrong from the distribution's point of view, and extra busywork has to be done to get rid of upstream's attempt.
- 6y ago
- anewguy9000 6y agoi want to like signal but the UX is wanting. i installed it today and it only imported some of my sms messages; found almost 1000 open issues on github. then i sent the "get signal" message to a friend who installed it but our messages still kept saying they were insecure sms. turns out we had to "refresh" our contact lists (there is no menu option to do this, you're just supposed to know to pull down on the contacts page -- discovered while reading the github issue related to the failed import). i also find the contrast ratio too high in dark mode and the random colors for all my contacts just make my eyes bleed. basically i felt like in 5 minutes of using it i'd uncovered as many bugs. maybe soon i can try to make the switch again.
- vinay427 6y ago> i also find the contrast ratio too high in dark mode I actually tend to prefer this style of dark mode for messaging or other short-term use apps on an AMOLED display because it's just "off" with no background, but I agree that there really should be another option. Plenty of apps I've seen have Dark and Dark (AMOLED) versions, or similar.
- solstice 6y agoThe UI could be improved but it is fine IMO. I'm happy that I have a messenger over which I can talk private stuff and be reasonably sure that no one else can listen in. Everything else is secondary for me. Contact discovery can have a slight time delay, but so far it has worked very well after a while. (I don't use SMS)
- anewguy9000 6y agoso i convinced my friend to get signal for a secure conversation. we both got it installed, and started talking. but it still said "unsecure sms" in faint grey letters in the input box. i almost didn't notice. she sent me screenshots she was messaging me from signal. we both verified our numbers. what was going on? after "refreshing" the contact list the unsecure message went away. were those initial message sent securely? i have no idea. that is the kind of poor ux that mars the experience -- without trust there is no point using it
- 2Gkashmiri 6y agounless they allow no phone accounts, its a non starter for many. including me. having been persecuted for having whatsapp installed on the phone, (which i personally dont, btw) for an adversary like a police state, whatsapp encryption is somewhat moot. public 'news' groups on whatsapp have admins and they are made to report to the local police station where that malware is installed. then its just a matter of time waiting for people to talk. the issue here is every account is linked to a phone number. easy for police to cross reference a person with that number because of already stringent kyc norms on phone numbers. oh, telegram also suffers from this. oh, and being beaten for having installed a vpn https://scroll.in/article/952355/vpn-for-terrorism-in-kashmir-youth-allege-their-phones-are-checked-by-the-army-for-masking-apps https://scroll.in/article/952355/vpn-for-terrorism-in-kashmi... https://www.kahawatungu.com/whatsapp-admins-in-kashmir-now-required-to-register-groups-with-police/ https://www.kahawatungu.com/whatsapp-admins-in-kashmir-now-r...
- godelski 6y agoI heard that they were working on this. https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-introducing-usernames/9157/163 https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-introducing-usern...
- 2Gkashmiri 6y agoyeah. i follow that news
- 2Gkashmiri 6y agoyou seem to be the only one actually replying to my comment. any idea what is the trigger word resulting in the downvotes?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- godelski 6y agoI'm not sure. Doesn't look like you're negative now (except this one). I guess because you're complaining about something that is in the works? But I'm not sure how you'd be expected to know what is going on. We're not all experts in the same things here and in the same areas. Whatever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ This comment is downvoted because you asked about down votes.
- Ansil849 6y ago> Group calls are currently limited to 5 participants Compared to other apps which offer group E2EE video calls: Duo - 32 participants Facetime - 32 participants Zoom - 100 participants (or 1000 w/ a Large Meeting License)
- ffpip 6y agoDuo started with up to 4 participants back in 2019. Facetime is apple only. Zoom is not even end to end encrypted (edit: now), and was built for businesses, and apps are close to malware installers
- Ansil849 6y ago> Zoom is not even end to end encrypted https://blog.zoom.us/zoom-rolling-out-end-to-end-encryption-offering/ https://blog.zoom.us/zoom-rolling-out-end-to-end-encryption-...
- ffpip 6y agoIt's not by default, and still hasn't rolled out here.
- hiq 6y agoAnd I don't want to diminish the skills of Zoom engineers, but when Google and Facebook (WA) can't offer more than 32 / 8, which tradeoff is Zoom doing to be able to offer E2EE calls with 1000 people? I don't think my phone would be able to receive 1000 different video streams simultaneously for instance.
- ffpip 6y agoIf Google offered more with Duo, people would use it for events. Then people wouldn't use Google meet when they go to work. Meet is part of Gsuite.
- dastx 6y ago
- sails 6y agoGreat news, hoping it is stable. This has been the last feature missing for my migration from whatsapp.
- WillYouFinish 6y agoDoes Signal still fore you to use a phone number? This is a huge deal breaker for a privacy concerned messenger. That's why I prefer using Threema.
- brobinson 6y agoThreema is not open source yet so I wouldn't use it for that reason. I did like their security whitepaper, though, and they do have some impressive clients (Mercedes-Benz, etc.).
- soziawa 6y agoAdditionally they have regular audits [1]. Open source only without any actual thorough reviews doesn't cut it in my opinion. [1]: https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/audit-2020-en https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/audit-2020-en
- viccuad 6y agoOpen source is a precondition. They can promise you the world, but if you can't build it yourself and get reproducible builds, who knows what's in there.
- robert_foss 6y agoYeah, agree. We've had enough fun recently with the likes of the CIA backed Crypto-AG.
- soziawa 6y agoSure, but a precondition itself doesn't guarantee anything. You still need to pony up the money for actual aufits.
- Vinnl 6y agoYep, they're still working on that.
- 6y ago
- marknadal 6y agoOr self-host your own Open Source encrypted call system https://github.com/meething/meething https://github.com/meething/meething !
- dbrgn 6y agoDoes someone know more about the architecture of Signal's group calls? From looking at the ringrtc source, it seems that the calls are not fully meshed, but use some kind of group key and a SFU for server-side media distribution. Is that correct?
- pthatcherg 6y agoI work at Signal and wrote much of that code, so I'm familiar with it :). Yes, it uses a server for media distribution and uses encryption keys that the server does not know.
- dbrgn 6y agoThanks! Since I've also written a lot of audio/video call code, it's always interesting to learn about design choices of other applications. Do you rotate the group key regularly and/or on group events (e.g. a person leaving the group call)? What SFU do you use, and did it require custom modifications? Or is it even a fully custom server-side solution?
- pthatcherg 6y agoWe rotate the keys whenever someone joins or leaves, although the mechanism is more efficient when someone joins than one someone leaves. I don't think we've made the SFU repository public yet, so I don't think I can comment on that yet. Likely I'll be able to in the future.
- blub 6y agoCalls are unusable in Signal: they drain a fully charged battery in about half an hour.
- mesofile 6y agoI had a successful hour-long video call on Signal recently using my aging iPhone SE (1st gen), which has battery-life issues in general but I made it through without needing to plug in. First time I’d used that feature of the app.
- zorbash 6y agoSecond that. I hear back my own voice, it drains the battery and the connection is almost always choppy. I wanted to be able to use Signal to replace whatsapp, telegram and FB messenger. I've convinced some of my friends to install it, but none of them are happy with it. On both mobile and desktop sometimes messages take hours to appear and on mobile it reserves ~2GB of storage for no apparent reason. I trust that people behind Signal are brilliant got the security right, but the UX is simply not there yet.
- hiq 6y ago2 GB on a fresh install? That would be definitely a bug. Did you check the storage usage (settings, storage)? Is it there as well? Your debug logs would also be welcome for messages taking hours to appear. For mobile it's usually something with battery savings or FCM. For desktop that's the first time I read about that, are you sure that the messages had actually been sent? I feel that for mobile it is still not as reliable as WhatsApp, but for desktop it's nice to be able to get your messages without mobile connection.
- orestarod 6y agoIn case the storage is due to numerous messages and media, you have the option to limit the number of messages saved for each conversation, default is no limit I think.
- zorbash 6y ago
- sheerun 6y agoIt's still not very stable for video calls compared to e.g. Whatsapp. Video and audio often is desynchronized and considerable lags are present, even on good connection
- faitswulff 6y agoSignal has been my daily messenger for messaging my SO and family for the past couple of years, so I'm looking forward to the moment when our legacy group gets upgraded and we can finally do group (video) calls.
- mderazon 6y agoDoes anyone know how Signal makes money? I know they received a lot of money from WhatsApp's founder, but that will eventually run out.
- qdhqdhqdg 6y agoThey still force you to give your phone number, they still refuse to be on F-Droid, they still force you to go through their own server and not self host, their UX still sucks. Once those points are addressed Signal would be great
- toomuchtodo 6y agoIt’s already great without these nitpicks. If those are your requirements, you might look elsewhere to have your communication needs met.