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Signal is working on removing the phone number requirements. Best not to have all these fragments.

by nichos 6y ago

fsflover 6y ago
> Best not to have all these fragments. Signal is another walled garder, which sooner or later will become to big to stay sustainable. Then it will be either sold (probably to Facebook) or die. We should support truly distributed systems if we do not want to repeat history forever. Consider Matrix instead.
- tga_d 6y ago
  It's a 501c3, I don't think you can buy those. In any case, it's open source, and there are several forks floating around (though Signal does typically dissuade people from using them, because it conflicts with their strategy around a cohesive experience, and rollout of new features).
- thefunnyman 6y ago
  Signal is open source. In any of these hypotheticals, it can be forked.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    But where will it find the money to support, say, 1 billion people? Telegram already started to show ads.
    - tga_d 6y ago
      Telegram is a product from a for-profit company. Again, Signal is a 501c3 non-profit. It gets its funding from the same sort of places as Wikipedia, the Tor Project, the Internet Archive, etc.: the donation link you're commenting on.
      - fsflover 6y ago
        Do you seriously believe that donations can cover 1 billion of users on Signal? I don’t. Only federation is a sustainable answer (unless maybe you convince governments to fund it).
        tga_d 6y ago
        >Do you seriously believe that donations can cover 1 billion of users on Signal? Yes. >I don't. Okay, any particular reason? The storage and processing costs are small, you're basically just paying for enough hosting to route the traffic, plus a dozen or so developers. >Only federation is a sustainable answer (unless maybe you convince governments to fund it). The US government does fund it, through several channels (most notable probably being the Open Technology Fund), as did Brian Acton for at least $50 million.

Signal is working on removing the phone number requirements. Best not to have all these fragments.

by nichos 6y ago

Signal is working on removing the phone number requirements. Best not to have all these fragments.

> Best not to have all these fragments. Signal is another walled garder, which sooner or later will become to big to stay sustainable. Then it will be either sold (probably to Facebook) or die. We should support truly distributed systems if we do not want to repeat history forever. Consider Matrix instead.

tga_d 6y ago
It's a 501c3, I don't think you can buy those. In any case, it's open source, and there are several forks floating around (though Signal does typically dissuade people from using them, because it conflicts with their strategy around a cohesive experience, and rollout of new features).
thefunnyman 6y ago
Signal is open source. In any of these hypotheticals, it can be forked.
- fsflover 6y ago
  But where will it find the money to support, say, 1 billion people? Telegram already started to show ads.
  - tga_d 6y ago
    Telegram is a product from a for-profit company. Again, Signal is a 501c3 non-profit. It gets its funding from the same sort of places as Wikipedia, the Tor Project, the Internet Archive, etc.: the donation link you're commenting on.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      Do you seriously believe that donations can cover 1 billion of users on Signal? I don’t. Only federation is a sustainable answer (unless maybe you convince governments to fund it).
      - tga_d 6y ago
        >Do you seriously believe that donations can cover 1 billion of users on Signal? Yes. >I don't. Okay, any particular reason? The storage and processing costs are small, you're basically just paying for enough hosting to route the traffic, plus a dozen or so developers. >Only federation is a sustainable answer (unless maybe you convince governments to fund it). The US government does fund it, through several channels (most notable probably being the Open Technology Fund), as did Brian Acton for at least $50 million.