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Bleh. I don't really appreciate this. User entitlement and harassment are major problems in FOSS, and I don't endorse it, even for Signal. But, coming from Sig
by ddevault 6y ago
Bleh. I don't really appreciate this.
User entitlement and harassment are major problems in FOSS, and I don't endorse it, even for Signal. But, coming from Signal in particular, this seems pretty weak. It almost feels exploitative of the real problem - harassment in FOSS - as an excuse for Signal to make self-serving design decisions at the user's expense.
Remember that Signal touts itself as a secure communications tool, with endorsements from the likes of Edward Snowden and Bruce Schiener. We should hold them accountable for delivering on that promise, or we risk the real human lives who choose to rely on a flawed tool. Signal has made several design decisions which reduce its ability to address the problem of secure communications, which are conveniently self-serving. When their arguments for these decisions have been debunked, and yet the self-serving designs persist, this is a bad look for Signal. They have chosen to weigh their self-interests against the user's security, in a tool designed for securing vulnerable users.
Signal is unlike most FOSS projects. They have access to resources which put them among the most privelged projects in terms of ability to execute on changes. The Signal Foundation has a war chest of hundreds of millions of dollars.[0] With a hundred million dollars, a full-time dev team, and 10+ years of development, I think we can expect them to have addressed many of the complaints ten times over, especially when similar systems have been built by volunteer teams in a fraction of the time. Complaints, again, which address ways in which Signal's privacy guarantees are lacking, and which Signal conveneintly benefits from leaving unsolved.
I don't think anyone should be mean or rude to FOSS maintainers, including the Signal contributors. Entitlement and harassment are huge problems in FOSS. However, I do think we should hold Signal accountable for delivering on its privacy promise, being good stewards of vulnerable people, and not compromising on this to chase after their own self-interest.
[0] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/824506840/12_2019_prefixes_82-86%2F824506840_201812_990_2019121216951146 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/82450...
- bluefox 6y agoYeah, there's something fishy with Signal, though it's been obvious for years that HN is one of its propaganda hubs. The other day I described one of my concerns with it here [0]. I made no demands or anything like that (this is HN after all) yet someone chose to basically label me "entitled"... that must address all concerns, right? Anyway, today I woke up and it seems this global campaign to ditch Facebook works, because some contact of mine added me to a group of "friends", people who "forgot" about me for years (because I'm not on any social network) and who had no idea what Signal was until now, who never knew or cared about privacy, but apparently decided to start using it this week. Neither he nor Signal asked for my consent, and now I'm faced with the unpleasant task of leaving that group and possibly hurting people because I never wanted to receive hundreds of vacuous messages every day. Thus I'm one step closer in my mind to moving to set up Matrix on my own server. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25692885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25692885
- creata 6y agoSorry if this comes across as blunt, but what self-serving decisions has Signal made, how do they benefit Signal, and how do they compromise users' privacy?
- ddevault 6y agoThe main concerns are: lack of federation, the persistent phone number disclosure requirement, and its absence on F-Droid, and its hostility to forks.
- akerl_ 6y agoI feel like this comment, and others like it, start from a baseline misunderstanding of Signal’s goal, and extrapolate from there into a narrative where the Signal team is plotting the downfall of all that’s good and right. Signal has been pretty clear that their goal is to create a messaging platform that provides security against the threat model faced by the vast majority of humans in the world, in a form factor that makes it effortless for those people to use it for their communications. Specific technical details, like federation, are not their goal, and their assessment is that the side effects of federation actively harm their goal. You’re welcome to disagree about whether it’s possible to federate and still solve the problem they’re targeting, but it’s not clear to me why they’d be expected to target their “war chest” at solving something that they’ve always acknowledged is not their actual goal, based on message board commenters demanding they do so.