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I fully expect to be downvoted to oblivion for this opinion but it needs to be said. Signal has been down for nine hours. the vast majority of people who turn

I fully expect to be downvoted to oblivion for this opinion but it needs to be said. Signal has been down for nine hours. the vast majority of people who turned to this platform today as an alternative to Whatsapp or Facebook probably quit looking into it after the first two minutes of that outage. for a platform that bills itself after installation as a suitable drop in replacement for your SMS service (and encourages you to shill it to friends as such) this is completely unacceptable and could have easily been avoided with better leadership and architecture. Cheerleading your users endorsement of privacy on twitter during an outage is insulting. Most sites and apps monitor things like news sites, twitter and the like for instances where their namesake may be trending. This is done in order to quickly head off DDoS type outages due to things like the slashdot effect. Signal doesnt do this for the same reason Signal is centralized: Moxy writes code like he still lives in 2006. - Nobody scrambled to bolster capacity after the electric car porn star (Elon Musk) gave a full throated endorsement? - Nobody raced to improve capacity after Apple looked to be in a position to piss in Facebooks cheerios? - Nobody even thought to reconsider capacity after Whatsapp showed up in the news JANUARY 6 with a bombshell announcement of privacy changes for users? we waited over a week? It also needs to be said --yes im aware of my audience-- that centralized services DO NOT scale. Moxys response to this has been cantfix/wontfix, so in traditional dev fashion he throws more hardware at the problem to make it go away instead of looking into a better architecture. Microservices do not scale. Yes, they scale across the cloud, but they do not scale across support channels. Microservices trade gaming cloud providers for precious pay-by-the-second service for an endless byzantine dumpster fire of almost impossible to diagnose failure conditions. A highly secure end to end encrypted service that expects to replace your SMS needs to be quick to diagnose and fix. Again: NINE HOURS. A more callous review would suggest that Signal remains centralized because Moxies waiting for an IPO, or an offer from FAANG to buy him out. Im certainly not of that opinion, but FWIW this was a disaster for Signal and most of HN is about to break an arm patting the company on the back. Whatsapp certainly took notice, and certainly used it as an opportunity to win back some of its detractors.

whymarrh 6y ago
I don’t understand, so what? They’re doing their best and if users go somewhere else so be it. I’m sure if they could avoid the outage they would. They’re not losing profits or anything. They’re hosting a free service. When they get the service back online users will have a secure messaging option that is even more battle-tested.
- pmlnr 6y ago
  > They’re not losing profits or anything. They are losing face. In oriental cultures, that's bad. EDIT apologies for bad wording. In certain situations, losing face is worth, than losing money - in this very moment, in my opinion, this is rather bad for Signal.
  - ahmedalsudani 6y ago
    As an “Oriental”, I assure you nobody loses face when they close shop for a good reason.
efwfwef 6y ago
Just saying, but WhatsApp encrypt communications the same way Signal does, it's good enough for me.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  WhatsApp uses dark patterns to encourage unencrypted cloud backups.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    ... and it doesn't matter if you know how to avoid those unless your friends also do so. BTW, is there an authoritative source whether these cloud backups to Google Drive are unencrypted/encrypted with Google keys, or encrypted with keys held by Facebook? I see no reason not to encrypt them the same as local backups (with a key that is held by Facebook, and provided to your phone once they verify your phone number). The difference between these against the US government filing warrants is just one piece of paper, but against an attacker that compromises your Google account, it does make a significant difference.
- not_really 6y ago
  It absolutely does not.
  - meibo 6y ago
    WhatsApp's encryption scheme was designed by Open Whisper Systems, which is now Signal, and even uses the Signal protocol library: http://www.cdn.whatsapp.net/security/WhatsApp-Security-Whitepaper.pdf http://www.cdn.whatsapp.net/security/WhatsApp-Security-White... Of course you got all the metadata going to FB, but it's still a good messenger feature-wise for now, so I'll keep it as a backup in case my favorite privacy-conscious messenger is down again for 10 hours.
    - orestarod 6y ago
      What good is e2e encryption that is essentially becomes mere in transit encryption, since WhatsApp will filter your messages BEFORE they are sent to see if it needs to take any action? (Which action is of course phoning home, outside the precious Signal Protocol)
apeace 6y ago
> centralized services DO NOT scale What do you mean by centralized and what makes you think they can’t scale?
TheOperator 6y ago
Yup they're already under 99.9% reliability for the year. Never mind WhatsApp this makes them a questionable replacement for SMS. Not only "was" it a disaster for signal the disaster isn't over. Reliability is more important than privacy for messaging most of the time. Some major balls are being dropped here.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Reliability is more important than privacy for messaging most of the time. Some major balls are being dropped here. Obviously, The Signal team should have done a better job of coordinating the mass user migration with the WhatsApp team at Facebook. Such a failure. /s I don't get why some people see the need to bitch about Signal at every opportunity. The criticisms are usually unfair (like this one), missing the point, or a self-centered whine that Signal didn't decide to focus on catering to the whiner.
  - TheOperator 6y ago
    I have made one complaint about signal in my entire life after the outage hit 9 hours. They did fail. It's just an inconvenient truth thus the character assassination and apologism.
calcifer 6y ago
> and encourages you to shill it to friends as such Despite your deliberate conflation of them, shill and recommend are not synonyms > Cheerleading your users endorsement of privacy on twitter during an outage is insulting. How is a non-profit charity saying "we are having trouble right now but thanks for all the support" insulting? How did these folks insult you? > Tesla, Apple, Facebook, WhatsApp These are all corporations that ultimately only care about money. They have customers. Signal has supporters. > because Moxies waiting for an IPO, or an offer from FAANG to buy him out Just like all the other 501c3 IPOs and buyouts, right? > this was a disaster for Signal and most of HN is about to break an arm patting the company on the back A charity is having a temporary problem most HN readers would kill to have: They literally can't scale up fast enough to meet demand. Truly a disaster. > I fully expect to be downvoted to oblivion I wonder why.
xfer 6y ago
Facebook, whatsapp, google have all messaging service that are centralized. > Microservices trade gaming cloud providers for precious pay-by-the-second service for an endless byzantine dumpster fire of almost impossible to diagnose failure conditions. Distributed systems design is hard, Signal team might not be equipped to deal with the sudden surge of users and this definitely is not a good look. But federated/decentralized servers doesn't make this problem any easier, you still have to diagnose and fix your issue across a fleet of multiple servers. You can offload the problem to users, but then you will not have the adaption to begin with to create this problem.
chimeracoder 6y ago
> A more callous review would suggest that Signal remains centralized because Moxies waiting for an IPO, or an offer from FAANG to buy him out. If so, they couldn't have picked a worse corporate structure, because their current one forbids this.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
theloneshark 6y ago
I lived in a age when sunday was holiday for postoffice & letters took forever. The false sense of urgency created by emails & instant messaging are human creation (if we agree on that) by organizations that have self-interests to protect. I fully understand availability of service. Most of package/mail carriers told us how deliveries will be delayed due to cyclone in Florida or increasing load due to holiday+covid in recent days? Let us translate all of this to internet traffic as well. Hell didnt break loose or sky didnt fall on our head when it happened. Hoping we are in agreement till now, what worries me is not messaging or availability of that service. But the commercial interests that will use such services for their data mining. As soon as one agrees to new terms & conditions, what if WhatsApp roles out updates that suck in more info about me from my phone to build their dark profile & strong social connectivity maps? I think some of us are opposing that. It comes at cost of, lets say half day of service outage once in a while. How did we spend our childhood days when there were lengthy blackouts?

whymarrh 6y ago

I don’t understand, so what? They’re doing their best and if users go somewhere else so be it. I’m sure if they could avoid the outage they would. They’re not losing profits or anything. They’re hosting a free service. When they get the service back online users will have a secure messaging option that is even more battle-tested.

pmlnr 6y ago
> They’re not losing profits or anything. They are losing face. In oriental cultures, that's bad. EDIT apologies for bad wording. In certain situations, losing face is worth, than losing money - in this very moment, in my opinion, this is rather bad for Signal.
- ahmedalsudani 6y ago
  As an “Oriental”, I assure you nobody loses face when they close shop for a good reason.

efwfwef 6y ago

Just saying, but WhatsApp encrypt communications the same way Signal does, it's good enough for me.

im3w1l 6y ago
WhatsApp uses dark patterns to encourage unencrypted cloud backups.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  ... and it doesn't matter if you know how to avoid those unless your friends also do so. BTW, is there an authoritative source whether these cloud backups to Google Drive are unencrypted/encrypted with Google keys, or encrypted with keys held by Facebook? I see no reason not to encrypt them the same as local backups (with a key that is held by Facebook, and provided to your phone once they verify your phone number). The difference between these against the US government filing warrants is just one piece of paper, but against an attacker that compromises your Google account, it does make a significant difference.
not_really 6y ago
It absolutely does not.
- meibo 6y ago
  WhatsApp's encryption scheme was designed by Open Whisper Systems, which is now Signal, and even uses the Signal protocol library: http://www.cdn.whatsapp.net/security/WhatsApp-Security-Whitepaper.pdf http://www.cdn.whatsapp.net/security/WhatsApp-Security-White... Of course you got all the metadata going to FB, but it's still a good messenger feature-wise for now, so I'll keep it as a backup in case my favorite privacy-conscious messenger is down again for 10 hours.
  - orestarod 6y ago
    What good is e2e encryption that is essentially becomes mere in transit encryption, since WhatsApp will filter your messages BEFORE they are sent to see if it needs to take any action? (Which action is of course phoning home, outside the precious Signal Protocol)

apeace 6y ago

> centralized services DO NOT scale What do you mean by centralized and what makes you think they can’t scale?

TheOperator 6y ago

Yup they're already under 99.9% reliability for the year. Never mind WhatsApp this makes them a questionable replacement for SMS. Not only "was" it a disaster for signal the disaster isn't over. Reliability is more important than privacy for messaging most of the time. Some major balls are being dropped here.

ardy42 6y ago
> Reliability is more important than privacy for messaging most of the time. Some major balls are being dropped here. Obviously, The Signal team should have done a better job of coordinating the mass user migration with the WhatsApp team at Facebook. Such a failure. /s I don't get why some people see the need to bitch about Signal at every opportunity. The criticisms are usually unfair (like this one), missing the point, or a self-centered whine that Signal didn't decide to focus on catering to the whiner.
- TheOperator 6y ago
  I have made one complaint about signal in my entire life after the outage hit 9 hours. They did fail. It's just an inconvenient truth thus the character assassination and apologism.

calcifer 6y ago

> and encourages you to shill it to friends as such Despite your deliberate conflation of them, shill and recommend are not synonyms > Cheerleading your users endorsement of privacy on twitter during an outage is insulting. How is a non-profit charity saying "we are having trouble right now but thanks for all the support" insulting? How did these folks insult you? > Tesla, Apple, Facebook, WhatsApp These are all corporations that ultimately only care about money. They have customers. Signal has supporters. > because Moxies waiting for an IPO, or an offer from FAANG to buy him out Just like all the other 501c3 IPOs and buyouts, right? > this was a disaster for Signal and most of HN is about to break an arm patting the company on the back A charity is having a temporary problem most HN readers would kill to have: They literally can't scale up fast enough to meet demand. Truly a disaster. > I fully expect to be downvoted to oblivion I wonder why.

xfer 6y ago

Facebook, whatsapp, google have all messaging service that are centralized. > Microservices trade gaming cloud providers for precious pay-by-the-second service for an endless byzantine dumpster fire of almost impossible to diagnose failure conditions. Distributed systems design is hard, Signal team might not be equipped to deal with the sudden surge of users and this definitely is not a good look. But federated/decentralized servers doesn't make this problem any easier, you still have to diagnose and fix your issue across a fleet of multiple servers. You can offload the problem to users, but then you will not have the adaption to begin with to create this problem.

chimeracoder 6y ago

> A more callous review would suggest that Signal remains centralized because Moxies waiting for an IPO, or an offer from FAANG to buy him out. If so, they couldn't have picked a worse corporate structure, because their current one forbids this.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

theloneshark 6y ago

I lived in a age when sunday was holiday for postoffice & letters took forever. The false sense of urgency created by emails & instant messaging are human creation (if we agree on that) by organizations that have self-interests to protect. I fully understand availability of service. Most of package/mail carriers told us how deliveries will be delayed due to cyclone in Florida or increasing load due to holiday+covid in recent days? Let us translate all of this to internet traffic as well. Hell didnt break loose or sky didnt fall on our head when it happened. Hoping we are in agreement till now, what worries me is not messaging or availability of that service. But the commercial interests that will use such services for their data mining. As soon as one agrees to new terms & conditions, what if WhatsApp roles out updates that suck in more info about me from my phone to build their dark profile & strong social connectivity maps? I think some of us are opposing that. It comes at cost of, lets say half day of service outage once in a while. How did we spend our childhood days when there were lengthy blackouts?