5 ms·

You're welcome to either use such a decentralised service or fork signal and add decentralisation / federation. Centralised services get more users by having a

You're welcome to either use such a decentralised service or fork signal and add decentralisation / federation. Centralised services get more users by having a lower threshold of adoption.

turminal 6y ago
What's the purpose of signal? Is it taking over the world or providing a service to people that care about their privacy and free (as in freedom) communication?
- sa1 6y ago
  There are lots of purposes but dismantling mass surveillance is a major one. This requires 'taking over the world'.
  - fourthark 6y ago
    ... Creating a central point of failure / censorship?
    - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
      Yeah so this latest attempt seems to want to “fix” that. “Hey, let’s distribute connections (proxy servers) to our central point of failure so that we can get around the central point of failure. Genius!” /s
      - im3w1l 6y ago
        They want to have a monopoly on points of failure. We can censor but no one else.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  Creating yet another walled garden.
danShumway 6y ago
Well... except in Iran, hence the strategy of decentralizing proxy servers.
pmlnr 6y ago
> You're welcome to either use such a decentralised service or fork signal and add decentralisation / federation. It's called XMPP. It predates Signal by ~15 years.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  And the clients for XMPP still suck, 15 years later. You might find a good one on one OS after trying out several (install, test for a few days, repeat), but then when you want a client on your phone or another OS, you have to try the install/test cycle all over again. In my experience, most of the clients just don’t do WEll everything a modern IM client needs.... group chat without needing to know a FQDN address, alerting on new messages/mentions, image and attachment support, encryption without wonky key management, multisession support (connecting simultaneously from multiple devices not leading to problems), on and on... I used XMPP for years on iOS, android, Mac, windows, and linux. Hated it every day.
  - pmlnr 6y ago
    Conversations and it's forks are all very good clients, and their voice/video chat works perfectly once the XMPP server configures the turn server. Gajim got a lot better recently. I even managed to get Pidgin to a decent, albeit not perfect level.
- awestroke 6y ago
  And yet it hasn't become big yet.
  - pmlnr 6y ago
    It did, then the google reader effect kicked in. Google talk, whatsapp, facebook were all xmpp at one point, deliberately crippled, then nearly killed. See RSS.

You're welcome to either use such a decentralised service or fork signal and add decentralisation / federation. Centralised services get more users by having a lower threshold of adoption.

turminal 6y ago

What's the purpose of signal? Is it taking over the world or providing a service to people that care about their privacy and free (as in freedom) communication?

sa1 6y ago
There are lots of purposes but dismantling mass surveillance is a major one. This requires 'taking over the world'.
- fourthark 6y ago
  ... Creating a central point of failure / censorship?
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    Yeah so this latest attempt seems to want to “fix” that. “Hey, let’s distribute connections (proxy servers) to our central point of failure so that we can get around the central point of failure. Genius!” /s
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      They want to have a monopoly on points of failure. We can censor but no one else.
eeZah7Ux 6y ago
Creating yet another walled garden.

danShumway 6y ago

Well... except in Iran, hence the strategy of decentralizing proxy servers.

pmlnr 6y ago

> You're welcome to either use such a decentralised service or fork signal and add decentralisation / federation. It's called XMPP. It predates Signal by ~15 years.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
And the clients for XMPP still suck, 15 years later. You might find a good one on one OS after trying out several (install, test for a few days, repeat), but then when you want a client on your phone or another OS, you have to try the install/test cycle all over again. In my experience, most of the clients just don’t do WEll everything a modern IM client needs.... group chat without needing to know a FQDN address, alerting on new messages/mentions, image and attachment support, encryption without wonky key management, multisession support (connecting simultaneously from multiple devices not leading to problems), on and on... I used XMPP for years on iOS, android, Mac, windows, and linux. Hated it every day.
- pmlnr 6y ago
  Conversations and it's forks are all very good clients, and their voice/video chat works perfectly once the XMPP server configures the turn server. Gajim got a lot better recently. I even managed to get Pidgin to a decent, albeit not perfect level.
awestroke 6y ago
And yet it hasn't become big yet.
- pmlnr 6y ago
  It did, then the google reader effect kicked in. Google talk, whatsapp, facebook were all xmpp at one point, deliberately crippled, then nearly killed. See RSS.