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Does signal not attempt to ban users that engage in spamming, spreading malware/CP/other undesirable content, impersonation, etc?

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
How would they have any information about any of this? It's end to end encrypted. I don't think it even has accounts; the service is just a relay and the messages are authenticated on the basis of TOFU, i.e. this peer is the same as it was last time.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  Yeah Signal still has as an order of magnitude fewer monthly users as WhatsApp has daily users, so the "we won't do anything, block them or call the cops" approach still works. The scale thing I mentioned is real.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    Most "monthly" users are also "daily" users, so I don't know what point you're trying to make there. Signal has tens of millions of active users. This has nothing to do with call blocking or anything like that. I've had Signal for years and the the only spam in my message history is from more than a year ago and was sent via SMS. It's all just network effect and WhatsApp being the same company as Facebook and therefore having a marketing budget that a non-profit doesn't. The fact that Signal has grown by a factor of nearly a hundred over the past two years despite WhatsApp's network effect implies that people strongly prefer it.
    - BoorishBears 5y ago
      I feel like you must be trolling between the whole spending 4 comments arguing that TCP/IP is a platform thing... and now saying MAUs and DAUs are the same. MAUs are how many people used Signal in a month. DAUs are how many people used WhatsApp in a day. The DAU/MAU ratio for an app is never 100%. Ever. 20% is like a "good" rating, and 50% is like a best-in-class rating. So WhatsApp having literally an order of magnitude more DAUs shows the gap in their usage. The gap in their usage is not something for you to start making excuses about, it explains why Signal has no way to deal with fraud, child porn, spam, etc besides calling the police. That flies precisely because Signal is small potatoes compared to the platforms I mentioned.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

How would they have any information about any of this? It's end to end encrypted. I don't think it even has accounts; the service is just a relay and the messages are authenticated on the basis of TOFU, i.e. this peer is the same as it was last time.

BoorishBears 5y ago
Yeah Signal still has as an order of magnitude fewer monthly users as WhatsApp has daily users, so the "we won't do anything, block them or call the cops" approach still works. The scale thing I mentioned is real.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  Most "monthly" users are also "daily" users, so I don't know what point you're trying to make there. Signal has tens of millions of active users. This has nothing to do with call blocking or anything like that. I've had Signal for years and the the only spam in my message history is from more than a year ago and was sent via SMS. It's all just network effect and WhatsApp being the same company as Facebook and therefore having a marketing budget that a non-profit doesn't. The fact that Signal has grown by a factor of nearly a hundred over the past two years despite WhatsApp's network effect implies that people strongly prefer it.
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    I feel like you must be trolling between the whole spending 4 comments arguing that TCP/IP is a platform thing... and now saying MAUs and DAUs are the same. MAUs are how many people used Signal in a month. DAUs are how many people used WhatsApp in a day. The DAU/MAU ratio for an app is never 100%. Ever. 20% is like a "good" rating, and 50% is like a best-in-class rating. So WhatsApp having literally an order of magnitude more DAUs shows the gap in their usage. The gap in their usage is not something for you to start making excuses about, it explains why Signal has no way to deal with fraud, child porn, spam, etc besides calling the police. That flies precisely because Signal is small potatoes compared to the platforms I mentioned.