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Or, to re-frame it, the people who own Signal have opinions on what the right way to do things are. You may disagree with those, and for good reasons depending

by growse 4y ago

Or, to re-frame it, the people who own Signal have opinions on what the right way to do things are. You may disagree with those, and for good reasons depending on your context, and that's ok! There's plenty of other messaging options out there which may fit your context better. Life is about compromise. Complaining that someone else's compromise doesn't work for you is not particularly productive.

ddevault 4y ago
When it stops being okay is when Signal's know-better-than-you/opinions are motivated by their commercial interests, and in conflict with the interests of the users.
- tankenmate 4y ago
  Can you provide an example?
  - baisq 4y ago
    The addition of MobileCoin to the app?
- growse 4y ago
  The "interests of the users" is not a single, homogonous thing that you can point at and define. Some users' interests conflict with other users! Also, interests can have a whole range of motivations, and I'm not sure any single class of motivation (commercial, spiritual, whatever) objectively outranks any other. People are going to disagree on that, because everyone ranks values differently. I don't get to tell Signal what to do though, they should be free to balance interests however they like. i may not fully agree with their approach, but may also choose to compromise on that because there's nothing out there that fits any better. This idea that "someone built a thing, has strong ideas about what that thing should look like, and some people don't like that because they don't share the same values" being somehow "not ok" is peculiar to me because it's at the very heart of fundamental freedoms around speech / association etc. If you don't share Signal's values, or disagree with how they balance competing interests, go use something else!
fsflover 4y ago
> the people who own Signal have opinions This is not what the OP said. It's not just opinions. You are forced to use the only client and the only server. You are forced to not have backups, and so on. You are forced to use an Android or iOS phone (security? really?).
- growse 4y ago
  > You are forced to use the only client and the only server. This is a fancy way of saying that the protocol is private and that their instance of the server has a ToS. There's also nothing stopping you running your own server instance (I know of a handful of private Signal server deployments). > You are forced to not have backups I literally juse restored my signal backup to a new device in the last 10 mins. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ > You are forced to use an Android or iOS phone (security? really?). I'm interested in hearing about what other client platforms they should invest in supporting that would increase the "security" of their users and service. What's frustrating is that these sorts of rants can generally be summarised as "I want to use someone else's service on my own terms, even if the service owner explicitly doesn't want that". No-one's forcing you to use Signal.
  - fsflover 4y ago
    >> You are forced to use the only client and the only server. > This is a fancy way of saying that the protocol is private and that their instance of the server has a ToS. No, this is a "fancy" way of saying that they are actively fighting against decentralization. It makes me suspicious of their intentions, to be honest. > I'm interested in hearing about what other client platforms they should invest in supporting that would increase the "security" of their users and service. How about a normal desktop GNU/Linux client? Is Android more secure than Linux? It depends on what threats you want to defend from, and Signal developers think that Google/Apple are not my threats. They force their own threat model on me. It makes me suspicious, again.
    - growse 4y ago
      > No, this is a "fancy" way of saying that they are actively fighting against decentralization. It makes me suspicious of their intentions, to be honest. I don't really see them "fighting" anything? They've made a decision that they want to build a centralised service, and as far as I can see they've been pretty open about why they want that and quite happy running a centralised service. Are they going round trying to convince other people to choose against decentralization in their systems?> If anything, the "fighting" here seems to be from people who really really care about decentralization and really wish Signal would just adopt their value system and do what they want, as though it's some sort of objective good. > They force their own threat model on me. It makes me suspicious, again. This is true for literally every company running any service you use. The people who pay for, design, engineer and run a service "forces" their threat modelling, feature prioritisation, colour scheme etc. on you. If you're suspicious about it or don't like it, simply stop using it.
AnonHP 4y ago
It’s not about just opinions. Signal is actively hostile to user privacy and experience in certain ways (note that I’m not saying it’s hostile to user privacy in all ways). As I wrote in this comment in the past [1]: > Additional irritants that nobody in the development team has thought about for years: > * I decline Signal’s prompt to turn on notifications with the “Not now” button (there is no “No thanks” button). It responds with “We’ll remind you later” and nags me again in a few days. > * I decline Signal’s prompt to share my contacts with it using the “Not now” button (there is no “No thanks” button). It responds with “We’ll remind you later” and nags me again in a few days. > Signal may be good at security, but whoever designed the app has no respect for users’ time, and it doesn’t seem like they respect a user’s privacy choices either. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31641137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31641137
- NoGravitas 4y ago
  It's the Silicon Valley vibe. Signal is 100% focused on user base growth, and they subordinate a lot of other concerns to that.

by growse 4y ago

ddevault 4y ago

When it stops being okay is when Signal's know-better-than-you/opinions are motivated by their commercial interests, and in conflict with the interests of the users.

tankenmate 4y ago
Can you provide an example?
- baisq 4y ago
  The addition of MobileCoin to the app?
growse 4y ago
The "interests of the users" is not a single, homogonous thing that you can point at and define. Some users' interests conflict with other users! Also, interests can have a whole range of motivations, and I'm not sure any single class of motivation (commercial, spiritual, whatever) objectively outranks any other. People are going to disagree on that, because everyone ranks values differently. I don't get to tell Signal what to do though, they should be free to balance interests however they like. i may not fully agree with their approach, but may also choose to compromise on that because there's nothing out there that fits any better. This idea that "someone built a thing, has strong ideas about what that thing should look like, and some people don't like that because they don't share the same values" being somehow "not ok" is peculiar to me because it's at the very heart of fundamental freedoms around speech / association etc. If you don't share Signal's values, or disagree with how they balance competing interests, go use something else!

fsflover 4y ago

> the people who own Signal have opinions This is not what the OP said. It's not just opinions. You are forced to use the only client and the only server. You are forced to not have backups, and so on. You are forced to use an Android or iOS phone (security? really?).

growse 4y ago
> You are forced to use the only client and the only server. This is a fancy way of saying that the protocol is private and that their instance of the server has a ToS. There's also nothing stopping you running your own server instance (I know of a handful of private Signal server deployments). > You are forced to not have backups I literally juse restored my signal backup to a new device in the last 10 mins. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ > You are forced to use an Android or iOS phone (security? really?). I'm interested in hearing about what other client platforms they should invest in supporting that would increase the "security" of their users and service. What's frustrating is that these sorts of rants can generally be summarised as "I want to use someone else's service on my own terms, even if the service owner explicitly doesn't want that". No-one's forcing you to use Signal.
- fsflover 4y ago
  >> You are forced to use the only client and the only server. > This is a fancy way of saying that the protocol is private and that their instance of the server has a ToS. No, this is a "fancy" way of saying that they are actively fighting against decentralization. It makes me suspicious of their intentions, to be honest. > I'm interested in hearing about what other client platforms they should invest in supporting that would increase the "security" of their users and service. How about a normal desktop GNU/Linux client? Is Android more secure than Linux? It depends on what threats you want to defend from, and Signal developers think that Google/Apple are not my threats. They force their own threat model on me. It makes me suspicious, again.
  - growse 4y ago
    > No, this is a "fancy" way of saying that they are actively fighting against decentralization. It makes me suspicious of their intentions, to be honest. I don't really see them "fighting" anything? They've made a decision that they want to build a centralised service, and as far as I can see they've been pretty open about why they want that and quite happy running a centralised service. Are they going round trying to convince other people to choose against decentralization in their systems?> If anything, the "fighting" here seems to be from people who really really care about decentralization and really wish Signal would just adopt their value system and do what they want, as though it's some sort of objective good. > They force their own threat model on me. It makes me suspicious, again. This is true for literally every company running any service you use. The people who pay for, design, engineer and run a service "forces" their threat modelling, feature prioritisation, colour scheme etc. on you. If you're suspicious about it or don't like it, simply stop using it.

AnonHP 4y ago

It’s not about just opinions. Signal is actively hostile to user privacy and experience in certain ways (note that I’m not saying it’s hostile to user privacy in all ways). As I wrote in this comment in the past [1]: > Additional irritants that nobody in the development team has thought about for years: > * I decline Signal’s prompt to turn on notifications with the “Not now” button (there is no “No thanks” button). It responds with “We’ll remind you later” and nags me again in a few days. > * I decline Signal’s prompt to share my contacts with it using the “Not now” button (there is no “No thanks” button). It responds with “We’ll remind you later” and nags me again in a few days. > Signal may be good at security, but whoever designed the app has no respect for users’ time, and it doesn’t seem like they respect a user’s privacy choices either. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31641137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31641137

NoGravitas 4y ago
It's the Silicon Valley vibe. Signal is 100% focused on user base growth, and they subordinate a lot of other concerns to that.