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A Message from Signal's New President
- stereoradonc 4y agoFrom a sudden high and then a consistent low, none of my contacts are using Signal. It has become irrelevant. Almost completely irrelevant.
- IYasha 4y agoIf Signal stop requiring telephone number, its popularity might skyrocket. The scheme is easy: to prevent spamming, you can have a pool of registered numbers that are NOT associated with accouts. This is enough to check if a number is already in use. That's all we need! (almost. subjective. required, but not limited to.)
- fefe23 4y agoI never understand modern corporate communication strategies. I'm not interested in her feelings or whether she thinks she is qualified. I would like to know her name so I can find out for myself what she has done before. I also don't need to be told that Signal is important. If I didn't think that I wouldn't be reading their blog post.
- HuwFulcher 4y agoYou can find her name (Meredith Whittaker) in 2 clicks from that article. I agree the name should be present but it's not exactly difficult for someone semi tech-literate to find.
- bauruine 4y agoIf you click on the author you get to her github profile that contains her full name. It's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Whittaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Whittaker
- djaychela 4y ago> I'm not interested in her feelings or whether she thinks she is qualified. Maybe not, but a lot of people will be, particularly if their favourite thing is being 'taken over' by said person. >I would like to know her name so I can find out for myself what she has done before. Kind of unfortunate that the link in the blog entry is to a currently-empty Github account (in terms of public repos, anyway). However, a brief search turned up her Wikipedia page [1], and going on what's in there it looks as if she's better aligned to what she said on the Blog page than if you just looked at her briefly and saw she was an employee of Google for some time. > I also don't need to be told that Signal is important. If I didn't think that I wouldn't be reading their blog post. You may not need to be told (and neither do I), but there are oceans of people out there who don't know that there is a workable alternative to using WhatsApp. It took me a long time (and leverage via a friend-group holiday) to get my friends on Signal (I'm not on any Meta properties, by principle), and most of them hadn't heard of it. Most people just use WhatsApp because it's become the default, and most of them don't care about Meta (or anyone else's) policies or warping of society. They just want to communicate, and don't want to use SMS/MMS (because of the limited features or cost), or can't use iMessage (because they aren't on an iPhone). [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Whittaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Whittaker
- t6jvcereio 4y ago> Maybe not, but a lot of people will be, particularly if their favourite thing is being 'taken over' by said person. Wouldn't those people rather be told what her plans are?
- lavventura 4y agowell said
- Mandatum 4y agoThis isn’t written for you. It’s for investors and middle managers internally.
- samuel 4y agoThat was my first instinct, to look what she had done/write before. I have to admit, being anti-woke myself (not American), that this article caught my eye: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/tech-labor-progressive/ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/tech-labor-progres... Not the kind of person I would expect to be in charge of Signal, TBH.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago> Not the kind of person I would expect to be in charge of Signal, TBH. Actually, to me, it seems fairly consistent with Signal’s mission. She appears to be fairly qualified (including a mindset, as she is in a leadership role) and I wish her well.
- samuel 4y ago_The Signal Foundation’s mission is to develop open source privacy technology that protects free expression and enables secure global communication._ vs _The left must vie for control over the algorithms, data, and infrastructure that shape our lives._ I don't think these two staments match very well. Caesar's wife and all that.... Edit: BTW, I wish her well too. I don't think that she's going to hinder Signal's crypto just serve to the left's interests, but she hasn't a clean record.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoFair ‘nuff, but the second quote was taken out of context, as the whole article was about “taking control,” in order to stop manipulation. She is quite left-leaning, though, so I could see why some folks would find her ideology grating. I believe that a fair number of right-leaning people also use Signal.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoControl in this context is very clearly control by the users and communities as opposed to government and corporations. Rainbow capitalism isn't left and never has been.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- potatototoo99 4y agoAn activist in charge of a privacy tool, not often a match made in heaven.
- erokar 4y agoWe're all activists.
- potatototoo99 4y ago*An activist-but-not-security/privacy-activist
- Barrin92 4y agoshe's literally been fired/quit her old job at google for protesting against surveillance programs and she's a longstanding advocate for whistleblower protection. two minutes on Wikipedia would have brought that up.
- the_third_wave 4y agoWikipedia is not a good source for anything even tangentially related to politically sensitive subjects which this clearly is. If you have to use it make sure to check the Talk and View history pages which tend to give some insight into the level of ideological control maintained by the page editors.
- janandonly 4y agoNot enough people know this.
- blueflow 4y agoI would hate being called an activist, because that puts me in the same bucket as some really obnoxious self-promoters...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ghastmaster 4y ago> My support for encryption and private communications has been consistent and unwavering So tell me about that support. I use signal for security. That is priority number one. This is the only statement in the message that explicitly mentions any support for security. Most of the rest of the message in fact focuses on aspects other than security. She is very good at saying thing's that have no substance. For example, "So I bring a clear understanding of the environment shaped by the dominant tech business model, and of what it takes to build tech that rejects this model", is not explicitly stating she rejects that model, just that she is familiar with it. The message is full of implied, not explicit statements of principle. I am a little disheartened. This message serves to make me pay more attention.
- _nalply 4y agoWhat I expected is a concise message of goals. What I found is that my eyes glazed over.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- _0ffh 4y ago>She is very good at saying thing's that have no substance Jives with her qualifications, which are a bachelor's degree in Rethorics.
- ticviking 4y agoThe Rhetoric here is terrible though. That or we're not the audience.
- UncleMeat 4y agoJennifer Widom was chair of the CS department at Stanford and is now Dean of the Engineering school there. She has a bachelor's degree in Trumpet. Criticizing people for their undergraduate degree is foolish.
- _0ffh 4y ago
- O__________O 4y agoUnless something has changed, all three board members have been responsible for running Signal Foundation within past year, which is highly unusual. Signal’s list of board members: https://signalfoundation.org/en/ https://signalfoundation.org/en/ Wish Signal would be more transparent and timely about there technical and financial status and plans. For example, might be wrong, but their most recent 990 should already be available, but they have not posted it (or any of their past 990s) on their own site. Tech wise, given users in mass have asked for it for years, feel like they owe the users a public explanation of why they only allow numbers.
- codethief 4y agoSince signalfoundation.org mentions that > Before joining Signal as President, she was the Minderoo Research Professor at NYU here are her publications, for anyone who wants to read up on what she's been up to: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Meredith+Whittaker&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Meredith+W...
- O__________O 4y agoShe joined Signal 2020; I personally do not care what she has been up to — Brian and Moxie know her, have worked with her for years, and agreed she was a fit for Signal’s needs.
- fmajid 4y agoShe's the lady who was fired by Google in retaliation for organizing the walkouts that protested the big payout Andy Rubin got despite being found guilty of sexual harrassment. So she's got both principles and guts, good to know and a positive sign for Signal. Not enough to overcome the taint of its initial funding by the US Government, its unnecessary and privacy-busting requirement for phone numbers and the stench by association of cryptocurrency, but who knows, she may be able to influence away from that.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cmeacham98 4y agoDoes "initial funding by the US Government" really matter? Tor was funded by the US Government and it at least looks like they struggle to break it. The phone number requirement is asinine and the reason I use Matrix, as I refuse to tie any identity of mine (even those I don't care about keeping private) to a phone number. Has Signal never heard of SIM swapping?
- cpach 4y ago“Has Signal never heard of SIM swapping?” Of course they have. Signal also has opt-in protection for that.
- cmeacham98 4y agoSo by default Signal accounts are vulnerable to a known security issue? Great design!
- cpach 4y agoAre you aware of any secure messaging systems where no trade-offs where made? If so, please let us know.
- pydry 4y ago>it at least looks like they struggle to break it. Do they? Their FAQ basically says that if your adversary is a nation state we aint gonna be much help. I think they focus much more on anonymizing against ISPs and have basically thrown the towel in on defending against, say, correlation attacks by nation states.
- rzr 4y agoDear Signal's presidency May you consider priority to get client published to f-droid (or debian): https://forum.f-droid.org/t/signal-wickr-on-f-droid-2021/12265/ https://forum.f-droid.org/t/signal-wickr-on-f-droid-2021/122... https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/127 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/127 Meanwhile I'll recommend freedom lovers to use matrix|XMPP|IRC (which can be also used on web or linux computer) Freely yours
- blueflow 4y agoCan't you install Signal without an App store? Directly via apk?
- rzr 4y agoyes that's something I'd like to avoid... because it hasn't been rebuilt from source (and audited) https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/search/org.thoughtcrime.securesms/ https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/search/org....
- Vinnl 4y agoYes, and it checks for updates by itself (though that's still more cumbersome than it being managed by F-Droid of course): https://signal.org/android/apk/ https://signal.org/android/apk/
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- b3nji 4y agoAnother political activist, I'm not certain how I feel about this. Seems like this might not go well, looking at what happens to companies with “activism” at their heart.
- actionfromafar 4y agoIsn't the very existence of Signal "activism".
- andrewinardeer 4y agoExercising the right of privacy is now activism? Good grief.
- ivank 4y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcC0RNsallc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcC0RNsallc Crypto Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk
- actionfromafar 4y agoIt certainly felt that way to me in the beginning, before Signal got some traction. It didn't even have voice calls originally. I think a majority will never care much about right to privacy and just use something. The thing is, for me to exercise my right to privacy, it helps if I can practice that right with more than one or two people in my address book.
- sbarre 4y agoI'll provide a counter-anecdote that almost my entire social circle - at least 30-40 people, mainly middle-aged non-tech people - has migrated to Signal from WhatsApp in the last 2 years. And it didn't take much effort. The desire for a cross-platform (iOS/Android) group chat system, Signal's features like desktop apps and ease of use, and a generally growing dislike for Facebook/Meta made it pretty painless and organic.
- dade_ 4y agoThat’s wonderful. Will they make a proper desktop app already?
- puyoxyz 4y agoThe desktop app seems good in my experience ?
- tharne 4y agoIt's ok, but not great. The biggest issue is that Signal is really designed to be tied to your smartphone and managed from there. I, and I suspect a lot of other folks who use the desktop app, would prefer Signal to be more platform and device agnostic, like email. There are ways with the signal-cli utility to make your desktop Signal application the primary signal client, but then managing contacts and groups becomes a real hassle - you have to message with a bunch of json config files and the cli utility doesn't always work as expected. I'll freely admit, this is probably not an issue for most regular users, but it's still something that could be improved.
- dade_ 4y agoYes, this is exactly what I am getting at. The cell phone number is the user identity, and this is flawed thinking. Some people have more than one phone number, and some people use more than 1 PC. Signal fails miserably here, and so I think it has been relegated to a niche market. Everyone I know that tried Signal, also tried Telegram. Anecdotal, but we are still communicating with Telegram.
- PaywallBuster 4y agoher profile links to an empty Github profile created days ago too
- Markoff 4y agoNo phone number required, decentralized network and third party apps allowed when? That's only information I care about Signal, until then Element (Matrix) FTW.
- ryukoposting 4y agoMatrix and Signal are apples and oranges. > no phone number required Signal has never claimed to offer anonymity AFAIK. The only reason this would be on their roadmap is if anonymity is one of their goals. Anonymity and privacy are both important, but they aren't both necessary at all times. Anonymity isn't desirable in some situations. > decentralized network After trying some of the decentralized chat apps out there, I'm glad Signal made an app my friends actually want to use, rather than a half-baked, slow, prohibitively complex Discord clone.
- Markoff 4y agoI see you use Signal for short time, I used that POS for years, asking for years when I can send more than one photo at time and they just fixed it recently, before you could select only one photo at the time. When I stopped using it the mssage delivery was extremely unreliable when you switch between WiFi and mobile network, Whatsapp send message within seconds, Signal needs minutes/hours to realize network changed to send it properly. There was major downtime because their US admin slept overnight so people in Europe could forget for hours about sending messages. Last drop was requiring PIN to use app with nagging prompt taking 1/3 or even full screen making app without PIN unusable, until they backpedalled on this nonsense. But it was already too late, uninstalled that user hostile POS from phones of my (extended) family where we used it.
- ryukoposting 4y agoIf 2 years is a short time, that's fine by me. All I can say is that I've never had any of the issues you describe. I appreciate the monthly reminder for your PIN- without it, I probably would have forgotten about it! And it doesn't stop you from using the app, it's just a little blurb at the bottom.
- subjectsigma 4y agoY'all remember how well Mozilla getting taken over by activists went? Witch hunt firings followed by years of failed product launches and loss of market share while leadership basically just checks out and collects their salary?
- ramesh31 4y agoYup. My first thought was “why does a messaging app need a board of directors?”. I guess I just don’t understand tech.
- rafram 4y agoNonprofits need boards of directors by law, and a free, open-source app needs a nonprofit to back it, because the alternatives are probably a for-profit or abandonment.
- gilrain 4y ago> Witch hunt firings Translation from conspiracy speak: there was one resignation
- the_why_of_y 4y agoDo you mean since 2007, when Mitchell Baker wrote the Mozilla Manifesto? https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/
- andrewinardeer 4y agoLet's see if she can get rid of this ridiculous MobileCoin that has somehow embedded itself into my Signal app. I won't hold my breath.
- aorth 4y agoDoes anyone actually use it? I seriously wonder why they put it in there. Moxie doesn't strike me as the type of guy who would fall for this cryptocurrency nonsense, so I'm seriously wondering if anyone uses it. The Signal project should do some case studies if so. For example: some farmers use it to pay for petrol in India, or some students from Myanmar use it to send money back home, etc.
- tablespoon 4y ago> I seriously wonder why they put it in there. Doesn't Telegram have some kind of payments features (I don't use it, so I don't know). Maybe it was an attempt at feature parity.
- FabHK 4y agoIndeed. Some five years ago, one could have excused a venture into cryptocurrencies as idealistic support of some bold, pathbreaking, liberating, enabling technology. Today, not so much.
- illiac786 4y agoI like the idea of anonymous payments, although I fully understand how alluring this is to criminals as well. MobileCoin has significantly lower environmental impact (PoS) and good anonymity features. Technically, I don't see what there is not to like, and no one is forced to use it? I would not excuse a "buzz word" feature, but I do not think that is one, I think it has a lot of potential.
- dividuum 4y agoHopefully. Got donor’s remorse from that decision and became hesitant recommending signal as a result.
- egberts1 4y agoI’ve learned that: Signal is best at keeping your message content off of their server - well-guarded against network-based MitM. - Need work on hiding association with others. - Your Signal message content remains retrievable only at and on endpoints, hence the timed message deletion. Telegram is probably best at keeping your identity safer (than Signal) - but needs work on hiding associations with others. - well-guarded against network-based MitM. - your message remains readable by Telegram at their server because Telegram holds your keys. So, I’d gladly give up association for privacy and use Signal.
- egberts1 4y agoI could envision a private Signal server to deal with the anonymity part but that would require ample assistance of anonymized router hops.
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- reocha 4y agoWhat makes you think shes a left wing extremist? She just seems like a liberal passionate about justice against sexual harassers and misuse of AI technology.
- 4gotunameagain 4y agoThings like the fact that she attacked white female trump voters, in a tweet that has apparently been deleted come to mind https://web.archive.org/web/20201204192116/https://twitter.com/mer__edith/status/1334914261559242752 https://web.archive.org/web/20201204192116/https://twitter.c... believing in "patriarchal power" and equality of outcome (i.e. quotas and the necessary discrimination to achieve them) flags people as extremists in my head. Could be wrong, who knows clarification edit, I am NOT a Trump supporter.
- reocha 4y agoAttacking trump voters seems pretty normal for a liberal. Doesn't really make her an extremist, nor does believing in the patriarchy make her an extremist. I'm gonna need to see anything that links her to equality of outcome, but quotas don't lead in any way to equality of outcome. No sane leftist let alone liberal believes in equality of outcome. I feel like criticizing female trump voters is pretty fair too, voting against one's self interest is pretty easy to recognize as bad.
- bilal4hmed 4y agoDoes this mean signal has to pay back that loan and this will lead to further monetization of the app?
- MomoXenosaga 4y agoGreed will come for Signal if it gets big. Which is probably the reason why you wouldn't want it to become the replacement for WhatsApp.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sylware 4y ago"trust us"... yeah, right...
- janandonly 4y agoAm I the only one who found the "Taproot" [1] hint interesting? In this sentence: > As President I will dedicate myself to helping Signal build a long taproot so it can grow and thrive in dynamic climates. [1] https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/bitcoin-taproot-upgrade/ https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/bitcoin-taproot-upgrade...