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The founder of signal wrote an article explaining why signal isn't federated that seems relevant here: > Indeed, cannibalizing a federated application-layer pr

The founder of signal wrote an article explaining why signal isn't federated that seems relevant here: > Indeed, cannibalizing a federated application-layer protocol into a centralized service is almost a sure recipe for a successful consumer product today. It’s what Slack did with IRC, what Facebook did with email, and what WhatsApp has done with XMPP. In each case, the federated service is stuck in time, while the centralized service is able to iterate into the modern world and beyond. > So while it’s nice that I’m able to host my own email, that’s also the reason why my email isn’t end-to-end encrypted, and probably never will be. By contrast, WhatsApp was able to introduce end-to-end encryption to over a billion users with a single software update. So long as federation means stasis while centralization means movement, federated protocols are going to have trouble existing in a software climate that demands movement as it does today. https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

some_furry 4y ago
What Moxie wrote was about his decisions with Signal. It's not that relevant to this post for distinct two reasons: 1. One of the stated anti-tenets of what I'm proposing is competing with Signal. https://github.com/soatok/mastodon-e2ee-specification#anti-tenets https://github.com/soatok/mastodon-e2ee-specification#anti-t... 2. Cryptography has matured greatly since Moxie wrote that post. I feel confident about rolling out a v1 E2EE protocol for the Fediverse in 2023, and then a v2 in 2024 or later. Migration is a two-putt, but it's tractable. I've worked on similar message format migrations before. 1. Roll out read-only support for v2. 2. Enable writing. Now people can start using v2. 3. Later, once the new version is ubiquitous for the scope of your concern, disable v1. It's not as fast as if you own the whole stack (like Signal does), but a federated ecosystem can move. Email is a lost cause. ActivityPub is still relatively small and can be influenced for good.

some_furry 4y ago

What Moxie wrote was about his decisions with Signal. It's not that relevant to this post for distinct two reasons: 1. One of the stated anti-tenets of what I'm proposing is competing with Signal. https://github.com/soatok/mastodon-e2ee-specification#anti-tenets https://github.com/soatok/mastodon-e2ee-specification#anti-t... 2. Cryptography has matured greatly since Moxie wrote that post. I feel confident about rolling out a v1 E2EE protocol for the Fediverse in 2023, and then a v2 in 2024 or later. Migration is a two-putt, but it's tractable. I've worked on similar message format migrations before. 1. Roll out read-only support for v2. 2. Enable writing. Now people can start using v2. 3. Later, once the new version is ubiquitous for the scope of your concern, disable v1. It's not as fast as if you own the whole stack (like Signal does), but a federated ecosystem can move. Email is a lost cause. ActivityPub is still relatively small and can be influenced for good.