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Believe me. I do not ‘wish’ Israel to have a thriving grey market for surveillance hacking tools like Pegasus that are used by oppressive regimes around the wor

Believe me. I do not ‘wish’ Israel to have a thriving grey market for surveillance hacking tools like Pegasus that are used by oppressive regimes around the world. I also do not ‘wish’ for the Israeli government to fund companies like Amdocs who have been accused multiple times of improperly handing over customer data to that government. But those are the facts and so when I am accused of some kind of vague ‘prejudice’ for having my fair suspicions about a telecom company funded in turn by Amdocs i can’t help but feel like I’m taking flak for being over the right target. “The initial project was created inside Amdocs, while building a chat tool called "Amdocs Unified Communications” Are you contradicting the wikipedia article? I have no inside knowledge so if there are inaccuracies on wikipedia it would be great if you could correct them. As an insider, what do you think was Amdoc’s reason for building a whole new chat protocol? Why would they pay big money for decentralization? Why wasn’t Slack or SIP+XMPP good enough?

WastingMyTime89 3y ago
You are taking flak for disparaging an open source protocol and set of softwares on allegations which are easy to disprove because the code is open and on the basis of prejudices which are themselves very close to being antisemitism. I remember Matrix being heavily used by the French government anyway. I’m pretty sure you they did check that it’s not spyware.
Arathorn 3y ago
> “The initial project was created inside Amdocs, while building a chat tool called "Amdocs Unified Communications” This is true; I created it. With a team, including myself, who had been acquired into Amdocs and operated as an independent unit. As I already said. > As an insider, what do you think was Amdocs’ reason for building a whole new chat protocol? Our pitch to Amdocs was that RCS was not fit for purpose, and XMPP was building on top of outdated primitives which didn’t reflect the synced multi-device group-chat experience of comms app which were becoming standard at the time in 2014. To be clear: the idea of Matrix was our idea; Amdocs deserves significant credit for going along with it and funding it in the early days. > Why would they pay big money for decentralization? They didn’t pay big money - they funded a ~15 person team for a few years. They supported decentralisation because if you’re building something which could replace the phone network, it needs to be an open protocol which anyone can independently implement, run, and verify. Including conspiracy theorists on HN. > Why wasn’t Slack or SIP+XMPP good enough? Because Slack is an unencrypted proprietary centralised chat vendor, not a communication protocol. SIP+XMPP was a horrifically flimsy approach, which duplicated functionality and risk of bugs, while limited by both protocols (eg lack of e2ee and group calling in SIP; lack of synced conversation history in XMPP at the time).
- goodSteveramos 3y ago
  Wow thats awesome dude. Matrix is great software. Building something which could replace the phone network sounds exactly like something Amdocs would be interested in. I get that you cant be throwing shade on your investors, but a LOT of people at FBI think Amdocs was handing over call records on Americans to people in Israel. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ataHCdCS_N0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ataHCdCS_N0 Furthermore, 6 Israelis working for Amdocs were deported in 2002 for spying on the US. That’s not just a conspiracy theory. Its a seriously concerning fact.
  - Arathorn 3y ago
    I saw absolutely zero evidence or interest in malicious activity while working at Amdocs. That said, nobody from the main Amdocs org ever contributed any code or non-financial input into Matrix, nor were there any links after we span out. To be clear: your allegations are categorically, unambiguously false.
    - goodSteveramos 3y ago
      That’s pretty reassuring to hear. Thank you!

WastingMyTime89 3y ago

You are taking flak for disparaging an open source protocol and set of softwares on allegations which are easy to disprove because the code is open and on the basis of prejudices which are themselves very close to being antisemitism. I remember Matrix being heavily used by the French government anyway. I’m pretty sure you they did check that it’s not spyware.

Arathorn 3y ago

> “The initial project was created inside Amdocs, while building a chat tool called "Amdocs Unified Communications” This is true; I created it. With a team, including myself, who had been acquired into Amdocs and operated as an independent unit. As I already said. > As an insider, what do you think was Amdocs’ reason for building a whole new chat protocol? Our pitch to Amdocs was that RCS was not fit for purpose, and XMPP was building on top of outdated primitives which didn’t reflect the synced multi-device group-chat experience of comms app which were becoming standard at the time in 2014. To be clear: the idea of Matrix was our idea; Amdocs deserves significant credit for going along with it and funding it in the early days. > Why would they pay big money for decentralization? They didn’t pay big money - they funded a ~15 person team for a few years. They supported decentralisation because if you’re building something which could replace the phone network, it needs to be an open protocol which anyone can independently implement, run, and verify. Including conspiracy theorists on HN. > Why wasn’t Slack or SIP+XMPP good enough? Because Slack is an unencrypted proprietary centralised chat vendor, not a communication protocol. SIP+XMPP was a horrifically flimsy approach, which duplicated functionality and risk of bugs, while limited by both protocols (eg lack of e2ee and group calling in SIP; lack of synced conversation history in XMPP at the time).

goodSteveramos 3y ago
Wow thats awesome dude. Matrix is great software. Building something which could replace the phone network sounds exactly like something Amdocs would be interested in. I get that you cant be throwing shade on your investors, but a LOT of people at FBI think Amdocs was handing over call records on Americans to people in Israel. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ataHCdCS_N0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ataHCdCS_N0 Furthermore, 6 Israelis working for Amdocs were deported in 2002 for spying on the US. That’s not just a conspiracy theory. Its a seriously concerning fact.
- Arathorn 3y ago
  I saw absolutely zero evidence or interest in malicious activity while working at Amdocs. That said, nobody from the main Amdocs org ever contributed any code or non-financial input into Matrix, nor were there any links after we span out. To be clear: your allegations are categorically, unambiguously false.
  - goodSteveramos 3y ago
    That’s pretty reassuring to hear. Thank you!