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Signal is just a company selling privacy
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this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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From what I've seen of the people in charge of Signal- they'd probably close before they sell out.
That said, you make a very good point. Having all the registered users in one place, is a vulnerability. A great many of us have non technical friends/partners/siblings/coworkers/etc; and encouraging them to use ANYTHING new is pulling teeth. So Signal is great, but it's still eggs in one basket- if they do something user-unfriendly or sell out or close, we are back to square one in begging/pleading/cajoling people to (please) try this (much better) app.
I've also lost a few people who used Signal over one stupid problem- the iOS version has no backup/restore function. If you lose your phone, or uninstall the app, all your saved chats are gone and there's no way to get them back. Android version at least has a useful backup/restore.
Exactly my point is that if it closes we will have to push for new apps anyway and it is better to do it now, before more users potentially use SIgnal and are left without their app.
Personally I don't think it's likely that signal will close, or that they will sell out. I think the more likely problem is the sort of thing I mentioned, that having a single dev team will be a bottleneck or will reduce user choice. The iOS backup thing I mentioned is one example of that. Usernames rather than phone numbers is another one. Having only one code base does make it easier to audit. And having one foundation in charge does mean there's an easy path to pay for those audits. But it is still a single point of failure.
To be clear- as single point of failure go, I trust Signal more than the next 10 put together. What I don't trust is the whole using phone numbers and SMS verification for sign up. And I would prefer their architecture was a bit more open/federated.
I disagree. There are many FOSS decentralized projects that are still running today, including XMPP, that are doing fine and make even better and more secure software than Signal. All centralized privacy apps so far closed or started sharing data with governments. Statistically that is far more likely scenario then a popular FOSS app to lack devs.
I agree that there's plenty of FOSS projects as good as or better than Signal from a crypto POV.
NONE of them are anywhere close to signal when it comes to number of users. And if your friends don't have it, then you can't talk to anyone on it.
And if your friend loses their phone and finds out they just lost all their chats too, they're gonna say 'fuck that, I'll just use iMessage so next time I don't lose anything'.
Exactly, that is a problem with network effect. This is why it is so important to build a network effect on an open protocol, because we will get stuck otherwise on Signal or any other centralized apps. Only when a network is completely open and anyone can create a new network being bridged to the old one, will we have an actual solution to the problem. Switching people to Signal is counter-productive in the long run.
We should tell everyone that wants to listen, the importance of this and how much of a big deal it is to be available on a decentralized network, even if you are not using it. Because then we have a chance to fight the network effect until there is enough potential users to actually make a switch.