this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Signal is just a company selling privacy (self.technology)
submitted 2 years ago by gthutbwdy to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Signal is a centralized app, run by a company. If they are offered enough money or legal threat they will sell out or close.

I am sure people will make an argument that its FOSS and people will just fork it if it goes bad, but a new fork will have 0 users and Signal will still have all of your old contacts. Why not make a switch now? Before it is even more popular and you have more reasons to stay? Why fork it if there are already decentralized apps that use same encryption, like XMPP apps?

Sure you can find flaws in every app, including XMPP implementations, but if we will have to write code for a new Signal fork, why not just fix whatever is that bugs you in XMPP clients?

If you want to use Matrix, that is fine as well, we can always bridge the two open protocols. But you cant bridge Signal if their company doesn't allow it.

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[โ€“] SirEDCaLot@lemmy.fmhy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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'.

[โ€“] gthutbwdy 1 points 1 year ago

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.