Jérémie Zimmermann🎶💗🧀🧉
Problems we are having with #Signal:
* It is and will remain centralized (clear strategy of *not* federating servers)
* It requires strong identifiers/selectors (phone#) to use
* Author disallows distribution by anyone but Google, although free/libre
* It keeps pushing away verification of fingerprint in interface
* It relies on Google+Amazon infrastructure
* Its funding is shady (OTF = Radio Free Asia = USG)
= clearly unethical choices, unjustifiable by accessibility or technological reasons.
Chris 💾✒🚀🍕🎮🔧📵💻
The Better options all require advanced skills to use. Non-technical users deserve privacy too.
* Non-federation means users not giving up at server selector dialog and no one-off hostile servers.
* Phone numbers are mediocre IDs but hard for users to screw up.
* Google prevents third parties (e.g. abusive ex, corrupt local sherrif) from tampering with the apk.
* Funding is funding; the USG funds lots of stuff, some of it good.
Signal is imperfect but the perfect is the enemy of the good.
Jérémie Zimmermann🎶💗🧀🧉
Usability is important, yet not *crucial*. It is often in the hands of people with large resources. Most of the it time amounts to having software making choices instead of you.
Balancing techno-ethics and software freedom by "usability" is i think a fake dichotomy.
Like balancing freedom and security to justify anti-terror measures restricting freedoms and agency. One cannot pretend to trade one for the other.
(Jefferson mode: ON - "He who sacrifices freedom for usability...."?)
Jérémie Zimmermann🎶💗🧀🧉
@suetanvil I wish we stop attempting at justifying the ethically/morally unacceptable by "usability". this notion considers that "users" (not people eh!) are all idiots, incapable of doing what the person mentioning it is capable of.
It is by infantilizing people that they end up being subjugated, under control.
My own field experience of sec is that when u make people understand (activists, journalists doing real journalism, sources, etc.) they are capable of making efforts (tails, GPG, etc.)
deutrino
@jz Other issues with #Signal:
* code quality is marginal - endless parade of small bugs, especially with the desktop client
* moxie is a jerk on github a little too frequently
* moxie is hostile to people running LineageOS
deutrino
@jz That being said, I finally have the vast majority of my contacts including many non-technical people using a secure messenger for the first time in history. Change will be slow and many of the alternatives are not currently viable for non-technical users, partly due to usability and partly due to the network effect of "I'm not installing yet another app that runs yet another service just to talk to one person."
thufie :: Girl
Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅
Thicker Matters Invested
when it demanded an sms capable number ALSO registered to a mobile provider i dropped signal like a radioactive rock spewing infected blood
Aadil Ayub
@jz a lot of popular support for Signal comes from the fact that Edward Snowden endorses it. That's how I first heard of it and came to trust it.
Lesson learned: don't take the word of celebrity infosec people as canon.
Daniel
@jz I recently discovered @ring which looks very interesting.
ar.al🌻
@jz Share your concerns + also that they have effectively helped whitewash Google/Facebook by working with them to add encryption that's not on by default.
At the same time, only one of two solutions right now that are fully open source + cross platform (the other being Wire). (Also, an apk is available for download but is discouraged/not easy to find - they do push people to Google.)
We definitely need decentralised alternatives that publicly oppose surveillance capitalism.
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