Edit: Yes I know signal is free and funded by donations. I've donated multiple times. I still don't think 'free' is a a valid reason for not informing people sooner. It's just unprofessional. This response from MrDresden is on point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28667509
It's a free service with no actual income stream, driven by donations. What do you expect?
I don't think we have the right to hold them to high standards because you get what you pay for. Signal has always been a bad choice for messaging in practice. In theory it's really secure and all, in practice, they have security issues that don't get fixed and no real reason to provide a quality service.
> "It's a free service with no actual income stream, driven by donations."
Completely agree with this point. Unless you are paying for the service (by being the product or via donations) you have no particular right to get upset with the creators of said service.
> "What do you expect?"
Professionalism and an understanding of the impact this will have on Signal's users. Some will be cut off from necessary communication channels while others might literally have their life depended on the service working.
This very delayed response from Signal, coupled with some of the stranger behaviour of the last year and inability to host my own servers is really pushing me towards looking at Matrix as an alternative.
And for the record, I've donated to Signal for the last 3 years.
While you are correct, I just want to clarify that by that I was talking about people living as subjects of totalitarian regimes or in places where their lives may truly be on the line if what they say in private would ever get out.
These individuals may not have the means or the option of paying for the service (either due to being blocked or by potentially exposing them selves to said regime if they would).
This isn't really the primary issue with Signal, as the protocol is pretty well audited, tested, and cryptanalyzed. THE issue with Signal is using real phone numbers as identifiers.
I know this point has been made repeatedly, but it's important to beat the drum, since it's recommended for journalists and dissidents, and that this "feature" will quite possibly get you killed if you're a dissident in a totalitarian system with a very simple two-part process:
1. All it takes is ONE of your fellow dissidents to turn snitch (or be tortured, or have their phone cracked) and disclose all their contacts.
2. Burners are NOT anonymous. Everything from location analysis to CCTV footage from the physical place you bought the SIM will give you away.
Signal is an obvious honeypot. Moxie's total refusal to even allow the option to use throwaway identifiers while burning precious development time on silly things like emoji support makes their purpose very evident.
Sure, use Signal to send cat pics. But stay far, far, far away if your life or freedom is at risk.
But that doesn't change the fact that there are non technical people who are using Signal in places where they believe it will protect them.
And I am not cynical enough to be ready to say that they are not being protected in some way by using Signal rather than say email/telegram/whatsapp/facebook etc.
But the points you raise stand, and I agree. I would never use Signal for things that are highly sensitive.
But we are tech literate individuals. We are a wast minority.
Gold is an SLA of one business day which basically makes it a non-starter. Platinum - maybe? But I'm guessing based on how they have it phrased that your commit will measure in the thousands of dollars a month minimum if they'd even entertain you as a private individual. In their own words:
Many services your life depends on can't be paid for, or rather - you can't decide whether and how much you pay for them, and thus cannot increase their reliability through payment.
One set of examples is online services and apps like Facebook, GMail, WhatsApp and such (although you could argue whether your life actually depends on any of these).
Another set of examples are things like transportation infrastructure, fire-fighting services, etc.
- I don't depend on whatsapp. I have multiple alternatives, including SMS.
- I still have Facebook and LinkedIn accounts that I never actually use.
- I have multiple fire extinguishers, because I don't depend on fire fighters to arrive on time, they're a last resort.
My biggest dependency, by far, is the power grid. I really need to look into battery storage for my solar. Because my life literally depends on that... Ooh. And the supply chain for groceries I guess.
I definitely agree with you on a user level. But on a practical level, I wouldn't want to be on 24/7 pager duty if I was part of signal, not getting paid much, if anything for it.
I don't think matrix is there yet as a good replacement, at least for my use case. It's just not mature enough.
I know, chicken and egg problem, but I don't want to be debugging my primary form of communication. It's too important.
This is exactly right. lol. Its funny, take a step back and you'll see this thread is everyone complaining that a messaging app that's free had an outage and the company acknowledged there was an issue and they are working on it, but took 2 hours to do it. A free app that as you pointed out is run on donations.
And the same people would also complain about alternative apps finding ways to monetize while still offering the service for free and keeping it reliable.
> veryone complaining that a messaging app that's free had an outage and the company acknowledged there was an issue and they are working on it, but took 2 hours to do it.
If we want people to switch from Whatsapp to Signal, "it's free lol" really isn't a response. From an end-user perspective, Whatsapp is free too [1], and generally wouldn't have issues with downtime. The fact is that to many people, Signal is the "new" thing, and any friction getting started with it is likely to make some people say "fuck this, I'm going back to Whatsapp."
This isn't a project by some random dev on Github that suddenly blew up, Signal has a foundation and millions of users, and if I'm going to convince my parents to use it, the sales pitch cannot be "it's like Whatsapp but doesn't work all the time, but hey it's got freedom or something".
[1] I know about data harvesting and whatnot, I'm talking nominally.
it's quite funny when you think about how many commercial internet services that were originally offered to the public for free, usually to cross-promote or grow some other business (advertising, mostly, it seems), that now, as the internet has subsumed more basic functions in society, are basically as vital as a telephone was 30+ years ago.
like, imagine if gmail announced they were shutting down...
Amongst other things they could take some action to develop an income stream that isn't whatever is going with their cryptocurrency endeavor.
Signal could easily start offering named, verified accounts as a paid service for say, businesses, to have secure texting to their customers. Heck, named personal accounts for this would be ideal to. This is a service which has direct value to me (I already pay for an email domain for the same sorts of reasons).
Signal's product is the sort of offering which ticks so many security textboxes that it would be a no brainer, and getting even 1 big enterprise pushing it out to their customers would guarantee adoption.
Is it possible that Signal don't want to go down this path as it potentially puts them at the whim of the demands or requirements of paying businesses? Which demands/requirements may not be aligned with the degree of privacy which set them apart from other messenging apps.
If not this, could another reason might be that they're still a small team and this, along with the other changes that would presumably need to come along with it (accounts that aren't tied to a phone number), are what are holding them back.
I don't really see how the demands of the core product - E2EE messaging to customers - can be compromised by accepting payment for one of the core problems of E2EE when legal entities are involved: establishing trust.
Signal aren't allowing accounts not tied to phone numbers because it currently serves a very useful spam mitigation problem for them. There's no real alternative there that's going to solve it without more work on the business side. Technically the phone number requirement right now means they do charge for "named" accounts, they just don't get paid for them - the phone providers do, since in many countries even prepaid phones require proof of identity to activate.
Are there any good paid alternatives to Signal? Looking for: Good UI, E2E, shared source native phone and desktop apps, group support, reliable push, easy setup.
It seems to me that all the alternatives are either free and suffer from some of the same issues Signal does, or don't have all these features.
Element on the Matrix protocol. Not perfect UX but keeps improving. Free but it has a solid business model servicing business cases with the open source set stack that suits corporate needs.
E2e is not a second class citizen, and it is now enabled by default. And it works seamlessly across all devices. It's worth pointing out the seamless functionality because none of the other popular supposedly e2e encryption messengers actually are e2e. So matrix is superior now to skype/whatsapp/signal/telegram on that front.
We’ve never had message delivery problems on Matrix (unless I missed something), and E2EE has been turned on by default since early 2020. You may have been on an overloaded server, or trying years ago.
Delayed or even skipped notifications is still a thing. But a lead from matrix posted recently on another thread that these bugs have become a priority for their team. One can expect the bugs to be tackled as we go along.
If Signal wants to play with the big boys they need to run their service with the same reliability. We can't go around telling everyone "use Signal, it's important for your privacy" if they have major outages as people will stop using it
Why are you so frustrated? It clearly had issues, how would faster acknowledgment would make your day better? With limited resources I rather engineers to just fix the problem instead of spending time trying to give timely status updates.
Apps often don't work for me. Spotify often needs restarting before it realizes it does have Internet, Antennapod keeps asking if I want to make an exception and use mobile data for a download (I'm on WiFi), etc.
An outage confirmation is nice to have before I debug things on my end or ask other people to check things, so I can understand the frustration to an extent (even if it seems overblown).
But it doesn't need to be a tweet for me. These people need sleep and/or could be spending their time on fixing the problem like you say, so just get a status page right? Everybody happy. (Just not one of those political ones like Amazon and co have, showing greens until someone hits the outage button manually.)
It's really annoying that they didn't even acknowledge the problem officially. Till about 15 minutes ago, their status page said everything was fine. Their Twitter account still doesn't mention any technical problems. But the service has been having issues for at least 3 hours. [1]
Most people I know that started using Signal a few months ago are now back to using Whatsapp. Privacy is a nice feature to advertise, but when both your UX and your reliability suck, it's not a good combo.
EDIT: A tweet has emerged 3 hours after the outage started.
Counterpoint - I'm completely happy with signal. The useability, contrary to some comments here, is wonderful. In particular I love the desktop app, it was easy to get family to use and does everything I need smoothly and with good privacy.
That does describe me nicely (Well, sort of, my daily driver phone is an iPhone XR - so only _sort of_ new?). But. I also run Signal on a ~6 year old iPad, and I've not noticed it run badly there.
I haven't tried Signal on a budget grade Android phone though. I have a few Galaxy S4s I use for various odd projects, but most "modern" apps run fairly badly on those.
I'm also "looking forward" to a weekend or two's worth of frustration failing to get Signal for Linux desktop running on my PinePhone when it arrives... ;-)
My last test of Signal was some years ago on a Galaxy S3 mini. Whatsapp wasv running without big problems, Signal had sometimes hangs of two or three seconds. I now use a Galaxy S4 mini, didn't suppose that Signal is performing better now.
And all that with most features of Whatsapp missing(on my last test). Currently I don't see a reason to go from Whatsapp to Signal. Encryption is the same and Moxie see's the Signal-Network as his own where no other client has to connect. So the trust in him is better than in Facebook, but not as good as it could be.
I'm not a WhatsApp user, but the circumstantial evidence of every single non technical friend I have happily using WhatsApp every day strongly suggests its not a complete UX shitfight.
I like Telegram more than either Signal and Whatsapp (security and privacy issues side)
Whatsapp sucks for me because of an unusable desktop client. Their backups system is extremely slow. I've found that messages get sent and received slowest on whatsapp when comparing with other messaging apps even if the gap is almost inconsequential. There's a woeful lack of features that I love on telegram that make the app very barebones and dull. You cannot edit messages. The replying UX is a bit irritating. There's tons of stuff but this is a small gist
WhatsApp's desktop version is crippled because it requires connectivity to your phone in order to use it. I believe they're working on a client that doesn't require that, but it's not here yet.
I have been trying the beta and it's pretty decent. Still alternate between signal, telegram and whatsapp for different groups/people, but the beta definitely seems better that what was before.
Moved to Signal from whatsapp, for me (and very happy to acknowledge others have different needs and likes) signal is way better than whatsapp. Yes, I've a modern smartphone but one of my family group is on an iphone 6 is perfectly happy.
I haven't had reliability problems, but I do find it annoying that if I don't update my app frequently enough, they just cut communications entirely. That is, I don't get notifications that I've received new messages anymore. I usually find out about this when someone emails me to say they've sent me a message on Signal, but I've not responded.
Instead of silently failing, I wish they would pop up a notification that says "Your version of Signal is now out-of-date, and you will not receive new messages until you update."
I receive notifications for apps that I use less than this, like Lyft. I manage my notifications very carefully, and I have never silenced Signal on my phone. Also, I don't go that long between sessions of using Signal — just apparently long enough to trigger this issue.
Sometimes it's necessary, when the protocol itself is updated, e.g. the multi-device beta page currently says "Messaging or calling someone who is using a very old version of WhatsApp on their phone won't work from your linked device."[1] for this reason. If they don't force those users to upgrade at some point, it would lead to an undesirable situation where you are not guaranteed to be able to message someone from desktop. My experience with my grandmother's phone confirms gnicholas's account that they do this very rarely.
But, more importantly for gnicholas's point, Whatsapp gives you a warning days/weeks ahead about the need to update the app. My grandmother is almost never connected to a Wi-Fi network, so her apps don't usually update, and she hardly uses any app other than Whatsapp anyway. She got the warning one time and gave me a call immediately, so I walked her through about what to do (i.e. yes grandma, click the update button). If it silently fails, like gnicholas says, and if this happens often, then I can't imagine using Signal with her.
Really? I go years between sessions of Whatsapp and can still get notifications. I wouldn't mind if a messaging app forced me to update to send a new message, or even to view a message that has just been received (though that would be a little lousy if it meant updating over cellular). My issue is that Signal fails silently.
If people are going back to Whatsapp after that, then let them. Signal has been working really well for me for years now. I don't like it from a privacy standpoint, I'd much rather see wide adoption of Briar or Matrix. But to say Signal isn't working well for a free app is crazy.
Who's paying for all their infrastructure anyways? What's the plan Moxie?
Time for people to look into Session (https://getsession.org). You get automatic native onion routing via decentralised infrastructure - currently 1800~ community-run servers (service nodes).
Session is based on a crypto scam though, that makes me hesitant to support it. And I otherwise have supported tor onion routing for many years so I'm definitely an idealist.
Anything that asks for thousands of dollars to the early adopters, for nothing in return, is a scam imho.
Now the founders could of course have idealistic goals in mind but we might never know that. Realistically there is no market giving that currency a value and they're asking for literally thousands of dollars just to support the onion routed network.
I only ever installed WhatsApp to talk to dates. The sad part about being privacy conscious and using the "right apps" is that you still want to communicate with people outside of your bubble.
The best thing is definitely having two devices, one you can trust and one you can abuse.
They also did not acknowledge the previous big outage, that happen at the beginning of the year. Their blog does not mention what steps are being taken to mitigate scalability issues. While the protocol and their effort to make everything secure is amazing, lack of transparency into reliability is concerning and a barrier to adoption.
However, I don’t think the UX is bad, so far it has been sufficient for me.
The people I got on Signal that dropped it (and not everyone did, it stuck for all my in-laws), did so because everyone was on WA anyway, including the people they used Signal with. But they all confessed that the usability was comparable (except for that pincode, which I turned off for some people that didn't understand it and when I explained, didn't need it).
I really wanted to keep using Signal but kept having a number of reliability / message delivery / notification issues. Last nail in the coffin was not being able to change my phone number and keep my message history.
Not sure I'd say that their reliability "sucks". I've been using it for years and this is only the second major outage I can recall, the other being when an Elon tweet dogpiled millions of users onto the service.
I wouldn’t say it sucks but they have had a number of times where it’s clear something is going on for an hour or so but it’s resolved without any notice being issued.
Overall i would say its reliable but not communicating out issues is a really fast way to lose user trust.
> Most people I know that started using Signal a few months ago are now back to using Whatsapp. Privacy is a nice feature to advertise, but when both your UX and your reliability suck, it's not a good combo.
Fully agree on the UX but not the reliability. WhatsApp used to be famous in Switzerland for its unreliability. On big European football games and Christmas / New Year WhatsApp was regularely down for 3 hours and more.
> Fully agree on the UX but not the reliability. WhatsApp used to be famous in Switzerland for its unreliability. On big European football games and Christmas / New Year WhatsApp was regularely down for 3 hours and more.
How do you know this is not intentional silencing by the govt to prevent terrorist attacks?
How do you know it is not X is not a reasonable form of argument. How do you know it is not quantum fluctuations in the techno-babble framework they use?
The UX and reliability sucks? I doubt that. Using Signal for years on a old iPhone SE (1st Gen) and a new Pixel 4a. Signal works perfectly and for many other people.
It is just funny when the local radio reports that WhatsApp has another outage. While Signal had only serious problems when WhatsApp changed it terms last time - too many new users. Sounds like "I had once a bug with it therefore it is bad and I know how to doge the bugs in the other crapy software...so the crapy software is better".
If you're tempted to switch back to WhatsApp because of Signal reliability issues, consider the possibility that you may be the target of a downgrade attack.
how much do you spend on the service that's so crucial to you? What do you expect to get when giving nothing?
Whoever is keeping a Whatsapp Account nowadays shits on the privacy of all their addressbook contacts and can't be helped, obviously. It may not be a friend.
Multiple outages now, worse ux, broken video call functionality, this annoying forced pincode, very bad desktop app instead browser portal. The list goes on.
Whatsapp is actually an amazing app, now that I think about it.
Fwiw I've been using Signal as my primary communications channel along with email for the past few years. There's an outage once a year or so, but I can live with that. It just works--for voice calls, video calls, chat, groups, etc.
The real question here isn't about which system is technologically superior (though HN gravitates to that question), it's which one is technologically superior taking into account network effects. Briar and Session may be great, and I wish everyone used them, but at present at least where I live it'd be very tough going. Getting people to use Signal isn't all that hard, the network is pretty robust in my communities (university city).
I agree Matrix is promising and I use it on a regular basis, but I wish they made it easier for non-technical people to join and use.
I haven't been very successful convincing people to join. Some tried but were immediately put off by the complicated UI. It takes too much explaining and hand holding.
Those constantly in-your-face "session verification" prompts are bewildering and useless. And then it's impossible to disable spell checking in the Element client.
Granted, this was about 1.5 years ago, so a lot has probably changed, but when a fellow engineer friend and I decided to switch to Matrix, we have a lot of trouble getting the end-to-end encryption working. It required a lot of finagling and sharing of keys and was pretty annoying.
Being engineers, we did figure everything out, but I couldn't see any non-technical users going through the headache, particularly when Signal is just "install and you're done".
Yeah I had exactly the same problem myself on iOS, I'm really promoting it to all my friends and family but this is quite a bad bug. Also I've noticed that sometimes that calls don't connect through and the person will only notice the missed call when he relaunches the app.
used signal for years before it became trendy recently, it had always problems with delivering messages when switching between mobile data and wifi, whatsapp will choose best connection almost instantly, it took Signal minutes or didn't choose it at all
heck for years you could not even select multiple photos to share at once from file picker
I vivily remember how Signal didn't work for like 8 hours because it was during night in US and the responsible person was sleeping, so these 3 hours outage is nothing with this profesionally managed client/network
that last drop was when they started to nag me with mandatory PIN code through half screen, then we just left with extended family, F that
I have used Signal for many years as well, I am now trying to move away from it because while the security is nice, it lacks a good backup/restore mechanism. All the critical data I recieved or sent on it is encrypted and even with the same number and pin it can't "merge" or import specific backups! The thick log that broke the camel's back for me was having to keep an android phone specifically for Signal usage because you can't import android backups on iPhones. Somehow they have resources to create a cryptocoin and other features I have no use for but basic reliability needs, at least for me is not met by this app.
I would like to say to each his own but the nature of communication apps makes them useless if others don't also use it. The typical response I get for this is some form of whataboutism. I will just use whatever else I find for now until they figure out a way to monetize it and care about user needs (such as not mandating phone numbers and being able to register the same number on multiple devices so I can use it on iPhone for example without stopping android usage) or some other app like threema will gain popularity like Signal.
There are over 200 open pull requests in GitHub for the Signal Android app, ones dating back to 2015. Instead, stupid shit (stickers, crypto, etc) is being introduced, and actual discussions around fundamental changes to make Signal better and more private are being ignored.
Lots of people are trying to contribute, but Signal is more and more becoming a black box, I say this as a t-shirt wearing (Open Whisper Systems) advocate, Signal is falling out of favor with many "OG" advocates.
Down due to a hosting outage, but back up currently.
This is why I would wanna see user-hosted instances of the Signal server [0] plugging in to the network and supporting traffic.
I think a zero-config server app install of Signal server would work great for decentralizing the messaging platform too, but unfortunately it's not set up to handle that yet.
moxie the creator of it is so against decentralizing signal its insane so thats never going to happen sadly, it really would fix the problem just have a few thousand server people start running and it connects to the network and gets sent messages to send to its destination
... is the article in question. Basically the argument is that federation slows down the possible rate of change. If you have but the one server in a system you can change things whenever you want and then push out any client changes.
The root concept here is that constant protocol and feature change is the most desirable state. Not all of us accept that.
I get quicker and more reliable notifications from a self hosted matrix instance then signal and even if I went on the signal app and looked at the chat I couldn't see the message until I got a notification a bit later from them could I see it
I have very limited experience with Signal, but it has an issue I cannot figure out that massively limits the appeal for me. I very rarely get any sort of notification. If I open the app on my OnePlus 7 Pro running Android 10, it'll flood me with missed notifications. But that's about it. (I think it has notified me in the past without opening the app, but I can't remember for sure.) I'm sure it's not designed to work this way, but I haven't worked out how to fix the broken notification system on my phone. Some online friends use it for coordinating plans, so I'm "forced" to use it (and try to remember to "check" it from time to time), but I do wonder how common my issue is. Presumably quite rare!
Does Signal work better on other platforms? (For me, no - I also have it installed on Windows and do not get notifications.)
I had a similar problem that was resolved by changing some obscure Android setting. I think it may have been the restrict background battery usage setting, then another where Signal has to have a persistent tray notification, but it gets hidden from view, so I just enabled all notifications then dialed back from there.
OnePlus is notorious for preventing apps from working as intended in order to increase battery life. Take a look at https://dontkillmyapp.com to see what you need to do to ensure Signal is working as intended.
What's a good alternative to Signal on Android for casual messaging? I don't think Element is a good fit since it's not easy to ask a friend or family member to sign up for Element whereas it's simple to install Signal.
For casual messaging, Telegram is fantastic. Actual multi-session clients across devices. No Electron. Truck loads of features and thoughtful touches everywhere. It's easily the slickest and if you're looking to have friends and family who don't have a lot of patience for technical issues actually convert and stay converted, it's the only one I've found to do the trick.
Searching through your messages by type, really good video messaging, voice messaging, video chats, and the best stickers on any platform.
It doesn't do E2EE by default (you need to manually flip on Secret Chats) and group chats are not E2EE at all, both of which make it HN kryptonite because apparently E2EE everywhere, by default, is the only thing that matters even though there are technical trade-offs to an E2EE-everywhere model. I appreciate I can flip on Secret Chats when I need them but do wish it was an option in group chats.
I selfhost a Matrix homeserver: it's nowhere near ready for primetime and misses a lot of those thoughtful touches less technical people appreciate. If you do want to try to onboard people to Matrix with the Element client (and be very careful because you only get one, maybe two shots with your friends and family before they go back to whatever they were using before) use Mozilla's homeserver for its vastly better performance and option of SSO sign-on.
WhatsApp has a better privacy story than Telegram, because every chat is a 'secret chat' by default. If your using signal, a priority for you is private chat with something the normies in your life can use, otherwise you'd just use whatever is the most popular where you live.
The backdoor only applies to WhatsApp for Business, where companies want a fail-safe to open employee messages e.g. after they've left the company. The fact they're transparent about it should be enough. Do not use WA for Business, for personal private communication. They are not the same product, and the business version isn't truly E2EE.
> WhatsApp has a better privacy story than Telegram
No it doesn’t. It’s owned by the 2nd largest surveillance capitalist; it shares a back-end with Facebook (so at a whim they can use the metadata around your chats to update their advertising models of you and your contacts); IIRC it leaks your engagement to FB (via web link previews).
It's a bit hard to make a case for Telegram's good intentions when they lack the ability to actually deploy usable, ubiquitous end-to-end encryption. They could even pay people like Moxie to implement it for them, which begs the question, why haven't they. Durov absolutely has the money.
Yes WA and FB has access to your communications metadata, but so does Telegram. And every entity that hacks Telegram.
Pavel Durov isn't a magical entity of good will and intentions, he's a Russian guy with sure, decent eye towards good user experience, but the cost for that is too great, considering he's never hired a competent cryptographer to even see if the features the app provides could be implemented in a privacy preserving way. I'd love to be able to defend Telegram's design choices, but the more they spend their time adding "sleek animations" and other bs features, the clearer it becomes it's just another social media platform with same privacy features as Facebook Messenger:
-Not end-to-end encrypted by default (Telegram Yes, FBM yes)
-No end-to-end encrypted group chats (Telegram Yes, FBM yes)
-Opt-in 1:1 end-to-end encrypted chats on mobile (Telegram Yes, FBM yes)
In that comparison, WA comes at the top. But then again, it's a false dichotomy as Signal puts incremental privacy features with no real down-sides.
-Open source clients (Signal yes, WA no)
-Reproducible builds (Signal yes, WA no)
-User-managed groups (Signal yes, WA no)
(And no, Telegram being open source with reproducible builds isn't really worth anything until the verification confirms that it's really using proper E2EE. Currently Telegram's source only confirms that it's not E2EE by default etc.)
As for the surveillance capitalistic aspect, Telegram is only as good as their word. FB wasn't surveillance capitalistic when it started back in 2005. Telegram isn't slaughtering the piglet before it's time to cash in, but they can get hacked at any point, and the hundreds of billions of messages that sit on their server, effectively unencrypted (storing the database key in server's memory is the same as "not encrypted"), Telegram isn't private even if Durov never wanted to use that data. The fact is experts agree such data is a liability, a toxic asset, that nobody can protect forever. Durov isn't as security researcher patching zero-days faster than NSA, GCHQ, Fancy Bear, Unit8200, CCA et. al. find them. Most probably Durov wouldn't even realize a rootkit has been sneaking data out of his server for the past 8 years.
Compared to these risks, WA has been ahead of Telegram ever since they implemented Signal protocol in 2016.
Invading your privacy is literally Zuck’s business model. The entire company operates based on selling an analysis of you and your friends to the highest bidder. Whether they planned that from the start or not, that is the basis of their funding, their IPO and their current valuation. All their products synergise to better invade your life. Duroc may not be squeaky clean, but he has a much better public record on standing up for ethical causes than Zuck. WA’s E2EE is entirely managed by WA - the user has no control over the keys and everything goes via their servers, so can it really be trusted?
I still think the WA privacy story is more suspect than Telegram’s at this point.
>but he has a much better public record on standing up for ethical causes than Zuck.
Paying lip service is not the same as practicing what you preach. I'm not saying Mark Zuckerberg is on your side. I'm saying WA team managed to implement Signal Protocol before Zuckerberg et. al. realized what was happening wrt. WA's data aggregation capabilities. Also, Durov isn't called the Mark Zuckerberg of Russia for nothing. Also, it's not like VKontakte users Durov made his fortune with, had too much privacy. Why is Telegram suddenly a magical fountain of privacy when on tech level it's worse than WhatsApp?
"the user has no control over the keys"
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
"everything goes via their servers"
Kind of the central point of centralized messengers?
Also, with Telegram there is a guarantee 100% of group chats, and 100% of Win/Linux desktop chats go through the server in the form that allows the server to spy on the content. All Telegram clients also leaks the metadata that you specifically enabled E2EE with some person, i.e. you disclose your desire to hide data from all third parties. That type of metadata is extremely valuable, and something WA -- due to ubiquitous E2EE -- is unable to collect.
"I still think the WA privacy story is more suspect than Telegram’s at this point."
Your opinion doesn't override that of Matthew Green, or Bruce Schneier who have explicitly advised to NOT use Telegram. I have never seen a security expert recommend Telegram, and don't expect you to provide evidence on the contrary, either.
> Why is Telegram suddenly a magical fountain of privacy
I didn't say it was. I said the Telegram _story_ was _better_ than WA's at this point.
> when on tech level it's worse than WhatsApp?
I'm not arguing that Telegram has a better or worse technical model; I'm arguing that the WA business model and senior leadership and share structure, which controls its tech, creates a _story_ which is less trustworthy.
I take your points about WA appearing technically better.
You're evaluating Telegram with many paragraphs given to your metric, which is E2EE. That's fair enough but it's not representative for what many users outside of the HN bubble are evaluating by. For me I value all of the features I wrote in my original comment in this thread more than I value E2EE by default. If someone were to come to me and offer me E2EE by default without those features I would say no thank you.
What I don't want is a corporation behind my chat app whose business is in monetizing my data. If Durov can keep Telegram out of that business I will be pleased.
Oh please. You're complaining about technical person evaluating technical product on technical level, on a technical forum.
E2EE is the bare minimum for security these days, as so carefully explained by the message you're replying to.
"If someone were to come to me and offer me E2EE by default without those features I would say no thank you."
This is such a loaded and unthoughtful comment. It assumes you have to make a choice. You don't, at least per technical reasoning. The only situation where you can't have E2EE is massive groups, and it's obvious those have no expectation of privacy. Anything else, I can explain to you on a technical level why it can be done in a privacy preserving way, and the only reason its not, is because Telegram's team lacks the know-how. Signal has already shown they can pull off pretty much any feature in a privacy preserving way.
So the question is not "what features do I need", but "should all my features be actual features". A feature that doesn't protect your privacy by definition can be used to spy on you, and I'm sure we both agree that is not a feature.
So ask yourself
Group chat with end-to-end encryption (Signal) or
Group chat without end-to-end encryption (Telegram).
Which one do you choose? The answer is obvious.
>What I don't want is a corporation behind my chat app
Also, you should know Telegram is not a non-profit like Signal. Telegram is a limited liability _company_. It's a for-profit entity, and the LLC only means, the owners are "legally responsible for its debts only to the extent of the amount of capital they invested".
> This is such a loaded and unthoughtful comment. It assumes you have to make a choice. You don't, at least per technical reasoning.
When Signal provides these features, please feel free to ping me back here but until then, the proof is in the pudding and the Signal pudding doesn't taste like the Telegram pudding.
As Signal's client is open source and its server is whenever they feel like it, I'm sure they'd also value your contribution to prove out your point.
Sure, because you need all 32GB of RAM but not your human right to privacy. Also, this is an argument against Signal's client, not excuse why you can't have E2EE on non-electron native client.
>"Truck loads of features and thoughtful touches everywhere."
So, eye candy. Not very strong argument.
>"Searching through your messages"
Only exact messages. Gets incredibly slow once you go past few weeks. Client-side searchers are as fast as your phone, i.e., fast.
>"video chats"
Not E2EE for groups
>"best stickers"
1:1 match between my Signal and Telegram sticker packs (50+ packs)
>"even though there are technical trade-offs to an E2EE-everywhere model"
The problem with this BS claim, is you can't point to a single trade-off. Everything you mentioned can be done with E2EE.
>"but do wish it was an option in group chats."
So the question is, why aren't you demanding it?
>"When Signal provides these features, please feel free to ping me back here but until then"
Again, which features? Please provide an actual, exact list so we know when to ping you.
>"the proof is in the pudding and the Signal pudding doesn't taste like the Telegram pudding."
The problem when you add a ton of sugar into a pot of porridge made from shit, is now you have a ton of sugar with an even coating of shit in it. No matter how much eye candy you glue on top of insecure design and spaghetti code that is Telegram, the fundamental truth is, it was never empowering you, only its owners who are collecting as much data about you as FB does, if not more.
EDIT: Fixed lack of E2EE on video calls to mean group video calls. Apologies if this looks like moving the goal post, not my intention.
Actually, I value a non-electron client way higher than E2EE. In fact, the incredible desktop client is one of the main reasons I am a huge Telegram proponent.
You're right in that the 1:1 video chats are E2EE, but not group video chats. This is my concern, but since you weren't making the claim, it's my mistake and now fixed.
It's not my intention to be aggressive towards you or anyone else. It's the argument (or lack of arguments) I'm attacking, not the person.
Facebook Messenger, Hangouts, Google Chat, and above all SMS / iMessage. Whatsapp by all accounts is the most popular (as much as I personally detest it).
I know I know, not HN-fare exactly, but they're easy, popular, and work. That's all that most of our's social network actually cares about. There's a lot of discussion in this thread about detailed encryption/security policy, but while I am a privacy nut, none of my non-IT friends/family could possibly care less... And they're not wrong. This convoluted encryption which severely limits multi device usability Andb frequently has louse ui is out of proportion with other comms methods such as email also used. While I may stand up for principles of privacy, my family isn't wrong asking why should their exchange of recipes or birthdays wishes be any harder than necessary.
> Facebook Messenger, Hangouts, Google Chat, and above all SMS / iMessage. Whatsapp by all accounts is the most popular (as much as I personally detest it).
Given you’re calling out WhatsApp specifically as a service you detest I’m going to assume you rank it last of all these options. Why is this? WhatsApp is E2EE, has a simple UI (at least IMO) and doesn’t store messages centrally. If I claimed to be a privacy nut I’d put WA above any of these.
Usability; and I hope I indicated clearly that it was a personal detestation over an objective claim :)
for what little it's worth: Facebook Messenger, Hangouts, Google Chat, let alone messengers of yore like ICQ, MSN, AIM, etc all allow me to create a userID & password on computer and use them from any device of my choosing, as well as change/transfer/obsolete devices seamlessly.
Whatsapp is bound to my phone number and device, and its experience with multi-device is.... actively hostile. My preference is to not type messages on a 1.5" keyboard, but rather on any number of ergonomic keyboards and devices I use around the house and work. Whatsapp is simply prohibitive for my usage, and for positively no actual (as opposed to theoretical/principled) benefit whatsoever. I've pulled what little hair I have trying to use it, but the 27th time it locked my account for using too many devices (Oh noes! I have a phone, tablet AND a laptop? Crazy me:), I gave up.
(privacy wise, also, my phone number is one of the more private and static pieces of identifying information I own; I guard it carefully and I have no idea why I need to expose it to everybody I want to communicate with, as opposed to anonymous and disposable userID or even email).
I did not mean to turn this into anti-whatsapp rant though; Many other E2EE-focus services are similar. Whatsapp just happens to be wildly popular and, for my use-case, completely and actively impractical :-/
Right. I’m just surprised that WhatsApp was just called out as worse than Facebook messenger. Both are owned by the same company but one of them is technically much more secure. (Yes, FB has the keys to the kingdom and can technically do whatever they want, but it’s much easier to snoop on messenger than WA.)
There are some features that are better on other messaging providers compared to WhatsApp or signal, it's just that sometimes you need to choose what you value more.
Shiny stickers and broader user market vs privacy.
Almost constant uptime due to being owned by a multi million/billion dollar company vs a group that mainly runs on donations.
I'm starting to suspect fb has people here to downvote critique. Or the vast majority have drank the Kool aid.
I really hope it's the former, instead of the latter.
Whatsapp is a non starter for me because the company that owns and operates it is not trust worthy. Very profitable, and probably making some of the people here great returns on their investments...but it's not trust worthy, nor ethical.
Beyond that, there are free XMPP servers, and you can even run you own. Clients like Conversations, blabber.im are all wonderful. I've been using it with friends and my wife for years without issues, albeit I have my own server.
Matrix is the best alternative. I have been onboarding one friend/family member at a time. And it's slow ride but the advantage is they don't have to sign up to anything else ever again.
In a thread about a Signal outage with a request for an alternative "casual messaging" app - I really don't think open source video video meetings is a relevant answer...
No forward secrecy. No future secrecy. No deniability. No metadata protection. PGP for secure communication needs to die. We've had better architecture for the past 17 years when OTR was introduced.
It's also not supported for majority of desktop clients, so if you want to continue the "secret chat" you had on mobile on laptop when you get to work/school/whatnot, guess what, you're shit out of luck and need to whip out your phone every time you want to reply. It's so bad you'll just give up and use non-E2EE 1:1 chats because at least they're cross-platform. So one could argue Telegram has no _functional_ E2EE at all.
WhatsApp is arguably more secure than many of the alternatives. Just look at the repo for Signal. For privacy it probably isn't, when you're in the US, that is.
Metadata-wise, yes. For protecting content, it's still pretty good. Also, WA seems to add features pretty close to Signal, which could indicate WA supports Signal in testing some of the features Signal provides consultation wrt secure implementation. WA probably doesn't want to fully take the wheel and fuck around with the Signal protocol. They've of course made some changes such as the group management system, and the levels of safety number warnings (no-warnings/non-blocking warnings as opposed to Signal's non-blocking/blocking warnings).
But WA has been working on interesting proof of concepts for wider deployment such as the client-side encrypted backups. Those are actually fantastic when properly implemented. There's of course shitty aspects with WA about those like the 64-bit passwords, but, if that's a feature Signal thanks to possible collaboration can properly deploy later, I'm all for it.
There's a difference between Signal being categorically better for pretty much everything when compared to WA, but, WA isn't the worst option, even when considering its owned by FB.
For what it is worth, creating an account on the matrix home instance using app.element.io or the matrix android app (haven't tried ios, but I assume it is the same) takes literally 3 clicks. Click register, select the matrix home server, type in your desired username, password, and recovery email (no phone # required or even requested) and click register.
The one part I see people struggle with is transferring keys across devices which is slightly convoluted (your keys are not stored on the matrix home server--for obvious reasons) but there are wizards to help you install your keys to a new device and for most use cases with phones completely unnecessary since you will always be using the same device.
Really? I haven't found it an issue to get friends or family to sign up for Element. In fact it's even better because you don't need to use your mobile number for that.
Haven't used Element but that sure doesn't sound better. Signal works as a drop-in replacement for the default SMS app on Android, I'm not gonna tell my mom to stop using my phone number and message `tfehring` from Element instead (if it's even that simple), especially since she'd still need an SMS app for everyone else.
I've found this specific issue doesn't matter for 30% of mobile users, because they're using the phone purely in a reactive state (usually to popups, or the notification area!).
"Meddling" with Russian elections is a pretty strong statement, they just followed what Apple and Google did, and there was lots of discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28655937
Telegram is not E2E encrypted by default, so the other comment makes sense.
Nope. WA uses server-side group management, with Signal its purely on user-side. The message is revealed to be a group message on client-side. In theory, since the group messages are a burst of packets of the same size, the server can distinguish between messages to groups,and drop them if it wants to, but that would be interference of communication which, IIUC, is a felony.
I want to try Briar on the Tailscale network, but couldn't figure out how to change the listening interface so far. Probably requires building Briar manually.
Sorry, no. Although Telegrams has encryption it's by default Client-Server, you have to explicitly start a secret chat with individual people. Additionally group chats are not encrypted except between client and server.
I'm not sure of a good alternative as simple as Signal
By default it's not e2ee, but this makes the distributed app model sooo much more user friendly. All your history is instantly available on the web client for example. Try that with Signal. The web client works if your phone is out of battery. Try that with WhatsApp.
But I don't want my entire history to be available on a website? Who would even want that, what's the use case? Who looks at their months or years old messages?
If my message is over two weeks old, I'd prefer it not to be on anyone's server. I can keep a local backup if I wish to do so.
Then you're not a person who values their message history. That's OK, you do you but there's many users out there, myself included who deeply value a searchable index of their chats from all time. I use it as a Memex or outboard brain I can tag and search. It's been in invaluable to digging up old quotes, pics, links, ebooks, etc. I wanted to re-surface either to share to someone else than the original recipient or for my own reference. Because you can search by broad types, it's doubly easy to find that archived data.
The problem isn't the message log itself, it's the fact you pay for the privilege of having the cloud backup of conversation history, by giving that history to Telegram as a company.
It doesn't have to be this way, as WA's planned feature of client-side encrypted cloud backups[1] shows, disproving Durov's implied claim that Telegram must have access to messages to provide such feature.
And Win/Linux desktop chats are groups are not E2EE even if you want, so it's not just about it not being default, it's about the complete lack of E2EE for those.
"but this makes the distributed app model sooo much more user friendly."
It does not. It forces you to either drop E2EE, or whip out your phone hundreds of times a day.
"All your history is instantly available on the web client for example."
You obviously can't because a) it's a security risk as per above and b) you don't need to as you can have native Signal client on your phone and your laptop and your desktop. Try having just one E2EE chat with Telegram across all three devices. You can't, even if you want to.
"The web client works if your phone is out of battery. Try that with WhatsApp."
Yeah, WA's system is shit, but at least they're working on a native desktop client (that also works on tablets), and that too, will feature E2EE for everything. Can't say that for Telegram.
I ditched Signal about a month ago. Transferred my last group chat to iMessage.
Most of my friends don't care about privacy, I tried to love Signal for 2 year, I recommended it to friends, only to give up and make a fool of myself. But after so long, the fact that I regularly don't get notifications of new messages is inexcusable.
So in my inner cirle, Signal has damaged people's willingness to improve privacy. Thanks.
Never said iMessage was my choice or it's safe so you are arguing with yourself here. I said that I transfered one of my group chats there. Wasn't really my choice but a group choice. Your comment and knowledge is very impressive but not a single of this helps me convince my family or friends to transfer to yet another chat application. Not so long ago I've read all over HN that I shouldn't use Telegram, because it's Russian. Now people recommend it all the time. What changed? And if iMessage has so many problems, which app does not have them? I can answer for you: none. Messenger & iMessage FTW and we can't really do anything about it.
Well, I can't choose for you or your peers, but you can say to them those who have looked into it, think iMessage is a security nightmare and there are better options that help you all sleep better at night.
It's not that Telegram started being good, it's that the experts felt it was so bad they decided it was for the public good to give pro bono advice on the topic and didn't feel too strongly about advocating wrt the matter ever since, aside occasional social media chuckles when more vulnerabilities in Telegram have been revealed.
Sure, all messaging apps have problems, bugs, and issues, but with some there's clearly more effort in building a foundation that's not accumulating technical debt like there's no tomorrow. If Telegram suddenly wanted to enable E2EE, they'd have to start from the ground up. You can't glue E2EE on top. So when you look into the software engineering aspect, you're inclined to look into how the product was made, and the design rationale. None of that holds water for Telegram. What you get is something that on paper looks exactly like FB Messenger, and a bunch of promises to never abuse the access to the insane amounts of private data that accumulates.
I've been looking to secure messaging for a decade now and Signal's by far the best option right now. Threema is pretty good, and Element's getting there, although it needs more time to mature. You were already using Signal, abandoning it wasn't perhaps the smartest thing to do: Downtime is of course very unfortunate, but I've had more outages with Telegram than with Signal. Also, again, it's easy to fix a broken window, much less easy to rebuild due to rotten foundation.
Genuine question - why not distribute over a) multiple AWS regions and b) distribute over multiple providers so that 'small' outages dont take down apps like this?
I went down the rabbit hole of trying to work out what this is. In involves new coins and ICOs. I'll stick with Matrix and Signal.
"Session is enabled by services provided through the Loki blockchain network. The Loki cryptocurrency is a fundamental part of these services, providing an anonymous way to transfer value between people. A lightweight wallet integrated into the Session app, using keys derived from the users existing keypair, could allow users to quickly and privately transfer value inside Session."
I think not being tied to phone numbers is on Signal's roadmap? Isn't that why they're encouraging me to memorize this PIN with spaced repetition? Or something?
The more I think about it and getting pushed to use messaging, the more I can't wait for RCS/5G to come. After all, what sucks most (for me) is that we've created all those communication standards such as http, html/sgml, XMPP, and GPS/SMS/MMS only for lusers to flock to proprietary systems at the very first occasion. I mean I can do without all the vulgar dating precaria but then what to do if you're horny and your lover only does What's App LOL?
Or is there anything wrong with RCS I should know, like rampant data collection or sth?
Basically I can understand this yearning for a messaging service with the ease of SMS in the good old day - no need for an app and everybody was able to recieve as this is just an infrastructure protocol. Indeed, RCS looks promising to let this principle live further.
RCS has a long lasting history but is driven forward mainly by google during the last years. [1] One mayor flaw is that it comes basically without end-to-end encryption which - again - google announced to add an roll-out slowly. [2] Furthermore its unclear in how far Apple will implement RCS [3]. And last-but-not-least there is lack of some feature we are used to by messenger apps, like avatar picture, status message, live location etc.
With 473 M users worldwide [4] it seems to be everywhere an nowhere. I'm checking from time to time with my contacts, but I've not seen the lock symbol in the Android Messages App on by up-to-date Pixel phone.
Yes, I try to keep all the alternatives available. Threema has a fine reputation privacy-wise and has obviously a business concept (which of course builds a hurdle for users not appreciating the difference that means). Main downside for my usecase is the lack of a true cross-platform approach. They offer a cumbersome web-client only by phone connection (similar to that what WhatsApp allows).
>There's no excuse for not making Signal an open, federated protocol.
This is just false. You can disagree with moxie all you like and make your case but he has been very clear on the reasons why he hasn't gone that way and the success of his project among non-technical users where so many others have failed suggests he's doing something right.
I will applaud and cheer if you show his concerns on federation aren't really a problem by making a federated, e2e encrypted message app work as well for users as moxie has with his. Seriously. I will cheer you like you won't believe. Go do it! Or do you have an excuse?
Sorry, I was not aware that you were not permitted to criticize anyone unless you invested tens of thousands of hours into building a competing product to demonstrate your point. Something to remember for next time.
You're of course allowed to criticize but, as your "There is no excuse" shows you're not aware of the tradeoffs, especially to security agility centralized platforms do, there isn't too much insight in your categorical dismissal. As someone with tens of thousands of hours of building a secure messaging system, I can say it helps a bit wrt perspective.
It's a thoughtful rebuttal, but I'm not sure it hits the point. As usual, there's nuance here.
The top selling points of Signal are security and privacy. If you want these things, then there's a lot of things that maintaining complete control of the protocol gives you. From the original "Ecosystem is moving" essay: "By contrast, WhatsApp was able to introduce end-to-end encryption to over a billion users with a single software update". That's the point of centralisation. Control means agility in the face of adversary, which when you're trying to optimize for security and privacy is pretty useful.
The comparison to HTML is therefore wide of the mark, because the whole point of HTML is to be interoperable. A better comparison would be with something like TLS/SSL, and then you can judge how effective the combination of slow-moving protocol evolution and a security focus has worked over the last few decades.
There is no bad choice. There are just compromises that you have to make depending on what you choose, and some of those compromises are more suited to some objectives than others.
TLS/SSL is a better comparison, and it's a protocol which has enjoyed widespread and unprecedented success in securing the privacy of users worldwide, despite being decentralized.
The tradeoffs Moxie was thinking of when rejecting federation had more to do with centralizing his power over Signal rather than any kind of technical limitations.
For TLS we've had to drag everybody along, kicking and screaming. You call this "widespread and unprecedented success" but the reality is that later this week you're going to see even more outrage and despair from people who didn't like being centralized and so, of course, they're screwed because the price of their "freedom" is the eternal vigilance they couldn't be bothered with.
draft-moriarty-tls-oldversions-diediedie (now RFC 8996) only exists because of this. Moxie doesn't need to worry about security problems with a protocol he shipped last century but for TLS we had to actually document that people should stop using that - because of course they are anyway.
In the Web PKI we have in practice even more centralization, in principle it would be possible to operate a public CA that simply isn't trusted by Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft or Google, but in practice you need all of them to have a viable service. The de facto situation is that you need logging with Google (and any other service, but Google is mandatory) and you need a sign-off from Mozilla, or you are dead in the water.
Now, I think the Web PKI is arguably the only global PKI with something approaching public oversight and it's a huge success. But it's not decentralized in the way you mean, not at all.
It's not without drawbacks, but TLS gives almost everyone good security/privacy by default. And for those who really need it, anyone who does even a basic amount of research can gain very good levels of confidence in the privacy of their TLS setup.
Also, there are degrees of federation. It doesn't have to be a wild wild west of the sort we see with projects like Mastodon. A closed federation can have strict rules on who can participate, can enforce constraints on auditing and rapid updates, and so on, and still be a federation. In fact, we see some of this in TLS - not everyone can participate, but there are dozens of independent organizations working within an internal governance models. Another example is EFnet, which is a federated chat network which has regulations on who can participate:
Moxie conveniently ignores all of this because it serves his interests to be ignorant of it. It has been repeatedly brought to his attention. Moreover, he has put out legal threats to any project which tries to fork Signal to research these features.
> In fact, we see some of this in TLS - not everyone can participate, but there are dozens of independent organizations working within an internal governance models
I think what's happened here is that you don't understand the difference between TLS, a network protocol, and the Web PKI, a Public Key Infrastructure and so you've sort of muddled both together, which is revealing on its own.
You've also imagined a fairytale outcome that doesn't match reality.
Moxie's strategy works and yours didn't, and you're here telling everybody you don't agree but reality doesn't care whether you agree with it or not.
>I think what's happened here is that you don't understand the difference between TLS, a network protocol, and the Web PKI, a Public Key Infrastructure and so you've sort of muddled both together, which is revealing on its own.
I understand the difference, and the condescending snark is not appreciated. I don't think the difference is very important in this case.
It's also revealing, perhaps, that you don't understand that the "Web PKI" is used far and wide in domains outside of the web.
>Moxie's strategy works and yours didn't, and you're here telling everybody you don't agree but reality doesn't care whether you agree with it or not.
Oh, bugger off. The only group who has even made a serious attempt to do it properly is Matrix and one "meh" implementation does not damn an entire design.
> I understand the difference, and the condescending snark is not appreciated. I don't think the difference is very important in this case.
As an example, you wrote earlier:
> In fact, we see some of this in TLS - not everyone can participate
As written this is nonsense of course. TLS is a series of published standard protocols, everyone can "participate" by implementing one of the protocols, and at their option some or even all optional extensions.
But for the Web PKI things are quite different, only some can participate and under exacting conditions. On one side, Certificate Authorities can only participate via the root trust programmes of key trust stores operated by Mozilla, Microsoft, and Apple, plus Google (for Android and, perhaps sooner or later, Chrome) and Oracle (for the JRE). Participation in these programmes requires obeying the CA/B BRs, but also is at the sole discretion of each programme operator and so their own policies apply†
As subscribers, the Web PKI is only interested in certifying names in the Internet's DNS hierarchy and, to a small extent in the Internet's IP address hierarchy. Other names aren't actually certifiable in the Web PKI, sometimes to the surprise of would-be subscribers (and even, once in a while, CAs)
Finally as a relying party (the role all of us occupy even if in addition to other roles) the Web PKI is only applicable to the Internet, which of course is a lot of things but it isn't everything.
> It's also revealing, perhaps, that you don't understand that the "Web PKI" is used far and wide in domains outside of the web.
That's true, and has been for many years, and yet, there's a reason it's named the Web PKI anyway. Notice the B in CA/B stands for "Browser" even though today these are (except Mozilla) operating system vendors, historically they're the browser vendors. You could imagine alternate worlds where say, IBM, Apple and Sony are the biggest players in CA/B instead of Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple, and it really isn't about the web at all, but they're quite different from our world.
If you don't like the phrase "Web PKI" you could sometimes substitute PKIX, but, ultimately PKIX isn't quite the same thing. PKIX is technical, it explains how to use the X.500 system's certificate format (X.509) to talk about the Internet instead of the X.500 directory, but it makes few substantive policy decisions. Certificates you get from Let's Encrypt are PKIX certificates, but, the ones you mint for testing with self-service tools or that come supplied with many Linux installs are also PKIX certificates and those aren't trustworthy. Certificates from Let's Encrypt are also part of the Web PKI and that's why you trust them.
† These policies can be quite significant, for example Microsoft's programme requires that participants agree to revoke certificates if Microsoft so chooses. In practice Microsoft seems to use this power to kill off certain types of phishing scam that attack Microsoft's products. Mozilla's programme has historically been the origin of a lot of important public policy some of which is now in the CA/B BRs.
And an absolutely tremendous number of devices are still using versions of TLS with serious weaknesses and there is very little pressure actually moving them to more current versions.
Are you aware of a federated, decentralized approach to e2ee messaging that doesn't require trusting the servers? i.e., without the metadata leakage of email, xmpp, Matrix, etc.? The only options I know of have poor support for offline messaging (and kill the battery) due to being peer-to-peer.
I'm not yet aware of any federated approaches that prevent a server from connecting a sender and recipient, but would love to be educated otherwise.
A single tweet 3 hours AFTER the outage has started is just not acceptable [1]
[1] https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1442354759009247232
Edit: Yes I know signal is free and funded by donations. I've donated multiple times. I still don't think 'free' is a a valid reason for not informing people sooner. It's just unprofessional. This response from MrDresden is on point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28667509