I take that as a compelling recommendation for Signal.
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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Agreed. Clearly it must do simply what is said on the tin, otherwise why ban it?
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Legitimate countries don't need to ban communications platforms.
Is tiktok ok?
He said "communications platforms" not "misinformation, social engineering, and mass data collection platform masquerading as a social media platform"
you can just say "social media."
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Does ByteDance publish TikTok’s transmission protocol to demonstrate transparency?
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I'd say social media platforms are an entire different beast.
Facebook is not the same as Facebook Messenger for instance.
tiktok is a platform to share information and communicate, yes
which is why the french government banned it in Kanaky ("new caledonia") during the protests there, as it was a tool of communication used by the protesters
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I kinda disagree - that's not to say that they don't usually do so for illegitimate reasons (or that these bans are legitimate), but there's plenty of valid reasons why a government would want/need to ban a platform
X, for example, has been giving the UK a whole lot of good reasons why they may wish to consider it (restoring the accounts of people like Tommy Robinson, allowing misinformation, the owner of the platform himself actively spreading that misinformation)
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We should allow the US surveillance giants into all countries, and let US companies control all world social media and communications platforms. Signal too, since it's a US-hosted centralized service that must follow its NSL laws /s
I find these absolutist arguments particularly hilarious in face of UK now actively talking about restricting social media, and arresting people for posts. When people use media to incite violence and social unrest in countries the west considers to be adversaries, free speech stands above all other considerations. However, as soon as these things start happening in the west, then the restrictions on speech are immediately put into place.
Worth highlighting that Telegram in Russia and WhatsApp in Venezuela - both with vastly larger user bases than Signal - are not blocked...
The session keys for WhatsApp are stored on Meta servers, so the encryption is meaningless. Meta can read everything everyone types. Yet all of the eastern hemisphere seem to worship it like it's pure platinum.
I don't think anyone took those seriously as private messengers. On another note, I think Maduro cracked down on WhatsApp as well, and called Venezuelans to cancel Meta altogether. Or something.
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That's a glowing recommendation of Signal. And a good reminder to donate. I'm doing it right now.
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Thankfully there are Signal proxies, VPNs and Tor (which can be used on mobile devices through Orbot.
This means it's working.
Client/Server apps will do that in hostile countries, that's why people are moving to decentralized messaging platforms such as Matrix
Matrix has the unfortunate problem right now where all the big clients have matrix.org set as the default homeserver. Yes, it is a decentralized and federated protocol, but I wonder how many users are registered on matrix.org vs other servers.
Matrix is nice
Matrix lacks metadata encryption
And before lacked this and that. It keeps improving, contrast to Signal having the server code closed source for more than a year so the Signal devs could get a headstart and insider knowledge in their Signal-included crytpo coin grief.
How one can trust Signal after them showcasing what they truly stand for is mind blowing.
Whats mind blowing is the BS people like you come up with to shit on a non profit open source project.
Signal falls right into the perfect niche of usability and privacy, but the problem is that not many people want that. The privacy nuts don't think it is private enough or transparent enough and the people that want something usable just use stuff with more features like Discord, Facebook Messenger, etc.
I've gotten my wife to use it because we felt more safe about sharing lewd photos there than other mediums. We got our partner to use it because they're on iPhone and we're on Android and SMS/MMS sucks ass. One of my friends said he has it and would be fine using it if everyone else in the group chat wanted to. But that's it. Everybody else in my circle wants to use Facebook Messenger.
Weirdly, I think Signal needs to focus more on fin features than safety features for a while. It's an easier sell for friends to hop over when it has the same cool stuff as the other platforms.
Signal having the server code closed source for more than a year so the Signal devs could get a headstart and insider knowledge
That argument makes absolutely no sense. This server-side code does almost nothing. The only task it really has is passing around encrypted packets between clients. All of the encryption is client-side, of course including metadata encryption. That's how end-to-end encryption works. The server code really doesn't matter. The Signal protocol, which is used for client-side, local, on-device end-to-end encryption has always been fully open, and it can be used by any app/platform.
How one can trust Signal after them showcasing what they truly stand for is mind blowing
It's very simple. The client is open source, and the encryption happens locally within the client application. You don't need to trust anything or anyone except for the code and mathematics, which are fully open, so you can verify them yourself.
It's mind-boggling how people attempt to spread so much misinformation while having absolutely no understanding of the topic their talking about.
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You can just as easily identify servers of a decentralized platform and block them. The disadvantage of a central service would come into play if say the US were to intervene, though Signal has already said they would move abroad if that was the case. For network level blockage it makes no difference if the service is central or not
It makes a difference in that you have to play perpetual whack-a-mole not only with VPN's but with hosting servers.
That is true for both cases as well. One thign to add though is that signals own cencorship circumvention makes it even better at resisting this kind of blockage then an arbitrary decentralized protocol, though for an objective comparison it would take some research.
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Glad it at least seems easy to circumvent with a VPN
Their own solution is actually better than a VPN for this use case. It's an encrypted proxy which anyone can download and run, so it's much harder to block.
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Time to run some proxies for these oppressed people.
There are already many signal proxies available, plus an unlimited number of VPNs to choose from (or self-host yourself on a VPS)
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Threema still works.
IIRC, Threema's crypto algo is a patchwork cluster of copypasta and prayers.
When choosing a crypto algorithm the answer is almost never "roll your own".
I wonder why these 2 countries specifically.
Some time ago it was reported that Russian Wagner groups have been spotted in Venezuela.
Now these 2 countries have banned Signal.
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