this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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Some interesting thoughts on this from the Signal creator: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
He is dodgy af. Doesn't want any Signal forks (Molly being the only one tolerated) and won't let them connect to the server. That's why the open source version LibreSignal was shut down. He also doesn't want Signal to be on F-Droid, a store which only allows 100% free/open source software.
Take everything coming out of his mouth with a grain of salt.
Totally agreed the project's actions against the community are shit. From a LibreSignal issue:
This sounds like a jaded, cynical individual. It's hilarious, sad, probably even delusional. How do they think the Internet and their operating systems work in this "modern world"? Magic fairy dust? It's difficult, thankless work put in by loads of people around the world despite enormous commercial pressure to do otherwise. Over decades. I respect Signal's work, but it's boneheaded attitudes like moxie's which impede progress, especially for the younger generations.
And an objection by the author of a popular XMPP client: https://gultsch.de/objection.html
10k downloads for a hideous outdated app is popular now?
FYI that's an app that's used by the German police and in several other "sensitive" contexts where users won't just pull it from the play store :) ISIS even had their own fork at a point.
Source?
https://gultsch.social/@daniel/109828650796048124
that website is broken beyond belief, I can't confirm anything
talking about the police site, not the mastodon link
It really took me a second to figure out: https://www.bundespolizei.de/Web/DE/Service/Mediathek/Jahresberichte/jahresbericht_2020_file.pdf , click on the PDF link, hop to page 48. But even without that, do you really believe that the developer of the app, who's making a living of it, would commit financial suicide by lying so openly about such a trivial thing? Either way, with or without Conversations, XMPP is used by millions of users daily: https://www.rst.software/blog/22-companies-using-xmpp-and-ejabberd-to-build-instant-messaging-services
https://xmpp.org/uses/instant-messaging/
Huh interesting, I actually had no idea those big apps used XMPP. Would it be easy for them to add e2ee if they wanted to?
It depends, E2EE is mostly a client thing and most of them implement OMEMO as a standard: https://omemo.top/
OMEMO is XMPP's take on the double ratchet algorithm (very similar to Signal's), MLS is in the works as the hot new cross-protocols standard (but is inferior to OMEMO:2 when it comes to metadata encryption), PGP is often an option for the cases where perfect forward secrecy isn't desired, and OTR is still used in niche cases when you want E2EE across protocols.
In fact, E2EE was a thing in XMPP world since about 10 years… before Signal existed.