You can use reproducible builds to verify that the provided clients are the result of the source code and you can also use alternative clients like Molly
fira959
What for? Running on a closed system there is no point to begin with.
They have provided reproducible builds for almost a decade https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/ https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/main/reproducible-builds/README.md
Most security experts who actually know what they are talking about do recommend Signal for most users, including [https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/661313394906161152](Edward Snowden), [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/06/russian_censors.html] (Bruce Schneier) and [https://linktr.ee/glenngreenwald](Glenn Greenwald). Eveyone should consider whether they would rather follow the advise of people who have literally fought the NSA and read the entire Snowden documents or belive in the FUD spread by some people here.
They are refering to the crypto payment option that was build into the messenger a while back. Never used it and it never bothered anyone. It just isnt very well recieved as a feature in a secure messenger.
Signal Servers are using AWS and are spread throught the world. The entire protocl is build to remove any need for trust in those servers, so they migth as well be places in the datacenter of the NSA. So in the end it will be the same result. With decentralized protocls like Matrix you may get lucky and not have your small server taken down because it only hosts a few users, but if we are using the number of users as a metric, Signal would fare better against server takedowns, since all users are replicated throght the world, while my matrix server is the only place where my user data is stored. Then again both can deal fairly well against takedown ins single countries.
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.
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
Whats mind blowing is the BS people like you come up with to shit on a non profit open source project.
All decentralized protocols have this issue. The servers need to handle metadata for chat groups, like who is part of which group. If the servers are under individual control, nobody can force them to delete this data. The question is, do you trust a non profit organisation like signal to minimize and delete metadata (which court orders have proven they do) or do you trust all individuals of a group chat to do the same when you manually ask them to.
Matrix is the worst option when it comes to avoiding metadata. A group chat with users on 10 different servers will create ten different places to store the metadata with no way for any user to delete or edit this metadata. Its a privacy nightmare.
Why are you so keen on spreading misinformation around? A feature you dont like does not affect the trust in the restof the application at all. Also, the integration of MobileCoin is part of the wiki page as well.