I mean WTF do they think? Only "their" revolutionaries can use the app, but others can't?

It's like TOR. It can be used by dissidents but it can also be used by enemies of the state, yet the state believes on balance TOR does good.

Just because it's a stupid insurrection doesn't mean it's not an insurrection.

And look I can only speak for my city since I was there but calling the protests violent is technically true but misleading in the way “there was a fight” is misleading in zero tolerance school policies. Being at the front of the protest was terrifying because the police were itching for any excuse to escalate and purposely obstructing people, grabbing and pushing the crowd daring someone to push back. Tensions are already high and the police acting like schoolyard bullies doesn’t help, and finally some guy finally breaks with a “get your hands off me” they get pulled down to the ground and start getting beaten, people step in to defend the guy and pull the cops off him, more cops rush in and boom — “violence.”

The shit at the Capitol was absolutely moronic and they had basically zero chance of achieving their goal but the intent was there and that’s really what matters.

So, you mean like hypothetically taking over 6 blocks of downtown Seattle and declaring it an autonomous zone?

Not even trying to play, if the Capitol shit was actually a sit-in a la #OccupyTheCapitol then I would be here defending their right to protest.

I find that everyone who comments about this zone on here is not actually from Seattle, and just firing off the same talking points.

- A group storming the capitol of the US after being fed a steady stream of lies regarding an election result, with the President himself pushing them to go.

versus

- A group protesting after yet-another-person-of-color was murdered, pushing for equality and a check on police brutality.

Totally checks out. ;P

The extremest fringe of the summer protests was burning cop cars and and a courthouse in one instance. There was even an area that declared itself an Autonomous Zone. That is insurrection. Not going to achieve anything though so everyone ignored it at the time. It wasn't any more of a problem than the Capitol riots.

I am not; I'm comparing the movements that led to each situation. You want to compare extremists, but the extremists are not the point - they'll always be there. The intent of the movements that caused these actions to happen are what matters, and it's fairly clear which side each falls on.

Many of those instances of violence in the summer protests were reactionary and driven by police exercising unnecessary force, which has been documented in troves of video.

Those who participated in the DC incident on the 6th were driven by a stream of misinformation, which has _also_ been well documented at this point.

One wanted to believe in conspiracy theories and support a failure of a President, going so far as to listen to him to attempt to overthrow the government. The other one just wants equality.

>There was even an area that declared itself an Autonomous Zone.

Yes, I live down the street from it. Having experienced it and lived around it, I would not classify it as anything remotely close to what was seen on January 6th in DC.

There's also nothing to be gained by doing so. Most likely your family and friends and co-workers, given your area, are of a similar mindset, so there's no social capital to be gained. It's unlikely that it will net you a better job or higher paying salary, or make your life easier in any way.

Seeing other viewpoints can help with compassion, though, and that might be a necessary ingredient for a society. Not that that's your concern: an individual is negligible to the behavior of the collective.

Why would I ever change my opinion to gain social capital, or make my life easier? I base it off of documented events; we've all lived the same past year whether people want to believe it or not.

It's simply not rationalizing when an individual looks at these two events that are clearly different in buildup, intent, and outcome, and then chooses to not view them the same.

Trying to bait someone with this stuff feels really old school internet, but not in an effective way.

We could probably have an interesting conversation in person, maybe even a meaningful one; but on the internet that's pretty much impossible. I certainly don't expect to change your mind, or even to convince you there's a possibility you might be wrong. You don't seem to have anything particularly new or insighful to add, so it's unlikely my opinions will shift. So there's not really a point in having a discussion, at least not in a format where we need to type out long comments and do point by point rebuttals.

And in any case other people are already doing the point my point contentious debate thing with you, and it doesn't seem to have much of an effect on anyone so it's a pretty obvious waste of time.

You seem the argumentative sort though so feel free to respond to this and explain why I'm wrong about whatever. I'll be drinking scotch and I do recommend that instead, but whatever you decide have a nice Tuesday night.

A government installed by the people is a principle that compares on similar footing to equality.

It was weaponized patriotism, not misguided patriotism.

And if it did, it wasn't that bad.

And if it was, that's not a big deal.

And if it is, that's not my fault.

And if it was, I didn't mean it.

And if I did...

You deserved it."

They had knives and zip ties and intended to take hostages. The fact that they are incompetent does not obviate their intent.

...which was handily rebuffed. You're overstating it.

The question is: How much liberty and privacy are you willing to give up to prevent that from happening again?

For me, the answer is zero. The next batch of idiots are welcome to come and take their turn getting arrested next week. It is offensive and disturbing yes, but not a real threat to democracy. And there's no 8chan in prison, so this problem will sort itself out eventually.

It's just the nature of true encryption. You take both the good and the bad, we've known this for a while now.

Would you be taking this principled stance if this was an insurrection on the Iranian parliament?

There are 2 approaches to fixing this.

1 is to undercut the roots of radicalism and polarization. I would say to do that by radically redistributing wealth and democratizing government. Yes, the capitol stormers mostly weren't poor, but Trumpism is in large part a reaction of horror by small business owners at being squeezed by monopolies, and what popular support they have would evaporate if the government fixed things instead of being run as the public relations firm and personal military of all the large companies put together.

2 is to instead double down on physical repression (by funding police) and digital repression of dissenting viewpoints by abolishing any right to privacy. This seems to be the direction we're heading. It already happened in large part under the last few presidents but Signal is obviously in the crosshairs.

I'm not mad at you. But I am frustrated that this obviously bad approach has support - of not dealing with root causes and material problems, but committing to suppression of beliefs on both the right and left that are obviously a reaction to those root causes.

All I see here is evidence of a sensible team pondering about the future of their product in light of recent events, both the potential for their platform to be abused, and let’s face it, the potential for their platform to disappear off the face of the internet if it becomes the platform of choice for an unsavoury audience. Neither of which they have much control over.

I would be more worried if people at Signal were not thinking about this, debating the issues and reflecting on the direction of their product.

I thought the article (despite the over-egged headline) was interesting and not particularly hysterical.

What I don’t see here is anyone actually suggesting they compromise E2E or any of the fundamentals of the product that we like in Signal.

I feel strongly that Signal needs to stay moving in the direction it’s heading - which is to be a no-bullshit, secure, E2E encrypted, reliable and open platform with none of the data-hoarding of its rivals.

I do not see any harm in Signal self-reflecting in particular in light of recent events.

A “head in the sand” approach seems worse. I’m surprised by the cynical comments here so far. How about we take a charitable read of this?

The potential? Seriously? There is no question a service like this will be abused (Let's ask Erdogan this question). No serious criminal is going to NOT consider using Signal as a comms medium. People who need to evade snooping will use it. People who need privacy will use it.

As for the other. For this product, either you believe in your principles or you don't. It was the whole premise of the product. Without it, there is no need for it. There are "better" (easier) alternatives.

It's like building a back-up product and saying, you know, we could save costs by not always reliably having the expected data. Yes, true. But why have your product in the first place?

It's probably helpful to look at a less emotionally charged principle like "customer focused". If your company enshrines "customer focus" as an inviolate principle, and nobody's comfortable discussing the value or meaning of "customer focus", you won't end up with a laser focus on the customer. You'll end up rudderless, because anyone skilled at office politics can justify whatever they want to do by declaring it customer focused.