There are lots of useful apps you can build atop e2ee messaging: location sharing, payments, group chats, secret sharing, etc.

This was the only method available of doing payments inside the app in a way that met their product requirements.

It's fine to not like cryptocurrency; it's intellectually dishonest to accuse every project of crime without evidence.

I can recall specifically two kinds of crime with cryptocurrency: “pump and dump” pyramid schemes and money laundering, which is hiding particularly nasty crimes like human trafficking. I won’t deny these are terribly victimizing things (that would be truly advocating for the devil).

There are people who don’t enjoy the banking infrastructure that Americans have; people in nations without the wealth of America. Now they have these open-source networks they can implement on their own terms. The people doing this research and making these offerings might be serving such customers, whether by practice or intention.

Crime is not “the perfectly sensible default assumption for cryptocurrency apps in 2023” unless the one making the assumption is naive to these perspectives. This is an (unconscious) anti-cryptocurrency bias by definition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic.

So if we are being honest - it really doesn’t matter.

0: https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/04/06/it-looks-like-signa... (source was published shortly after the publication of that article)

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26715013 (comment from founder of MobileCoin)

2: https://www.theverge.com/22249391/signal-app-abuse-messaging...

I agree the crypto was stupid. But, it was a product of the times, and I believe it grew (from scant evidence) out of concern about independent funding longterm for the project. It didn't work: it rebounded badly.

I use signal every day. I'm glad it exists, I'm glad he did the work. I like Meredith, and I think the new board needs to be given time to bed in and for us to see how things eventuate.

Good for privacy?

But to be fair that's the person in charge of policy, so it's the kind of profile you'd expect. (Of course, you're free to argue that a messaging application has no good reason to hire for such a position in the first place.)

Let's be fair: there's a big difference between "this person has worked in or near the federal government" and "this person has literally committed war crimes".

If there are specific concerns about the people on Signal's board, I'd be interested in hearing it, but having Fed connections doesn't inherently mean a whole lot.

This announcement shows clearly that Signal is at the end of its life and it is time to jump ship.

No need to point the obvious

Meanwhile, at least some sources claim their numbers are still slowly climbing: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...

Telegram on the other hand keeps growing

Obviously anecdotal, but almost all my friends and family are still using it, and usage has increased compared to SMS or other options.

99% of my messages are sent on Signal with 100ish contacts including all bar two of my friends who I message regularly. But I would never think to suggest my anecdotal evidence is the norm.

[0]: https://www.signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33258684

If this is the case, I wish Signal had provided this information somewhere in an official capacity, rather than some random persons HN post. Like a follow up blog post following the reaction that people had. This is extremely poor communication to what I would believe is a decent portion of their username: technically oriented persons. The reasons they give in their blog post are extremely flimsy.

That raises all sorts of interesting questions. Like how does some random person in some random part of the world using some random carrier know I'm using an Android phone today. Surely they don't.

Assuming they don't, how do they handle iOS not supporting RCS. iOS is over 50% of the phones in the USA. Dropping 50% of messages sent by Android phones is untenable. Whatever happens - that isn't it.

The next question is what happens if an RCS message arrives on a Android phone that doesn't have Google messages as it's registered SMS app. It would seem mightily unfriendly to just drop it on the floor if you have no one to pass it to. It seems far more likely it would just pop up in Google Messages.

But you can avoid all that if the sending carrier has some way of asking if the phone number they sending to supports receiving RCS or not. One way to do that is the RCS app registers with some central registry, and Google Messages only registers itself if it's the default messaging app, otherwise it doesn't. So you only get RCS messages if you are using Google Messages.

TL;DR: Google not publishing the RCS API is a red herring. It doesn't matter, just as Signal not publishing an API for sending messages using the Signal protocol doesn't matter.

If that is all true, then spokes people from Signal claiming RCS forces their hand was a best misleading. As it happens the other reasons they gave didn't look particularly convincing either. Which left me in the position of trusting them about as much as I trust Google. As Signal gave me no choice I now use Google Messages as my default SMS app. Everything is still seamlessly end-to-end encrypted if the other end supports RCS - in fact the feature sets of Messages and Signal are so similar it looks like they were copying from each other. But security wise it's a definite step backward from when Moxie was CEO.

Which brings to the final point - I can't see what any of this has to do with Moxie. It all happened when after he stepped down as CEO. Seems like this was some else's decision.

This is where whatsapp just excels

Last I checked, that was Android only. And the password they periodically ask for is your PIN, which is unrelated to your backup password.

I trusted signal in part due to his persona. And his in your face attitude towards that one company that provided software to law enforcement that claimed to hack signal.

[0]https://signal.org/blog/cellebrite-vulnerabilities/

Yeah, uh huh.

Good analysis tho

> After over a decade spent creating Signal, Moxie has departed to focus on new efforts. As the founder of Signal, the work he did and the organization he built are the reason Signal exists. We are infinitely grateful. He remains a friend and a core part of the Signal legacy

Safe travels to Moxie. I look forward to seeing what he builds next.

[0] https://mastodon.world/@signalapp/110549359401156075

I suspect it would be some approximation of “no longer his”. I can understand your frustration but this kind of message is likely only to exacerbate his.

I am requesting a statement from someone that has been very outspoken on many issues around secure, safe, private communication in the past and is in a better position than any of us to follow up on his advocacy.

He has had a very strong effect on the ecosystem including explicitly denigrating non-centralized efforts like the Matrix ecosystem (to the detriment of these non-US controlled systems supported by the French and Germans who had reason to be cautious in the wake of the Snowden revelations).

As someone who has had a significant impact in this area he owes us. Otherwise we can all draw our own conclusions.

I wouldn't go so far as to call Signal compromised - yet - but I will be keeping an eye out for increased mentions of Signal in DOJ indictment documents, just like I did for Dropbox after Condy Rice joined their board (after which there was indeed an increase in such mentions of Dropbox).

I mean Signal is worse than Mastodon in adoption as of today and it had so so many opportunities wasted on things that were never needed (in fact those efforts should have been categorically avoided) and a lot effort was also wasted on not doing things that should have been done. Hope that changes as well with his departure. Or I’ll rather see Signal put out of its misery in a kind and quick way.

Sounds wonderful for a messaging system that is going to be definitely trusted not to be manipulated by the USA.