Why not Signal?
dessalines.github.io
A few essays on communism

We as a community must stop recommending Signal. For far too long we have blindly followed this app without a second thought. It has created a cult of followers, when there are much better apps out there for us to use.

https://archive.is/Lhe24 archive for the essay

This essay was posted to r/Privacy and subsequently removed and censored for literally No Reason. This is honestly really scary: https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/wj5svi/signal_messenger_revealed_to_have_cia_ties_funded/ https://archive.ph/FZr1d

I am seriously hoping we can have a discussion about this on lemmy. @TheAnonymouseJoker , I know you from r/PrivateLife, and thought you’d be the one to go to about this. Thanks for being open in the past and not bowing to the inner circle of reddit cringelords.

I also am preparing an essay of my own about a complicit honeypot-ish web going on between Signal, Skiff, r/Privacy, r/PrivacyGuides, etc. They have a crazy little cabal that is very creepy. Any materials are welcome. Every time i turn over a stone i find two more. More to come.

  • PM_ME_UR_PCAPS@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Signal haters are back. I skimmed it and didn’t see anything remotely convincing or new. I was hoping this lemmy community wouldn’t turn into quite the level of deranged conspiracy posting as the subreddit of the same name, but it looks like that may not be the case.

    • Unlucky_Boot3467@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      02·
      2 years ago

      The evidence is all there. It’s ironic that the negative association of the word “conspiracy” was actually pushed by the CIA and their cohorts, and is used on other words too, to cause your mind to instantly recoil is disassociate yourself from it.

      Just try it. Say “I’m a conspiracy theorist” out loud in front of people, and felt the fear instantly take over as you try to mentally remove yourself from it. That’s called brainwashing.

      But people like you do their bidding and perpetuate the weaponization of “evil” sounding words.

  • Pablo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Ok, so what is better with other apps and why shouldn’t one recommend signal over the apps people use (say Whatsapp, telegram)

    • gonzo0815@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      01·
      2 years ago

      OP linked a whole essay about the second part of your question.

      An alternative would be matrix, which can be used with the elements app on your phone.

      • PM_ME_UR_PCAPS@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Matrix, where it’s ambiguous if you’re sending encrypted or unencrypted messages, disappearing and view once messages aren’t really a thing, and the server logs all metatata. Much better than signal.

        • Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          01·
          2 years ago

          To be fair, all of that stuff can be controlled by the server host. Too bad you have to be the server host to be sure.

    • Unlucky_Boot3467@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      They are extremely begrudging when it comes to providing a fully FOSS apk. They push really hard for their app to be pulled from Google’s servers and refuse to do an F-Droid build or even set up their own instance where they can push whatever they want.

          • amanneedsamaid@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            The security risk their signing process introduces. My guess would be Signal wants a 0% chance of a malicious client being distributed, hence why they only allow direct apk downloads (which self-updates, essentially making an F Droid build obsolete) and Google Play. I would also guess this is why Signal only packages a deb package (if anyone knows a better way to run Signal desktop on fedora [besides the flatpak] than my current solution of spinning up a Mint Virtual Machine [maybe distrobox?] please let me know!) and literally has no official support for rpm based distributions.

  • Melpomene@kbin.social
    0·
    2 years ago

    @Unlucky_Boot3467 This is an interesting read for sure, but I see no concrete evidence in the essay that suggests that Signal is insecure. Signal was never anonymous; users who have Signal accounts (myself included) are well aware that their Signal ID is tied to their phone number. If Signal were not offering the E2EE promised, that would be huge… but nothing in the evidence or the article suggests that that this the case.

    To be sure, I think Matrix great. But I have to wonder at the agenda behind the article… indirect initial funding from the US government at the outset, even absent malfeasance on Signal’s part, is bad, while direct current endorsement of Matrix by the French government is… good? to be clear, I consider neither problematic on their own, but there doesn’t appear to be much in the way of logic behind that reasoning.

    Overall, I’d like to see us move away from centralized control of communication… and Matrix might in fact be that eventual solution. But that doesn’t mean that Signal isn’t safe for those who understand that it is not, generally speaking, anonymous to use.

    • Unlucky_Boot3467@lemmy.worldOP
      01·
      2 years ago

      To be sure, your messages won’t be read from the server, but that’s not the point. There’s way more going on.

  • LollerCorleone@kbin.social
    212·
    2 years ago

    Governments routinely fund the development of secure and open communication systems because they themselves benefit from having such communication tools which can be trusted. By the logic presented in this “essay”, one shouldn’t be using the internet at all. What you need to check is whether Signal’s technical claims about its encryption is true or not. There is nothing in this article that raises any question on Signal’s encryption. We already know how much data Signal has on its users through their responses to various legal subpoenas over the years (spoiler: its pretty much nothing).

    Here are some cool links for you to check out:
    https://signal.org/bigbrother/
    https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/new-documents-reveal-government-effort-impose-secrecy-encryption