- cross-posted to:
- observances@midwest.social
- reddit@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- observances@midwest.social
- reddit@lemmy.world
You must log in or # to comment.
Signal isn’t federated [1][2][3.1]; it’s decentralized [1][2][3.2]. Though, for all practical purposes, I would generally argue that it’s centralized.
References
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
- This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
- “Signal (software)”. Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-06T09:34Z. Accessed: 2025-02-1T09:30Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software).
- ¶“Architecture”. ¶“Servers”.
Signal relies on centralized servers that are maintained by Signal Messenger. In addition to routing Signal’s messages, the servers also facilitate the discovery of contacts who are also registered Signal users and the automatic exchange of users’ public keys. […]
- ¶“Architecture”. ¶“Servers”.
- “Reflections: The ecosystem is moving”. moxie0. Signal Blog. Published: 2016-05-10. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:40Z. https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/.
- ¶5. to ¶“Stuck in time”. ¶3-6
One of the controversial things we did with Signal early on was to build it as an unfederated service. Nothing about any of the protocols we’ve developed requires centralization; it’s entirely possible to build a federated Signal Protocol-based messenger, but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all. […] [interoperable protocols] [have] taken us pretty far, but it’s undeniable that once you federate your protocol, it becomes very difficult to make changes. And right now, at the application level, things that stand still don’t fare very well in a world where the ecosystem is moving. […] Early on, I thought we’d federate Signal once its velocity had subsided. Now I realize that things will probably never slow down, and if anything the velocity of the entire landscape seems to be steadily increasing.
- ¶“Stuck in time”. “Federation and control”. ¶6.
An open source infrastructure for a centralized network now provides almost the same level of control as federated protocols, without giving up the ability to adapt. If a centralized provider with an open source infrastructure ever makes horrible changes, those that disagree have the software they need to run their own alternative instead. It may not be as beautiful as federation, but at this point it seems that it will have to do.
- ¶5. to ¶“Stuck in time”. ¶3-6
Yeah. I love Signal but it doesn’t belong in that list. Dansup (creator of loops and pixelfed) is apparently working on “Sup” that will be a decentralized alternative to whatsapp.
100% agree >.> Like as much as i love (and trust) Signal i would never call it the same as Mastodon or Matrix for Example >.> This was like comparing Appels and Oranges -.-
To me this person sounds like they have too many big projects at once. I wish them success tho
Yeah… I’m bit afraid of “kbin Ernest Effect” (not sure what a proper term is) where personal issues pile up and the sole head developer just disappears.
Haven’t followed dansup much but from what I understand he is much more open to pull requests and listening to the community, but time will tell. Right now I appreciate and love his effort, giving, and the impact on fediverse he is brining.
The kickstarter was a good idea.
Given that I’ve waited 3 weeks to join his smaller instance of pixelfed.art, I can tell things are already piling up. I am hoping the kickstarter does help.
XMPP is an established federated messaging app with encryption.
There isn’t much information about “Sup”, but if I had to guess it could be that dansup is making sup app with XMPP(rotocol) as the messaging protocol.
Originally it was supposed to be ActivityPub based, but recently they posted something about it being for XMPP, Matrix and IRC as well 🤷♂️ Maybe they decided to fork Pidgin 😂
IMHO Sup. isn’t going to happen. They will have their hands more than full with Pixelfed’s new popularity and maybe Loops.
Oh! didn’t know that, I thought activitypub can’t be used for secure messaging. Lol really hope its XMPP!
Yeah I didn’t take it that seriously when it was announced right now. Just hope pixelfed stays afloat amidst the user flood and hope he can publish loops as open source soon!
Delta.chat already exists
Matrix?
Bro put citations in his lemmy comment 💀
I wish more people did that ngl 💀
I wish Boost understood the collapsible spoilers.
On my client, it’s all expanded and I see all the formatting characters. It looks/works great in a browser though.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
My comment wasn’t protesting the use of Signal; it was rather clarifying the misinformation in OP’s post — ie misinformation that Signal is a federated service.
Yeah, Moxie has openly shot down the idea of adding federation to Signal, and I’ve never heard them claim Signal was decentralized.
Matrix is federated, distributed, and decentralized.
XMPP is federated and decentralized.
Matrix is […] distributed […].
It is? How so?
Matrix servers keep a copy of any remote room an account on the server has joined, and it’s possible to recreate a room from the copies held on different servers. There are more details I don’t remember, but at a high level that’s how it’s distributed.
Storing messages of remote rooms in addition to local rooms is why people complain about the storage requirements of Matrix servers. They don’t realize it’s distributed.
Interesting — I hadn’t considered it that way.
but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all.
The fact that we have a telephone system that works with separate providers contradicts this sentiment. If I want to pick up the phone and talk to my cousin’s puppy in New Zealand, I can do that without creating an account on his provider’s service.
I don’t understand why we’ve forgotten this as a society. Yes, it was difficult to upgrade the phone systems over the past century, but it’s worth it in my opinion. I really wish we’d start seeing government regulation that says “you should be able to talk to someone on a service without having to create an account on said service.” I thought the DMA would do this, but sadly, Whatsapp still requires an account to talk to people using that service. Very disappointing.
How is the puppy?
As for interoperability between services… Monetization of surveillance data. The social media companies are Ad companies, and they make their money surveilling people and selling access. It’s harder to build an accurate model of a person when only pieces of data is available, and they need to have more data then the other Ad tech companies they’re competing with.
Signal is hostile to third party clients like Molly.im as well
That’s not true. Moxie only had a problem with a fork called “LibreSignal” because it was using their name. He didn’t want users to confuse the apps.
it’s decentralized
No it’s not. From literally your own comment:
Signal relies on centralized servers
For a decentralized messenger use https://delta.chat/
it’s decentralized
No it’s not. From literally your own comment:
Signal relies on centralized servers
I was using “decentralized” to mean that there isn’t centralized control over ownership of the service in general — eg anyone can spin up their own server (impractical, imo, pushing it more towards being centralized) and people can use it (making it decentralized, imo (Please correct me if I am wrong, but I do think my usage of the term is appropriate in this way.)), but people who use that server can only communicate with that server (making it not federated). But yes it could still be said to be centralized in that it operates on a client-server model [1].
This is more an argument of definitions, though. I’m not trying to claim anything in bad faith.
References
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
- This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
That’s just open source, not decentralized. I can’t find a definition of decentralization that would even make it vague. From Wikipedia:
Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and given to smaller factions within it.
Signal has a central authoritative server and to use it with any other server you have to modify the source code.
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
I support the cause in general but: Signal is not federated at all. It may seem like a decent alternative to WhatsApp but is it really? It still falls under the same US jurisdiction. Let’s say the US gov starts agressively prosecuting dissidents and certain minorities (they already do): can and should we still use signal in this case? I don’t think so. Sadly i can’t name a much better alternative. Maybe matrix. But it has other issues.
Signal is open source. They absolutely do always comply with US warrants. They have never provided any information to US law enforcement, because they can’t access it. They literally have no way of accessing the information contained inside the texts. The most they could provide is metadata, but they currently aren’t collecting that. I also think if they started, it would not work well for their user base. You can see all their requests for information, and the responses they gave, here: https://signal.org/bigbrother/
We should stop being naive. Immersing ourselves as a society into facebook and twitter significantly contributed to the shit situation we are in now. Going to Signal seems like a short term solution. We should have some idea where to go on the long term.
Facebook and twitter are not the same as signal. The signal protocol is a free open source project, that WhatsApp, Signal, and many other use. It secures the data so that whatever servers they are stored on, the company storing it does not know what the texts say. Facebook and Twitter are all about getting as much data as possible. Even though WhatsApp uses the signal protocol, they still collect all metadata with the texts (which is really what they want anyway). Moving to open source project is absolutely the long term goal to get out of this shit hole.
Jurisdiction is not that important. Even if it was in Switzerland it’d have to comply with international law enforcement and warrants. The key is that sure Signal is obliged to give out whatever data it has, but the point is that it doesn’t have much useful data to give. It’s the same as Mullvad, and a far smarter approach than “lol we just gonna ignore the warrant huhuhu look at us we host somewhere in Shitzerfuck” (oh btw “We are in X country which is not in N eyes” is just marketing).
Oh and btw the same goes for instances of the fediverse (which are ran by volunteers you need to trust), and if they don’t comply and the US government really wants to break into them they probably will find a way. Doesn’t even need some complicated backdoors or anything it just needs to find an OPSEC slip-up, do some social engineering, arrest someone or at worst find a bug to exploit, and I can guarantee that unless you have some serious security wizards running your instance you’re not beating the FBI there and if the FBI is really persistent and focused on you for some reason then the wizards won’t be enough you need state actors.
If your threat model actually includes the US government (aka you’re actually in danger and not some paranoia or just-in-case situation, be realistic with yourself) and there’s credible threats you may be targeted by it or other governments then you’re probably going to be using tor, briar, all that jazz, and wouldn’t be on lemmy. If you’re just some guy who just needs to message your family and shit Signal is perfectly fine, I can tell you that unless you’re a serious threat to the government they won’t waste resources cracking down ways to capture you via signal or whatever you use that is even somewhat secure (so no telegram, no WhatsApp, no messenger, etc), even if you’re a minority or activist, if not because you’re not important enough then because they have other easier ways to do it.
Edit: oh and btw Signal was banned in Ruzzia (a country way more authoritarian than the US currently is) because the FSB couldn’t crack it so that goes to show it is pretty secure.
(oh btw “We are in X country which is not in N eyes” is just marketing)
Why do you say this? There are real data-sharing agreements between the Eyes.
Doesn’t even need some complicated backdoors or anything it just needs to find an OPSEC slip-up
This already happened with kolektiva, unfortunately, but from what I hear they’ve since strengthened their security.
- There’s data-sharing agreements with more than just the N eyes countries
- If there’s an international warrant for that data the company is obliged to comply regardless
The only countries in which n° 2 doesn’t apply for the US are countries you really don’t want your data in either.
In short, however: if a government really wants your data it will find a way to get it no matter where you store that data, so the best thing is to simply not store that data at all, Mullvad and Signal don’t do that.
Let’s say the US gov starts agressively prosecuting dissidents and certain minorities (they already do): can and should we still use signal in this case?
Definitely no. Russian government already is aggressively prosecuting dissidents and you can’t join Signal there. I don’t know whether it’s due to sanctions or if the government is blocking 2FA SMS messages. In either case, it is impossible to join without a phone number confirmation. At least I wasn’t able to. I don’t see the USA being that far off with all the recent TikTok drama.
you can’t join Signal there. I don’t know whether it’s due to sanctions or if the government is blocking 2FA SMS messages. In either case, it is impossible to join without a phone number confirmation.
What do you mean? You need a phone number to join Signal in any country.
And that’s the problem. The whole privacy thing goes out the window because it relies on an insecure and state-controlled method for authentication. What’s the use of it if it can be killed off in any country at a whim of its, or USA’s government?
I find youtube to be the hardest one on this list
Youtube is the only one on this list that I use and I only use it with an ad blocker.
Agreed as peertube is great the creators i enjoy to watch dont upload there
PeerTube appears to be completely devoid of content
no, there’s tons of furries, like the rest of the fediverse. >.>
It feels pretty quiet here. At least going by active posts. They’re often the same for a while. New is a bit better. Unless it’s my expectations that are wrong?
Take a look at the 2 pinned posts in this community: https://lemmy.wtf/c/peertube
That’s the problem with the fediverse in general. It’s a lovely concept, but it’s hard to sell people on something that has 10% (if we’re being generous) of the content they’re used to.
Unfortunately, the switch from YouTube to PeerTube has not worked for me so far. I can’t find a decent instance (not full of right-wing/conspiracy content) with interesting stuff that also allows me to make an account.
Yes finding the right instance on peertube is a nightmare — and also the general lack of quality content, or subtitling, which makes it as good as useless for deaf people like me.
Have a look here for potential instances: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115 and also check these links out for channels to follow: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15810205 / https://peertube.wtf/home
For the avid readers out there, bookwyrm is a fantastic alternative to goodreads.
Yes it’s excellent! Also noting for those that aren’t aware: Goodreads is owned by Amazon.
Is there a way to automatically add books to it when a book in my Calibre Library gets marked as completed?
Folks should also check out neodb.social . it’s good reads, letterboxd, and steam reviews all in one.
I’ve been looking for something to track my physical book, music, and game collections. An instance of this might work nicely. Thanks!
has anyone tried Friendica? is it devoid of people?
The UI is fucking awful and way too complex, so it’s difficult to get anything done. I’ve tried two different instances and found them both to be unusable.
It’s a shame because Friendica is way more powerful than most Fediverse platforms – they leverage way more of ActivityHub’s potential, such as a system for calendars + events. But the UI needs to get sorted out before it’s ready for mass adoption.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
A lot of youtubers make a living posting videos.
They dont have a good enough reason to risk going to a much smaller audience with no ads and no membership system
They also probably arent knowledgeable enough about computers to switch
Hear me out.
Creators should be hosting peer tubes. And they should host exclusively their own content. Fans of their can subscribe to whatever systems they want to pay and support.
For creators, it’s a backup for when YouTube the project inevitably fails. For fans as well. But it’s also a backup of their content.
Tech-savvy content creators, sure…
Your average content creator that wants to make Minecraft videos? Unrealistic.
I hate the monopoly Youtube has, but all of the federated alternatives have a learning curve the general public isn’t willing to deal with.
Not to mention it lacks any (ethical) monetization options. And the app is absolutely rudimentary, lacking even basic functionality.
Framasoft made it clear they don’t want to make it a Youtube alternative though, however it could be through plugins. So there’d have to be a company or cooperative using it as a base to build upon, which is actually realistic. Especially European ones; not because Asia wouldn’t be interested in being more independent on the US as well, but because Framasoft is from France and Europe actively works towards this goal anyway with lots of money behind it.
For Mastodon, the people you follow will also need to switch. This is even harder than getting your friends to switch.
Well I switched from the birdsite to Mastodon because a) I like to shout in the void and b) see what other people are shouting into the void. Doesn’t really ultimately matter who’s doing the shouting. People who go to social media exclusively for news and updates are a bit strange when you really think about it. You’ve got to have the shout in you.
(I’m only being half facetious here)
You also can’t just switch from whatsapp to signal. I have hundreds of contacts on whatsapp that message me constantly there, and 2 on signal.
@jonjuan That’s totally true! I tried to use WhatsApp just for work and Telegram for my friends and contacts, but only my wife and mom were talking to me there 😂. However, I think it’s important to keep talking to people about alternatives. That way, we can switch from this “proprietary web” to a free one.
Remember the early days of YouTube? When people made garage videos for fun? Remember Vines? When people were making videos instead of businesses making content?
That’s what Peertube is for. It’s to have fun. Showcase your high school band. Talk about your potted plants. Share your excitement about trains. It’s not to make money. It’s to live.
How is signal considered part of the fediverse?
It’s not federated, but it is an open source secure texting alternative.
It should be something like SimpleX
This is such a beautiful guide!
Ah. I see…
Don’t worry, your successor isn’t offering anything big. You’ll still be around for many more days to come.
I don’t get the joke
Signal is centralized, loops is closed source and not accepting new users.
Loops will be open sourced later they say.
Is Loops open source? It will be! We plan on open sourcing the platform after it reaches a stable and easy to maintain state.
So Matrix it is?
I was told that unless you self host, matrix is less secure because it leaks more metadata. Something to consider
Leaks more metadata? What does that mean?
sender, recipient, chatroom, what kind of event you sent (message, emoji, reaction, vote), if you responded to a message, room privilege changes, etc
but it’s a question how big of a problem is that. they want to tackle it in the future, but that’s far away for now I think
Damm, didn’t know that, good to know
it’s not even true information, the new tech stack is zero trust
What does this mean?
the new cryptographic protocol protects metadata, like signal. the servers know nothing about any encrypted chats
So the guy above the guy avobe me was wrong?
Zero trust means there’s no trust assumed on the protocol - I.e. it distrusts all actors and the protocol takes steps to work in that trustless environment. I don’t know how that applies specifically to matrix.
So the guy above the guy avobe me was supposedly wrong?
Signal is not Fediverse! Element/Matrix is!
Element/matrix aren’t part of the fediverse, either. It doesn’t speak AP.
Matrix is federated, Signal is not.
although it is federated, it isn’t apart of the fediverse, as it doesn’t use activitypub.
I’d argue it’s part of “the fediverse” but not “The Fediverse”.
Are we claiming now that Activity Pub is the only protocol that we can use for the fediverse? I think XMPP is roughly 30 years old at this point, and I’m pretty sure Activity Pub is much younger than that. I could be wrong though.
But regardless, I don’t see why Activity Pub has to be the only protocol we accept to be considered a part of the fediverse. It’s not even like different AP implementations talk to each other all that well. My understanding is that Mastodon doesn’t federate that well with Lemmy, and I haven’t seen Loops or Pixelfed on Lemmy yet either.
I’d be happy to be corrected on any of this though, I haven’t looked too closely into exactly how AP works or how it’s supposed to interoperate with different applications.
I mean, yeah… the fediverse, specifically, are AP servers, which is why we don’t include diaspora for it.
It’s decentralized and federated, to be sure, just not the “fediverse”.
I’d like to argue that using AP is an inconsistent rule for membership. For example, Diaspora has been considered to be part of the fediverse from early on, but it doesn’t use AP.
I don’t really know where to draw the line. AP simply isn’t suitable for some applications, but it makes sense to include it for branding
I don’t know of anyone who include d*, accepting the tiny number of d* pods that also speak AP.
I mean, nostr is also NOT part of the fediverse, but another federated and decentralized network.
Both Wikipedia and fediverse.party consider Diaspora, and a handful of other (mostly defunct) protocols as being part of the fediverse.
I don’t really like the use of AP to be a qualification of being in the fediverse. There must be a better way to qualify a platform, even if it means that use of AP is a natural consequence.
Absolutely, signal isn’t federated, but I don’t want my messaging app to be federated. I want my social media to be federated. Lemmy is good because it’s open. Signal is good because it’s shut.
Don’t use Matrix the devs knew about sidechannel vulnerabilities and ignored them for years. This is peak negligence and should immediately disqualify you from touching anything security related.
the author literally picked random projects from github tagged as matrix, without considering their prevalence or whether they are actually maintained etc.
if you actually look at % of impacted clients, it’s tiny.
meanwhile, it is very unclear that any sidechannel attack on a libolm based client is practical over the network (which is why we didn’t fix this years ago). After all, the limited primitives are commented on in the readme and https://github.com/matrix-org/olm/issues/3 since day 1.
From your link.
You do not have a solution.
I do, use Signal if you care about privacy. They are the only game in town when it comes to reasonably secure chat software. Sure, I would prefer a federated alternative but I haven’t found one yet that is always end-to-end encrypted, open source, implements forward secrecy, and is user friendly enough to be used by my grandmother.
SimpleX is better, you don’t even need a phone number.
SimpleX is cool, but fails the “my grandmother can use it” requirement. Signal has the huge benefit that is just as easy as WhatsApp. With Simplex you have to invite each of your friends individually.
Scan a QR isn’t difficult, there are also tantum links
With Signal you just have to install the App and make an account to start chatting with your friends and family. SimpleX requires me to send a link or QR code to everybody I want to interact with. You will have a hard time convincing anyone to do that. Compare that to the first Twitter exodus, people chose Bluesky over Mastodon because picking a server was ‘difficult’. The average person doesn’t care about technology at all and will always pick the path of least resistance.
No, Matrix is federated differently.
And Signal isn’t?!
Signal is centralised.
You now understood both my point and the OC’s, I hope.
Signal is not federated.
Bless your heart.
Unpopular Opinion Lemmy and PeerTube logo look ugly.
Unpopular opinion: your opinion is not unpopular at all.
I think it’s just the colours for the peertube one. I like that it’s three individual play icons to signify the federation aspect, but the colours are just dull.
