18 ms·

Et Tu, Signal?

• enriquto 5y ago
  Shit. Just as I convinced all my family and friends to move out from whatsapp and I uninstalled the stupid green app. What do we get to do now?
  • Lev1a 5y ago
    Can't the user just ignore this cryptocurrency BS if they (like myself) have no intention of using it?
    • gruez 5y ago
      You can, it's just that having the cryptocurrency in the first place leaves a bad taste in some people's mouths.
      • lameiam 5y ago
        don't lick your phone then, seriously, if you don't like a feature, do use it. Done.
        • 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
          The problem is that these features need to be worked on, they require attention and the implementation sends a (strong) message. It's not just the fact that it exists that leaves the bad taste, it's the fact the decision was made, what that implies about the mentality/goals of the people making such a decision and that it will from that point on hog resources. And those aspects won't go away by not using it.
    • marcinzm 5y ago
      I feel the biggest concern is about focus shift for Signal since doing one shady thing usually means other shady things will be done. You can ignore it for now but how much will they push it over time to make it harder and harder to ignore? Will grandma accidentally buy tokens due to some dark pattern UI and then call you about it? Will you get constant messages from scammers trying to get you to send them tokens? This might not happen but I feel it is a valid concern for a platform you wish to stay on longer term. edit: And since the CEO of the token company has said he wishes to make future monetary donations to Signal they have an incentive for making the token do well.
    • Saris 5y ago
      You can for sure. But it seems like a waste of resources by Signal, they could be making the chat part of the app better instead.
    • unionpivo 5y ago
      Problem is that with the cryptocurrencies, it opens the app to whole new financial legal frameworks and agencies. Not to mention that with the number of scams with cryptocurrencies It's not inconceivable that either Apple or Google will eventually ban them from App store (apps using cryptos)
  • XorNot 5y ago
    This isn't a privacy breach at this point though. It's just questionable. The security model of Signal doesn't require us to trust the servers (in theory - in practice, well, you've got the app chain and non-reproducible builds and distribution).
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • hnarn 5y ago
      I don't mean to sound pessimistic but "Security in theory" isn't really secure, is it? I still have way more trust for Signal than I have for say Messenger or Telegram, but I've been burned too many times to take these things at face value.
  • romseb 5y ago
    If you are looking for e2e encryption, it all depends on which features you need (like voice messages) and how good usability and UX needs to be for your family and friends to adopt the new tool. Some candidates are * GNU Jami: https://jami.net/ https://jami.net/ * Matrix with Element: https://element.io/ https://element.io/
    • bilal4hmed 5y ago
      second the recommendation for Element. At least you can rehost it on your own.
    • qqii 5y ago
      Jami has it's own tradeoff as you'll be revealing your IP in a DHT.
  • fsflover 5y ago
    Check the other apps in the HN poll: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669864. I recommend Matrix.
  • tim333 5y ago
    I realize everyone here seems to hate it but couldn't you just keep messaging and ignore the availability of a payment system?
    • enriquto 5y ago
      No. This is an unacceptable shit move. No way I can keep using signal with a clear conscience. Now I am ashamed to swallow again all the shit that I supported from my colleagues who said that in a few weeks I would be asking them to switch to a less-evil place than signal. And here we are.
• del_operator 5y ago
  And drawing on my one semester of Latin from Wheelock just for fun here: Quid facis, Signal? Quid cogitas?
  • jan_Inkepa 5y ago
    Aha; I'm working through it right now. This quote is from Cicero's speech to the senate condemning Catiline for trying to overthrow the Roman republic for the second time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catiline#Second_Catilinarian_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catiline#Second_Catilinarian_c...) "Quid facis, Catilīna? Quid cōgitās? Sentīmus magna vitia īnsidiāsque tuās. Ō tempora! Ō mōrēs! Senātus haec intellegit, cōnsul videt. Hic tamen vīvit." "What are you doing, Catiline? What are you thinking? We know your great treachery and plans. Shame on the age and on its principles! The senate is aware of these things, the consul sees them, and yet this man lives." (I like the gentle reprimand of the 'and yet this man lives' line)
• IgorPartola 5y ago
  I was recently pulled onto Signal by a non-techie who values his privacy. I talked to him about Matrix/Element and he had no idea what that was, but was very happy with Siganl. I must admit, the app is very nice. All I had to do was give it access to my contacts and bam, I am now able to chat with all my contacts. By comparison, Element is much more like a chat program than a phone messenger. It's good for "I want to connect with that person from GitHub" instead of "messaging the cute girl I met last night" or "messaging my grandpa". And yet, it feels to me like Matrix/Element is the platform less likely to pull something like this. Then again, Keybase seemed that way as well...
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • CA0DA 5y ago
    > Matrix/Element is the platform less likely to pull something like this Agree, I've been using Matrix/Element, and it's a bit slower/buggy but seems like it'll be around for longer.
    • Ardon 5y ago
      The best part about Matrix/Element, is that it could be Matrix/Anything. If Element is buggy, switch to another client.
      • alexvoda 5y ago
        And unlike Telegram where the client is open source, with Matrix you can also switch the server. Or bring your own server.
    • ruph123 5y ago
      It has improved a lot. I once wanted to switch with another tech-savvy friend 2 or 3 years ago and the experience was abhorrent. Nowadays I use it mostly like a IRC client and it improves constantly. However the comparison between this and signal falls flat due to the metadata that needs to be stored on matrix servers due to its federated setup.
• niij 5y ago
  Dang: could the title be changed to something more informative? "Signal announces cryptocurrency: opinion"
  • simias 5y ago
    I thought the title was a pretty good hint as to the content of the article, assuming that you're familiar with the reference to "et tu Brute": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_tu,_Brute%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_tu,_Brute%3F
    • medstrom 5y ago
      "Et tu" implies betrayal, but doesn't specify how.
      • robjan 5y ago
        Probably using people to market and, in some cases, donate to their non-profit then essentially selling their user base to a friend. A perfect example of crony capitalism.
    • niij 5y ago
      I know the meaning of the saying. But it doesn't say how they betrayed us. Mentioning that they introduced a cryptocurrency is much more descriptive.
• ex3ndr 5y ago
  Woah putting telegram to the same bucket is insane - their network was permined, true, but unlocking value exchanging of 500m users makes this a tiny drop in the ocean. Unlike Signal, sigh.
• marcinzm 5y ago
  The piece doesn't note the additional fun fact that the website to buy the tokens is blocked in the US presumably to avoid an SEC investigation. edit: Blocked at the cloudflare level without even an explanation of why if you go there.
  • BelenusMordred 5y ago
    > fun fact It's absolutely hilarious, the SEC has gone after so many different coins, ICO's and exchanges now who have gone to far greater lengths in excluding Americans. The first person who gets around it opens you up to all sorts of civil and criminal charges. I don't understand how after years of this happening any company thinks it's somehow safe with nothing more than an IP geofence.
    • TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
      If they make reasonable attempts to keep out Americans, requiring IP proxies and checking a box saying "I am not an American," then is it really their fault when Americans end up using it?
      • kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 5y ago
        Yes, because of KYC
    • nullc 5y ago
      Thus far the SEC penalties are fairly uniformly ... raise a billion dollars from suckers, pay a penalty of $25 million as part of a settlement where they promise no further action kinda stuff. Just a really minor cost of doing business.
  • salawat 5y ago
    They have to. If they allow even the possibility of a monetary transaction to a United States citizen, they fall under SEC, FINRA, and FINCen, which among other things, requires compliance with AML/a KYC process. This kills the Signal value proposition. You can move money electronically legally, or you can be anonymous in the U.S. It us incredibly difficult if not nigh impossible to do both. It's part of the U.S. soft power projection scheme. If you want access to American markets/easy movement of financial assets, you leave audit trail.
• sneak 5y ago
  This seems to ignore the fact that absolutely nothing about using Signal requires that one use this additional feature. It's not required if you don't like it. Yet it insists on it being a pump and dump scam, without evidence. :(
  • progx 5y ago
    But it requires extra code and that code can have additional bugs.
    • _nalply 5y ago
      And it adds a risk that you fat-finger something disastrous.
  • mikepurvis 5y ago
    No one wanted Google+ either, but these things are a sign of a company with misguided or missing focus, a misunderstanding its own product and the core competencies of its team, and which may be chasing trends in search of growth, perhaps a sign that current revenue streams are not sustainable. None of this bodes well for the future of Signal, either the app, the service, or the company.
• shawnz 5y ago
  I am highly optimistic about the future of cryptocurrencies but even I can acknowledge this was a strange/risky move by Signal.
• jasonhansel 5y ago
  Don't blame Signal, blame capitalism.
  • lolsal 5y ago
    Can you explain exactly how capitalism is at fault here, and contrast it with other economic systems which you think would have had a different result?
• dt3ft 5y ago
  Oh well. No such thing as free lunch after all. Yet again, a user-funded nonprofit would be the way to go, but users want free stuff. Minority would donate, but good luck having a steady cash flow and being able to pay for the infrastructure and your wages.
  • robotbikes 5y ago
    Moxie seems to think that they need to do this to keep up with the Joneses, as they try to build some kind of decentralized alternative to WeChat. I guess we should have seen this coming when he got involved with MobileCoin. I'm not a psychic and it might turn out okay but it still seems like a bad idea to me.
    • jerry1979 5y ago
      Do you have any examples of Moxie talking about needing to keep up with the Joneses?
      • robotbikes 5y ago
        Yes in the other article in Wired that was on here he said they felt like it was important to add this feature because other messenger clients we're adding it. That was one of his primary justifications for it along with the promise of adding privacy to payments and making that mainstream, like they've attempted to do with encryption.
        • jerry1979 5y ago
          I found a quote from Goldbard in the article: "To be frank, there's a moral imperative to do so, because Signal has to offer payments in order to remain competitive with the world's top messaging apps." https://www.wired.com/story/signal-mobilecoin-payments-messaging-cryptocurrency/ https://www.wired.com/story/signal-mobilecoin-payments-messa...
    • kreetx 5y ago
      No, he wants to do this, has wanted to do this for a long time.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• nathias 5y ago
  Crypto is much a much better route for monetization than selling adds and personal data, I hope more projects start implementing it.
• simias 5y ago
  I definitely agree with the article that it felt a bit like a betrayal. I've pushed some friends and family to use it over Telegram despite significant usability issue, and now I see that instead of implementing some IMO basic features like proper message sync and easy backup when you get a new phone, they prefer to implement a... micropayment system? Based on some niche altcoin which doesn't even exist on mainstream exchanges? It goes beyond the usual issue with cryptocurrencies. Let's assume that they integrated with Bitcoin or Litecoin or some "mainstream" CC, would it still be a good idea? You can already send wallet addresses over signal if you care to do it. I'm willing to give the Signal devs the benefit of the doubt and assume that they meant well and aren't actively trying to benefit from the move (even though I'm not completely dismissing this possibility) but at the very least it's just showcases a very strange way to lead the project and prioritize issues. I can think of a dozen things out of the top that would do more to drive Signal adoption than integrating with some "literally what?" cryptocoin. This is going to drive the adoption of this niche cryptocoin, it's not going to do anything at all for Signal.
  • vodkapump 5y ago
    > easy backup when you get a new phone I just recently got a new phone, and used the new feature to do this (uses wi-fi direct) and I have to say it seemed like it would be easy enough for non-techy users to use.
    • tw04 5y ago
      Try transferring from an iOS phone to Android. Try transferring messages to a new desktop (you can't). It's 2021, I don't want to be platform locked and none of the other popular messaging apps have that issue.
      • dividedbyzero 5y ago
        Last I checked (about a year ago I think) Whatsapp backups were platform-locked as well.
        • 5y ago
• tom_mellior 5y ago
  > of which the issuing organization controls 85% of the supply. [citation needed] > This token then floats on a shady offshore cryptocurrency exchange hiding in the Cayman Islands or the Bahamas, where users can buy and exchange the token. The token is wash traded back and forth by insiders [citation needed] > insiders are free to silently use information asymmetry to cash out on the influx of pumped hype-driven buys [citation needed] > Did I mention that the exchange that floats the token is the primary investor in the company itself [citation needed, the linked article doesn't seem to say anything like this] I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if all of this were true! But Stephen Diehl's increasingly hysterical anti-cryptocurrency rants are becoming less and less informative (talk about insider information...), and possibly, less and less grounded in reality. It's a shame, because he used to be a good, persuasive writer.
  • RootKitBeerCat 5y ago
    A) it’s true, B) why does the world need yet another currency? Why didn’t they partner with Bitcoin or Monero or LTC, or ETH, etc...
  • marcinzm 5y ago
    > of which the issuing organization controls 85% of the supply. > [citation needed] This is based on the original whitepaper which says they pre-sold 15% of the tokens (to investors) and still own the rest. They claim to have not followed that whitepaper but the new one only says they start with 100% ownership and will not answer questions of how much they still own. So all we can go on is their original plan which was to hold onto 85% of the supply as long as possible.
    • tom_mellior 5y ago
      Thanks to you and the others who responded with information. Looks like some of the claims I highlighted above cannot be sourced at all, and others can only be sourced to a whitepaper that the developers are distancing themselves from. So... Yeah, being downvoted and flagged really showed me, I guess.
• siwatanejo 5y ago
  Actually, bitcoin proponents can agree with 99% of what this guy is saying. The only thing that is not accurate is when he mentions counterparty risk: Signal is planning to add a non-custodial wallet, therefore there's no counterparty risk (granted, no counterparty risk of magical shitcoins, but yeah, no counterparty risk). Signal did a bad move here, but they will learn their mistake eventually: once they remove shitcoin support and add bitcoin support.
• otachack 5y ago
  It seems any platform/app/software moving forward has the "risk" of incorporating a cryptocurrency variant to their platform and I can't totally blame them for it since they want to get funded one way or another. But why not open avenues for donations as well? Wikipedia managed to do so, Khan Academy is doing it, WhatsApp used to do it. Someone here mentioned Keybase, which I would have gladly donated to as a heavy user back before the Zoom buy out. They instead tried their own crypto integration, then Zoom bought them, leaving that platform in a questionable state. I get the excitement of wanting to integrate or even create your own crypto but after the fiasco a few years ago where everyone and their parents spun a new variant it seems to have left a bad taste to most people while causing a major issue: how to get people to actually use it? Especially through a chat app where chat in itself is fragmented.
  • sneak 5y ago
    Having integrated payments is an excellent way to enable the donations of which you speak. Note that keybase's payment integration wasn't their own, but was presumably a (paid) advertising deal with the B-list cryptocurrency in question, Stellar. A lot of organizations that raised a lot of money during the 2017 boom are now trying to turn that into marketshare. Most integrations are paid marketing.
• zibzab 5y ago
  Sorry for bringing humour into this... but are they copying the plot of HBO Silicon Valley? Then I guess adding AI is next.
• hereme888 5y ago
  This article is trash. If the author did a live debate with a Signal spokesman who actually knows what he's talking about, he'd be embarrassed. Also, it will not be illegal in the US as the SEC will most likely clear its use after having reviewed the facts. Edit: Apparently my guess was correct. Quote from sec.report: "MobileCoin, Inc. is regulated by the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission and incorporated in the state of Delaware. For financial reporting, their fiscal year ends on December 31st. This page includes all SEC registration details as well as a list of all documents (S-1, Prospectus, Current Reports, 8-K, 10K, Annual Reports) filed by MobileCoin, Inc.." MobileCoin was also initially financed by Binance Labs.
• petard 5y ago
  I'm baffled how tech-savvy people like the author are surprised when a seemingly free product suddenly introduce ways to monetize its service. There is no free lunch or to put it in another way, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.
  • duxup 5y ago
    There's very much a horrible system right now with of all these free services creating demand free only services at the expense of any possibility of paying for it ... and then we get upset when they scramble to pay for things in other ways. Personally I'd like to pay for things (would like a system to manage it)...
  • throwaway4good 5y ago
    Yes. This is the sad truth. Cryptocurrency is about network effects; more users, more value^2. Today it is really the way to monetize a large collection of users, whereas it in the past perhaps was advertisement. Perhaps it should be illegal in the same way a chain letter or pyramid scheme is illegal. However right now it is not.
  • vitno 5y ago
    I'm baffled how people assume this is monetization. Signal has been a nonprofit for years and has no money issues: https://signalfoundation.org https://signalfoundation.org. The organization has no formal ties to the alt-coin, although Moxie does. It doesn't monetize the Signal foundation. I'm very unhappy with this, but it's not a monetization scheme.
    • helen___keller 5y ago
      > Signal has been a nonprofit for years and has no money issues: https://signalfoundation.org https://signalfoundation.org. The organization has no formal ties to the alt-coin, although Moxie does. It doesn't monetize the Signal foundation. Even worse, in my opinion. If a nonprofit running a useful encrypted app was trying to fund itself by shilling some altcoin, I wouldn't be happy but I would be understanding. If the lead of the project is inserting the altcoin for personal enrichment at the cost of the nonprofit and the useful project, that's pure and simple corruption. As far as I can tell, no good is coming of this (I mean, unless you're interested in actually using Mobilecoin, of course. Personally I have no interest in doing so, and if my Signal contacts wanted to send me money I'd say to use Venmo instead).
• macintux 5y ago
  Also discussion on Schneier's take here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26723399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26723399
• jeromenerf 5y ago
  Yet another rant about a free for use, centralized app/protocol with no business model. Expecting it to achieve world domination for journalists and grandmas alike is just misplaced expectations.
• mk81 5y ago
  What if I told you... companies need revenue to continue operating?
  • jeltz 5y ago
    The foundation gets plenty of donations. No, the one who is likely to get rich from this is Moxie and his buddies.
• verytrivial 5y ago
  Yeah ... well the update that includes MOB will be the uninstall event trigger for me. I remember skimming that article from 2018 before I'd switched myself and all my friends (the shame!) to Signal and counted it as a negative for that platforms reputation. I guess my honeymoon is over. On to the next chat platform!
  • amarant 5y ago
    May I recommend something based on matrix? If you keep getting upset by companies changing their product, hosting it yourself is pretty much your only option. (Apart from hopping from startup to startup every 3 months I guess)
• throwaway823882 5y ago
  "Many technologists viscerally felt yesterday’s announcement as a punch to the gut [...] our fellow technologists that we truly believed were advancing a cause many of us also believed in." It can be painful when a belief system runs into reality. "Just do one thing and do it well, be the trusted de facto platform for private messaging that empowers dissidents, journalists and grandma all to communicate freely with the same guarantees of privacy. Don’t become a dodgy money transmitter business." Lol. Because that usually goes over well. Hey, just do what we tell you! We don't care what's involved, just get it done! Says the user of the free service.
• spir 5y ago
  EDIT: I fixed my ad hominem by adding detail As usual, Stephen's correct about the 42% and so mad about it that he's missing the 58%. Stephen's understanding of blockchain is only skin-deep. If we keep lionizing his articles by upvoting them to #1, then HN's understanding of blockchain is only going to be skin-deep, too. Here are some of the problems with Stephen's objections to Signal's use of cryptocurrency: - in prior essays, Stephen's majority objection to blockchain has been proof of work and the environmental impact, but the blockchain chosen by Signal is not proof of work - Signal would love to use US dollar payments instead of a new and volatile token. But, Signal was sprinting towards private payments. On Signal's timeline, there was no technology option for the payments to be USD-denominated because the blockchain they chose is optimized for semi-centralized private payments, not decentralization or programmability, and it takes extra work to peg a token's value to USD I find it concerning that HN looks for blockchain wisdom from, eg., Stephen and Schneier (I love Bruce), because they honestly don't know what they are talking about, and I know that because I've been full-time on ethereum for three years.
  • tonyjstark 5y ago
    this reads more like an ad-hominem. So what's your counter argument, what did he get wrong? The conflict of interest is already a big no-no...
    • spir 5y ago
      That's fair. Updating my original comment
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• dexen 5y ago
  While I'm generally happy with cryptocurrency for reasons of practicality, privacy, and broader governance, connecting both your private communications and your private purchases to your phone number (and to each other) is exceedingly unwise. Especially as most western countries insist on connecting your phone number with government-issued ID. Anybody with technical knowledge and a modicum of appreciation for privacy should be either bitterly amused or straight up appalled. The correct solution: decouple messaging from your offline identity (phone number etc.). Decouple transactions from offline identity and from communications - proper use of cryptocurrency is good for that. "Every program attempts to expand until it can connect online identity with offline identity. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." [1] -- [1] with apologies to jwz - his original is: “Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.”
  • lottin 5y ago
    > While I'm generally happy with cryptocurrency for reasons of practicality, privacy, and broader governance, You must have other reasons because cryptocurrencies fail flat out on every one of these aspects.
  • VectorLock 5y ago
    He's been twitter replying to everybody who @s him on some "Zawinsky's Law" variant with "Staaaahhhhhhhpppppp."
    • asddubs 5y ago
      every twitter feed expands until it contains a variation of Zawinsky's Law
• firebaze 5y ago
  Another option: https://threema.ch https://threema.ch (no phone number required, fully anonymous, fully open source)
  • Sebb767 5y ago
    I really like the direction Threema is going to. I admit I was pretty skeptic back when they were closed-source and just starting out, but their recent actions (like open-sourcing most of the code) look very promising. Their client is also pretty good and the reactions (agree/disagree) are pretty innovative and useful. I'm somewhat surprised that feature has not popped up in other messengers yet.
    • schmorptron 5y ago
      Slack and then discord are just miles ahead of any other chat platform and they'll probably be playing catch up in terms of features for a looong time
• mikece 5y ago
  I'm a little surprised that nobody is mentioning that any kind of blockchain payment system creates a permanent, public ledger. One US Attorney called Bitcoin's blockchain "prosecution futures" as it's only a matter of time before the sender/receiver addresses for transactions are correlated with unique individuals. This permanent, public record of a transaction between a Signal account and another user or a service flies in the face or Signal's presumed goal of completely private e2ee communication.
  • twobitshifter 5y ago
    That’s true for a lot of crypto but not for something like monero which has an anonymous blockchain.
    • gruez 5y ago
      It's anonymous with some caveats. The transaction graph is still there, it's just that there are decoy inputs/outputs which provides plausible deniability. However, over repeated transactions the plausible deniability weakens. ie. having an output to a darknet market in one of your transaction is easily explainable by bad luck, but it's present in several transactions it becomes suspicious enough that the police can start investigating you.
      • derefr 5y ago
        This might be true of the particular decoy approach used with Monero, but I don’t think it’s true in general; e.g. with mixer/tumbler services. If every transaction that everyone does has some outputs to darknet markets (because they’re popular and high-volume), and some outputs to legitimate businesses (because they’re also popular and high-volume) then that really is reasonable doubt that any particular individual did anything bad. It’s like how you can’t charge someone with possession of cocaine because there’s cocaine on the US dollar bills in their pocket: there’s actually trace amounts of cocaine on every US dollar bill.
        • Igelau 5y ago
• tonyjstark 5y ago
  This article mirrors my feelings toward this announcement well. I spent a significant amount of time trying out different messaging apps and convincing my friends and family to move over from Telegram and WhatsApp. I used my reputation and their trust in my expertise. The whole blockchain industry is just too mixed with scams that I feel comfortable to have my non-tech relatives dealing with it. It's enough that I have to educate them on 'investments' in random coins (it's gambling) and cure their FOMO regarding NFTs. Now the technology will be integrated into the messaging app that I endorsed, well-packed together with the smelly involvement of Moxie with the currency. What now?
  • okamiueru 5y ago
    What would you say are the cons of Telegram? I've been highly impressed with the UX for quite some time, but have refrained from pushing it (and the likes) onto friends. My family and friends seems to have slowly drifted towards signal, and I haven't bothered affecting that, but if I would go from a pure UX, I'd suggest telegram. So, I'm genuinely curious to know others' thoughts on it. I have only limited knowledge, just vague recollections of Russian developers (?), which might or might not have distanced themselves from political pressure (?), as well as the app itself being somewhat open sourced (?), based on the same protocol as signal (?).
    • traspler 5y ago
      I am also a happy Telegram user and think it offers amazing UX but if you leave WhatsApp due to privacy concerns, Telegram might not be the right solution. All Groups and by default any other conversation you have are only encrypted in transport between your client and their servers. Also their encryption has been called into question a lot at the beginning.
    • ethagnawl 5y ago
      I believe the most commonly cited criticism is that they rolled their own cryptographic solution.
    • dijit 5y ago
      Telegrams stupidity was marketing itself as secure. If it never had, then all arguments and sour intent towards it would be hugely misplaced. As it stands, it’s not E2E by default and it’s E2E scheme is homegrown- which is usually not recommended (though IMO was not a dealbreaker), the big issue there was that there were flaws in the original design of the encryption scheme which makes it harder to look passed the fact it’s homegrown. Telegram can intercept most messages on the platform, however, ultimately I trust them more than Facebook; so I’m less concerned. Additionally, since Facebook controls _both_ ends of whatsapp _and_ does not support third party programs, then even though WhatsApp is E2E there’s little preventing Facebook from pushing an update to your phone which backs up all your chats to their cloud.
• bitexploder 5y ago
  I have met Moxie and followed his work for over a decade. He is one of the most ethical people in the information security industry. I would suggest people put down their pitch forks and think this through carefully. I can’t imagine this was done lightly or without considering Signal’s core mission in a highly ethical context. There is a lot of anti-crypto sentiment these days. Does this announcement actually change the ethical or moral landscape for Signal, at all? Does it compromise Signals security as a messenger client?
  • sbarre 5y ago
    I am willing to wait until the dust settles before passing judgement, but if the facts in the linked article - that the exchange backing this basically unknown currency is financially tied to Signal in some way - then it's hard to not see _potential_ conflicts of interest here, and be suspicious of the motivations involved. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck... etc.. As for Moxie.. he has indeed done great work, but a lot of people, ethical or otherwise, get to a point in their life where they just want to get paid and move on. I'm not saying that's the case here, I have no insider info, but it has certainly happened before. All I hope is that this is an opt-in feature that you can easily ignore or disable, and it's not constantly being pushed on us and getting in the way of just sending messages.
  • skywhopper 5y ago
    Unfortunately the fact that the code updates were hidden from GitHub while this feature was in development and the fact that the announcement doesn’t really address the risks argue against this being an ethical move.
  • gm3dmo 5y ago
    I believe Moxie to be a person of integrity, therefore I'm happy to wait and see how this pans out.
  • dexen 5y ago
    As a background I'm broadly pro-crypto, in particular the privacy-preserving coins. >He is one of the most ethical people in the information security industry. Connecting your communications history, your transaction history and your offline ID through phone number is an explicitly pro-establishment move. Something must have changed along the way about his originally cypherpunk positions. >Does it compromise Signals security as a messenger client? Not that we know. The problem is much more pernicious: through centralization, it makes the user less secure. In case of a privacy breach or court ordered document reveal or seizure, the scope will be much broader: communication history AND transaction history. Given that it will also list the transaction counter-parties, this opens up others to the privacy risks just as well. The correct solution: decouple messaging from your offline identity (phone number etc.). Decouple transactions from offline identity and from communications - proper use of cryptocurrency is good for that.
• Macha 5y ago
  Every time Matrix is brought up here, the federation and open spec is criticised as being too slow moving compared to Signal's BDFL approach. Well, this is what happens when the interests of the BDFL and community diverge. If New Vector decided to fuck up Element on the other hand, you could just move to a new client and not deal with marketing a network move to your social network.
  • hnarn 5y ago
    > the federation and open spec is criticised as being too slow To be fair I don't think that the slowness and complexity is being put forward as an example of why Matrix is "bad", but rather as an example of why it can't compete with Signal for "normal" users — and if you want to create something that competes with Messenger, Whatsapp or Snapchat, you need to put "normal" users first, it can't be an afterthought.
    • rectang 5y ago
      What stops a Matrix client producer from putting "normal" users first? Is it that all such producers plan to do something evil once they have enough users locked in, which an open protocol like Matrix would impede? Or is it that the protocol is not yet mature enough? In which case, a deliberate approach to evolving the spec may be for the best so long as it eventually gets to where it needs to be? A couple years ago the Riot client was unusable on Mac. Now Element seems to be fine. Why won't it continue to get better?
    • kubanczyk 5y ago
      > you need to put "normal" users first Normal users primarily want what their peers already use for communication. Hence a power user who is able to use two messengers and switch between them has a disproportionately big market impact. /s
  • ddevault 5y ago
    Matrix being slow has a lot more to do with their crappy implementation than it has to do with the nature of a federated network.
• thomasjudge 5y ago
  The source is GPL3, right? Could someone fork it without the cryptocurrency code?
  • madars 5y ago
    Signal explicitly disallows third party clients https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165 https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
    • jron 5y ago
      A workable fork would most likely require standing up new servers that would be isolated from the existing Signal user base. I think we'll see a handful of forks very shortly and it will be interesting to see how the new maintainers navigate the current landscape.
      • anaphor 5y ago
        There is already a fork, it's called Session, but it's decentralized, so there's no requirement for servers to be stood up other than introducer nodes AFAIK. https://getsession.org/ https://getsession.org/
    • kiwidrew 5y ago
      This outright hostility towards third-party clients was how I knew that Signal was just a wolf wearing open-source clothing. Glad I stayed far far away.
  • jron 5y ago
    Last I checked, the mobile clients are GPLv3 and the desktop client and server are AGPLv3. I assume a usable fork will materialize due to Signal's introduction of a token scam. Unfortunately, signal has the network effect and asking friends and family to move again will most likely fall on deaf ears. I'll move if the new project looks sustainable.
• AzzieElbab 5y ago
  I suspect HN is actually run by some kind of communist federal reserve given level of hostility to all things crypto and money in general
• everdrive 5y ago
  I'm afraid we'll always be jumping to new apps. If we jump ship from Signal to Matrix, as some people suggest, then I fear that in 2-5 years, Matrix will morph into something unacceptable, just as Signal has.
  • stryan 5y ago
    Matrix is an open, federated protocol so something like this can't happen. Worst that could happen is bad stuff happens to Element (the flagship client) at which point people can either fork it or simply use another client.
    • acdha 5y ago
      This assumes that there’s enough volunteer capacity to maintain it and that federation remains open despite business incentives to close it or the maintenance costs (i.e. spam). That could be true but the track record hasn’t been good and it definitely won’t happen without a concerted effort to support it.
      • miloignis 5y ago
        I think there is a big enough community to maintain it, should that ever happen. There are multiple totally community-made clients that work well, and there's at least one community-made server that's getting close-ish to federation, even if no-one forked Element/Synapse/Dendrite.
    • slipheen 5y ago
      Jabber was an open Federated protocol, before Matrix. I am absolutely in favor of open protocols, but they are not a guarantee against needing to change ecosystems in the future.
• red_trumpet 5y ago
  I see Keybase mentioned a lot in this discussions (both in the linked article, and in HN comments). Does anyone have a good summary to read up on what happened with Keybase?
  • otoburb 5y ago
    Using the HN search bar at the bottom of the page with keywords "stellar keybase" will return a bunch of different threads.[1][2][3] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21758671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21758671 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19913496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19913496 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20919927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20919927
  • Ayesh 5y ago
    After adding features like Git repos and file storage, keybase started their own currency called Stallar (XLM). They airdropped XLM to Keybase users. About 2 billion IIRC. It resulted in bit accounts for obvious reasons, so they had to make many changes to their original plan. I converted what I received into BTC, and it looks like XLM is still functional to this date though. Keybase was a very well regarded app, but users lost a lot of trust with the cryptocurrency news. Zoom bought Keybase, and we didn't really hear any big news from them lately.
    • Galaxeblaffer 5y ago
      Keybase did NOT create Steallar Lumens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_(payment_network) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_(payment_network)
  • comprev 5y ago
    Got bought out by Zoom, and given their reputation for security/privacy, many users ditched Keybase quicker than rats from a sinking ship. It's almost like Zoom forgot that Keybase users are more likely from the more technical end of the spectrum and thus more security conscious.
    • 5y ago
• throwaway12757 5y ago
  It sounds like they are trying to increase their revenue/profits and think this is the best way. I get that it is hard, because when everyone is anonymous then it is hard to collect money from people. Perhaps make some way to donate/subscription for signal a la pay what you want? I love Signal and would pay for it if I could.
  • input_sh 5y ago
    1. It's not a company but an NGO. Therefore, in theory, as long as they can cover the operational cost, they should be good. Of course, there's plenty of NGOs that don't do that. 2. https://signal.org/donate/ https://signal.org/donate/ wasn't that difficult to find. 3. Brian Acton (WhatsApp co-founder) "donated" a hundred million to it. In theory, that alone should keep them running for at least a decade, but the "donation" was more of a loan with 0% interest, meaning that Signal will have to re-pay it back at some point. Also, just to make it shadier, he happens to be the chairman of the Signal Foundation. So he loaned the money to the org he's in charge of.
• tluyben2 5y ago
  Would you pay for it if they just asked money? I use Threema and I paid for it, but most people simply refuse that (even at that price), so the others don't even try it. So how are companies supposed to make money? The usual ways; get larger and larger investor rounds and then get out (resign and sell shares for personal reasons or whatever) or sell the company before it all collapses. Not sure if that or tokensales is worse; they both can be used for good and bad.
  • sigg3 5y ago
    I would pay. I currently pay for some open source projects I enjoy, and donate to Wikipedia and Archive.org whenever they ask for it. I buy Linux games I never get to play. It's important to spread the love when you can. Most people are not aware of what project they use and that they're not for-profit. I used to work for an ISP, and people could pay for the WiFi hotspot feature (on phones they owned). People paid when they needed it. Signal is pretty big, I think, so why couldn't it ask for donations? And possibly get some extra love from eg. The Linux foundation..?
• knocte 5y ago
  Nothing to see here, people, this has been already reported as a bug and hopefully be fixed soon: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/11177 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/11177
  • felideon 5y ago
    Not sure if you were joking, but that issue was promptly closed and marked as spam.
• jerry1979 5y ago
  edit I should have prefaced my comment with the fact that I find it odd that people got caught by surprise when the inventor of a cryptographically focused mobile messaging app integrated his cryptographically focused payment system which he unambiguously called mobile coin. Mobilecoin has the same design principles as Signal insofar as it uses sgx enclaves to do its crypto work. While I would not want to rely on enclaves to do crypto work, it seems to fit in Signal's wheelhouse. Also, on a speculative basis and assuming no colossal foul-ups, it appears to me that signal+mob want to distribute the mobile coins to artists and community groups. So, the marketing for mob will probably include their honest mission of having a green crypto that does good for the community.
  • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > Also, on a speculative basis and assuming no colossal foul-ups, it appears to me that signal+mob want to distribute the mobile coins to artists and community groups. When the company holds 85% of the pre-mined coins, they’re looking for any excuse to distract from that fact. The claim that they might give some token amount to artists and communities in the future is a distraction. The CEO of MobileCoin was in HN threads yesterday spamming the link the site where you could buy MobileCoins directly from them. This is a clear as day pump and dump scheme. Don’t let yourself be distracted by hints of potential future charity. They could give those tokens to charities right now, but they won’t because they would just be sold off and push the price down. Instead they’re spreading claims of future donations so they can cash in on price appreciation without downward selling pressure. They only want people buying MobileCoin, not selling it. That’s the only way the founders get rich.
    • jerry1979 5y ago
      I see this more as an interesting test of the "post-2000 wto protest" black-flag anarchist cohort. Will this particular "strange and radiant machine" make the world a better place?
• roadbeats 5y ago
  Signal (messenger, not foundation)’s plan for cryptocurrency was in news 4 years ago already. It can feel like a betrayal but can we put others responsible others for our feelings? How can we expect a company to provide us what we want for free? Robots running on solar power will build them? How about this: stop approaching a monetization problem as if it's a choice being evil vs. not evil.
  • jsmith12673 5y ago
    Signal is a not-for-profit organization.
    • roadbeats 5y ago
      Edited my comment for clarity
• KingOfCoders 5y ago
  So all of this was a long con? https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/09/mobilecoin-a-cryptocurrency-involving-signal-founder-moxie-marlinspike-just-raised-venture-funding https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/09/mobilecoin-a-cryptocurrenc...
• lovedswain 5y ago
  It could be nothing, but it seems like it should have been disclosed and the article author neatly avoided it. They're the CTO of something very financ-ey/crypto-ey oriented in the B2B payments space, although the site (adjoint.io) explains little. Going by their GitHub most of their work somehow relates to cryptography.
• KingOfCoders 5y ago
  Feeling betrayed in a big way as someone who evangelized Signal for several years to all my friends.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• KingOfCoders 5y ago
  All my past comments on HN defending Signal against Telegram now look laughable.
• ElectricMind 5y ago
  I don't understand what all the all fuss about. How much money people have really that you need 100 payment apps to send money on top of existing banks? I just wise/transferwise for overseas transfer other than that my bank. You think I am poor minority and don't care about payment drama?
  • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    It’s not really about payments. The scam is to create a new altcoin, give most of the altcoin supply to the founders, then try to force as many people as possible to use the altcoin by deploying it as part of something popular like Signal. Now if anyone wants to use Signal’s money transfer feature, they have to buy MOB. The CEO of MobileCoin was in the threads yesterday pushing the website where they were selling MOB. They don’t really care about transferring money. They just want to sell MobileCoin and pump up the price by making it look useful.
    • kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 5y ago
      Yes exactly this is just another ICO-like pump and dump. There is absolutely no reason to not use Ethereum for this, or at worst ERC-20 coin.
    • ElectricMind 5y ago
      I understand what you saying it is indeed scam. But my question can I use Signal just to chat with my friends/family and ignore everything else and live my life peacefully? In other words, are they forcing every user to use this "MOB" to transfer money for something? If not, then we can ignore them :)
    • piffey 5y ago
      Can't you just shape that as any founder creating something though? Like oh, they own 50% of the company with their co-founder, then just grow it over 10 years to 100M ARR, then sell it to private equity to make a profit! Can you believe it? If their implementation of a secure, fast, mobile cryptocurrency works and is accepted mainstream as a way to send money anonymously and securely then why shouldn't they make a dime off it? They'll have to sell their shares eventually. Everyone always does. Don't get the hate here. I'll likely never use it, but they're trying something, and if it works let them get paid for it.
• as1mov 5y ago
  But I thought moving from the walled garden owned by Facebook to another walled garden owned by a Non Profit Organisation whose main maintainer controls the entirety of the platform and discourages any forks/federation would solve all our problems. Surely they would never dare to push shady shit in their application since they are the good guys™. I am shocked.
  • jeltz 5y ago
    Agreed, I never really saw the point of moving to Signal since they always felt shady to me. Why go through the effort to convince your friends to move from one shady chat client to another?
    • JeremyNT 5y ago
      Ultimately history has proven your decision to be wise, but there was still a meaningful selling point: Signal was (ostensibly) open source and its developers hadn't yet demonstrated any ill-will or incompetence. Matrix really was not an option in the early days of signal (and arguably still isn't, for most non-technical users). I adopted Signal even though I disliked its centralization, resigned to the fact that it was a poor compromise but the best available. In hindsight, though, Signal coaxed many users into its walled garden by being "good enough," which leads to complacency. That has only distracted us from the true importance of embracing and improving the nascent decentralized alternatives.
  • Seirdy 5y ago
    I criticized both WhatsApp and Signal in an article linked here previously, and made the same points in a bit more detail: "WhatsApp and the domestication of users". Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25982860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25982860 A sequel [0] describes how an open platform/protocol isn't a silver bullet, since open platforms can become (or act) closed if we're not careful. It goes over XMPP, email, and Matrix; I described Matrix in a generally negative light but I think it still shows promise. [0]: https://seirdy.one/2021/02/23/keeping-platforms-open.html https://seirdy.one/2021/02/23/keeping-platforms-open.html TLDR of [0]: the key is to combine open platforms/protocols with simplicity and diversity.
• qrbLPHiKpiux 5y ago
  I’m tired of people complaining about FREE applications. Services should be paid for. If signal were what you want, exactly, why not pay an app fee or a small yearly fee?
• turbinerneiter 5y ago
  Just make an in-app purchase button that allows me to buy a year of usage for myself as well as gift for others. I'd happily pay a couple of bucks per month for myself and my family.
  • whywhywhywhy 5y ago
    Scooping the cream off every monetary transaction between some friends is a more appealing proposition than hoping some people will pay for your software.
    • turbinerneiter 5y ago
      Apple Pay, Google Pay, Visa, Signal - there is a lot of companies basing their business model on Office Space. Hackers had the same theme, right? And Operation Swordfish, which was trash.
      • whywhywhywhy 5y ago
        Hackers is just getting better with age.
• Hbruz0 5y ago
  Monero would have made much more sense
  • timbit42 5y ago
    MobileCoin's features make more sense than Monero's for this use case.
• stevespang 5y ago
  It's all about the money . . . as is so much of life. "The sad part of this entire project is that it launched in the UK—likely because it would be blatantly illegal in the United States—where here retail transfers are ubiquitous, instant, and cheap". You can be sure once the SEC identifies US users summons will be issued to Signal leaders on charges of evading US laws regarding crypto, many have occurred lately, Telegram of note.
• IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
  All the dumping on signal is sad. Here we have an nonprofit app that has succesfully broken into a major consumer market, and because of their ambitions to break up another cartel, and this is bad ? Lets take a stab at understanding the authors complaints. Author states users are smart and "we make the majority of users". Going beyond the entitlement of that statement, author can feel betrayed, but for signal to succeed it needs to keep iterating and address the consumer market. Author may not need fast/cheap payments. But what about the rest of the world including the underbanked? Author may fret about asymetry of info around transactions. However, will author think about the users of cash app and the million others that democratized stock trading ? Users have spoken and they prefer something, over nothing. The article is unfortunately reeking of elitism. Sour grapes because a 3rd party will make money off an excellent application. I say keep an open mind. This is the best thing that could happen to the world. Someone has the guts to finally take on currency, and has the potential to succeed. Yes it not perfect. Yes some will make money and signal may be able cover for their forever loan. Thats good. The project has been a great endeavor since the days of redphone / textsecure. Project is still open sourced and nonprofit. Signal is the future of privacy and security of the masses. As recently as 2019 that was still not clear. Its time to cheer, not to dump.
  • pmlnr 5y ago
    It's rolled out in the UK with one if the best banking systems in the world. Plus like hell Signal is anonym, it still relies on an sms capable phone number, which is hard to get in many countries.
    • IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
      Ok. I don't understand how UK selection is bad. You need to build to an addressable market and build in that. Someone made an assesment that the UK made sense. Presumably that someone could be wrong. But they are going to try. Which is 100% better than the rest of the payment apps because they are closed, for profit, and sell your data Re sms. Agree. But you do agree that prioritization is subjective? What signal leadership thinks it needs to maximize privacy and security may differ from your perspective, correct?
• ppf 5y ago
  In this case, I'm glad that, around the time everyone was talking about moving to Signal, I threw out the baby with the bathwater and ditched my smartphone entirely. I'm so disappointed in this action by Signal, and very glad I never bothered to loudly promote Signal to friends and family.
• piokoch 5y ago
  We used to say if developers did not have the idea what to add to the application, they were adding ability to chose skins. Nowadays it seems adding cryptocurrencies took place of fancy skins management.
• randomsearch 5y ago
  Super sad. I played a major part in getting a lot of people I know onto Signal and felt vindicated by the masses switching recently, and now this. So how do I adjust my filter for who I trust now? Are all American organisations corrupt, not just big tech? Why would I ever support any app again if even Signal is corrupt?
• adamsvystun 5y ago
  Broadly agree with the article, but I don't understand the Diem comparison. Isn't Diem a stable coin? No premining is possible, right? Am I missing something?
• illustriousbear 5y ago
  Don't like it? Don't use it. Afterall, private organizations can do what they want according to the mantra repeated here. At least that was the defense for social media organizations implementing censorship and bans.
  • enumjorge 5y ago
    I don’t see anyone arguing that Signal can’t do this.
• alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  > Signal is a still a great piece of software. Just do one thing and do it well, be the trusted de facto platform for private messaging that empowers dissidents, journalists and grandma all to communicate freely with the same guarantees of privacy. Don’t become a dodgy money transmitter business. This is not the way. Digital currency is just digital communications. Signal allows us to communicate privately. Should people care whether or not this communication is a message that a language we also speak, or a message that contains a digital transaction. Again... > trusted de facto platform for private messaging that empowers dissidents, journalists and grandma all to communicate freely If you care about the privacy of Signal users to communicate freely about anything they chose, don't also hate when these same Signal users want to communicate digital currencies. ... and before you downvote, let me know why I'm wrong (although, they should have chosen a more mainstream privacy coin like ZCash or Monero at least).
• cratermoon 5y ago
  It's funny, to me, to see a culture that values personal freedom and shuns regulatory oversight get bent out of shape when their platforms take those values to their logical conclusion. It's even funnier when they realize there's no Free Market solution.
  • asddubs 5y ago
    i don't shun regulatory oversight, i shun regulatory overreach
    • cratermoon 5y ago
      If the line between oversight and overreach is so far tilted to one side that shenanigans like the story here pass legal muster, what's the difference?
• brainzap 5y ago
  So I guess we need a chat client that costs 1-5 EUR per month.
• weeboid 5y ago
  oh god whatever. the betrayed are also known as fools
• gnarbarian 5y ago
  Its own currency seems odd, arguments could be made instead for better wallet integration so discreet payments could be made through signal but this would complicate ease of use for people. Also a very slim minority of people would actually perform the action of installing a wallet and connecting it to signal. If signal is your wallet and you are sending signal coins everybody who has signal will be able to receive a payment from you without worrying about installing a wallet separately and connecting it to their account. This is smart from a usability perspective and maybe wallet integration and other currencies will come later. Another reason this makes sense is by controlling the cryptocurrency signal has control over the protocol to ensure it's privacy and anonymity.
• cyberpunk 5y ago
  Did anyone ever consider that this is actually on purpose to deter people from using Signal by it's authors? Lets imagine, theoretically, some three letter agency in the US has forced signal to backdoor their platform somehow, and so signal stops posting source code to the clients, and everyone just keeps on using it for a year even though the authors thought that maybe this would be a big red "DANGER" signal to the users (who they're not legally allowed to inform, or shutdown the platform for any more) then how else could you try and mitigate this? Pushing a shitcoin onto a largely tech user base may do the trick eh? Or maybe I just put on my tinfoil hat this morning..
  • clevergadget 5y ago
    Theories like this are interesting because if you have a hundred of them one is probably true. It's definitely plausible even if it seems on the face unlikely. It's interesting enough that this is what I'm going to take from the story anyway so thx for putting on the hat
    • jordanpg 5y ago
      Reminds me of the so-called "10th man rule" made famous in World War Z. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2eaqp8/whats_the_history_behind_the_10th_man_rule/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2eaqp8/whats...
  • throwawayffffas 5y ago
    That's highly unlikely and not the way one deals, with this kind of thing. The responsible thing to do in that case is to shutdown your operation, just what lavabit did back in 2013. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit#Suspension_and_gag_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit#Suspension_and_gag_ord...
  • WhompingWindows 5y ago
    Never ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to incompetence.
  • stjohnswarts 5y ago
• arsome 5y ago
  "The ecosystem is moving"... to pump and dump pre-mined shitcoins.
  • olah_1 5y ago
    The irony is that the coin would be excusable if it was used as a utility token to power a decentralized network of incentivized nodes (like Status or Session). But Signal is still centralized. So there’s no reason for the sh*tcoin other than to make some people rich.
• gyre007 5y ago
  Kinda funny that the post like this is written by the CTO of a company that claims to do the following: > "Adjoint digitises cash and settlement processes for multinational corporates."
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• knorker 5y ago
  Very much a betrayal. Signal has an image of "for the weak against abuse by the strong". Cryptocurrency is "I'll sell my grandmother and everyone I know for money. HODL YOLO!", which is not exactly compatible. And it's not just disappointing, it's also dragging the to-the-core corrupt world of these people into Signal. This is making Signal lose the moral high ground, making it that much easier to drag its name through the mud that is cryptocurrencies.
  • screamingninja 5y ago
    > Cryptocurrency is "I'll sell my grandmother and everyone I know for money. HODL YOLO!" How do you conclude that?
    • nikolay 5y ago
      Everybody with a brain knows. Are we all tired of the HODLers who parrot the same mantras in secret hopes to wake up millionaires one day when their crapto makes it big and their bits they bought saving money from not eating lunch can buy them a house finally?
• jancsika 5y ago
  Bram Cohen famously called Bitcoin "digital Goldbuggism." Since then he's given talks on cryptocurrency and found bugs in Bitcoin's code that were copied by most of the alt-coins. Now he's even got his own blockchain cryptocurrency called "Chia" that is based on "proof of space-time." There are numerous devs who are devoted FOSS zealots and randomly dive into the idea of using blockchain to fund their work. Blockchain seduces hackers the same way Walmart seduced small towns to give it every incentive conceivable to move in and suck up the local economy. "Et Tu, Signal?" simply isn't a grown-up argument. If it were, the vast majority of Hacker news would have quit adtech and already figured out fast homomorphic encryption by now. If you want to help, figure out what social problem hackers think they are routing around with blockchain. Then explain sensible approaches to those social problems in a way hackers can understand. If Richard Stallman's endless world tour of his boring-ass one-man-play is any indication, it is possible to convince hackers of ethical arguments that have implications outside of software. But you've got your work cut out for you. (Also notice-- the least convincing part of his play comes when he tries to imply you're a bad person betraying a cause if you write proprietary software.) Edit: clarification
• intrasight 5y ago
  I hear the tech community regularly bemoan the lack of a micropayment system. So why the criticism when a company tries to do it?
• darepublic 5y ago
  Payments seems at least potentially to have a lot of utility. Don't understand the kneejerk hate for this. For me social media direction is more dubious
• programmarchy 5y ago
  If Signal can be as successful with private payments as they have been with private communications, then that would be a big win for everyone. I don't see why people are complaining about this. What's the fundamental difference between private payments and private communication. Why support the latter but not the former?
• thrwaway3892 5y ago
  Throwaway for obvious reasons. I interviewed at signal a while back, and none of their recent mishaps surprise me. At first, they had me talk to Brian Acton on the phone for about an hour, who seemed to think I was already getting an offer, and he was there to sell me on it. He was cool to talk to, so I didn't mind, but I was surprised at this level of confusion for a company that small. Next, I was given a lengthy take home project (which I was warned not to do in a language other than Java, because Moxie would reject candidates if they didn't pick a language he liked). After I finished it, they disappeared for a month. Apparently I passed. They said I was basically the only one out of 200 people they sent it to that did pass. I assumed this meant I would be getting an offer, but they then wanted me to do a full onsite. The "onsite" weirdly consisted of another take home, but shorter, and a live interview. After not hearing back again for a while, I got an email titled: "Hello from Signal!". Great! I opened it, excited: it was a rejection. I tried to get feedback on why I was rejected but never heard back. The best thing I can come up with: in the system design interview, as a solution to a postgres node being overloaded, I didn't come up with the solution of having a SPOF redis node with a full key scan every 10 minutes acting as an intermediate data store before transferring to postgres. I was told this is how they actually do things. Take this with a grain of salt, since I'm obviously still irked by the experience, but it's all true.
  • dijit 5y ago
    > I didn't come up with the solution of having a SPOF redis node with a full key scan every 10 minutes acting as an intermediate data store before transferring to postgres. Obviously that is bad architecture smell. But if you didn't already know; redis supports high availability through "sentinel"[0]. [0]: https://medium.com/@amila922/redis-sentinel-high-availability-everything-you-need-to-know-from-dev-to-prod-complete-guide-deb198e70ea6#:~:text=Redis%20sentinel%20is%20the%20high,mode%20without%20any%20human%20intervention https://medium.com/@amila922/redis-sentinel-high-availabilit....
    • zbentley 5y ago
      Sentinel smears the SPOF out into a redundant (but still memory-backed) system. Backups mitigate the risk of data loss further. AOF can also be used but may cancel out the performance gains. ...and none of those change the fundamental durability/performance tradeoff of the system, nor do they replace a proper scaling strategy for an RDBMS.
• josh2600 5y ago
  Good Morning, I am the CEO of MobileCoin. A few points: 1) I started MobileCoin to fund Signal. That’s it. I believe that a world with a well-funded signal is a better place. In order for signal to compete in the 21st century with messaging apps around the world they need a payment story. MobileCoin is the only thing ever built that is both privacy protecting and fast that meets the standards of data retention signal requires. 2) MobileCoin Inc. intends to maintain an extreme minority of the coins once the dust settles. 3) This is designed to be used as a payment rail, which requires us getting coins in the hands of users. As you might imagine, navigating the regulatory waters of how to do that with compliance to how governments want us to behave is non-trivial. It’s important for us to move with correctness over speed. 4) this project is 4 years of my life building real technology. This is not a pump and dump scam. We have been very careful in the design, operation, and development of this system to give it the best chance at surviving in the world of cryptocurrency projects. It is non-trivial to deliver a coin that is useful for payments (the requirements are speed, privacy, low-energy footprint, and operation in resource-constrained mobile environments). Let me put it simply, I love signal and we intentionally designed this currency to be as oblivious as possible with respect to user data so that signal could maintain their relationship with their users, one of retaining as little information as possible without compromising on the user experience. Nothing else in cryptocurrency, or payments, comes close to the level of privacy and performance that MobileCoin has achieved. I welcome any questions I am able to answer. Note that some questions revolve around tightly regulated areas of concern and may take longer to answer as I must check with outside counsel before replying.
  • dleslie 5y ago
    Why another altcoin and not simply ETH or BTC? You state privacy and performance: could you be more specific?
    • josh2600 5y ago
      A few things: 1) tx settlement time is ~3 seconds on mobilecoin, p99 latency right now with single block finality. Eth and Btc are great but they aren’t that fast (for payments speed really matters). 2) with respect to privacy, the key innovation of MobileCoin is that when all of the systems are operational, there is no transaction graph stored in the ledger. The links between transactions are known only to the counter parties to those transactions. In the event of a failure of the Secure Enclave, links between transactions degrade to probabilistic links between transactions (and forward secrecy can be restored upon recovery of the enclave). The effect is a payment system that is both fast and privacy-protecting with no central authority, a quality not present in any other payments system I am aware of today. Does that answer your question? Oh, last and perhaps most important, because of our consensus design, we don’t use a ton of energy like btc and eth.
• efnx 5y ago
  I actually didn’t mind the stellar/Keybase deal and thought it was a pretty cool value addition. I don’t know if this holds for signal but at least on Keybase you’re not _required_ to purchase coins. You only use them if you want. Also - the free XLM Keybase distributed are now worth hundreds! It’s the only app that has ever paid me to use it. I have obvious complaints but I do like the app.
• EGreg 5y ago
  Another centralized social network adds a payment network. WeChat, Facebook, iMessage, GMail and now Signal. I would like to see the decentralized crypto space tackle payments: https://community.intercoin.org/t/signal-another-centralized-social-network-adds-a-payment-network https://community.intercoin.org/t/signal-another-centralized...
• jan_Inkepa 5y ago
  My theory is that the reason Signal was so reluctant to add slightly-less-secure-but-usable backups is that it is going to have some unified infrastructure for crypto and messaging storage/backup. The backup usability weirdness makes way more sense in that context. I don't understand security/crypto stuff so much, but the new version of the server seems to use the same secret token for crypto transactions as it does for backup https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server/search?q=userAuthenticationTokenSharedSecret https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server/search?q=userAuth... , which offers some evidence that this be the case.
• d23 5y ago
  Why is this on the second page? 720 points at two hours old should put it higher.
  • ng55QPSK 5y ago
    Consider ourselves lucky, could have been deleted fully.
• alexmingoia 5y ago
  It’s very odd to me that HN has a problem with premined cryptocurrency, considering equity operates the same way. All startups sell “tokens” (shares) they created out of thin air. Startups also eventually sell them to the public, after having sold them to insiders.
  • deft 5y ago
    HN missed out on this shitcoin, that's where the salt comes from.
• alphachloride 5y ago
  He says: > So many of us have spent significant time and social capital moving our friends and family away from the exploitative data siphon platforms that Facebook et al offer, and on to Signal And then he says: > Signal users are overwhelmingly tech savvy consumers I find it hard to believe that both of these can be true at once. If the second statement is true, then the time spent moving friends and family was wasted. If the second statement is true, people won't actually use MobileCoin currency if they are skeptical.
• nikolay 5y ago
  It's good that I never started to really use Signal and now it stinks they are nothing but sellouts in their cores.
• driverdan 5y ago
  Why is this post being downranked? 753 points in 3h and it's near the bottom of the 2nd page.
  • Forbo 5y ago
    Previous posts apparently triggered some type of flamewar filter, so that's probably what happened here.
• _dibly 5y ago
  I should probably say first that I totally agree with the overall point of the article. This was a sketchy move by Signal and I really question the motivations that played into making such a decision. With that said, there's just something about the way this is written that really bothers me. For starters, the first paragraph makes it sound like Signal was a grassroots movement the entire tech community got behind that then stabbed us in the back, and I can't get over how naive and borderline dangerous that line of thinking is. "This news really cut to heart of what many technologists have felt before when we as loyal users have been exploited and betrayed by corporations, but this time it felt much deeper because it introduced a conflict of interest from our fellow technologists that we truly believed were advancing a cause many of us also believed in. So many of us have spent significant time and social capital moving our friends and family away from the exploitative data siphon platforms that Facebook et al offer, and on to Signal in the hopes of breaking the cycle of commercial exploitation of our online relationships. And some of us feel used." I don't understand how any of that is the fault of Signal and not the user. Don't treat the products you use like they mean anything other than the profit motive that built them. It just seems kind of naive to say "every consumer messaging app you use is terrible, come use this one instead and we'll all hope that a massive userbase doesn't inspire them to monetize their platform" when that is essentially the job of what I roughly estimate to be half of the people on HN. I think it's whack that Signal thought this was a good idea, but I also think it's insane how many people are up in arms as if Signal was once a utility for public good and not the product that it is. They did this because they know how many people bent over backwards to get their loved ones on the platform and they know most people aren't going to get their entire extended family to switch to another messaging app because they added in GarboCoin or whatever the fuck.
• freebuju 5y ago
  Seems like I dodged a bullet. Didn't install the app, neither bothered to try the service. All the signals (excuse the pun) about this app seemed off to me. Centralized servers, no f-droid listing, used GCM, apparently the devs were hostile to feedback etc. Though can't blame everyone who hopped on the bandwagon
• lupire 5y ago
  Stephen Diehl hates cryptocurrency, and that's fine, but does he have an alternate payments proposal? If not, it's poor form to say that people shouldn't be able use something that works for them.
• vocatus_gate 5y ago
  MobileCoin foundation website: "At MobileCoin, we believe governments have a legitimate interest in regulating the economic lives of their citizens." https://twitter.com/fluffypony/status/1379795248252080130 https://twitter.com/fluffypony/status/1379795248252080130
• spiznnx 5y ago
  Now I feel like an idiot for donating to the Signal Foundation. This is the worst kind of scope creep when it comes to the goals of maintaining usability and privacy.