248
Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive
(signal.org)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
248 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37669 readers
233 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I love Signal but this is one of many problems with centralized servers. Not only can they be disabled by the gov but they cost, as seen here, tens of millions of dollars to keep running at scale.
What is the advantage? Why are we not using P2P systems? If I can download a 30GB video problem-free over and over again, shouldn't it be simple enough to do with a 1mb text file?
A huge part of their costs is just verifying phone numbers, which is something the service does not need and shouldn't even have.
If you are curious, you should give XMPP a shot, it's equivalent to Signal in terms of encryption, but anyone can host their own. Signal is ideologically opposed to anyone but themselves being in control of your account, and because of that I don't want to trust them.
Ten years ago sure, the days I'd suggest matrix instead.
I assessed XMPP vs Matrix about 8 years ago, and strikingly, the basis on which it didn't make the cut still applies today. Here's what I responded to a sibling post: https://programming.dev/comment/5408356
In short, Matrix dug themselves into a complexity pit with an inadequate protocol, survived for a while on venture capital money (upscaling servers and marketing at all cost), all of it dried up, and now they are in financial trouble. Matrix won't disappear overnight, but is definitely losing the means to run the managed instances and the client/server ecosystem.
Isn't that why they built matrix 2? Or am I thinking of element 2?
Edit: it's matrix
https://matrix.org/blog/2023/09/matrix-2-0/
If you read between the lines, Matrix 2 is practically about handing the client state over to the server (what they refer to as "sliding sync"). Realistically, this is an admission that the protocol is too complex to be handled efficiently on the user's devices. I'm not saying there are not clear benefits (and new trade-offs) to the approach, just that in the grand scheme of things the complexity is shifted elsewhere (and admins foot a larger bill).
And Element X as client.
They are kinda shooting themselves in the foot with all their big rewrites though. Like Vector, Riot, Element, Element X (and I think before vector/riot there was another official client). And Synapse/dendrite... It feels like they spread their development over too many fronts.
They're supporting development of MLS for managing encryption for groups
Yup, like pretty much everyone else :) https://nlnet.nl/project/XMPP-MLS/
Is Matrix's problem just the large scale? I thought it worked relatively well if you're just using it for personal needs like smaller servers and personal bridges.
It works great for me for personal use yes.
Matrix problems become unmanageable at scale, but the effects of the underlying complexity can be felt long before: https://telegra.ph/why-not-matrix-08-07