Because of the ongoing fucktastrophe, the cries of "Use SIGNAL!" are constant and unavoidable. And I get it, it may be the least-bad option in a sea of terrible options. If, that is, you choose to ignore the advice of "don't use your phone for that shit" (the Stringer Bell Rule). But out of curiosity, because I haven't been keeping up, has the Signal Corporation addressed: The fact that they ...
Just about. JWZ is known for his cynical hot takes on tech in general.
I don’t think any of his complaints are invalid, though his conclusions are uncharitable at best. Making a communication tool that’s both reasonably secure and sufficiently palatable to people who don’t know how to use computers to achieve broad adoption is a hard problem with no perfect solutions. If he has a better idea, well… he’s a skilled and somewhat famous programmer; he’s better equipped than most to implement it.
There are some fairly good solutions tho. Matrix is still kinda half-baked (specifically thinking about 2.0 and Element X) and Conversations has limited capabilities, but they are fairly easy to use
Edit: Although I would really wish Matrix had a ‘normie-mode’, with secure and reasonably easy to handle defaults
I use Matrix, and I’ve moved some conversation with people I met in public rooms there to Signal because it kept failing to transfer keys rendering it unable to decrypt messages. I haven’t seen that in a while so maybe it’s fixed, but I haven’t been using it for one-to-one conversations lately.
Unfortunately, I’ve found most people have a lot of resistance to adding another messaging app. I don’t really understand why that is, but it’s true. Asking someone to install a messaging app when I’m their only contact who uses it and they have another way to contact me has a success rate near zero.
Just about. JWZ is known for his cynical hot takes on tech in general.
I don’t think any of his complaints are invalid, though his conclusions are uncharitable at best. Making a communication tool that’s both reasonably secure and sufficiently palatable to people who don’t know how to use computers to achieve broad adoption is a hard problem with no perfect solutions. If he has a better idea, well… he’s a skilled and somewhat famous programmer; he’s better equipped than most to implement it.
There are some fairly good solutions tho. Matrix is still kinda half-baked (specifically thinking about 2.0 and Element X) and Conversations has limited capabilities, but they are fairly easy to use
Edit: Although I would really wish Matrix had a ‘normie-mode’, with secure and reasonably easy to handle defaults
I use Matrix, and I’ve moved some conversation with people I met in public rooms there to Signal because it kept failing to transfer keys rendering it unable to decrypt messages. I haven’t seen that in a while so maybe it’s fixed, but I haven’t been using it for one-to-one conversations lately.
Unfortunately, I’ve found most people have a lot of resistance to adding another messaging app. I don’t really understand why that is, but it’s true. Asking someone to install a messaging app when I’m their only contact who uses it and they have another way to contact me has a success rate near zero.
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