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Comment on ‘There isn’t really another choice:’ Signal chief explains why the encrypted messenger relies on AWS

who@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

“The question isn’t ‘why does Signal use AWS?’” Whittaker writes. “It’s to look at the infrastructural requirements of any global, real-time, mass comms platform and ask how it is that we got to a place where there’s no realistic alternative to AWS and the other hyperscalers.”

To me, this reads like sophistry.

What happened here is a predictable result of Signal’s design. They chose to build a centralized messaging system. This made things significantly easier for them than a distributed design would have been, but it has its drawbacks. Having single point of failure is one of them. (In this case, that single point is Amazon.)

Trying to direct the public’s focus onto cloud providers instead of acknowledging this fundamental shortcoming in their design is, frankly, disingenuous. Especially coming from someone in Whittaker’s position.

While we’re at it, let’s also acknowledge that centralized design in messaging networks are problematic not just because of (un)reliability, as seen here. It’s also a single point of attack for any entity seeking to restrict, shut down, or track people’s communications with each other. End-to-end encryption cannot solve those problems.

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possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Signal is user friendly and reliable

While I don’t agree with some of their choices they do have a point here.

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- cabbage@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Yeah. I’m the nerdiest person I know—I’m not gonna try to convince people to use something I struggle to understand myself. Signal is good because it does not feel like a compromise, and the advantages are easy to explain. Matrix I wouldn’t even know how to sign up for myself, as much as I would love to see the entire internet run on decentralized technology.
  
  I am sure it’s not so difficult and that I could find a good instance and figure it out if I sank some time into it, but that’s really not the point here. The point is that me doing that would be worthless as I still couldn’t convince anyone else to join, and nobody I am interested in talking to is currently on there. (In other words: this post is not me asking for help to sign up for Matrix)
  
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  - possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Honestly I kind of wish that Simplex Chat was a bit more user friendly
    
    It focuses so much on privacy and anonymity that it is hard to use.
    
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KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I get your point, but that comes with a whole host of other problems. Take a look at Lemmy for instance, decentralized, yes. But also prone to problems stemming from that same decentralization.

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- who@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  But also prone to problems stemming from that same decentralization.
  
  Exactly what problems do you have in mind?
  
  There is no reason to assume that a distributed incarnation of Signal would have the same design as ActivityPub or Lemmy.
  
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  - KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Massive lag coming from larger instances, instance moves or domain name loss causing the death of an instance, misconfigurations in general since those cause a plethora of problems.
    
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    who@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Problems like those are unavoidable even on today’s Signal, because the service depends on internet peering relationships, internet service providers, mobile network operators, cell service, etc. Oh, and Amazon.
    
    You usually don’t notice them because when any of those components experiences problems too often, affected users tend to get annoyed and switch to a more reliable one. (Also because you don’t expect to receive messages from as many people or as often as you do on Lemmy, so short outages are less likely to affect you at all.)
    
    That would still be true in a distributed Signal, except that users could switch away from Amazon as well. Meanwhile, everyone not using Amazon would still be chatting during such an outage.
    
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  - 1984@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Thats true but what examples is there of successful distributed apps with tons of users?
    
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    ethicallysliced@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Email
    
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    who@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    We’re not talking about a distributed app, but a distributed service.
    
    Email.
    The web.
    The entire internet.
    The postal service.
    
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artyom@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

It also creates a single point of attack for any entity seeking to restrict, shut down, or track people’s communications.

That’s what relays are for.

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