• Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    To put it bluntly, as a nonprofit we don’t have investors or profit-minded board members knocking during hard times, urging us to “sacrifice a little privacy” in the name of hitting growth and monetary targets.

    Good, I’ve been a regular donor for almost a year now.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I donated, and planned to continue yearly, but then they added a cryptocurrency in a very obvious pump and dump scam — MobileCoin; brand new, untested, for-profit startup owned, VC funded, in which the Signal CEO was an adviser and potential investor, with all “coins” privately pre-sold to VC’s and other investors.

      I haven’t recommended Signal since, and refuse to donate until that shit is removed.

      IMO Signal should only be seen as temporary until a stronger competitor is built. Being centralised and US based is a deal breaker, long term. The permanent communication service, that humanity should ultimately rely on, must be completely decentralised and capable of transacting via a client-based P2P mesh network, that is independent of commercial internet infrastructure… e.g. it can continue operating phone to phone, router to router, etc, using wifi/bluetooth if the internet is cut, whether by government action or natural disaster.

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Nothing is black and white or pure. The list of features of a large-scale system like this includes its popularity. Signal excels at that compared to many alternatives and personally I think that’s worth a few transgressions. I too dream of a P2P system but I can’t see how underfunding Signal would help reach that goal. If anything having one popular open source non-profit platform could make it easier to get P2P. For example by pushing the popular platform to implement it.

      • Zak@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        For something less centralized, Matrix already exists. In my experience, the UX isn’t as smooth as Signal, and it seems like mainstream users have very little patience for rough edges in UX anymore.

    • 14th_cylon@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      if they stop operating it, we won’t be using it anymore.

      it is likely bad phrasing, instead of intentional click bait.

      • Fuck Work@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        If they open sourced all the server code, we could be helping them to operate it potentially, but they want to control the infrastructure, so I guess we’ll all be using xmpp soon.

        • 14th_cylon@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          so I guess we’ll all be using xmpp soon

          of course… jabber is here for 25 years, but it will take over the world any minute now!

          • Fuck Work@slrpnk.net
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            1 year ago

            The problem with you techbros is you can’t imagine anything at smaller scales. But what you just said… Jabber is here for 25 years. That means it is good enough for tons of people. Not everybody needs a shiney new toy and if free software doesn’t scale, then who cares. It can and will still work for those of us willing to share the burden and for those that can’t, each one of me can accommodate at least a few such users and those that just won’t… Fuck em. We don’t have to capture every use case to be of value. I use jabber. I have plans to self host it. It works and has done so for 25 years. Furthermore AIM captured everything a chat needs to do, why do we keep reinventing this wheel when there are much more interesting problems that need to be solved.

            • 14th_cylon@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              The problem with you, fanboys, is you don’t understand that in context of replacing tool used on a global scale no one cares what you and 9 your friends are using, whether it is a good tool or not. To become global tool you need some critical mass and jabber doesn’t have it.

    • Steve@communick.news
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      1 year ago

      It’s unusual phrasing, but not wrong. It doesn’t say specifically who is using, or will have to pay the $50M. You’re only assuming it’s about each of us individually.

      • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        exactly, I don’t like the wording, but I do question people’s reading abilities if they misinterpret that headline.

        [People] Using Signal Will Soon Cost [Operators] $50 Million a Year.

        How else would you read it? Each user paying $50M lol?

    • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      two sides of the same coin, just a badly phrased sentence

      [People] Using Signal Will Soon Cost [Operators] $50 Million a Year.

      if you read it as each user paying $50M, maybe touch some grass

  • bobotron@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I was just talking with a friend about why people trust signal so much and this article is a wonderful example of why