• teri@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    414·
    2 days ago

    I support the cause in general but: Signal is not federated at all. It may seem like a decent alternative to WhatsApp but is it really? It still falls under the same US jurisdiction. Let’s say the US gov starts agressively prosecuting dissidents and certain minorities (they already do): can and should we still use signal in this case? I don’t think so. Sadly i can’t name a much better alternative. Maybe matrix. But it has other issues.

  • DicJacobus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    382·
    2 days ago

    instead of switching ive mostly just been ditching entirely. I need less time interacting with internet people.

    literally the only thing on this list im still using is facebook messenger, for my work colleagues. and youtube. everything else ive migrated (reddit-lemmy), or abandoned and torched

  • RedSnt@feddit.dkEnglish
    24·
    2 days ago

    I was already on Mastodon by just having a Vivaldi (the chromium browser) account, and it’s just lovely I’ve spent most of the day setting up lemmy, even though I joined feddit.dk 2 years ago, it’s only just now I’m taking it seriously.
    And, while not related to the fediverse per se, I switched to linux a year ago.
    The only service that’s hard to drop/switch away from is Youtube imo.

  • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1768·
    3 days ago

    Signal isn’t federated [1][2][3.1]; it’s decentralized [1][2][3.2]. Though, for all practical purposes, I would generally argue that it’s centralized.

    References
    1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
      • This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
    2. “Signal (software)”. Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-06T09:34Z. Accessed: 2025-02-1T09:30Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software).
      • ¶“Architecture”. ¶“Servers”.

        Signal relies on centralized servers that are maintained by Signal Messenger. In addition to routing Signal’s messages, the servers also facilitate the discovery of contacts who are also registered Signal users and the automatic exchange of users’ public keys. […]

    3. “Reflections: The ecosystem is moving”. moxie0. Signal Blog. Published: 2016-05-10. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:40Z. https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/.
      1. ¶5. to ¶“Stuck in time”. ¶3-6

        One of the controversial things we did with Signal early on was to build it as an unfederated service. Nothing about any of the protocols we’ve developed requires centralization; it’s entirely possible to build a federated Signal Protocol-based messenger, but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all. […] [interoperable protocols] [have] taken us pretty far, but it’s undeniable that once you federate your protocol, it becomes very difficult to make changes. And right now, at the application level, things that stand still don’t fare very well in a world where the ecosystem is moving. […] Early on, I thought we’d federate Signal once its velocity had subsided. Now I realize that things will probably never slow down, and if anything the velocity of the entire landscape seems to be steadily increasing.

      2. ¶“Stuck in time”. “Federation and control”. ¶6.

        An open source infrastructure for a centralized network now provides almost the same level of control as federated protocols, without giving up the ability to adapt. If a centralized provider with an open source infrastructure ever makes horrible changes, those that disagree have the software they need to run their own alternative instead. It may not be as beautiful as federation, but at this point it seems that it will have to do.

    • Lazycog@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      892·
      3 days ago

      Yeah. I love Signal but it doesn’t belong in that list. Dansup (creator of loops and pixelfed) is apparently working on “Sup” that will be a decentralized alternative to whatsapp.

        • Lazycog@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          311·
          3 days ago

          Yeah… I’m bit afraid of “kbin Ernest Effect” (not sure what a proper term is) where personal issues pile up and the sole head developer just disappears.

          Haven’t followed dansup much but from what I understand he is much more open to pull requests and listening to the community, but time will tell. Right now I appreciate and love his effort, giving, and the impact on fediverse he is brining.

          The kickstarter was a good idea.

          • ApollosArrow@lemmy.worldEnglish
            10·
            3 days ago

            Given that I’ve waited 3 weeks to join his smaller instance of pixelfed.art, I can tell things are already piling up. I am hoping the kickstarter does help.

        • Lazycog@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          5·
          3 days ago

          There isn’t much information about “Sup”, but if I had to guess it could be that dansup is making sup app with XMPP(rotocol) as the messaging protocol.

          • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
            6·
            3 days ago

            Originally it was supposed to be ActivityPub based, but recently they posted something about it being for XMPP, Matrix and IRC as well 🤷‍♂️ Maybe they decided to fork Pidgin 😂

            IMHO Sup. isn’t going to happen. They will have their hands more than full with Pixelfed’s new popularity and maybe Loops.

            • Lazycog@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              3·
              3 days ago

              Oh! didn’t know that, I thought activitypub can’t be used for secure messaging. Lol really hope its XMPP!

              Yeah I didn’t take it that seriously when it was announced right now. Just hope pixelfed stays afloat amidst the user flood and hope he can publish loops as open source soon!

            • chrislowles@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              2 days ago

              Multi-protocol would be awesome, hopefully down the line it’ll come back around to adding some basic AP integration.

      • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        474·
        3 days ago

        My comment wasn’t protesting the use of Signal; it was rather clarifying the misinformation in OP’s post — ie misinformation that Signal is a federated service.

        • apex32@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          3 days ago

          I wish Boost understood the collapsible spoilers.

          On my client, it’s all expanded and I see all the formatting characters. It looks/works great in a browser though.

          • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            I wish Boost understood the collapsible spoilers.

            On my client, it’s all expanded and I see all the formatting characters.

            Ah dang, that’s good to know (though I’m not sure what to do as an alternative) — I was unaware that the collapsible spoilers weren’t supported on Boost. I guess that means that Lemmy’s markdown formatting hasn’t entirely been standardized across the service. I personally have encountered some inconsistency on the Tesseract UI with CommonMark Autolink [2] formatting where the autolinks don’t even render [1].

            I recommend reporting this to the Boost devs to improve Markdown feature compatibility between them and the Lemmy UI.

            References
            1. “Kalcifer” @[email protected]. To: [“Happy #GlobalSwitchDay”. @[email protected]. “Fediverse” [email protected]. Tesseract. sh.itjust.works. Published: 2025-02-01T07:08:40Z. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:40Z. https://tesh.itjust.works/post/sh.itjust.works/32046509.]. Published: 2025-02-01T09:20:14Z. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:42Z. https://sh.itjust.works/post/32046509/16425699.
              • Raw Text:
                Signal isn't federated ^[1][2][3.1]^; it's decentralized ^[1][2][3.2]^. Though, for all practical purposes, I would generally argue that it's centralized. 

::: spoiler References
1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. <https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server>.
   - This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
2. "Signal (software)". Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-06T09:34Z. Accessed: 2025-02-1T09:30Z. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)>.
   - ¶"Architecture". ¶"Servers".
     > Signal relies on centralized servers that are maintained by Signal Messenger. In addition to routing Signal's messages, the servers also facilitate the discovery of contacts who are also registered Signal users and the automatic exchange of users' public keys. […]
3. "Reflections: The ecosystem is moving". moxie0. Signal Blog. Published: 2016-05-10. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:40Z.  <https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/>.
   1. ¶5. to ¶"Stuck in time". ¶3-6
      > One of the controversial things we did with Signal early on was to build it as an unfederated service. Nothing about any of the protocols we’ve developed requires centralization; it’s entirely possible to build a federated Signal Protocol-based messenger, but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all. […] [interoperable protocols] [have] taken us pretty far, but it’s undeniable that once you federate your protocol, it becomes very difficult to make changes. And right now, at the application level, things that stand still don’t fare very well in a world where the ecosystem is moving. […] Early on, I thought we’d federate Signal once its velocity had subsided. Now I realize that things will probably never slow down, and if anything the velocity of the entire landscape seems to be steadily increasing.
   2. ¶"Stuck in time". "Federation and control". ¶6.
      > An open source infrastructure for a centralized network now provides almost the same level of control as federated protocols, without giving up the ability to adapt. If a centralized provider with an open source infrastructure ever makes horrible changes, those that disagree have the software they need to run their own alternative instead. It may not be as beautiful as federation, but at this point it seems that it will have to do.
:::
                • Rendered:

                • In the rendered text there are no links; however, there should be links at the end, as is shown by the CommonMark autolinks in the raw text.
            2. “CommonMark Spec”. John MacFarlane. CommonMark. Version: 0.31.2. Published: 2024-01-28. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:51Z. https://spec.commonmark.org/0.31.2/#uri-autolink.
              • §6.5 “Autolinks”. ¶2.

                A URI autolink consists of <, followed by an absolute URI followed by >. It is parsed as a link to the URI, with the URI as the link’s label.

            • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              2·
              2 days ago

              Dang 😕. See my comment for a related response.

              I recommend reporting the bug to the Sync devs to fix their Markdown formatting to improve feature compatibility between them and the Lemmy UI.

    • jollyrogue@lemmy.mlEnglish
      6·
      3 days ago

      Yeah, Moxie has openly shot down the idea of adding federation to Signal, and I’ve never heard them claim Signal was decentralized.

      Matrix is federated, distributed, and decentralized.

      XMPP is federated and decentralized.

        • jollyrogue@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          Matrix servers keep a copy of any remote room an account on the server has joined, and it’s possible to recreate a room from the copies held on different servers. There are more details I don’t remember, but at a high level that’s how it’s distributed.

          Storing messages of remote rooms in addition to local rooms is why people complain about the storage requirements of Matrix servers. They don’t realize it’s distributed.

    • namingthingsiseasy@programming.devEnglish
      6·
      3 days ago

      but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all.

      The fact that we have a telephone system that works with separate providers contradicts this sentiment. If I want to pick up the phone and talk to my cousin’s puppy in New Zealand, I can do that without creating an account on his provider’s service.

      I don’t understand why we’ve forgotten this as a society. Yes, it was difficult to upgrade the phone systems over the past century, but it’s worth it in my opinion. I really wish we’d start seeing government regulation that says “you should be able to talk to someone on a service without having to create an account on said service.” I thought the DMA would do this, but sadly, Whatsapp still requires an account to talk to people using that service. Very disappointing.

      • jollyrogue@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        How is the puppy?

        As for interoperability between services… Monetization of surveillance data. The social media companies are Ad companies, and they make their money surveilling people and selling access. It’s harder to build an accurate model of a person when only pieces of data is available, and they need to have more data then the other Ad tech companies they’re competing with.

    • amzd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      112·
      3 days ago

      it’s decentralized

      No it’s not. From literally your own comment:

      Signal relies on centralized servers

      For a decentralized messenger use https://delta.chat/

      • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        211·
        3 days ago

        it’s decentralized

        No it’s not. From literally your own comment:

        Signal relies on centralized servers

        I was using “decentralized” to mean that there isn’t centralized control over ownership of the service in general — eg anyone can spin up their own server (impractical, imo, pushing it more towards being centralized) and people can use it (making it decentralized, imo (Please correct me if I am wrong, but I do think my usage of the term is appropriate in this way.)), but people who use that server can only communicate with that server (making it not federated). But yes it could still be said to be centralized in that it operates on a client-server model [1].

        This is more an argument of definitions, though. I’m not trying to claim anything in bad faith.

        References
        1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
          • This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
        • amzd@lemmy.worldEnglish
          82·
          3 days ago

          That’s just open source, not decentralized. I can’t find a definition of decentralization that would even make it vague. From Wikipedia:

          Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and given to smaller factions within it.

          Signal has a central authoritative server and to use it with any other server you have to modify the source code.

          • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            71·
            2 days ago

            Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and given to smaller factions within

            Imo this fits my usage of the term — Signal can be broken up into many isolated servers [1] all offering the same service.

            References
            1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
              • This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
          • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            4·
            3 days ago

            That’s just open source, not decentralized.

            Depending on exactly how said open source development is occuring, I could argue that open source development is an example of decentralization. It may even be an example of federation (all depending on licensing and development medium imo).

  • Undaunted@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    94·
    3 days ago

    Unfortunately, the switch from YouTube to PeerTube has not worked for me so far. I can’t find a decent instance (not full of right-wing/conspiracy content) with interesting stuff that also allows me to make an account.

    • spaduf@slrpnk.netEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      Folks should also check out neodb.social . it’s good reads, letterboxd, and steam reviews all in one.

      • BruisedMoose@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        I’ve been looking for something to track my physical book, music, and game collections. An instance of this might work nicely. Thanks!

    • LoganNineFingers@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      It could be but I find the android app buggy (this month I’ve been using bookwyrm, GR, Open Reads, and The Story Graph to compare them all and still nothing is as smooth as GR. Plus bookwyrm has no apple app. I love where Bookwyrm is going but right now the switch is not the best

    • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
      464·
      3 days ago

      Element/matrix aren’t part of the fediverse, either. It doesn’t speak AP.

      • namingthingsiseasy@programming.devEnglish
        14·
        3 days ago

        Are we claiming now that Activity Pub is the only protocol that we can use for the fediverse? I think XMPP is roughly 30 years old at this point, and I’m pretty sure Activity Pub is much younger than that. I could be wrong though.

        But regardless, I don’t see why Activity Pub has to be the only protocol we accept to be considered a part of the fediverse. It’s not even like different AP implementations talk to each other all that well. My understanding is that Mastodon doesn’t federate that well with Lemmy, and I haven’t seen Loops or Pixelfed on Lemmy yet either.

        I’d be happy to be corrected on any of this though, I haven’t looked too closely into exactly how AP works or how it’s supposed to interoperate with different applications.

        • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
          52·
          3 days ago

          I mean, yeah… the fediverse, specifically, are AP servers, which is why we don’t include diaspora for it.

          It’s decentralized and federated, to be sure, just not the “fediverse”.

          • acockworkorange@mander.xyzEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            Fediverse is about federation. It’s not Activityverse. So yeah, email, Usenet, IRC, XMPP, Matrix… all Fediverse, all an antidote to corporate walled gardens.

            Edit: not demeaning AP, it’s a great achievement and the services built upon it are a testament to its quality and forward-thinking.

            • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
              1·
              2 days ago

              I’m just saying that there’s deficiencies in those other networks. Just that they are different networks.

              Now if an xmpp user can directly message or communicate with a Mastodon user… then they’d be both part of the “fediverse”.

                • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
                  1·
                  2 days ago

                  Signal, no. And yes, Lemmy’s integration via AP is sub-perfect. Ie, I can (and do) follow communities on lemmy, with my Mastodon and pixelfed accounts.

                  So, work is needed, and only happens if a) same protocol is used, or b) bridge modules are used (like friendica does).

                  If someone made an xmpp bridge to talk AP, then it’s would be one big network, like how a lot of irc nets get bridged with xmpp nets, which makes those one, singular, federated network. But until they start speaking the protocol the rest of the fediverse does, it’s just another network.

                  And again, it’s not a bad thing. It’ll even probably get there eventually.

      • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.caEnglish
        8·
        3 days ago

        I’d like to argue that using AP is an inconsistent rule for membership. For example, Diaspora has been considered to be part of the fediverse from early on, but it doesn’t use AP.

        I don’t really know where to draw the line. AP simply isn’t suitable for some applications, but it makes sense to include it for branding

        • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
          41·
          3 days ago

          I don’t know of anyone who include d*, accepting the tiny number of d* pods that also speak AP.

          I mean, nostr is also NOT part of the fediverse, but another federated and decentralized network.

          • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.caEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            Both Wikipedia and fediverse.party consider Diaspora, and a handful of other (mostly defunct) protocols as being part of the fediverse.

            I don’t really like the use of AP to be a qualification of being in the fediverse. There must be a better way to qualify a platform, even if it means that use of AP is a natural consequence.

      • Matombo@feddit.orgEnglish
        61·
        3 days ago

        afaik ap is not a hard requirement for being in the fediverse, matrix is often included because it has the same federation idea

        • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
          23·
          3 days ago

          Then email is a part of the fediverse? UUCP nets? IRC nets?

          All federated, none speak AP.

          I think a good working definition is “speaks the w3c standard AP”. Otherwise, its totally lost its meaning.

    • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.worldEnglish
      193·
      3 days ago

      Absolutely, signal isn’t federated, but I don’t want my messaging app to be federated. I want my social media to be federated. Lemmy is good because it’s open. Signal is good because it’s shut.

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyzEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        That’s your preference and there’s nothing wrong with it. Doesn’t make Signal a Fediverse alternative. Matrix fits that use case.

        I prefer my messaging to be federated for the same reason I don’t want my other services depending on the benevolence of a single actor. But that’s me.

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyzEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        the author literally picked random projects from github tagged as matrix, without considering their prevalence or whether they are actually maintained etc.

        if you actually look at % of impacted clients, it’s tiny.

        meanwhile, it is very unclear that any sidechannel attack on a libolm based client is practical over the network (which is why we didn’t fix this years ago). After all, the limited primitives are commented on in the readme and https://github.com/matrix-org/olm/issues/3 since day 1.

        From your link.

        • e8d79@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          That is exactly what it says. They knew about security issues in their library and didn’t fix them for years. This isn’t being ignorant, this is negligence.

        • e8d79@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          23·
          2 days ago

          I do, use Signal if you care about privacy. They are the only game in town when it comes to reasonably secure chat software. Sure, I would prefer a federated alternative but I haven’t found one yet that is always end-to-end encrypted, open source, implements forward secrecy, and is user friendly enough to be used by my grandmother.

            • e8d79@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
              1·
              2 days ago

              SimpleX is cool, but fails the “my grandmother can use it” requirement. Signal has the huge benefit that is just as easy as WhatsApp. With Simplex you have to invite each of your friends individually.

                • e8d79@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                  2·
                  2 days ago

                  With Signal you just have to install the App and make an account to start chatting with your friends and family. SimpleX requires me to send a link or QR code to everybody I want to interact with. You will have a hard time convincing anyone to do that. Compare that to the first Twitter exodus, people chose Bluesky over Mastodon because picking a server was ‘difficult’. The average person doesn’t care about technology at all and will always pick the path of least resistance.