Many of us (or at least me) would probably like to see Signal getting decentralized. Here are a few thoughts I had about this recently.
First let me define three persons:
- Peter (using the official signal.org instance)
- Ted (using the example.com instance)
- Andrew (using his own instance under andrew.chat)
Couldn’t we use the upcoming username feature to build a decentralized signal network? For example with a modified client or maybe just a modified libsignal library we could parse the instance from the username which would look like an email address ([email protected] or [email protected]). If the username doesn’t have a domain part it just uses the default instance (so Peter just has the username peter.94).
Maybe we have some people here who are already familiar with the Signal codebase and willing to assist?
EDIT: Yes I know Session and Matrix exist but Session is to extreme and technical and Matrix is more focused on communities and groups which aren’t even encrypted. Besides that both of them have a much smaller userbase compared to Signal.
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I’m pretty sure the original Signal dev wanted to avoid federation to be able to evolve the protocol rapidly.
https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
That has 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.
Isnt this basically matrix?
Matrix is more for communites
One can perfectly use matrix for chat as well, especually with e.g. Fluffychat as client.
And yes, matrix is encrypted too
I’ve been using Matrix for a few days now and I have to say that encryption is a mess. Rooms and Spaces are not encrypted. 1:1 chats are encrypted but before it worked for my account (whysoever) I had to verify the other person. Also fluffychat is really buggy
Rooms can be encrypted - in fact its enabled by default now for all new rooms, but rooms that are public don’t make sense to encrypt as anyone is able to find/join, and what would be the point of encryption if anyone can just join and access the data anyway?
I will say that Matrix is not as easy, intuitive or as feature-polished as Signal and I think we can thank Signal’s decision to not attempt federation for how much better it is at some things than Matrix. That said, Matrix is a great alternative, but I’m not asking my friends/family to join just yet.
Or XMPP
@[email protected] I’m quite happy with my Matrix home server and signal bridge that I’ve got. My matrix server lets me speak to discord, WhatsApp, SMS and signal users without me needing to worry about which app I need to use to get there. Yes, it took me weeks, if not months, to get working just how I want it, but now that it is, I’m not feeling that same desperation for it to be federated that I otherwise would have done
From the last I recall, the owners of Signal have never wanted it to federate. They have their publicly stated reasons, but I think the real reason is that Signal has always been on an enshittification track. JWZ has spoken out against Signal many times.
I’m gonna be honest. I chose a random article by JWZ and read it. The only thing they are talking about is the contact discovery system. If they don’t want contacts to be uploaded (encrypted) then simply don’t give signal the permission. And that the author moves to facebook messenger because there
at least the privacy failings are obvious
just shows how the author isn’t even interested in secure and private messaging but only in defamig signal
