{"guid":"840802b4-a35c-5f4d-8560-22ef54132f6a","title":"Signal: you were the chosen one!","subtitle":null,"slug":"mch2022-196-signal-you-were-the-chosen-one-","link":"https://program.mch2022.org/mch2022/talk/7QRECD/","description":"This is a rant about how moving ecosystems are not a good reason for centralizing a crucial service, how stickers are no substitute for a desktop client that does not crash, and how effectively shutting out less popular OS platforms is just not cool.\n\nIn his seminal work [\"The ecosystem is moving\"](https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/), Moxie Marlinspike laid out clearly the reasons why it's impossible to do what [Matrix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)), or [the Fediverse](https://fediverse.party/), or for that matter the Web, have done: create a dynamic, quickly-evolving ecosystem without centralizing it.\n\nFor years, as a person responsible for information security of at-risk reporters and their sources, I have been advocating Signal as a secure Internet messaging service. And with good reasons.\n\nCriticizing a security-sensitive tool like Signal is tricky, as it might be misconstrued as a call to abandon it, and move to alternatives that might be in fact worse. But here, at a hacker conference and with little risk of causing confusion and diverting users towards less secure platforms, can we please have an honest conversation about Signal's problems? And how 5 years after that blogpost, moxie's centralization has not solved them?..\n\nThere are good reasons to exert a level of control over what connects to a communication network. But effectively shutting out a community of developers that would love to implement Signal clients [for](https://gitlab.com/rubdos/whisperfish) [less](https://open-store.io/app/textsecure.nanuc) [popular](https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8505) [OSes](https://forums.puri.sm/t/how-can-you-install-signal-on-the-librem-5/10244) (many of which happen to attract the kind of infosec-aware crowd that used to be the core pushers of Signal) is not a good outcome.\n\nOpening up more on the client side and providing some form of independent client development program (starting with a stable API) would already help a ton. Even if it's just the desktop client that gets re-written in something that is not in essence a packaged browser [trailing it's upstream on security patches](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22239791).\n\nFinally, we need to talk federation. Does it make moving fast and breaking things more difficult? Yes, yes it does, and that can be a good thing. It also makes the resulting federated service more resilient (one [service provider experiencing issues](https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/signal-users-globally-experiencing-issues-company-working-on-a-fix-1759524-2021-01-15) does not bring the whole network down). And, it lets others innovate without being locked out.","original_language":"eng","persons":["rysiek"],"tags":["mch2022","196","2022","MCH2022 Curated content"],"view_count":14885,"promoted":false,"date":"2022-07-23T23:20:00.000+02:00","release_date":"2022-07-24T00:00:00.000+02:00","updated_at":"2026-04-11T20:00:07.001+02:00","length":1889,"duration":1889,"thumb_url":"https://static.media.ccc.de/media/events/MCH2022/196-840802b4-a35c-5f4d-8560-22ef54132f6a.jpg","poster_url":"https://static.media.ccc.de/media/events/MCH2022/196-840802b4-a35c-5f4d-8560-22ef54132f6a_preview.jpg","timeline_url":"https://static.media.ccc.de/media/events/MCH2022/196-840802b4-a35c-5f4d-8560-22ef54132f6a.timeline.jpg","thumbnails_url":"https://static.media.ccc.de/media/events/MCH2022/196-840802b4-a35c-5f4d-8560-22ef54132f6a.thumbnails.vtt","frontend_link":"https://media.ccc.de/v/mch2022-196-signal-you-were-the-chosen-one-","url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/events/840802b4-a35c-5f4d-8560-22ef54132f6a","conference_title":"May Contain Hackers 2022","conference_url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/conferences/MCH2022","related":[],"recordings":[{"size":317,"length":1889,"mime_type":"video/webm","language":"eng","filename":"mch2022-196-eng-Signal_you_were_the_chosen_one_webm-hd.webm","state":"new","folder":"webm-hd","high_quality":true,"width":1920,"height":1080,"updated_at":"2022-07-25T00:54:14.866+02:00","recording_url":"https://cdn.media.ccc.de/events/MCH2022/webm-hd/mch2022-196-eng-Signal_you_were_the_chosen_one_webm-hd.webm","url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/recordings/60294","event_url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/events/840802b4-a35c-5f4d-8560-22ef54132f6a","conference_url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/conferences/MCH2022"},{"size":116,"length":1889,"mime_type":"video/mp4","language":"eng","filename":"mch2022-196-eng-Signal_you_were_the_chosen_one_sd.mp4","state":"new","folder":"h264-sd","high_quality":false,"width":720,"height":576,"updated_at":"2022-07-24T23:51:36.012+02:00","recording_url":"https://cdn.media.ccc.de/events/MCH2022/h264-sd/mch2022-196-eng-Signal_you_were_the_chosen_one_sd.mp4","url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/recordings/60287","event_url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/events/840802b4-a35c-5f4d-8560-22ef54132f6a","conference_url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/conferences/MCH2022"},{"size":92,"length":1889,"mime_type":"video/webm","language":"eng","filename":"mch2022-196-eng-Signal_you_were_the_chosen_one_webm-sd.webm","state":"new","folder":"webm-sd","high_quality":false,"width":720,"height":576,"updated_at":"2022-07-24T23:46:48.942+02:00","recording_url":"https://cdn.media.ccc.de/events/MCH2022/webm-sd/mch2022-196-eng-Signal_you_were_the_chosen_one_webm-sd.webm","url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/recordings/60284","event_url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/events/840802b4-a35c-5f4d-8560-22ef54132f6a","conference_url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/conferences/MCH2022"},{"size":18,"length":1889,"mime_type":"audio/opus","language":"eng","filename":"mch2022-196-eng-Signal_you_were_the_chosen_one_opus.opus","state":"new","folder":"opus","high_quality":false,"width":0,"height":0,"updated_at":"2022-07-24T23:38:03.521+02:00","recording_url":"https://cdn.media.ccc.de/events/MCH2022/opus/mch2022-196-eng-Signal_you_were_the_chosen_one_opus.opus","url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/recordings/60283","event_url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/events/840802b4-a35c-5f4d-8560-22ef54132f6a","conference_url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/conferences/MCH2022"},{"size":28,"length":1889,"mime_type":"audio/mpeg","language":"eng","filename":"mch2022-196-eng-Signal_you_were_the_chosen_one_mp3.mp3","state":"new","folder":"mp3","high_quality":false,"width":0,"height":0,"updated_at":"2022-07-24T23:35:48.351+02:00","recording_url":"https://cdn.media.ccc.de/events/MCH2022/mp3/mch2022-196-eng-Signal_you_were_the_chosen_one_mp3.mp3","url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/recordings/60282","event_url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/events/840802b4-a35c-5f4d-8560-22ef54132f6a","conference_url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/conferences/MCH2022"},{"size":499,"length":1889,"mime_type":"video/mp4","language":"eng","filename":"mch2022-196-eng-Signal_you_were_the_chosen_one_hd.mp4","state":"new","folder":"h264-hd","high_quality":true,"width":1920,"height":1080,"updated_at":"2022-07-24T18:30:07.184+02:00","recording_url":"https://cdn.media.ccc.de/events/MCH2022/h264-hd/mch2022-196-eng-Signal_you_were_the_chosen_one_hd.mp4","url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/recordings/60217","event_url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/events/840802b4-a35c-5f4d-8560-22ef54132f6a","conference_url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/conferences/MCH2022"}]}