David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)Much as I like #Signal, threatening to leave a country if they pass laws banning end to end encryption demonstrates a weakness in the system. The Signal Foundation should not have the technical ability to 'leave' a country. At worst, they should be able to stop receiving donations from people in that country.
jwz@david_chisnall And this problem only exists because Signal chose the business model of being a growth-at-all-costs social network running in a closed data silo, no different from Facebook, instead of being a protocol and set of applications capable of meaningful federation. I am constantly [ Nathan Fillion Face ] at people's seemingly-intentional blindness to this. https://jwz.org/b/yjnA
Thomas Guyot-Sionnest@jwz @david_chisnall I think the issue has more to do with the current app distribution model. Most users will never install an app outside their phone vendor's app store, and in fact for iPhone it's almost impossible to do so. Even if Signal resisted or offered direct app downloads, blocking from the app stores would affect most users.
@dermoth @david_chisnall Everyone saying "but federation is hard" or "but people like app stores" is making the argument to just stay on Facebook forever and Never Try, and it is baffling to hear people making that argument on Mastodon.