𝔰𝔥𝔦𝔟𝔠𝔬Mar 11

In 2015 I was on a beach in Hawai'i helping build the prototype of what became Signal. I argued that the app needed pseudonyms because abusers know their victims' phone numbers. I lost the fight that day. History proved me right, and Signal would move to usernames under @Mer__edith's stewardship.

In this new essay, I trace the line from Barlow's Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace through smart-home forensics, metadata killings, and Archive Team's non-consensual Tumblr scrape to ask: when did we decide that a jpeg is a photograph, that a profile is a person, that storage is memory?

The answer involves a boat off Honolulu, the early days of Signal, Iran's missiles over Amazon's Dubai AWS facilities, and the communities already building for a world where the server goes dark. This is an essay about infrastructure, memory, archiving without consent, and what we lose when we mistake the filesystem for memory.

It is also the angriest and most personal text I've ever written. I'm furious, and you should be too. We bet an entire civilisation on a brutal and unreliable stack. Now, fate has come to collect that wager.

California has a lot to fucking answer for.

https://newdesigncongress.org/en/pub/who-will-remember-us-when-the-servers-go-dark/

Show threadgroxxMar 12

@shibacomputer @Mer__edith

(edit to try to minimize distraction: apologies for derailing discussion a bit early on! Signal is a relatively small part of the writing, it's much broader. it was just literally a discussion point for me minutes before seeing this)

ironically, I was just discussing Signal with my wife, and she refuses to install it ever since it spammed people who had her phone number in their contacts the moment she signed up, with no warning or option. and I don't blame her one bit. so many of those "it's good for the social graph" decisions are obviously dangerous and directly at odds with the other stated/advertised purpose of "the best option if your safety is at risk". and it put up such a fight to try to force you to sync contacts, for so long.

wild, insane stuff, every step of the way. I'm still reading through, but wanted to say thanks for the attempts, and the write-up 

Show threadjust adrienneMar 12
@groxx @shibacomputer @Mer__edith I'm forced to use it for some stuff, these days, but i resisted installing it as long as i could because i have never forgiven and will never forgive it for that decision.
Show threadd@nny disc@ mc²
@adrienne @groxx @shibacomputer @Mer__edith that was a moxie marlinspike special. whether the rot can be removed after the fact is your call
Mar 12 at 1:32pmWeb
Show thread𝔰𝔥𝔦𝔟𝔠𝔬Mar 12
@hipsterelectron @adrienne @groxx I have had the pleasure to work with the Signal team since, and watched them move to usernames. I think it's worth thinking about how teams and their work change over time. There were very specific people who were responsible for those decisions and they are long gone.
Show threadd@nny disc@ mc²Mar 12
@shibacomputer @adrienne @groxx i have as well and was the first to add documentation strings to many of the cryptographic operations with immense help from jordan rose. this would become relevant when moxie blocked me on twitter
Show threadd@nny disc@ mc²Mar 12
@shibacomputer @adrienne @groxx white boy with dreads should never have been allowed anywhere