A Message from Signal's New President

[ghastmaster]

> My support for encryption and private communications has been consistent and unwavering

So tell me about that support. I use signal for security. That is priority number one. This is the only statement in the message that explicitly mentions any support for security. Most of the rest of the message in fact focuses on aspects other than security.

She is very good at saying thing's that have no substance. For example, "So I bring a clear understanding of the environment shaped by the dominant tech business model, and of what it takes to build tech that rejects this model", is not explicitly stating she rejects that model, just that she is familiar with it. The message is full of implied, not explicit statements of principle.

I am a little disheartened. This message serves to make me pay more attention.

[FabHK]

Yes, would have been nice if the statement had been more about the product and the product strategy than about the author.

[_nalply]

What I expected is a concise message of goals.

What I found is that my eyes glazed over.

[_0ffh]

>She is very good at saying thing's that have no substance

Jives with her qualifications, which are a bachelor's degree in Rethorics.

[andrewinardeer]

Let's see if she can get rid of this ridiculous MobileCoin that has somehow embedded itself into my Signal app. I won't hold my breath.

[aorth]

Does anyone actually use it? I seriously wonder why they put it in there. Moxie doesn't strike me as the type of guy who would fall for this cryptocurrency nonsense, so I'm seriously wondering if anyone uses it. The Signal project should do some case studies if so. For example: some farmers use it to pay for petrol in India, or some students from Myanmar use it to send money back home, etc.

[FabHK]

Indeed. Some five years ago, one could have excused a venture into cryptocurrencies as idealistic support of some bold, pathbreaking, liberating, enabling technology. Today, not so much.

[dividuum]

Hopefully. Got donor’s remorse from that decision and became hesitant recommending signal as a result.

[O__________O]

Unless something has changed, all three board members have been responsible for running Signal Foundation within past year, which is highly unusual.

Signal’s list of board members:

https://signalfoundation.org/en/

Wish Signal would be more transparent and timely about there technical and financial status and plans. For example, might be wrong, but their most recent 990 should already be available, but they have not posted it (or any of their past 990s) on their own site. Tech wise, given users in mass have asked for it for years, feel like they owe the users a public explanation of why they only allow numbers.

[b3nji]

Another political activist, I'm not certain how I feel about this. Seems like this might not go well, looking at what happens to companies with “activism” at their heart.

[actionfromafar]

Isn't the very existence of Signal "activism".

[wbsss4412]

As if privacy isn’t political.

The fourth amendment exists for a reason.

[potatototoo99]

An activist in charge of a privacy tool, not often a match made in heaven.

[bilal4hmed]

Does this mean signal has to pay back that loan and this will lead to further monetization of the app?

[subjectsigma]

Y'all remember how well Mozilla getting taken over by activists went? Witch hunt firings followed by years of failed product launches and loss of market share while leadership basically just checks out and collects their salary?

[the_why_of_y]

Do you mean since 2007, when Mitchell Baker wrote the Mozilla Manifesto?

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/

[gilrain]

> Witch hunt firings

Translation from conspiracy speak: there was one resignation

[ramesh31]

Yup. My first thought was “why does a messaging app need a board of directors?”. I guess I just don’t understand tech.

[PaywallBuster]

her profile links to an empty Github profile created days ago too

[IYasha]

If Signal stop requiring telephone number, its popularity might skyrocket. The scheme is easy: to prevent spamming, you can have a pool of registered numbers that are NOT associated with accouts. This is enough to check if a number is already in use. That's all we need!

(almost. subjective. required, but not limited to.)

[stereoradonc]

From a sudden high and then a consistent low, none of my contacts are using Signal. It has become irrelevant. Almost completely irrelevant.

[Markoff]

No phone number required, decentralized network and third party apps allowed when? That's only information I care about Signal, until then Element (Matrix) FTW.

[fefe23]

I never understand modern corporate communication strategies.

I'm not interested in her feelings or whether she thinks she is qualified. I would like to know her name so I can find out for myself what she has done before.

I also don't need to be told that Signal is important. If I didn't think that I wouldn't be reading their blog post.

[djaychela]

> I'm not interested in her feelings or whether she thinks she is qualified.

Maybe not, but a lot of people will be, particularly if their favourite thing is being 'taken over' by said person.

>I would like to know her name so I can find out for myself what she has done before.

Kind of unfortunate that the link in the blog entry is to a currently-empty Github account (in terms of public repos, anyway).

However, a brief search turned up her Wikipedia page [1], and going on what's in there it looks as if she's better aligned to what she said on the Blog page than if you just looked at her briefly and saw she was an employee of Google for some time.

> I also don't need to be told that Signal is important. If I didn't think that I wouldn't be reading their blog post.

You may not need to be told (and neither do I), but there are oceans of people out there who don't know that there is a workable alternative to using WhatsApp. It took me a long time (and leverage via a friend-group holiday) to get my friends on Signal (I'm not on any Meta properties, by principle), and most of them hadn't heard of it. Most people just use WhatsApp because it's become the default, and most of them don't care about Meta (or anyone else's) policies or warping of society. They just want to communicate, and don't want to use SMS/MMS (because of the limited features or cost), or can't use iMessage (because they aren't on an iPhone).

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Whittaker

[Mandatum]

This isn’t written for you. It’s for investors and middle managers internally.

[bauruine]

If you click on the author you get to her github profile that contains her full name. It's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Whittaker

[HuwFulcher]

You can find her name (Meredith Whittaker) in 2 clicks from that article. I agree the name should be present but it's not exactly difficult for someone semi tech-literate to find.

[samuel]

That was my first instinct, to look what she had done/write before.

I have to admit, being anti-woke myself (not American), that this article caught my eye:

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/tech-labor-progres...

Not the kind of person I would expect to be in charge of Signal, TBH.

[lavventura]

well said

[egberts1]

I’ve learned that:

Signal is best at keeping your message content off of their server

- well-guarded against network-based MitM.

- Need work on hiding association with others.

- Your Signal message content remains retrievable only at and on endpoints, hence the timed message deletion.

Telegram is probably best at keeping your identity safer (than Signal)

- but needs work on hiding associations with others.

- well-guarded against network-based MitM.

- your message remains readable by Telegram at their server because Telegram holds your keys.

So, I’d gladly give up association for privacy and use Signal.

[egberts1]

I could envision a private Signal server to deal with the anonymity part but that would require ample assistance of anonymized router hops.

[rzr]

Dear Signal's presidency

May you consider priority to get client published to f-droid (or debian):

https://forum.f-droid.org/t/signal-wickr-on-f-droid-2021/122...

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/127

Meanwhile I'll recommend freedom lovers to use matrix|XMPP|IRC (which can be also used on web or linux computer)

Freely yours

[blueflow]

Can't you install Signal without an App store? Directly via apk?

[fmajid]

She's the lady who was fired by Google in retaliation for organizing the walkouts that protested the big payout Andy Rubin got despite being found guilty of sexual harrassment.

So she's got both principles and guts, good to know and a positive sign for Signal. Not enough to overcome the taint of its initial funding by the US Government, its unnecessary and privacy-busting requirement for phone numbers and the stench by association of cryptocurrency, but who knows, she may be able to influence away from that.

[Vinnl]

> its unnecessary and privacy-busting requirement for phone numbers

https://signal.org/blog/building-faster-oram/

> It lays the groundwork for the introduction of usernames and phone number privacy which will offer new privacy controls around your phone number’s visibility on Signal.

So not so much unnecessary as it is hard to implement privately. But it should be on its way.

[cmeacham98]

Does "initial funding by the US Government" really matter? Tor was funded by the US Government and it at least looks like they struggle to break it.

The phone number requirement is asinine and the reason I use Matrix, as I refuse to tie any identity of mine (even those I don't care about keeping private) to a phone number. Has Signal never heard of SIM swapping?

[imjonse]

Is the whole internet tainted due to it having its root in a US goverment funded project?

[reocha]

What makes you think shes a left wing extremist? She just seems like a liberal passionate about justice against sexual harassers and misuse of AI technology.

[sylware]

"trust us"... yeah, right...

[dade_]

That’s wonderful. Will they make a proper desktop app already?

[janandonly]

Am I the only one who found the "Taproot" [1] hint interesting?

In this sentence: > As President I will dedicate myself to helping Signal build a long taproot so it can grow and thrive in dynamic climates.

[1] https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/bitcoin-taproot-upgrade...