LibreSignal Alternatives

Posts

• Signal CEO Moxie Marlinspike explains his vision for the app — and what he sees as the biggest threats to privacy
  reddit.com/r/privacy | 2021-01-22

  I can't read this, paywall. Does he mention his hate for alternative Signal clients?

• Why does Signal require Google Play Store?
  reddit.com/r/degoogle | 2021-01-20
• Signal: All communication takes place via tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Cloudflare.
  reddit.com/r/privacy | 2021-01-20
• Installing Signal without Google Play?
  reddit.com/r/fossdroid | 2021-01-18

  Is it reliable long term? See, Moxie made libresignal, https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37, which was pretty much the same thing, useless.

• Signal package for Fedora 33
  reddit.com/r/Fedora | 2021-01-17

  It basically boils down to not wanting anybody else using their trademarks, and not wanting anybody else using their servers. Both are somewhat understandable. This was part of the message to LibreSignal, encouraging that project to end.

• We can do better than Signal
  news.ycombinator.com | 2021-01-17

  Because the Signal developer firmly opposes federation.

  https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

  news.ycombinator.com | 2021-01-17

  It's not like his motives are secret. He's been straightforward about his stance, however much I disagree with it.

  https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

  news.ycombinator.com | 2021-01-17

  The benefit of running Signal on F-Droid is its secure update mechanism.

  Do you really think a homebrewed self-update mechanism is superior to the battle tested F-Droid?

  Moxie has a complete stranglehold on the Signal system. You are completely at his mercy for all decisions affecting the platform

  See:

  https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

  The solution is federation, like email has always been.

  There are a couple of ways to solve this problem, which can be used in tandem. We can stop Signal from knowing when we’re talking to each other by using peer-to-peer chats. This has some significant drawbacks, namely that both users have to be online at the same time for their messages to be delivered to each other. You can still fall back to peer-to-server-to-peer when one peer is offline, however. But this isn’t the most important of the two solutions.

  The most important change is federation. Federated services are like email, in that Alice can send an email from gmail.com to Bob’s yahoo.com address. I should be able to stand up a Signal server, on my own hardware where I am in control of the logs, and communicate freely with other Signal servers, including Open Whisper’s servers. This distributes the security risks across hundreds of operators in many countries with various data extradition laws. This turns what would today be easy for the United States government to break and makes it much, much more difficult. Federation would also open the possibility for bridging the gap with several other open source secure chat platforms to all talk on the same federated network - which would spurn competition and be a great move for users of all chat platforms.

  Moxie forbids you from distributing branded builds of the Signal app, and if you rebrand he forbids you from using the official Open Whisper servers. Because his servers don’t federate, that means that users of Signal forks cannot talk to Signal users. This is a truly genius move. No fork of Signal4 to date has ever gained any traction, and never will, because you can’t talk to any Signal users with them. In fact, there are no third-party applications which can interact with Signal users in any way. Moxie can write as many blog posts which appeal to wispy ideals and “moving ecosystems” as he wants5, but those are all really convenient excuses for an argument which allows him to design systems which serve his own interests

• Libsignal-client – a Signal protocol implementation in Rust
  news.ycombinator.com | 2021-01-15

  He does, check this:

  https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

  He's very much opposed to other projects using either the name Signal or the servers they provide.

• Facebook moderating posts about Signal?
  reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO | 2021-01-15

  It’s open source but they don’t allow published forks to use their server. For example: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165

• WhatsApp says it can't see your shared location; its privacy policy says otherwise
  reddit.com/r/Android | 2021-01-13

  There are functioning third party Telegram apps with e2e. The same cannot be said for Signal, which blacklists your API token if you try distribute your own build of the Signal app. See for example this build of Signal that removes Google tracking: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37 . OpenWhisperSystems told them to go away and thta they'l never work with them

• Messenger Comparisons – Threema, Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp
  news.ycombinator.com | 2021-01-12

  I don't think that Signal which is refusing forks or third party clients is any better aligned with the FOSS spirit..

  https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

  "You're free to use our source code for whatever you would like but you cannot use our servers" and they also refuse alternative servers or federation.

  So basically you cannot create any fork or alternative client or make any change without their agreement.

  They are very "Apple-like" in a way, "we known what's good for you, so just agree with us and don't try to go outside of what we want".

  They also refuse to be on F-Droid for plainly false arguments. F-Droid offers double security : author signature + reproducible builds yet they keep pretending that you cannot sign apks on F-Droid and force you to download a non-externally verified apk on their website

  Signal in itself is great but the people behind are not reassuring at all I think.

• Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration
  news.ycombinator.com | 2021-01-12

  See: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

• Discusión random semanal
  reddit.com/r/chile | 2021-01-11

  Buena acotación, desconozco como funciona android. Pero hubo una pelea por el uso de gcm en los usuarios de signal que termino en la creación de libresignal que actualmente está descontinuado.

• [Open Source] Signal becomes the top free app on App Store in India, and more countries
  reddit.com/r/programming | 2021-01-10

  If you had any knowledge of Signal's history, you wouldn't need help to read between the lines of "The ecosystem is moving" as an admission of defeat. This thread might help you. tl;dr: Moxie initially pandered to the security-conscious (opensource) community with the lauded promise of federating, which he did at first, and later backtracked due to the challenges (and/or megalomania, attention whoring or insecurity). Because he couldn't get it for himself, anything federated became the enemy as a result, hence the out of spite blog post.