The protocol is built from the same digital DNA as the Tor browser and the chat app Signal and will be used to create new ways for folks to communicate, share files, and generally surf the web while simultaneously protecting their privacy.
If the browser is based on Tor & the messaging app Signal, why shouldn’t we use these existing and established originals.
One of the complaints about Signal is that although the content is encrypted end to end, the sender and receiver are in the open. This is analogous to a postal service letter where the contents are unviewable. Signal now offers something to obscure the sender (like not putting a return address on a letter), but the receiver must be known to the servers in order to properly deliver it.
Although the Signal protocol is probably sent to the Signal servers encrypted, privacy enthusasts contend that it’s possible that the maintainers of Signal could be coerced into providing the sender and receiver of messages, even if the messages are not viewable.
Signal has much work to do to be a real “privacy” app. Get rid of phone numbers, get rid of metadata, stop contact mining. They say they don’t mine contacts but it is easy for them to do if they wanted to, so I assume they do.
Tor is great but has speed issues and no udp, so no voip. A lot of room for improvement there also. We should welcome all that try to improve on what we have.
I have a question, I can likely look this up but I also want to start engaging in this sub if that’s even what’s these communities are called. If it forces the use of Tor, does that endpoint not also act as a node that would balance our the speed issue for Tor by adding more processing power and bandwidth?
I think Tor is kind of stuck as it is. To really fix it’s issues, a new system needs to be built from scratch. Until then we’ll be working with patches and hacks.
Probably because a phone number isn’t required!?
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I know it’s a small thing, but the one thing I miss going to SimpleX, and a reason my friend group probably won’t switch, is the lack of gifs and stickers…
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I definitely agree! I tried it recently, and was surprised how polished it is. If/when they add some nice to have features, I would have no problem switching from Signal as long as I can get other people to switch too. Which is always the hard part.
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Fuck. I’d even trust a group named like that with my life.
Maybe I missed it, but I have a couple questions. (1) if it’s based on Signal, how does it not use phone numbers? I thought Whisper doesn’t allow this sort of implementation. (2) is it compatible with Signal? As in, can I be on this, while my friends are on Signal, and still be able to communicate?
