Comment by Caligatio
2 years ago
You're moving the goal post from "self-sovereignty" to supports federation with an infinite number of servers. Nothing is stopping you from compiling your own Signal server and modifying a Signal client to use your server.
Given that Signal is free as a service, supporting federation only increases their expenses.
Without federation, Signal is still working with the advantage of network effects. So an open source server is not enough of a way out.
Element can do it for their Matrix servers. Process.one can do it for ejabberd. Prosody as well. Why can't Signal?
Back to your original point: please don't support an organization that doesn't share important values of yours! That is absolutely your choice!
You've named several products that share your values. Perhaps those would be a better fit if you were to donate.
Because centralisation provides ecosystem agility, which they absolutely value as an upside. Find a way of doing post-quantum secure key exchange? Just roll it out to the server and all the clients essentially overnight.
They've talked about this, a lot.
I'm well aware of their justifications. I'm also aware that centralization brings systemic risks, which they don't talk about.
The internet would be a lot more efficient and able to evolve if we just had it controlled by one single entity like Google or Microsoft. Do you think is a good idea to do that?
The economy would be a lot more efficient and allocation of resources could be a lot more fair if we could put it all in the hands of one single corporation or government. Do you think it's a good idea to do that?
Agricultural output would improve significantly if all crops used the exact same genetic strain and if all soil was artificially managed. Do you think it's a good idea to do that?
In case you are wondering, "ability to quickly roll out post-quantum key exchange" is waaaaay down the list of my worries compared to "facing a catastrophic Black Swan affecting all of the world's communications".
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