Comment by godelski
2 years ago
I agree with all this, but only to a certain extent. The big disadvantage of a centralized system is the ability to control an entire ecosystem. The same reason we dislike monopolies. It's because monopolies of any kind have the ability to abuse their power, though that doesn't mean they do. I mean browsers are "decentralized" and that doesn't stop Google from exerting significant control, especially considering most browsers are chromium (I find it weird people say to fight Chrome by switching to a different color of Chrome).
Like I said, I'm all for Signal becoming federated. It's why I dropped that link to the airdrop feature request. I'd also be in favor of people running their own servers. I mean the server code is available, you just can't connect it with the main network. So as far as I see it, there's nothing stopping this from happening. I see a lot of people complaining but I'm not aware of any major roadblocks. That doesn't mean there aren't any, but I'm just not aware of any. And fwiw, there are alternative Signal clients like Molly[0]. So at least the app can be disjoint from the official ecosystem.
Signal has said that they don't want a decentralized network until they have settled on their standard and implementation as they see decentralized federation as what has prevented email from modernizing . I'm assuming they will never get to the point where they feel Signal is stable enough to decentralize.
I'm not sure why people keep responding with this. Signal doesn't want to work on the federated problem, sure, I'm well aware. But everything is open source. We're on a forum of hackers, makers, and programmers. So what is in the way? People keep saying "Signal this" "Signal that", what are they gonna do, stop sourcing the code? Ruin their entire business model? I doubt it. The code is open, so seriously, someone tell me what's stopping you all from creating a federated version?
A) it's already been done. There are forks already.
B) Network effects drive the value of tools that are networked. The forks aren't popular at all.
C) Signal is well funded and not in financial trouble, so they can sustain effort on development and infrastructure.
D) I suspect you already knew all this too. So why did you respond the way you did?