Use Signal. We promise, no AI clutter, and no surveillance ads, whatever the rest of the industry does. <3
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Meredith Whittaker
@Mer__edith@mastodon.world
mastodon 4.7.3President of @signalapp@mastodon.world
33680 Followers
311 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 26, 2022
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To conclude: my silver lining hope is that AWS going down can be a learning moment, in which the risks of concentrating the nervous system of our world in the hands of a few players become very clear. And that this can help us craft ways of undoing this concentration and creating real choice ❤️ 13/
📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU.
Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.
PSA: we're aware that Signal is down for some people. This appears to be related to a major AWS outage. Stand by.
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In short, the problem here is not that Signal ‘chose’ to run on AWS. The problem is the concentration of power in the infrastructure space that means there isn’t really another choice: the entire stack, practically speaking, is owned by 3-4 players. 11/
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The question isn’t "why does Signal use AWS?" It’s to look at the infrastructural requirements of any global, real-time, mass comms platform and ask how it is that we got to a place where there’s no realistic alternative to AWS and the other hyperscalers. 3/
Merry Christmas! May you enjoy the cinnamon nutmeg season as much as I do, with all the peace, major chord progressions, warm drinks, butterfat and sparkling this and that, whatever you believe, however work it ❤️🎄
🎁 here's a great album to get your day going https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=oscar+peterson+live+in+tokyo+1862
PSA: tips to protect yourself from scams on Signal.
Every major comms platform has to contend w phishing, impersonation, & scams. Sadly.
Signal is major, and as we've grown we've heard about more of these attacks--scammy people pretending to be something or someone to trick and abuse others. 1/
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So, Signal does what we can to provide a service w integrity in the concentrated ecosystem we're working in. We protect your comms w end-to-end encryption, so that we can use AWS and others as a highway across which to send Signal data in ways that don’t let AWS, or anyone else, gain access. 12/
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This isn't ‘'renting a server.' It's leasing access to a whole sprawling, capital-intensive, technically-capable system that must be just as available in Cairo as in Capetown, just as functional in Bangkok as Berlin. Particularly given the high stakes use cases of many who rely on Signal. 6/
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Running a low-latency platform for instant comms capable of carrying millions of concurrent audio/video calls requires a pre-built, planet-spanning network of compute, storage and edge presence that requires constant maintenance, significant electricity and persistent attention and monitoring. 4/
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Instant messaging demands near-zero latency. Voice and video in particular require complex global signaling & regional relays to manage jitter and packet loss. These are things that AWS, Azure, and GCP provide at global scale that, practically speaking, others (in the western context) don’t. 5/
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o, yes, Signal runs on AWS. It also runs on your phone, which runs on iOS (Apple) or Android (Google). And on Dekstop, via Windows (Microsoft). Each of these presents similar dependencies on large entrenched tech companies, and concomitant barriers and risks. 10/
Signal strongly opposes the newest #ChatControl proposal in Europe.
Let there be no doubt: we will leave the EU market rather than undermine our privacy guarantees.
This proposal--if passed and enforced against us--would require us to make this choice.
It's surveillance wine in safety bottles.
See more: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/majority-for-chat-control-possible-users-who-refuse-scanning-to-be-prevented-from-sharing-photos-and-links/ @echo_pbreyer@digitalcourage.social
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But even if Signal had the billions needed to recreate AWS, it’s not just about money. The talent to run these systems is rare & concentrated. The expertise, the tooling, the playbooks, the very language of modern SRE came out of these hyperscalers, and is now synonymous with 'the cloud.' 9/
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Meaning that infrastructure like AWS is not something that Signal, or almost anyone else, could afford to just “spin up.” Which is why nearly everyone that manages a real-time service–from Signal, to X, to Palantir, to Mastodon–rely at least in part on services provisioned by these companies. 8/
📣 NEW w/#UdbhavTiwari Mapping the technical reality & privacy/security perils of pushing AI agents into our infra
We offer palliatives, but the core issues are paradigmatic: 'agency' relies on pervasive data access + ability to act w/o explicit consent.
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Such infrastructure costs billions and billions of dollars to provision and maintain, and it’s highly depreciable. In the case of the hyperscalers, the staggering cost is cross-subsidized by other businesses–themselves also massive platforms with significant lockin. 7/
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To be crystal clear: Signal will NEVER message you this way. Ever.
And just like with your bank details or passwords, NEVER EVER share your Signal verification code (SMS/Call) or PIN with anyone. Ever. 3/
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39C3 - AI Agent, AI Spy
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And finally finally, here's a resources you can share and reference with more about how to detect, and protect yourself from scammers and abusers: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/9932566320410-Staying-Safe-from-Phishing-Scams-and-Impersonation
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Contact with Signal (https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/6746004451610-Contact-Us) or any Signal representative will ONLY come from an
@signal.org
email address, not from within the app.
And again, we will never ask for your PIN or verification code. And we do not reach out proactively, only in response to your requests.4/
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If you do receive a message you think is suspicious, report it as Spam and block the sender so that they cannot contact you again. AKA basic comms hygiene to preserve your peace. 5/
Looking for a convivial convo w me & Michael Moynihan covering everything from Snowden to Babbage to why Michael actually cares about privacy to our impoverished def of "AI" and the need to expand it?
👉 7pm EDT tonight, Nov 13th, streaming + archived thereafter: https://www.youtube.com/live/ZYNJ0zpFvqA
AI is NOT replacing your job, it's "degrading" it. here's how - SIGNAL head Meredith Whittaker
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I also find Barbara Ehrenreich's preface to the book compelling, which you can read here: https://monoskop.org/images/5/54/Theweleit_Klaus_Male_Fantasies_Vol_1_Women_Floods_Bodies_History.pdf
Good material to put in conversation with discourses on the imperial boomerang, as we do the work of tending to our analyses in service of building grounded strategies ♥️
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Finally, to help you determine the fake and malicious from the genuine, we have signposts (https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007459591-Signal-Profiles-and-Message-Requests#message_requests) in the application that can aid you in identifying fakers and phishing attempts.
We also have tools like Registration Lock to help protect against account takeovers. 6/
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@yawnbox I don't think you have a clear understanding of what you're talking about, and it might be fun for you to look a bit more deeply into how TOR works and its dependencies.
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@svitvojimilioni@balkan.fedive.rs @echo_pbreyer@digitalcourage.social We would not comply. Then what would happen would happen, which per the law would amount to somehow being prevented from operating in the EU. Likely through app store deplatforming but who knows.
This paper is really important, presenting empirical evidence of the imbrication bet. AI & the surveillance biz model. This is notable particularly given that most production surveillance tech is proprietary, its existence and use hidden from the public.
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@ck@chaos.social @dalias@hachyderm.io @signalapp@mastodon.world There's also a reckoning to be had within the FOSS community IMO, which in the 1990s took its eye off market actors even as it remained vigilant about government surveillance/overreach. The acceptance of corporate tech (and implicitly its surveillance business model), led by folks like ESR via the break from Free software to "open source," did a lot to get us here.
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Also, note: You can sign up for beta to test these features. Note that Apple caps the number of iOS beta testers, and we have reached that limit. If you use Signal on iOS, you can get around this by signing up for Desktop beta, linked to your iOS account. More info: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007318471-Signal-Beta
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@simmac Because I thought we were out of time. I was mistaken. However we stayed after for as long as we could and took questions near the stage.
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@julf@social.secret-wg.org @ck@chaos.social @dalias@hachyderm.io @signalapp@mastodon.world Sure. Yes. I would argue that assholes abound, and that this--and how RMS was allowed to keep his crown for so long in spite of his rigid, ungenerous dogmatism and shitty behavior--needs to part of said reckoning.
@olavi@defcon.social @saaste@mementomori.social Sadly it's not that simple, as we review.
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@dalias@hachyderm.io @echo_pbreyer@digitalcourage.social Yes. TLDR we would not comply. Then they'd take whichever action they'd take in response to remove us from the market.
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@pkreissel@volksverpetzer.social @intermobility@toot.community @signalapp@mastodon.world Yes, sharing your QR code also shares your username. But, you can change your username at any time, as many times as you want.
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@VincentTunru@fosstodon.org @ck@chaos.social @dalias@hachyderm.io @signalapp@mastodon.world Yes, this is true.
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@cholling@social.sdf.org @echo_pbreyer@digitalcourage.social We don't scan your contacts. You can use a username to keep your phone number private from those you communicate w/on Signal.
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