My parents, in-laws, grandmother-in-law, and entire extended family is on Signal. It's the extended family group chat, video calls with grandparents/great grandparents, and the baby photo feed. That's mostly because you just install it and it works.

I have no idea how to get my extended family on a Matrix homeserver without extensive handholding. I can barely figure it out myself and I was a huge XMPP nerd that ran my own ejabberd server for years.

For users who want strong security in messaging, yet an easy way for anyone to use the platform Signal has a much better user experience. Over 95% of my messaging is on Signal. Almost none of those users will benefit in any way by switching to Matrix. While it's a great ecosystem, it's also too much work for people who don't want those features or flexibility.

For users who want strong security is messaging signal should not be considered because they lie to users about their risks, and they store sensitive data in the cloud. It's easy to use and not a bad chat/IM system, but I would never trust it to protect your data.

Given that you post same diatribe on a common theme, you clearly lack ways to back up your veiled allegations without any evidence.

https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf

Here you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=autoexec&next=394457...

The paper you linked to was published before they started collecting and storing sensitive user data in the cloud

Here comes the evidence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39414322

In the spirit of CALEA, sealed sender basically pushes law enforcement back to good ol' days of "got the time", "got the IP addy", but "we don't know what was said".

> but "we don't know what was said

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-bas...

Matrix doesn't have the same threat model as Signal, and isn't a 1:1 replacement for it. Matrix is great (maybe optimal) for things that would otherwise be Slack channels.

I don't understand which different threat model you mean. Could you elaborate? To me, it's the same: private, end-to-end encrypted chat with rooms.

Signal:

* Gives the servers virtually no control over communications between parties.

* Goes through huge pains to minimize serverside metadata storage.

* Is a sealed system end-to-end; the client and the server are part of a single coherent design that together make promises about privacy and security that apply to every user of the system; Matrix is a protocol ecosystem.

A good example of this is group messaging: Matrix servers control group membership. In Matrix, group membership is key management; a Matrix server decides who can decrypt your group messages. That's not how Signal works! But I don't think anybody seriously thinks Signal is a replacement for a large Slack.

> * Goes through huge pains to minimize serverside metadata storage.

And yet uses AWS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39414322

And? It could run on NSA servers and it shouldn't in theory much of a difference. (I would not use Signal if it ran on NSA servers).

The threat model assumes attackers have maximal control of the server environment.

Assume US AWS servers are NSA servers.

You get that it's the literal opposite, right? There are actual rules, whether you believe NSA follows them or not, about NSA interfering with US servers. Not only are there no rules applying to overseas servers, but interfering with those servers is literally NSA's chartered mission.

Rules historically have not been an impediment to the NSA. Worst case, they can be ignored, best case, they can be interpreted with extreme creativity. Five Eyes partners are not subject to the same rules, and information can be shared freely with them.

This continued insistence (widespread - not just you!) on the benevolence and good faith of US intelligence, post-Snowden, doesn't make any sense to me.

Yes, I agree that the rules don't mean much to NSA. Do you see why that doesn't matter in this case?

No, I don't see that. I do, however, see you in the parent comment arguing that rules are what currently prevent the NSA from compromising AWS.

You skipped whether you believe NSA follows them or not. Even if NSA ignores those rules, they have literally no rules about compromising foreign servers; they are required to do so, as part of their job.

Take a step back and note that nobody on HN is going to make an argument premised on "you should trust NSA to follow the rules". You can accept that as an axiom and have easier conversations here.

> Even if NSA ignores those rules, they have literally no rules about compromising foreign servers

This is not good enough. Signal server is a single point of failure: NSA (and any other attacker, e.g., China) knows that the users can't go elsewhere, so it's very easy to target them all (thanks to the Signals's politics of walled garden). In case of Matrix, there are thousands of servers around the world, which you have to find and get into. They can run completely different software. This is not very scalable or easy.

I guess this whole subthread is based on the assumption that non-US servers are somehow more safe than US servers; I completely agree that's obviously not true, I just want to point out that allies ratified shenanigans to pull between each other to stay compliant with internal regulations on paper but in truth have access to everything about everyone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

...and this is the declassified part.

I’m not in a position to know anything except unconfirmed rumors about the NSA.

Hence my position remains unmoved.

Ok! Either way: immaterial to Signal.