“We’re aware of reports that access to Signal has been blocked in some countries,” Signal says. If you are affected by the blocks, the company recommends turning on its censorship circumvention feature. (NetBlocks reports that this feature lets Signal “remain usable” in Russia.)
I take that as a compelling recommendation for Signal.
Agreed. Clearly it must do simply what is said on the tin, otherwise why ban it?
This means it’s working.
That’s a glowing recommendation of Signal. And a good reminder to donate. I’m doing it right now.
Thankfully there are Signal proxies, VPNs and Tor (which can be used on mobile devices through Orbot.
Just turn on the censorship intervention feature
based
Worth highlighting that Telegram in Russia and WhatsApp in Venezuela - both with vastly larger user bases than Signal - are not blocked…
But they are not as secure as Signal
Believe that’s the point.
Legitimate countries don’t need to ban communications platforms.
I kinda disagree - that’s not to say that they don’t usually do so for illegitimate reasons (or that these bans are legitimate), but there’s plenty of valid reasons why a government would want/need to ban a platform
X, for example, has been giving the UK a whole lot of good reasons why they may wish to consider it (restoring the accounts of people like Tommy Robinson, allowing misinformation, the owner of the platform himself actively spreading that misinformation)
Poe’s Law
Do you really not see that this is literally just “we are the good guys so it is ok if we do it”?
“Misinformation” is whatever those in power decide to be such, whether it can be found on Signal or X or wherever, and whether the ones deciding it are in power in the UK, the US, India, Germany, Venezuela, or Russia.
Is tiktok ok?
Does ByteDance publish TikTok’s transmission protocol to demonstrate transparency?
Signal doesn’t even provide reproducible builds 🤣
They have provided reproducible builds for almost a decade https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/ https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/main/reproducible-builds/README.md
now do iOS
What for? Running on a closed system there is no point to begin with.
🙄
bytedance offered the government unfettered access and moved their entire infrastructure to the united states; it was more transparent than anything else out there.
Do you have any citation for that?
it was in their initial filing when they started the lawsuit to defend themselves.
i’ve been sealioned too much on the lemmyverse so you’re going to have to do your own googling.
Asking the person you’re debating to look up your own citations is certainly one way to converse. But ok, let’s go for it.
In Aug 2023, Forbes published an article describing the proposal of “unfettered access” you referred to:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/08/21/draft-tiktok-cfius-agreement/
In June 2024, the Washington Post reported that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) turned down the proposal and includes some broad reporting as to why:
The article isn’t very technical, but it mentions some interesting responsibility angles that the US wouldn’t want to back themselves into:
- throwing open some, but not all, doors to server operations and source code creates a mountain of work for the government to inspect, which would be a workload nightmare
- the US government’s deepest concerns seem to be about what data is going out (usage insights on the virtuous side and clipboard/mic/camera monitoring on the ultra shady side) and data coming in (bespoke content intended to influence US residents of China-aligned goals). Usage insights are relatively benign from national security perspective (especially when you can just mandate that people in important roles aren’t permitted to use it). Shady monitoring should be discoverable through app source code monitoring, which you can put the app platforms (Apple, Google, whoever else) on the hook for if they continue to insist on having walled app gardens (and if you trust them at all). The content shaping is harder to put your finger on though, since it’s super easy to abstract logic as far out as you need to avoid detection. “Here, look at these 50M lines of code that run stateside, and yeah, there are some API calls to stuff outside the sandbox. Is that such a big deal?” Spoiler: it is a big deal.
- the US can’t hold Byte Dance accountable so long as it remains in China. Let’s say the US agreed to all this, spent all the effort to uncover some hidden shady activity that they don’t like (after an untold amount of time has passed). What then? They can’t legally go after Byte Dance’s foreign entity. The US can prosecute the US employees, but it’s totally possible to organize in such a way that leaves those domestic employees free from misdeeds, leaving prosecutors unable to enforce misdeeds fairly. It’d be a mess.
The second article explains this somewhat, but I’m admittedly painting some conjecture on top regarding how a malicious actor could behave. I’ve got no evidence that Byte Dance is actually doing any of that.
But going back to the “influence the public” angle, I’m struggling to see how different TikTok is versus NHK America (Japan’s American broadcasts) or RT (American media from the Russian standpoint) aside from being wildly more successful and popular. But I guess that’s all there is to it.
I’d prefer our leaders also be transparent with us regarding their concerns about TikTok. The reductive “because China!!1!” argument is not compelling on its own.
I’d say social media platforms are an entire different beast.
Facebook is not the same as Facebook Messenger for instance.
We should allow the US surveillance giants into all countries, and let US companies control all world social media and communications platforms. Signal too, since it’s a US-hosted centralized service that must follow its NSL laws /s
I find these absolutist arguments particularly hilarious in face of UK now actively talking about restricting social media, and arresting people for posts. When people use media to incite violence and social unrest in countries the west considers to be adversaries, free speech stands above all other considerations. However, as soon as these things start happening in the west, then the restrictions on speech are immediately put into place.
Show me what Stalinism looks like
This is what Stalinism looks likeHow is that Stalinist? Censorship isn’t some unique rare policy, even 5EYES countries regularly challenge the legality of E2EE.
Ah, lemmy.ml welcome there xD
its !technology@lemmy.ml so what did you expect?
