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Signal isn’t federated [1][2][3.1]; it’s decentralized [1][2][3.2]. Though, for all practical purposes, I would generally argue that it’s centralized.
References
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
- This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
- “Signal (software)”. Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-06T09:34Z. Accessed: 2025-02-1T09:30Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software).
- ¶“Architecture”. ¶“Servers”.
Signal relies on centralized servers that are maintained by Signal Messenger. In addition to routing Signal’s messages, the servers also facilitate the discovery of contacts who are also registered Signal users and the automatic exchange of users’ public keys. […]
- ¶“Architecture”. ¶“Servers”.
- “Reflections: The ecosystem is moving”. moxie0. Signal Blog. Published: 2016-05-10. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:40Z. https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/.
- ¶5. to ¶“Stuck in time”. ¶3-6
One of the controversial things we did with Signal early on was to build it as an unfederated service. Nothing about any of the protocols we’ve developed requires centralization; it’s entirely possible to build a federated Signal Protocol-based messenger, but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all. […] [interoperable protocols] [have] taken us pretty far, but it’s undeniable that once you federate your protocol, it becomes very difficult to make changes. And right now, at the application level, things that stand still don’t fare very well in a world where the ecosystem is moving. […] Early on, I thought we’d federate Signal once its velocity had subsided. Now I realize that things will probably never slow down, and if anything the velocity of the entire landscape seems to be steadily increasing.
- ¶“Stuck in time”. “Federation and control”. ¶6.
An open source infrastructure for a centralized network now provides almost the same level of control as federated protocols, without giving up the ability to adapt. If a centralized provider with an open source infrastructure ever makes horrible changes, those that disagree have the software they need to run their own alternative instead. It may not be as beautiful as federation, but at this point it seems that it will have to do.
- ¶5. to ¶“Stuck in time”. ¶3-6
Yeah. I love Signal but it doesn’t belong in that list. Dansup (creator of loops and pixelfed) is apparently working on “Sup” that will be a decentralized alternative to whatsapp.
To me this person sounds like they have too many big projects at once. I wish them success tho
Yeah… I’m bit afraid of “kbin Ernest Effect” (not sure what a proper term is) where personal issues pile up and the sole head developer just disappears.
Haven’t followed dansup much but from what I understand he is much more open to pull requests and listening to the community, but time will tell. Right now I appreciate and love his effort, giving, and the impact on fediverse he is brining.
The kickstarter was a good idea.
Given that I’ve waited 3 weeks to join his smaller instance of pixelfed.art, I can tell things are already piling up. I am hoping the kickstarter does help.
Delta.chat already exists
Matrix?
XMPP is an established federated messaging app with encryption.
There isn’t much information about “Sup”, but if I had to guess it could be that dansup is making sup app with XMPP(rotocol) as the messaging protocol.
Originally it was supposed to be ActivityPub based, but recently they posted something about it being for XMPP, Matrix and IRC as well 🤷♂️ Maybe they decided to fork Pidgin 😂
IMHO Sup. isn’t going to happen. They will have their hands more than full with Pixelfed’s new popularity and maybe Loops.
Oh! didn’t know that, I thought activitypub can’t be used for secure messaging. Lol really hope its XMPP!
Yeah I didn’t take it that seriously when it was announced right now. Just hope pixelfed stays afloat amidst the user flood and hope he can publish loops as open source soon!
100% agree >.> Like as much as i love (and trust) Signal i would never call it the same as Mastodon or Matrix for Example >.> This was like comparing Appels and Oranges -.-
Bro put citations in his lemmy comment 💀
I wish more people did that ngl 💀
I wish Boost understood the collapsible spoilers.
On my client, it’s all expanded and I see all the formatting characters. It looks/works great in a browser though.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
My comment wasn’t protesting the use of Signal; it was rather clarifying the misinformation in OP’s post — ie misinformation that Signal is a federated service.
Yeah, Moxie has openly shot down the idea of adding federation to Signal, and I’ve never heard them claim Signal was decentralized.
Matrix is federated, distributed, and decentralized.
XMPP is federated and decentralized.
Matrix is […] distributed […].
It is? How so?
Matrix servers keep a copy of any remote room an account on the server has joined, and it’s possible to recreate a room from the copies held on different servers. There are more details I don’t remember, but at a high level that’s how it’s distributed.
Storing messages of remote rooms in addition to local rooms is why people complain about the storage requirements of Matrix servers. They don’t realize it’s distributed.
but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all.
The fact that we have a telephone system that works with separate providers contradicts this sentiment. If I want to pick up the phone and talk to my cousin’s puppy in New Zealand, I can do that without creating an account on his provider’s service.
I don’t understand why we’ve forgotten this as a society. Yes, it was difficult to upgrade the phone systems over the past century, but it’s worth it in my opinion. I really wish we’d start seeing government regulation that says “you should be able to talk to someone on a service without having to create an account on said service.” I thought the DMA would do this, but sadly, Whatsapp still requires an account to talk to people using that service. Very disappointing.
Signal is hostile to third party clients like Molly.im as well
That’s not true. Moxie only had a problem with a fork called “LibreSignal” because it was using their name. He didn’t want users to confuse the apps.
it’s decentralized
No it’s not. From literally your own comment:
Signal relies on centralized servers
For a decentralized messenger use https://delta.chat/
it’s decentralized
No it’s not. From literally your own comment:
Signal relies on centralized servers
I was using “decentralized” to mean that there isn’t centralized control over ownership of the service in general — eg anyone can spin up their own server (impractical, imo, pushing it more towards being centralized) and people can use it (making it decentralized, imo (Please correct me if I am wrong, but I do think my usage of the term is appropriate in this way.)), but people who use that server can only communicate with that server (making it not federated). But yes it could still be said to be centralized in that it operates on a client-server model [1].
This is more an argument of definitions, though. I’m not trying to claim anything in bad faith.
References
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
- This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
That’s just open source, not decentralized. I can’t find a definition of decentralization that would even make it vague. From Wikipedia:
Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and given to smaller factions within it.
Signal has a central authoritative server and to use it with any other server you have to modify the source code.
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
For the avid readers out there, bookwyrm is a fantastic alternative to goodreads.
Yes it’s excellent! Also noting for those that aren’t aware: Goodreads is owned by Amazon.
Is there a way to automatically add books to it when a book in my Calibre Library gets marked as completed?
Unfortunately, the switch from YouTube to PeerTube has not worked for me so far. I can’t find a decent instance (not full of right-wing/conspiracy content) with interesting stuff that also allows me to make an account.
Yes finding the right instance on peertube is a nightmare — and also the general lack of quality content, or subtitling, which makes it as good as useless for deaf people like me.
Ah. I see…
Don’t worry, your successor isn’t offering anything big. You’ll still be around for many more days to come.
I don’t get the joke
Signal is not Fediverse! Element/Matrix is!
Element/matrix aren’t part of the fediverse, either. It doesn’t speak AP.
Matrix is federated, Signal is not.
although it is federated, it isn’t apart of the fediverse, as it doesn’t use activitypub.
deleted by creator
Are we claiming now that Activity Pub is the only protocol that we can use for the fediverse? I think XMPP is roughly 30 years old at this point, and I’m pretty sure Activity Pub is much younger than that. I could be wrong though.
But regardless, I don’t see why Activity Pub has to be the only protocol we accept to be considered a part of the fediverse. It’s not even like different AP implementations talk to each other all that well. My understanding is that Mastodon doesn’t federate that well with Lemmy, and I haven’t seen Loops or Pixelfed on Lemmy yet either.
I’d be happy to be corrected on any of this though, I haven’t looked too closely into exactly how AP works or how it’s supposed to interoperate with different applications.
Don’t use Matrix the devs knew about sidechannel vulnerabilities and ignored them for years. This is peak negligence and should immediately disqualify you from touching anything security related.
the author literally picked random projects from github tagged as matrix, without considering their prevalence or whether they are actually maintained etc.
if you actually look at % of impacted clients, it’s tiny.
meanwhile, it is very unclear that any sidechannel attack on a libolm based client is practical over the network (which is why we didn’t fix this years ago). After all, the limited primitives are commented on in the readme and https://github.com/matrix-org/olm/issues/3 since day 1.
From your link.
Unpopular Opinion Lemmy and PeerTube logo look ugly.
Unpopular opinion: your opinion is not unpopular at all.
I think it’s just the colours for the peertube one. I like that it’s three individual play icons to signify the federation aspect, but the colours are just dull.
as i say peertube is currently a alt to twitch as well as youtube
Youtube is probably the one that you can’t “Just Switch To Fediverse”
Youtube content is mainly by creators. If they won’t leave, there will be no transition. And unlike reddit posts, you can’t just reupload. Because they will copyright strike you and take it down. Also, videos take up a lot more space than just text and some low-res memes like reddit-type sites.
reddit is essentially a bunch of strangers talking to people, moving froms stranger Group A to stranger Group B is very easy to do. The reddit > Lemmy transition is probably one of the easiest. You’re just joining a new group of strangers.
For everything else, your contacts will also need to switch.
For Mastodon, the people you follow will also need to switch. This is even harder than getting your friends to switch.
Hear me out.
Creators should be hosting peer tubes. And they should host exclusively their own content. Fans of their can subscribe to whatever systems they want to pay and support.
For creators, it’s a backup for when YouTube the project inevitably fails. For fans as well. But it’s also a backup of their content.
Tech-savvy content creators, sure…
Your average content creator that wants to make Minecraft videos? Unrealistic.
I hate the monopoly Youtube has, but all of the federated alternatives have a learning curve the general public isn’t willing to deal with.
Not to mention it lacks any (ethical) monetization options. And the app is absolutely rudimentary, lacking even basic functionality.
Framasoft made it clear they don’t want to make it a Youtube alternative though, however it could be through plugins. So there’d have to be a company or cooperative using it as a base to build upon, which is actually realistic. Especially European ones; not because Asia wouldn’t be interested in being more independent on the US as well, but because Framasoft is from France and Europe actively works towards this goal anyway with lots of money behind it.
A lot of youtubers make a living posting videos.
They dont have a good enough reason to risk going to a much smaller audience with no ads and no membership system
They also probably arent knowledgeable enough about computers to switch
For Mastodon, the people you follow will also need to switch. This is even harder than getting your friends to switch.
Well I switched from the birdsite to Mastodon because a) I like to shout in the void and b) see what other people are shouting into the void. Doesn’t really ultimately matter who’s doing the shouting. People who go to social media exclusively for news and updates are a bit strange when you really think about it. You’ve got to have the shout in you.
(I’m only being half facetious here)
You also can’t just switch from whatsapp to signal. I have hundreds of contacts on whatsapp that message me constantly there, and 2 on signal.
@jonjuan That’s totally true! I tried to use WhatsApp just for work and Telegram for my friends and contacts, but only my wife and mom were talking to me there 😂. However, I think it’s important to keep talking to people about alternatives. That way, we can switch from this “proprietary web” to a free one.
PeerTube appears to be completely devoid of content
What does signal have to do with anything?
The post is really about abandoning the tech oligarchy more than specifically using federated technology.
I keep seeing this type stuff but neither peertube or friendica are genuine replacements at this point, mastodon is weaksauce compared to akkoma or a misskey fork, and loops is alpha software. also yes signal is centralized but it just works and has contact discovery so it owns matrix and xmpp when compared to whatsapp. basically none of this stuff is truly ready
As software, PeerTube is great and there’s actually plenty of content to consume if you can find it. The more content creators we can get to use PeerTube, the more appealing PeerTube will also become.
Check this link out, if looking for content: https://peertube.wtf/
“If you can find it” … that’s the crucial point I suppose … but without a discovery algorithm, interesting creators, and a VAST content archive, it can hardly be called an “alternative” for YouTube.
When I was looking into it I found the best use case was to use it as a self-hosted video archive to replace/extend my Vimeo. At least at that point, all instances that were remotely interesting were not taking any users, and the generic ones seemed to be very far away from what I’m doing content-wise.
And I guess as long as that’s the case, and you have no ways to monetize content nor any significant reach due to the federated fragmentation, I don’t think it’s an interesting software/federated platform for creators …
Check this link out: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115 for servers and have a look at https://peertube.wtf/ for some of the content available on PeerTube.
If you are a content creator, you need to take the first step. Viewers will come after you, not before.
I’m running my own instance, and typically post my stuff on mastodon, so I guess I have made the first step?
It’s a bit of a Catch-22 I suppose … low numbers of viewers makes it less attractive for creators, and fewer interesting creators make it less attractive for viewers.
Taking into account the other aspects that make it less attractive for viewers (fragmentation and inconvenience … having to dig through “Find the right instance for you” tutorials, no matter how well curated, can be a bit of a turn-off compared to just going to a central point and find what you’re looking for), I don’t have that much hope that it’ll reach a critical mass of both viewers and creators to catapult Peertube into large-scale relevance … as sad as I am about saying that.
Cool. What’s your instance?
And yes, it is a catch-22 or a “chicken before the egg” issue, but I’m confident we will see even more content creators on PeerTube in the future.
(sorry for the late reply)
https://see.ellipsenpark.de/ --> again, single-user, single-topic, more of an archive really
I find youtube to be the hardest one on this list
Thanks for the tip, friend!
Hi, I think too many people are focusing too much on the type of software included in this chart. I don’t think the goal of the person that created the chart was to create the ultimate guide to move to the Fediverse or FOSS apps with all the options available for them. I believe it prioritizes simplicity, and it’s clearly directed towards people unaware that these alternatives exist.
Most people I know don’t even know what the Fediverse is, and I think this initiative is for them.
I know that debating which FOSS/Fedi apps are the best is a big matter of concern for people that are already aware of the problems some platform have. But focusing too much on this debate not only creates more division among supporters of FOSS/Fedi, but it is also drawing attention from the main point: Bringing more people to the Fediverse.
Facebook Marketplace - > Craigslist
