Signal president Meredith Whittaker is prepared to withdraw the privacy-focused messaging app from Australia — saying she hopes it doesn’t become a “gangrenous foot” by poisoning its entire platform by forcing it to hand over its users’ encrypted data to authorities.
Ms Whittaker says Signal would take the “drastic step” of leaving any market where a government compelled it to create a “backdoor” to access its data, saying it would create a vulnerability that hackers and authoritative regimes could exploit, undermining Signals’ “reason for existing”.
Pressure has been mounting on Signal and other secure messaging platforms. ASIO director general Mike Burgess has urged tech companies to unlock encrypted messages to assist terrorism and national security investigations, saying offshore extremists use such platforms to communicate.
as with Signal, is not really about what you’ll use, but what alternative gains traction and you can persuade your contacts to use. I hope one of the decentralised alternatives is able to rise to mainstream status.
Persuading enough people I know to use Signal was hard enough already. I only got lucky because I already had some other friends who were already on the platform. It’s much easier to persuade people if you tell them other people are already using it. I just get frustrated that people are too lazy to tap a couple of buttons on their phone to download an app.
One of my friends is just so opposed to using anything else other than Meta Messenger and SMS. He says he doesn’t want app bloat. I get it, but I’d also like to not have corporations spying on our chats. 🙄
App bloat lol. Meta apps are some of the most bloated and resource hungry apps out there.