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  • 16 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 20th, 2023

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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
    1. 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.
    2. “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. […]

    3. “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/.
      1. ¶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.

      2. ¶“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.












  • Plus I cringe at the thought of 75% of the CBC budget being spent on content moderation.

    Theoretically, could they outwardly federate only? For example, they make a post which gets pushed out to other instances, but they would set their instance to not allow any external posts or comments to be federated into their instance, and they could close registrations. That way, the rest of the Fediverse could follow and interact with their content, and they wouldn’t have to deal with moderation. I’m not sure if that’s really how federation works, so please correct any inaccuracies.



  • Recently, my life feels like a blur, like I dont really remember what happened even in the past 2 weeks, and this has cause me some anxiety. […] How much of your life do you remember, like do you only remember major events in your life, or do you remember like what you have been doing for the past 2 weeks. […]

    I experience the same sort of feelings. What I find helps me a little bit is to journal at the end of the night and document what I did during the day and what happened during the day. This helps me reflect and ground myself on what goes on around me. Instead of me just existing with events passively happening around me, it forces me to sort of anchor events to my life. Having this sort of stuff documented also allows me to reflect on it in the future.