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submitted 3 months ago by fer0n@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.ml

“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.)

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[-] davidagain@lemmy.world 167 points 3 months ago

I take that as a compelling recommendation for Signal.

[-] overload@sopuli.xyz 35 points 3 months ago

Agreed. Clearly it must do simply what is said on the tin, otherwise why ban it?

[-] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 107 points 3 months ago

Legitimate countries don't need to ban communications platforms.

[-] Korkki@lemmy.world 40 points 3 months ago
[-] Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website 76 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

He said "communications platforms" not "misinformation, social engineering, and mass data collection platform masquerading as a social media platform"

[-] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 19 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

you can just say "social media."

[-] barsquid@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

I wish they would apply that standard universally.

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[-] neuracnu 33 points 3 months ago

Does ByteDance publish TikTok’s transmission protocol to demonstrate transparency?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol

[-] eldavi@lemmy.ml 10 points 3 months ago

bytedance offered the government unfettered access and moved their entire infrastructure to the united states; it was more transparent than anything else out there.

[-] neuracnu 15 points 3 months ago

Do you have any citation for that?

[-] eldavi@lemmy.ml 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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.

[-] neuracnu 21 points 3 months ago

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:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tiktok-offered-an-extraordinary-deal-the-u-s-government-took-a-pass/ar-BB1nfAcE

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.

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[-] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 25 points 3 months ago

I'd say social media platforms are an entire different beast.

Facebook is not the same as Facebook Messenger for instance.

[-] carotte 11 points 3 months ago

tiktok is a platform to share information and communicate, yes

which is why the french government banned it in Kanaky ("new caledonia") during the protests there, as it was a tool of communication used by the protesters

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[-] pewgar_seemsimandroid 3 points 3 months ago

probably not in anyway unless if bytedance strips the algorithm and sells it to like cloudflare, mozilla for example instead of facebook.

[-] xor 13 points 3 months ago

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)

[-] dessalines@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 months ago

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

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[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 69 points 3 months ago

Worth highlighting that Telegram in Russia and WhatsApp in Venezuela - both with vastly larger user bases than Signal - are not blocked...

[-] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 25 points 3 months ago

But they are not as secure as Signal

[-] toynbee@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago

Believe that's the point.

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[-] skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 3 months ago

The session keys for WhatsApp are stored on Meta servers, so the encryption is meaningless. Meta can read everything everyone types. Yet all of the eastern hemisphere seem to worship it like it's pure platinum.

[-] whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 months ago

I don't think anyone took those seriously as private messengers. On another note, I think Maduro cracked down on WhatsApp as well, and called Venezuelans to cancel Meta altogether. Or something.

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[-] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 45 points 3 months ago

Just turn on the censorship intervention feature

based

[-] fubo@lemmy.world 34 points 3 months ago

Show me what Stalinism looks like
This is what Stalinism looks like

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 31 points 3 months ago

How is that Stalinist? Censorship isn't some unique rare policy, even 5EYES countries regularly challenge the legality of E2EE.

[-] InfiniWheel@lemmy.one 31 points 3 months ago

Stalinism is when thing bad.

[-] Klear@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 months ago

Stalinism is literally 1984

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[-] rageagainstmachines@lemmy.world 32 points 3 months ago

That's a glowing recommendation of Signal. And a good reminder to donate. I'm doing it right now.

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[-] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 3 months ago

Thankfully there are Signal proxies, VPNs and Tor (which can be used on mobile devices through Orbot.

[-] atimehoodie@lemmy.ml 23 points 3 months ago

This means it's working.

[-] tired_n_bored@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago

Client/Server apps will do that in hostile countries, that's why people are moving to decentralized messaging platforms such as Matrix

[-] apprehensively_human@lemmy.ca 9 points 3 months ago

Matrix has the unfortunate problem right now where all the big clients have matrix.org set as the default homeserver. Yes, it is a decentralized and federated protocol, but I wonder how many users are registered on matrix.org vs other servers.

[-] Mwa@thelemmy.club 8 points 3 months ago
[-] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 months ago

Matrix lacks metadata encryption

[-] barryamelton@lemmy.ml 12 points 3 months ago

And before lacked this and that. It keeps improving, contrast to Signal having the server code closed source for more than a year so the Signal devs could get a headstart and insider knowledge in their Signal-included crytpo coin grief.

How one can trust Signal after them showcasing what they truly stand for is mind blowing.

[-] fira959@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Whats mind blowing is the BS people like you come up with to shit on a non profit open source project.

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[-] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Signal having the server code closed source for more than a year so the Signal devs could get a headstart and insider knowledge

That argument makes absolutely no sense. This server-side code does almost nothing. The only task it really has is passing around encrypted packets between clients. All of the encryption is client-side, of course including metadata encryption. That's how end-to-end encryption works. The server code really doesn't matter. The Signal protocol, which is used for client-side, local, on-device end-to-end encryption has always been fully open, and it can be used by any app/platform.

How one can trust Signal after them showcasing what they truly stand for is mind blowing

It's very simple. The client is open source, and the encryption happens locally within the client application. You don't need to trust anything or anyone except for the code and mathematics, which are fully open, so you can verify them yourself.

It's mind-boggling how people attempt to spread so much misinformation while having absolutely no understanding of the topic their talking about.

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[-] fira959@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

You can just as easily identify servers of a decentralized platform and block them. The disadvantage of a central service would come into play if say the US were to intervene, though Signal has already said they would move abroad if that was the case. For network level blockage it makes no difference if the service is central or not

[-] Ohmmy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 months ago

It makes a difference in that you have to play perpetual whack-a-mole not only with VPN's but with hosting servers.

[-] fira959@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 months ago

That is true for both cases as well. One thign to add though is that signals own cencorship circumvention makes it even better at resisting this kind of blockage then an arbitrary decentralized protocol, though for an objective comparison it would take some research.

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[-] communism@lemmy.ml 16 points 3 months ago

Glad it at least seems easy to circumvent with a VPN

[-] bitwolf@lemmy.one 14 points 3 months ago

Time to run some proxies for these oppressed people.

[-] refalo@programming.dev 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

There are already many signal proxies available, plus an unlimited number of VPNs to choose from (or self-host yourself on a VPS)

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[-] x00z@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

I wonder why these 2 countries specifically.

Some time ago it was reported that Russian Wagner groups have been spotted in Venezuela.

Now these 2 countries have banned Signal.

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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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