Governments routinely fund the development of secure and open communication systems because they themselves benefit from having such communication tools which can be trusted. By the logic presented in this "essay", one shouldn't be using the internet at all. What you need to check is whether Signal's technical claims about its encryption is true or not. There is nothing in this article that raises any question on Signal's encryption. We already know how much data Signal has on its users through their responses to various legal subpoenas over the years (spoiler: its pretty much nothing).

Here are some cool links for you to check out:
https://signal.org/bigbrother/
https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/new-documents-reveal-government-effort-impose-secrecy-encryption

How exactly is Signal anti-FOSS? This might have been a problem before (the article is from 2021) but I checked the Github link in the article and the server was updated 18 hours ago with frequent updates this year alone. I also find the source of funding argument to be pretty flimsy. Though I do agree with the conclusion that federated alternatives are better for privacy. For my personal threat model Signal is fine for me.

No hate though, it's an interesting read, I'd like to see more discussions like this.

@Unlucky_Boot3467 This is an interesting read for sure, but I see no concrete evidence in the essay that suggests that Signal is insecure. Signal was never anonymous; users who have Signal accounts (myself included) are well aware that their Signal ID is tied to their phone number. If Signal were not offering the E2EE promised, that would be huge... but nothing in the evidence or the article suggests that that this the case.

To be sure, I think Matrix great. But I have to wonder at the agenda behind the article... indirect initial funding from the US government at the outset, even absent malfeasance on Signal's part, is bad, while direct current endorsement of Matrix by the French government is... good? to be clear, I consider neither problematic on their own, but there doesn't appear to be much in the way of logic behind that reasoning.

Overall, I'd like to see us move away from centralized control of communication.. and Matrix might in fact be that eventual solution. But that doesn't mean that Signal isn't safe for those who understand that it is not, generally speaking, anonymous to use.

Ok, so what is better with other apps and why shouldn't one recommend signal over the apps people use (say Whatsapp, telegram)

Thank you for posting archive links

Signal haters are back. I skimmed it and didn’t see anything remotely convincing or new. I was hoping this lemmy community wouldn’t turn into quite the level of deranged conspiracy posting as the subreddit of the same name, but it looks like that may not be the case.