I like everything Matthew Garrett writes but I can't resist being annoying about this:
Signal has had forward secrecy forever, right? The modern practice of secure messaging was established by OTR (Borisov and Goldberg), which practically introduced the notions of "perfect forward secrecy" and repudiability (as opposed to non-repudiability) in the messaging security model. Signal was an evolution both of those ideas and of the engineering realization of those ideas (better cryptography, better code, better packaging).
What's so galling about this state of affairs is that people are launching new messaging systems that take us backwards, not just to "pre-Signal" levels, but to pre-modern levels; like, to 2001.
nickpsecurity · 21h ago
Let's not forget three things from prior leaks:
1. Core Secrets said the FBI "compelled" companies to secretly backdoor their products. Another leak mentioned fines by FISA court that would kill a company. I dont know if you can be charged or not.
2. They paid the big companies tens of millions to $100+ million to backdoor their stuff. Historically, we know they can also pressure them about government contracts or export licenses. Between 1 and 2, it looks like a Pablo Escobar-like policy of "silver or lead."
3. In the Lavabit trial, the defendant said giving them the keys would destroy the business since the market would know all their conversations were in FBI's hands. The FBI said they could hide it, basically lying given Lavabit's advertising, which would prevent damage to the business. IIRC, the judge went for that argument. That implies the FBI and some courts tell crypto-using companies to give them access but lie to their users.
Just these three facts make me wonder how often crypto in big platforms is intentionally weak by governemnt demand or sloppy because they dont care. So, I consider all crypto use in a police state subverted at least for Five Eyes use. I'll change my mind once the Patriot Act, FISC, secret interpretations of law, etc are all revoked and violators get prosecuted.
tptacek · 21h ago
There is no such thing as "fines by FISA court". FISA doesn't hear adversarial cases and doesn't have statutory authority or even subject matter jurisdiction to enforce compliance on private actors. FISA is an authorizer for other government bodies, who then use ordinary Article III courts to enforce compliance. Other than the fact that they're staffed by Article III judges and not directly overseen by Article III courts, the FISA court functions like a magistrate court, not a normal court. So: I immediately distrust the source.
People are going to come back and say "well yeah that's just what they tell you about FISA court, but I bet FISA courts fine people all the time", but no, it's deeper than that: private actors aren't parties to FISA cases. It's best to think of them as exclusively resolving conflicts between government bodies.
voxic11 · 1h ago
You are just wrong:
> In some circumstances, nongovernmental parties may litigate the lawfulness of FISA orders or directives to provide information or assistance to the government. For example:
> A private company or individual that has been served with a directive to assist in acquiring information under Section 702 may petition the FISC to modify or set aside the directive. Conversely, the government may petition the FISC to compel the recipient to comply with the directive.
> In responding to the government’s petition, the private party has the opportunity to show cause for the noncompliance or argue that the order should not be enforced as issued.
> In 2007, Yahoo! Inc. refused to comply with directives issued by the government under provisions of FISA that have been replaced by Section 702. The government filed a motion with the FISC to compel compliance.
The warrants the court issues do apply to private parties. Failure to comply with a warrant is contempt of court and the court can compel compliance by fines and other sanctions. You can read what that looks like in this FISA court ruling against Yahoo.
It was a big company that said they'd be fined per day for non-compliance with mass surveillance. Core Secrets etc says that was done by FBI for FISA warrants. So, whoever enforces that.
I dont know the mechanics of it, like jurisdiction. It might be as you say. I just know they and their targets were both clear at different times they could force a company to do it.
tptacek · 14h ago
I have no idea, I just know they weren't facing fines from a FISA court.
And it's going to remain that way as long as people download apps written on PC through App Store.
remram · 14h ago
On PC? What do you mean?
b0a04gl · 1d ago
if this's using ephemeral keys with no forward secrecy and no ledger of interactions, what part of it’s actually bitcoin style besides the name?
cobbal · 23h ago
It uses cryptography (a little-known and mostly-useless offshoot of Crypto)
anon7000 · 20h ago
Plus, one of the simplest forms of cryptography is a basic SHA, so the words is practically meaningless without more details
masklinn · 1d ago
Having no actual use?
jeroenhd · 23h ago
Bitcoin is great for prospecting, laundering money across borders, and scamming gullible people. It's also easier to hide a stash of stolen bitcoins from the authorities for after you get released from jail than it is to hide a stash of actual money. Bitcoin is certainly no alternative to actual money but it's not entirely useless.
I think these Twitter DMs only does the scamming the gullible part, as you need to pay to use the feature and this is scamming people into thinking they're paying for secure messaging.
8note · 13h ago
prospecting? like, finding diamonds or oil or copper or something?
is the bitcoin a fundraising mechanism for juniors or something?
can you explain tbe mechanism?
neuroelectron · 12h ago
I think he means prospecting like pyramid scheme prospecting
shiandow · 1d ago
Bitcoin isn't a secure communication channel either?
hoppp · 6h ago
Its all out in the public....
mjg59 · 1d ago
Key derivation from a PIN? Although that's an implementation detail of the key backup rather than anything inherent in the actual messaging so who knows.
deciduously · 1d ago
They use a hash function.
gizmo686 · 1d ago
He didn't say it was Bitcoin style, just that it used "(Bitcoin style) encryption".
I was going to point out that Bitcoin does not use encryption; but technically I think it's signature algorithm (ecdsa) can be thought of as a hashing step, followed by a public-key based encryption step.
So, in the most charitable reading, it using ecliptic curve asymmetric encryption. Presumably for the purpose of exchanging a symmetric key, as asymmetric encryption is very slow. In other words, what basically everything written this decade does. Older stuff would use non EC algorithms, that are still totally fine, but need larger keys and would be vulnerable to quantum computers is those ever become big enough.
SAI_Peregrinus · 22h ago
> but technically I think it's signature algorithm (ecdsa) can be thought of as a hashing step, followed by a public-key based encryption step.
It really can't. If you're extremely drunk you can think of it as similar to hashing followed by a public-key based decryption step (signing uses the private key, as does decryption) but that's about as good an analogy as calling a tractor-trailer a container ship because both haul cargo. The actual elliptic-curve part of the operation isn't encryption or decryption, and thinking of it as such will lead to error.
RSA does have a simpler correspondence in that the fundamental modular multiplication operation is shared between decryption and signing (or between encryption and verification). But modular multiplication alone isn't secure, it's the "padding" that turns modular multiplication with a particularly-chosen modulus from some basic math into a secure encryption/signature system. And the padding differs, and the correspondence doesn't hold in real systems. RSA without padding is just sparkling multiplication.
varjag · 23h ago
I was going to point out that Bitcoin does not use encryption
Yeah Musk as not very technical person would hardly know the difference.
Thanks. The top comment there gets pretty technical and ends with:
> ... As noted in the help doc, this isn't forward secure, so the moment they have the key they can decrypt everything. This is so far from being a meaningful e2ee platform it's ridiculous.
The top comment is written by the person who wrote the blog post this thread is discussing.
consumer451 · 23h ago
Ah, thanks. I try not to be guilty of just comment surfing, but this was not one of those times. :/
michaelg7x · 23h ago
Username matches the current URL
zzo38computer · 20h ago
It would be better to use separate software for encryption, and to get the public keys by meeting with them in place.
LAC-Tech · 16h ago
Question: I plan to visit Peking soon, can I use Twitter there without a VPN? Thanks.
dongcarl · 16h ago
Some roaming SIM cards aren't restricted by the Great Firewall, but in general, yes you'd need a VPN.
cyberax · 14h ago
ALL roaming SIMs aren't restricted unless the home telecom company cooperates. The roaming traffic passes over a global MPLS network to the home mobile network, so it's not restricted by the national firewalls.
diggan · 1d ago
> All new XChat is rolling out with encryption [...] This is built on Rust with (Bitcoin style) encryption
What does "Bitcoin style encryption" mean? Isn't Bitcoin mostly relying on cryptographic signatures rather than "encryption" as we commonly know it?
paxys · 1d ago
It doesn't mean anything, just sounds cool to people who don't know the tech well enough. Same reason why your HDMI cable is "gold plated for 10x speed!"
jsheard · 1d ago
Gold plating electrical contacts does at least do something useful though, it helps to prevent oxidization/corrosion. A better analogy would be gold plated TOSLINK cables, which unfortunately do exist.
kees99 · 1d ago
A lot of quack tech is technically somewhat useful. Oxygen-free copper, occasionally used in "audiophile" cables - technically is a better electrical conductor (compared to regular copper), by a whooping low single-digit %.
Exact same effect could be achieved by making conductor that very same single-digit % thicker. Which is an order of magnitude cheaper. And ohmic resistance is not that important for audio-cables anyway.
jsheard · 1d ago
Sure, but we were talking about high-speed digital cables, not audio cables. When you're pushing 48gbps over copper (as in HDMI 2.1) the cable construction and connection integrity absolutely does matter, older HDMI cables don't work reliably at those speeds (if at all) despite having exactly the same pinout as the newer ones.
kees99 · 23h ago
Gold-plating of contact surface of electric connectors is indeed genuinely useful, on account of preventing contact oxidation.
Assuming good contact in connector(s) is achieved, gold-plating does not further help with high-speed signals. What matters here - is wire/cable itself, specifically, tight control over where conductors are relative to each other and insulation, so that impedance is well matched throughout, cross-talk is minimized, etc, etc...
__alexs · 23h ago
True audiophiles hold out for Low-background steel enclosures.
I can tell you're no connoisseur. Gold-plating a digital connector like HDMI makes sure the zeros are really round and the ones are really pointy. If you have the right setup you can definitely tell the difference.
thewarpaint · 1d ago
The source of that comment is provably not someone with deep technical expertise so take that with a grain of salt.
arealaccount · 16h ago
Its there because he knows it’s going to trigger people and will get more attention
It's just a buzzword meant to add perceived value.
nicce · 1d ago
For me it feels like that after sending messages over 5 years, you need 1TB storage just for the Twitter app.
londons_explore · 1d ago
e2e encryption is easy if everyone knows public keys for everyone else. This is how GPG works for example.
However, the challenge is distributing those keys in a trustworthy way - because if someone can tamper with the keys during distribution, they can MITM any connection.
I assume this "bitcoin style" encryption is a blockchain or blocktree of every users public key now and throughout history. Ship the tree root hash inside the client app, and then every user can verify that their own entry in the tree is correct, and any user can use the same verified tree to fetch a private key for any other user.
kstrauser · 1d ago
I’m not sure you appreciate how large that data structure would be if you had to ship it inside the app.
CodesInChaos · 1d ago
The idea is to only distribute the root of the tree to a client, query the server for the username you want to look up, which then returns the key and a short proof that this username maps to that key within the hash tree identified by the known root.
kstrauser · 23h ago
How is that substantially better than an API that returns a user’s key?
londons_explore · 22h ago
If the service provider (ie. the X.com servers) are evil, then the API can return false data and the client has no way to know.
However, with a merkle tree, the root hash is embedded into the app, and the servers return the data together with info chaining to the merkle root (typically a few kilobytes, even if the whole tree is hundreds of gigabytes).
With that info, the app can verify the chain to the root and be sure that the servers aren't returning false data.
fc417fc802 · 13h ago
To clarify the above. It protects against endpoint compromise but depends on the assumption that the service operator (the one computing the root hash) is trustworthy. In other words it significantly reduces attack surface.
londons_explore · 23h ago
It can be done with Merkel trees. You just ship the root hash.
Merkel trees are snapshot/read only though - so you then use a bitcoin style Blockchain to ship refreshed versions of the root tree hash (you can even ship it in the actual bitcoin Blockchain if you like, piggybacking on its proof of work to ensure different people don't see different root hashes)
JustFinishedBSG · 1d ago
I'm sure shipping a >150GB file to every user is perfectly fine and sound engineering.
NicolaiS · 20h ago
Parent comment writes: "ship[ing] the tree root hash", for a merkle tree ("bitcoin style") this would just be a single (small) hash no matter the tree size, i.e. 32 bytes is enough.
VWWHFSfQ · 1d ago
It's not _that_ far off from shipping a 3GB chrome webapp disguised as a desktop app (cough electron)
kstrauser · 1d ago
What’s a couple orders of magnitude between friends?
viraptor · 1d ago
We pretty much know this can't be practically done in a distributed way. Even the public federated stores for gpg keys have been flooded so much they stopped being usable.
yndoendo · 1d ago
Would the real XChat be able to sue X-Twitter for name infringement?
Maybe? XChat would have to show an established market in commerce in each market that x is infringing that they have an established commercial precense in. Also it's harder if xchat doesn't have a trademark in each of those regions.
remram · 14h ago
No, they would have to show an established market in commerce in ONE market that X is infringing.
pityJuke · 23h ago
I do find it funny that the library Twitter is using (according to TFA anyway) self-describes itself as:
> Caution
> Experimental library!
and
> While this library is just a wrapper around the well known Libsodium library it still comes with high potential of introducing new attack surfaces, bugs and other issues and you shouldn't use it in production until it has been reviewed by community.
The Twitter brand is so strong it survives even after a rebrand.
ashleyn · 22h ago
The footnote elaborates on why the author used the old name.
jhardy54 · 21h ago
> I'll respect their name change once Elon respects his daughter
Marsymars · 21h ago
It’s going to get confusing when trademark offices start getting submissions to expunge the “Twitter” trademark for lack of use.
romaaeterna · 1d ago
Given that Signal is pushing new code updates all the time, isn't it trivial for them to push new binaries that harvest messages/keys/whatever-they-want?
paxys · 1d ago
Their client is open source and is routinely audited. Their Android builds are fully reproducible. You can also build and run the app yourself if you want instead of downloading it from the app stores. It is virtually impossible for them to ship a backdoor, at least on Android, without the security community noticing.
romaaeterna · 1d ago
What exactly prevents them from doing a Windows build with an non-published change, signing it with the keys they control, and pushing it to an individual client through the upgrade servers which they control?
tabletcorry · 1d ago
Desktop clients communicate through mobile clients, so they don't have access to the key material.
romaaeterna · 20h ago
I don't believe that is the case. You can turn your phone off and the Signal desktop client will continue to work just fine.
dingaling · 22h ago
There is a window of vulnerability between a theoretically malicious update being pushed and the security community noticing that it doesn't correspond to a build of the published source. That might only be a few hours, or even minutes - but milliseconds would be enough to do most of its work.
jzb · 20h ago
Correct me if I'm wrong here -- let's say the Signal folks are breached or have been secretly waiting for just the right moment to push out some malicious code. How would they coordinate rolling it out to client devices to take advantage of that gap? I mean, depending on what the exploit was, they might be able to whack some percentage of users -- but it would be caught fairly quickly. I'm curious what sort of attack you're theorizing that would be worthwhile here.
fc417fc802 · 13h ago
> it would be caught fairly quickly
Noticing something and reacting to it are very different things. Signal could fairly trivially grab all historical data for all online users within a fairly limited window. However it would be a one off event so the value proposition of such an act is dubious.
rainonmoon · 4h ago
> fairly trivially
Show your working otherwise this is utterly spurious.
rainonmoon · 4h ago
What's especially frustrating about all of these "Signal could flip a switch and steal everybody texts!" histrionics is that if they were interested in doing that they... wouldn't work at Signal. They'd go join/start the hundreds of other companies we've heard of in the past few years that have stored/leaked incredibly sensitive data with an insignificant fraction of the effort Signal have put in to establishing their credibility (the TeleMessage scandal being just the latest). People should hold Signal accountable, constantly, forever. But the baseless FUD is frankly hysterical from a forum of ostensible technologists.
romaaeterna · 1h ago
This comment does not follow the context of the discussion.
Circling back up. Article author: Twitter might be untrustworthy and could bruteforce your keys. Use Signal.
Me: That's unreasonable. You also have to trust Signal.
Your answer just now: Why are people picking on Signal?!?
In fact, what the world really needs, rather than 3rd-party controlled encrypted messaging solutions like Twitter and Signal, is public apis for public key cryptography on non-trusted infrastructure, not tied to single groups. Everybody knows this. The reason that we instead have bodies like Signal -- a company that just so happens to tie every encrypted message to a real phone number and real human identity for no easily explained reason -- and the reason we have people who surely know better defending bodies like Signal in public, is an exercise left for the reader.
romaaeterna · 20h ago
They control the update servers. So it's possible to target a single user with a single build that no one else ever sees. What percentage of users verify every release?
comex · 19h ago
In theory, Binary Transparency (https://binary.transparency.dev/) solves that among other things. To pass verification, an update has to prove that it's included in a public log of releases.
But I guess Signal doesn't implement it?
NoThisIsMe · 18h ago
It's distributed in the Play Store, so Google controls the update servers, no?
Edit: or Apple, whathaveyou
paxys · 20h ago
Sure, but only if you are blindly auto installing every update as soon as it is pushed. All you have to do to protect yourself is download the bundle, run a checksum and then install it.
perching_aix · 20h ago
Then you audit and build it on your own? Or implement your own client?
No free lunch. If comms security is that critical for you, outsourcing its assurance via trust is never going to cut it.
e44858 · 23h ago
How easy would it be for them to ship a backdoor on iOS? With Apple's DRM it should be difficult to decrypt the IPA and compare it to the source code.
maqp · 23h ago
If your HW/OS doesn't allow verification of binaries, but your threat model requires doing that, then you need to use proper HW/OS that allows the verification. Also, iOS is proprietary so who knows what the OS is doing anyway. Also, this https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/DROPOUTJEEP-NSA-Apple-iPho...
paxys · 20h ago
If you are in the EU you can build the app from source and sideload it on your phone. Everyone else is out of luck. So yeah, either Signal or Apple can insert a backdoor into the app.
VWWHFSfQ · 1d ago
> It is virtually impossible for them to ship a backdoor [..] without the security community noticing.
OpenSSH was trivially backdoor'd [1] and distributed in several major distributions and the security community _did not_ notice until after it was already wild.
1) That was not "trivial", by any stretch of the definition. It was a 3-year long campaign by a (suspected to be) nation-state (or similarly resourced) actor! I don't think you can get any farther away from "trivial" if you tried.
2) From your link, it says: "Ubuntu 24.04LTS was a month away from being shipped with this backdoor, with other distros being on the same boat. Maybe the best way to describe it is this: had it gone undetected, Linux servers would have been running with a bomb waiting to be activated remotely." and "Luckily this backdoor was discovered in an early stage, and most of the Linux user community stays safe"
So, the security community _did_ notice.
xmodem · 23h ago
That was an attack targeting an optional dependency that receives significantly less scrutiny than OpenSSH proper. Which to be fair, is probably also the most plausible path if you wanted to attack Signal.
I would quibble with calling it "trivial" though.
yifanl · 1d ago
Sure. If you don't trust Signal to not do that, then you likely aren't using Signal.
thrance · 1d ago
Signal is open-source [1]. You can compile the code yourself and review each PR if you're that paranoid.
Yes but an app that never pushes update can also do that
regularjack · 20h ago
Which one do you trust more?
baby · 1d ago
At this point i don't care if it's encrypted, just make it better.
dehrmann · 23h ago
I don't get most of the hype around end-to-end encrypted messages when the app's source code isn't available for audit.
1oooqooq · 1d ago
why people keep giving it the good press connotation by calling it by the old name?
rsynnott · 1d ago
"X" is a _terrible_ name; in a headline it looks like someone forgot to fill out a template.
Twitter wouldn't be the first rebrand where people just decide they're not going to bother with this. Notably, there the odd year or so where the Royal Mail attempted to rebrand to 'Consignia' (in the alternate universe where the Iraq War didn't happen, this would be what everyone remembered about the Blair era), and Netflix's attempt, some years before scrapping it entirely, to rename its DVD delivery business to 'Quikster'.
fc417fc802 · 13h ago
It will always remain Comcast to me. Fixing your public image requires correcting your wrongdoing, not changing your name.
callc · 13h ago
Semi-related, parking your company name on widely used words in the dictionary like “Apple” and “Meta” really irks me.
Let’s just start some companies with the names:
- Let’s
- Just
- Start
You get the idea…
rsynnott · 5h ago
Interestingly, Apple (then Apple Computer) themselves fell afoul of this; they were repeatedly sued by Apple Corps (The Beatles' record label) over their name.
fc417fc802 · 13h ago
Git Pull LLC
tzs · 1d ago
I keep calling it Twitter, and urge everyone else to do so, because "twitter" is a better search term than "x", especially if you are using a search that doesn't let you specify word match.
AStonesThrow · 12h ago
Sorry, but I use a search engine where I can specify "site:x.com" for example, or better yet, "site:m.xkcd.com", and it shows me exclusively results on that site’s domain, rather than clumsily trying to pretend with a content keyword.
X.com is distinctive and unambiguous. Wikipedia has entertained at least 12 proposals to change the article name; 100% of them have failed, and they are issuing 3-month moratoriums on discussion now.
Honestly the new name is a bit of a prank on porn addicts. If someone is watching over your shoulder while you try to type "x.com" into the URL bar, autocomplete may reveal how many other sites begin with "x" that you’ve visited lately.
tzs · 1h ago
That's fine when you are searching for things on x.com.
But what about when you are searching a comment thread on another site to try to find a comment you remember where x.com was mentioned? The comment is probably not going to say "x.com".
jasonlotito · 1d ago
It's not a good press connotation. Quite the opposite. As for why? The answer is in the article.
> [1] I'll respect their name change once Elon respects his daughter
owebmaster · 1d ago
That is an interesting concept as it seems that Elon Musk's main battle is against people's right to not be called by an old name. Xitter transition have not been very successful.
jeffhuys · 1d ago
It's still running fine for me with actual interesting content. I don't get this take, feels like only people who don't use it at all (anymore) say it's been a bad transition or "X sucks now" but they're not using it.
It's still just Twitter, but you're not being banned anymore. So ACTUAL discussions can take place without having the thought police running around with a banhammer.
Yeah I'm not going to return to a website that doesn't ban people unable to have a civilized conversation.
jeffhuys · 1d ago
> I'm not going to return to a website that doesn't ban people unable to have a civilized conversation
That's your choice! Perfectly fine. For me, I don't want to close my eyes for what the world is actually thinking, even when they're in rage-mode. I think that makes your own thinking very narrow.
Also, it's a conscious choice they made - they're the only platform I know of that allows you saying anything with no penalty except for maybe a algorithmic one. That doesn't mean it sucks, or is a bad platform, or the transition failed.
happosai · 23h ago
Twitter won't open my eyes to the "world is actually thinking". It is a rather minor social media in the big picture:
There are certainly much better ways to learn what the world is thinking than a website without effective moderation. The problem was never "censorship" or "people are not allowed to say everything". The problem is the quantity of garbage the information supersewer generates and finding what is true and relevant.
jeffhuys · 23h ago
It’s interesting to me that we can have such different views of the same platform.
“Garbage”. “Supersewer”. I simply don’t see what you mean. Of course there IS garbage, but you’d actively have to seek it out. You’d have to scroll down all the replies to get to the shit. If you want to see that, it’s there, but if it doesn’t have value, it stays there. Up top are the sensible replies and discussion threads.
We can keep talking, but if you don’t want to see it, you’ll never see it.
loktarogar · 16h ago
> Of course there IS garbage, but you’d actively have to seek it out
I still instinctively open Twitter up most days. I scroll for a bit, see a couple of interesting tweets, but the majority is either garbage spam for views, overtly general racist tweets, purposeful right-wing distortion of facts to incite hate.
You go into any comments of a tweet that has gained a traction - the first comment will usually be "@grok is this true?", OF replies boosted by the original post (because the thread was garbage spam and they're getting paid), or obvious ChatGPT responses.
It feels really disheartening, especially having grown my career from the stuff i've seen and connections i've made on Twitter. Shell of its former self.
regularjack · 20h ago
Every time I open a Twitter link, most of the comments will be garbage.
hobs · 23h ago
Except for criticizing musk in the papers, as he's banned journalists, people "doxing" him by publishing his plane, etc
There's a million things you cant say, its now you are happy that the right wing nutjobs get to have their peace in public - that's the only part of the conversation that's "now allowed"
jeffhuys · 23h ago
I’ve already addressed the first part of your comment in another comment.
I don’t think there’s a million things you can’t say. I see tons of posts criticizing Elon. But I also see tons of people defending him in replies.
This is what we should want. Discussion. Open talking. And that includes “right wing nutjobs”.
If the vision you’re seemingly okay with censoring is so damaging that you can’t fight it with words, is the opposing vision strong enough?
nilamo · 1d ago
I won't speak for others, but I refuse to use a service that doesnt work if I'm not signed in. But when it did work, there didn't appear to be overzealous banning, and all the banning conversation appeared to be coming from sources that deserved to be banned, imo.
So when you say "it's still good" while also mentioning thought police, I take what you're saying with a huge grain of salt, as I never noticed thought police to begin with, so less of something unnoticable sounds very close to "complete anarchy, nazis, and that's how we like it". Like 4chan put on a business suit.
jeffhuys · 1d ago
If you never noticed the thought police, you were of the kind of people that Twitter wanted there to exclusively be. That's okay, but not a realistic view of the world. However, people with differing ideologies were pushed away. Yes, that includes literal nazis. But that also includes people who don't agree with the status-quo and want to see something different. The old twitter gave the impression of a world where 99% of the people agree with the current state of things, which is just not reality.
X is the only platform where you can see the real state of the world, raw, unedited. That's INCREDIBLY valuable and I'm absolutely baffled by how everyone here seems to celebrate censorship. We fought wars over this.
i80and · 1d ago
Yeah the censorship is overbearing now. I've since deleted my account of a decade but just using the word "cis" got a post of mine immediately auto-moderated.
I think people talking about how new-Twitter is somehow a bastion of free speech or whatever are just telling on themselves about what they think speech is.
jeffhuys · 23h ago
Are you banned? Is your post deleted? No? Then it’s not censorship.
Again, if you don’t match with the vision, don’t use the platform. But you have to accept that the platform exists, is very popular, and allows free speech, and you can’t change that.
drdeca · 22h ago
I don’t think Elon is particularly principled on the topic of free speech, seeing the way he blocked those outgoing links to competitors a while ago.
Regarding the auto moderation of that word, what does happen when a post gets auto moderated? Does it get like, semi-hidden or something?
jeffhuys · 22h ago
They go to the bottom, behind a button you have to press to reveal them.
rstat1 · 23h ago
*allows free speech Elon agrees with
which isn't really all that free after all.
nilamo · 23h ago
I recognize the benefits of open communication, while also not wanting to participate in something so gross. I'm absolutely baffled by people claiming censorship free is the only option, and that any moderation at all is bad. A free for all is not what I want, in any platform or space I participate in.
jeffhuys · 22h ago
I think this might be a reaction to the previous moderation which seemed to be extremely biased. The moderation that’s currently in place seems much less so, however some people seem to argue it’s now the same, just the other way around.
In my opinion a free-for-all is what the online world needs. But it’s just that, an opinion. Feel free to not participate. I’m interested in what you do participate in, except for HN, though - is there something better that doesn’t ban me for defending Elon, for instance? To put question marks by global policy? etc etc. That’s at least as popular as X is? We can just talk to huge names there, and call them out on their bullshit, if they spew it. That’s unbeatable.
kemotep · 22h ago
Well 2 years ago Elon completely broke twitter for me by requiring an account. 10 years of using twitter then poof no more twitter access.
I don’t know why an account is necessary to read updates from government agencies and local organizations after 10 years of not needing to do that.
paulryanrogers · 1d ago
"ACTUAL discussions" like what?
Because it would seem hate speech has had quite a surge:
Of course it surges when you re-instate complete free speech. But now you could interact with them, discuss with them, maybe sway them another way. Or you just ignore them and scroll away, or even block them, so the algorithm knows you don't want that content.
They're already being pulled down by the alg. It's just allowed now, and why shouldn't it be? I think it's better for humanity overall if these people are not pushed into a small echo-chamber but instead can speak freely and openly.
We should go back to sticks & stones. Let hate flow off you and instead look for love, which is also still there.
righthand · 23h ago
And when all the hate speech proponents flood the platform with bots? What happens when pushing down is not enough because there is too much? What happens when there are so many new accounts posting hate speech you can’t block them either. Free speech and word detection algorithms are not good moderation they are lazy moderation that refuses to address the problem most people have with Twitter.
Twitter is not the US and does not guarantee free speech. To insist that it must because it’s a US company is entirely missing the point. Banning people is essentially ignoring people. Which is what the text of “sticks and stones” is instructing.
jeffhuys · 23h ago
I’ve never mentioned “because it’s a US company” so I’ll ignore that part of the message.
Sticks & stones is a general thing that’s missing in a lot of people nowadays. Trying to protect everyone from bad words will only make them react more when they inevitably will encounter said bad words.
As for the rest of the “what if”s, I guess we’ll see what happens when it happens. As of right now, my For You page is filled with science, discussions, tech, friends, well-known people having normal discussions with “plebs”, etc.
If you don’t find value in the platform, simply don’t use it. Use Bluesky if you want.
righthand · 21h ago
Correct I mentioned it. If Twitter wasn’t a US company we’d never be having a conversation about freedom of speech so be ignorant about that all you want. However it’s silly you choose that reasoning.
Isn’t your suggestion to remember the words of “sticks and stones” the same as you advocating for how everyone should protect themselves from bad words?
I don’t use either platform because I find short form writing utterly valueless for anything than marketing purposes. You may say “but I read a lot of good discussions on there”. Great for you but the discussions are still mostly short form rhetoric with little value other than “talking out loud”. The other half of discussions is split between jobless comedians and hate-speech-as-freedom-of-speech advocates. I will never get my science, news, etc from a quote box. There’s a reason I deleted my account 10 years ago.
jeffhuys · 2h ago
FYI long-form is possible since a few years, and actively used by a lot of people.
wildpeaks · 22h ago
As much as I hoped Blue Sky might succeed where Mastodon didn't, it's by far the platform where I've gotten the most unwanted dickpics and thirst traps, and the general vibe feels so shallow and performative.
The signal to noise ratio is so low even when curating feeds, it feels pointless to post anything meaningful anymore, it just gets drowned in the noise and bots.
jeffhuys · 22h ago
Oh wow, didn’t know that. I never left X but saw a lot of talk about BS when the transition happened. I just assumed it was a clone of Twitter with mostly the people who left.
That sucks tho. I’m not against other places existing if it makes people feel better.
righthand · 21h ago
The purpose of Bluesky isn’t to make people feel better it’s to stave people off from being indebted to an advertising heavy society. Software like Twitter that’s designed to keep you engaged and defending it regardless how harmful it’s been in the last decade is the reason Bluesky exists.
bananapub · 1d ago
> Of course it surges when you re-instate complete free speech.
what? Elon routinely complies with random countries asking him to ban users, and routinely bans people he personally doesn't like. he even banned someone who was just reposting public flight data!
what on earth does "complete free speech" mean to you??!
jeffhuys · 1d ago
Routinely? I doubt that. Of course I don't agree with everything he does, but I agree with his vision.
Anyone still swayed by his vision is painfully naive
paulryanrogers · 22h ago
His vision seems to be "freedom for me, not for thee"
jeffhuys · 22h ago
Nice. Good discussion.
righthand · 1d ago
That’s a pretty damning study, post-purchase hate speech is nearly half the Twitter content. Sounds like hate speech is the “actual discussions”.
jeffhuys · 23h ago
That seems like a weird take. If 80% of the internet is spam (which it very well could be), is spam the internet?
I guess censorship is a popular thing now on HN. Never thought I would see all you people advocating FOR censorship. I’m happy Elon seems unmoving in his stance on this. We need to progress.
paulryanrogers · 17m ago
A lot of spam is censored by laws like CAN-SPAM act and fraud laws. Private mail services also censor spam with their own terms of service, with rules like DMARC.
singleshot_ · 16h ago
I believe it’s called a “coherent speech product,” not censorship.
I loathe the poorly educated.
righthand · 21h ago
The internet isn’t Twitter, people aren’t advocating for censoring the internet, they’re advocating for censoring a person on a digital service platform. If you don’t think you’d see people advocating for censorship on HackerNews then you don’t understand what HN platform is, because bans, downvotes, flagging, etc are all types of censorship.
If you don’t like the platform censoring you, go somewhere else or do what Elon did and buy the platform and change the rules for yourself.
sergiotapia · 1d ago
I only see bluesky types keep calling it twitter fwiw.
bigstrat2003 · 23h ago
I am by no means a bluesky person. I hate Twitter and all its clone sites, because I think they're tearing apart the social fabric by training people to interact in bite-sized hot takes in a cycle of outrage. I will still call it Twitter until the end of time, because I refuse to respect corporate rebrands. Whether it's Twitter, Facebook, Comcast, or anything else, I'm not going to play along with their silly name games.
upofadown · 1d ago
>...you're still relying on the Twitter server to give you the public key of the other party and there's no out of band mechanism to do that or verify the authenticity of that public key at present.
...
>Signal doesn't have these shortcomings. Use Signal.
Dunno that Signal is a really good counterexample for this particular aspect of E2EE messaging. The option exists to compare a 60 digit decimal number but the usability of this feature is such that most users don't even know that this is something they have to do. Just having a feature is not valuable if no one knows that feature exists and have no idea what any of it means.
I like the approach used by Briar Messenger. They just have the user use the number that represents identity in the system. There is no misleading feature that maps a phone number to the actual cryptographic identity. This makes it much harder for the user to unknowingly use the system in an unsafe way. A Briar identity looks like this:
Signal has had forward secrecy forever, right? The modern practice of secure messaging was established by OTR (Borisov and Goldberg), which practically introduced the notions of "perfect forward secrecy" and repudiability (as opposed to non-repudiability) in the messaging security model. Signal was an evolution both of those ideas and of the engineering realization of those ideas (better cryptography, better code, better packaging).
What's so galling about this state of affairs is that people are launching new messaging systems that take us backwards, not just to "pre-Signal" levels, but to pre-modern levels; like, to 2001.
1. Core Secrets said the FBI "compelled" companies to secretly backdoor their products. Another leak mentioned fines by FISA court that would kill a company. I dont know if you can be charged or not.
2. They paid the big companies tens of millions to $100+ million to backdoor their stuff. Historically, we know they can also pressure them about government contracts or export licenses. Between 1 and 2, it looks like a Pablo Escobar-like policy of "silver or lead."
3. In the Lavabit trial, the defendant said giving them the keys would destroy the business since the market would know all their conversations were in FBI's hands. The FBI said they could hide it, basically lying given Lavabit's advertising, which would prevent damage to the business. IIRC, the judge went for that argument. That implies the FBI and some courts tell crypto-using companies to give them access but lie to their users.
Just these three facts make me wonder how often crypto in big platforms is intentionally weak by governemnt demand or sloppy because they dont care. So, I consider all crypto use in a police state subverted at least for Five Eyes use. I'll change my mind once the Patriot Act, FISC, secret interpretations of law, etc are all revoked and violators get prosecuted.
People are going to come back and say "well yeah that's just what they tell you about FISA court, but I bet FISA courts fine people all the time", but no, it's deeper than that: private actors aren't parties to FISA cases. It's best to think of them as exclusively resolving conflicts between government bodies.
> In some circumstances, nongovernmental parties may litigate the lawfulness of FISA orders or directives to provide information or assistance to the government. For example:
> A private company or individual that has been served with a directive to assist in acquiring information under Section 702 may petition the FISC to modify or set aside the directive. Conversely, the government may petition the FISC to compel the recipient to comply with the directive.
> In responding to the government’s petition, the private party has the opportunity to show cause for the noncompliance or argue that the order should not be enforced as issued.
> In 2007, Yahoo! Inc. refused to comply with directives issued by the government under provisions of FISA that have been replaced by Section 702. The government filed a motion with the FISC to compel compliance.
https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/about-foreign-intelligence-sur...
The warrants the court issues do apply to private parties. Failure to comply with a warrant is contempt of court and the court can compel compliance by fines and other sanctions. You can read what that looks like in this FISA court ruling against Yahoo.
PDF warning: https://donohueintellaw.ll.georgetown.edu/sites/default/file...
I dont know the mechanics of it, like jurisdiction. It might be as you say. I just know they and their targets were both clear at different times they could force a company to do it.
https://inteltoday.org/2020/02/15/crypto-ag-was-boris-hageli...
We've always done this.
I think these Twitter DMs only does the scamming the gullible part, as you need to pay to use the feature and this is scamming people into thinking they're paying for secure messaging.
is the bitcoin a fundraising mechanism for juniors or something?
can you explain tbe mechanism?
I was going to point out that Bitcoin does not use encryption; but technically I think it's signature algorithm (ecdsa) can be thought of as a hashing step, followed by a public-key based encryption step.
So, in the most charitable reading, it using ecliptic curve asymmetric encryption. Presumably for the purpose of exchanging a symmetric key, as asymmetric encryption is very slow. In other words, what basically everything written this decade does. Older stuff would use non EC algorithms, that are still totally fine, but need larger keys and would be vulnerable to quantum computers is those ever become big enough.
It really can't. If you're extremely drunk you can think of it as similar to hashing followed by a public-key based decryption step (signing uses the private key, as does decryption) but that's about as good an analogy as calling a tractor-trailer a container ship because both haul cargo. The actual elliptic-curve part of the operation isn't encryption or decryption, and thinking of it as such will lead to error.
RSA does have a simpler correspondence in that the fundamental modular multiplication operation is shared between decryption and signing (or between encryption and verification). But modular multiplication alone isn't secure, it's the "padding" that turns modular multiplication with a particularly-chosen modulus from some basic math into a secure encryption/signature system. And the padding differs, and the correspondence doesn't hold in real systems. RSA without padding is just sparkling multiplication.
Yeah Musk as not very technical person would hardly know the difference.
X's new "encrypted" XChat feature doesn't seem to be any more secure
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44178008
> ... As noted in the help doc, this isn't forward secure, so the moment they have the key they can decrypt everything. This is so far from being a meaningful e2ee platform it's ridiculous.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44178544
What does "Bitcoin style encryption" mean? Isn't Bitcoin mostly relying on cryptographic signatures rather than "encryption" as we commonly know it?
Exact same effect could be achieved by making conductor that very same single-digit % thicker. Which is an order of magnitude cheaper. And ohmic resistance is not that important for audio-cables anyway.
Assuming good contact in connector(s) is achieved, gold-plating does not further help with high-speed signals. What matters here - is wire/cable itself, specifically, tight control over where conductors are relative to each other and insulation, so that impedance is well matched throughout, cross-talk is minimized, etc, etc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
However, the challenge is distributing those keys in a trustworthy way - because if someone can tamper with the keys during distribution, they can MITM any connection.
I assume this "bitcoin style" encryption is a blockchain or blocktree of every users public key now and throughout history. Ship the tree root hash inside the client app, and then every user can verify that their own entry in the tree is correct, and any user can use the same verified tree to fetch a private key for any other user.
However, with a merkle tree, the root hash is embedded into the app, and the servers return the data together with info chaining to the merkle root (typically a few kilobytes, even if the whole tree is hundreds of gigabytes).
With that info, the app can verify the chain to the root and be sure that the servers aren't returning false data.
Merkel trees are snapshot/read only though - so you then use a bitcoin style Blockchain to ship refreshed versions of the root tree hash (you can even ship it in the actual bitcoin Blockchain if you like, piggybacking on its proof of work to ensure different people don't see different root hashes)
http://xchat.org/
[0]: https://hexchat.github.io/news/2.16.2.html
> Caution
> Experimental library!
and
> While this library is just a wrapper around the well known Libsodium library it still comes with high potential of introducing new attack surfaces, bugs and other issues and you shouldn't use it in production until it has been reviewed by community.
[0]: https://github.com/ionspin/kotlin-multiplatform-libsodium
Noticing something and reacting to it are very different things. Signal could fairly trivially grab all historical data for all online users within a fairly limited window. However it would be a one off event so the value proposition of such an act is dubious.
Show your working otherwise this is utterly spurious.
Circling back up. Article author: Twitter might be untrustworthy and could bruteforce your keys. Use Signal.
Me: That's unreasonable. You also have to trust Signal.
Your answer just now: Why are people picking on Signal?!?
In fact, what the world really needs, rather than 3rd-party controlled encrypted messaging solutions like Twitter and Signal, is public apis for public key cryptography on non-trusted infrastructure, not tied to single groups. Everybody knows this. The reason that we instead have bodies like Signal -- a company that just so happens to tie every encrypted message to a real phone number and real human identity for no easily explained reason -- and the reason we have people who surely know better defending bodies like Signal in public, is an exercise left for the reader.
But I guess Signal doesn't implement it?
Edit: or Apple, whathaveyou
No free lunch. If comms security is that critical for you, outsourcing its assurance via trust is never going to cut it.
OpenSSH was trivially backdoor'd [1] and distributed in several major distributions and the security community _did not_ notice until after it was already wild.
[1] https://www.ssh.com/blog/a-recap-of-the-openssh-and-xz-liblz...
2) From your link, it says: "Ubuntu 24.04LTS was a month away from being shipped with this backdoor, with other distros being on the same boat. Maybe the best way to describe it is this: had it gone undetected, Linux servers would have been running with a bomb waiting to be activated remotely." and "Luckily this backdoor was discovered in an early stage, and most of the Linux user community stays safe"
So, the security community _did_ notice.
I would quibble with calling it "trivial" though.
[1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/main/reprod...
Twitter wouldn't be the first rebrand where people just decide they're not going to bother with this. Notably, there the odd year or so where the Royal Mail attempted to rebrand to 'Consignia' (in the alternate universe where the Iraq War didn't happen, this would be what everyone remembered about the Blair era), and Netflix's attempt, some years before scrapping it entirely, to rename its DVD delivery business to 'Quikster'.
Let’s just start some companies with the names:
- Let’s - Just - Start
You get the idea…
X.com is distinctive and unambiguous. Wikipedia has entertained at least 12 proposals to change the article name; 100% of them have failed, and they are issuing 3-month moratoriums on discussion now.
Honestly the new name is a bit of a prank on porn addicts. If someone is watching over your shoulder while you try to type "x.com" into the URL bar, autocomplete may reveal how many other sites begin with "x" that you’ve visited lately.
But what about when you are searching a comment thread on another site to try to find a comment you remember where x.com was mentioned? The comment is probably not going to say "x.com".
> [1] I'll respect their name change once Elon respects his daughter
It's still just Twitter, but you're not being banned anymore. So ACTUAL discussions can take place without having the thought police running around with a banhammer.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1876168991330439314
Yeah I'm not going to return to a website that doesn't ban people unable to have a civilized conversation.
That's your choice! Perfectly fine. For me, I don't want to close my eyes for what the world is actually thinking, even when they're in rage-mode. I think that makes your own thinking very narrow.
Also, it's a conscious choice they made - they're the only platform I know of that allows you saying anything with no penalty except for maybe a algorithmic one. That doesn't mean it sucks, or is a bad platform, or the transition failed.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...
There are certainly much better ways to learn what the world is thinking than a website without effective moderation. The problem was never "censorship" or "people are not allowed to say everything". The problem is the quantity of garbage the information supersewer generates and finding what is true and relevant.
“Garbage”. “Supersewer”. I simply don’t see what you mean. Of course there IS garbage, but you’d actively have to seek it out. You’d have to scroll down all the replies to get to the shit. If you want to see that, it’s there, but if it doesn’t have value, it stays there. Up top are the sensible replies and discussion threads.
We can keep talking, but if you don’t want to see it, you’ll never see it.
I still instinctively open Twitter up most days. I scroll for a bit, see a couple of interesting tweets, but the majority is either garbage spam for views, overtly general racist tweets, purposeful right-wing distortion of facts to incite hate.
You go into any comments of a tweet that has gained a traction - the first comment will usually be "@grok is this true?", OF replies boosted by the original post (because the thread was garbage spam and they're getting paid), or obvious ChatGPT responses.
It feels really disheartening, especially having grown my career from the stuff i've seen and connections i've made on Twitter. Shell of its former self.
There's a million things you cant say, its now you are happy that the right wing nutjobs get to have their peace in public - that's the only part of the conversation that's "now allowed"
I don’t think there’s a million things you can’t say. I see tons of posts criticizing Elon. But I also see tons of people defending him in replies. This is what we should want. Discussion. Open talking. And that includes “right wing nutjobs”.
If the vision you’re seemingly okay with censoring is so damaging that you can’t fight it with words, is the opposing vision strong enough?
So when you say "it's still good" while also mentioning thought police, I take what you're saying with a huge grain of salt, as I never noticed thought police to begin with, so less of something unnoticable sounds very close to "complete anarchy, nazis, and that's how we like it". Like 4chan put on a business suit.
X is the only platform where you can see the real state of the world, raw, unedited. That's INCREDIBLY valuable and I'm absolutely baffled by how everyone here seems to celebrate censorship. We fought wars over this.
I think people talking about how new-Twitter is somehow a bastion of free speech or whatever are just telling on themselves about what they think speech is.
Again, if you don’t match with the vision, don’t use the platform. But you have to accept that the platform exists, is very popular, and allows free speech, and you can’t change that.
Regarding the auto moderation of that word, what does happen when a post gets auto moderated? Does it get like, semi-hidden or something?
which isn't really all that free after all.
In my opinion a free-for-all is what the online world needs. But it’s just that, an opinion. Feel free to not participate. I’m interested in what you do participate in, except for HN, though - is there something better that doesn’t ban me for defending Elon, for instance? To put question marks by global policy? etc etc. That’s at least as popular as X is? We can just talk to huge names there, and call them out on their bullshit, if they spew it. That’s unbeatable.
I don’t know why an account is necessary to read updates from government agencies and local organizations after 10 years of not needing to do that.
Because it would seem hate speech has had quite a surge:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
They're already being pulled down by the alg. It's just allowed now, and why shouldn't it be? I think it's better for humanity overall if these people are not pushed into a small echo-chamber but instead can speak freely and openly.
We should go back to sticks & stones. Let hate flow off you and instead look for love, which is also still there.
Twitter is not the US and does not guarantee free speech. To insist that it must because it’s a US company is entirely missing the point. Banning people is essentially ignoring people. Which is what the text of “sticks and stones” is instructing.
Sticks & stones is a general thing that’s missing in a lot of people nowadays. Trying to protect everyone from bad words will only make them react more when they inevitably will encounter said bad words.
As for the rest of the “what if”s, I guess we’ll see what happens when it happens. As of right now, my For You page is filled with science, discussions, tech, friends, well-known people having normal discussions with “plebs”, etc.
If you don’t find value in the platform, simply don’t use it. Use Bluesky if you want.
Isn’t your suggestion to remember the words of “sticks and stones” the same as you advocating for how everyone should protect themselves from bad words?
I don’t use either platform because I find short form writing utterly valueless for anything than marketing purposes. You may say “but I read a lot of good discussions on there”. Great for you but the discussions are still mostly short form rhetoric with little value other than “talking out loud”. The other half of discussions is split between jobless comedians and hate-speech-as-freedom-of-speech advocates. I will never get my science, news, etc from a quote box. There’s a reason I deleted my account 10 years ago.
The signal to noise ratio is so low even when curating feeds, it feels pointless to post anything meaningful anymore, it just gets drowned in the noise and bots.
That sucks tho. I’m not against other places existing if it makes people feel better.
what? Elon routinely complies with random countries asking him to ban users, and routinely bans people he personally doesn't like. he even banned someone who was just reposting public flight data!
what on earth does "complete free speech" mean to you??!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/25/elon-mu...
Anyone still swayed by his vision is painfully naive
I guess censorship is a popular thing now on HN. Never thought I would see all you people advocating FOR censorship. I’m happy Elon seems unmoving in his stance on this. We need to progress.
I loathe the poorly educated.
If you don’t like the platform censoring you, go somewhere else or do what Elon did and buy the platform and change the rules for yourself.
...
>Signal doesn't have these shortcomings. Use Signal.
Dunno that Signal is a really good counterexample for this particular aspect of E2EE messaging. The option exists to compare a 60 digit decimal number but the usability of this feature is such that most users don't even know that this is something they have to do. Just having a feature is not valuable if no one knows that feature exists and have no idea what any of it means.
I like the approach used by Briar Messenger. They just have the user use the number that represents identity in the system. There is no misleading feature that maps a phone number to the actual cryptographic identity. This makes it much harder for the user to unknowingly use the system in an unsafe way. A Briar identity looks like this:
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