A prime one is that the entity that you (have no choice but to) trust today will eventually turn against you at some point down the road.

• How does that change with federation, you always trust someone. Why should I trust the shady person running software on their basement, even if you self host, you are trusting the developers not to ship bad or poorly written code.

using a 3rd party client is against Signal's ToS

As far as it being against signals tos, molly exists and had not received any problems from the signal foundation to my knowledge, discord has the same clause and they don't seem to give a rats ass. Sure they could enforce it but they don't, and personally with how matrix clients are handled they have mixed security, fluffychat has security issues ranging from outdated SDK versions to quite literally ddosing homeservers because of a non-existent rate limit.

pushing controversial features like crypto payments

The crypto stuff wasn't great but you know what's cool? You don't have to use it. Simple as that. You don't have to engage with it and you and I both know that. It's buried in settings and you have to find it yourself.

Signal is an entity that's incorporated in a jurisdiction and might be compelled by law or to degrade its encryption to comply with the local regulator.

• I've always used integrity as a metric as to how trustworthy a service is, and in terms of signals e2ee, they've never lied about it, it's been proven in court multiple times not having any data on their users, no government can compel anyone or any company for things they don't have. Signal had everything to lose by lying about their encryption and nothing to gain, so why would they? Why would any company take a huge chance at a death blow just because? Signal is a non profit so they don't have any incentive to degrade it, they would be dead tomorrow if they got caught.

Using a centralized service like Signal makes you an easily identifiable/prime target in such a scenario.

Signal is not an anonymity tool, and has never been advertised as such, if you need anonymity, signal is not a good choice. You can make it more anonymous by using a burner phone but that's a different topic.

No matter what Signal says, nobody but themselves can verify what code runs on their servers

• You can't really confirm what any software can or cannot do, even if it runs on your system. Open source software is bound to the same principals of code, it will do exactly what you tell it to do, even if it is not intended (a 0-day, bug, etc.). Thousands of people constantly are monitoring the Linux kernel and it is still found to have tons of 0 days baked in due to it running a fuck ton on ring zero. You can't just inspect code and know exactly what it's doing, unless it's a hello world program it gets quite complicated. Verified safety numbers also make sure that no man-in-the-middle attacks can take place, making conversations even more trustworthy and still not trusting any server.

As far as I understand the American law, any agency could tap into that, either directly, or via Amazon on which the whole thing is running.

If everything is encrypted, what could Amazon tap? You do realize sealed sender and PFS take away any trust from the server correct? It's all encrypted, your aren't trusting the server at all, it's completely trust-less, and unless you think Amazon or governments can at this very moment tap any encrypted data and decrypt it, I would recommend taking a walk outside and realize that no one, NO ONE can decrypt current encrypted standards.

Unless you can point me to a reputable article showing in great detail that signal is lying about their e2ee claims then I'll rest my case. Signal has been proven time and time again to not have any data on their users except the minimum required for the service to work, that's called integrity.

Also there will always be someone you trust on the internet, nothing will change that unless we completely rethink how the internet works.

Edit: added quotes Edit 2: added extra info

with the nature of the communication (text, video, image, …) from which a lot can be inferred

If the messages are E2EE, the server wouldn't have access to this information.

Totally agreed the project's actions against the community are shit. From a LibreSignal issue:

I understand that federation and defined protocols that third parties can develop clients for are great and important ideas, but unfortunately they no longer have a place in the modern world.

This sounds like a jaded, cynical individual. It's hilarious, sad, probably even delusional. How do they think the Internet and their operating systems work in this "modern world"? Magic fairy dust? It's difficult, thankless work put in by loads of people around the world despite enormous commercial pressure to do otherwise. Over decades. I respect Signal's work, but it's boneheaded attitudes like moxie's which impede progress, especially for the younger generations.

That’s a good response I hadn’t read before - thanks. Still so relevant 7 years on.

of a popular XMPP client

10k downloads for a hideous outdated app is popular now?

For sure he notices; the author runs their own email server and founded a direct competitor to WhatsApp. The author is making the point that what each of those have done - build proprietary software around federated protocols - is a financially lucrative business model. I'm sad to agree.

FWIW my opinion is that Signal's actions against these clients is petty and just shit. Thankfully, elsewhere we can see things happening differently: the interaction between Tailscale, Headscale and Wireguard gives me hope. Sourcehut is a cool project too.

That's not the point