Elon Musk’s X blocks links to Signal, the encrypted messaging service
Signal has been a primary method of communication for federal workers looking to blow the whistle on DOGE.
You know, for a free speech supporter, he sure seems to hate it when people speak freely.
"Free speech absolutist"*
hes quite the selective speech supporter
He absolutely wants to support the speech he agrees with. The rest can get fucked.
Only the cool kids know where to get FOSS.
Is signal foss?
Yeah look: https://github.com/signalapp
It's source-available
They also block any content, even private messages that contain Bluesky for example.
Time to create redsky, yellowsky, and pinksky URL forwarders
Redground
I was waiting for such endorsement, maybe my friends will switch now.
Agree this reinforce that signal is good for now.
In kinda pissed with them not agreeing to the chat app interoperability protocolo though, i want to delete whatsapp so bad...
It was never about free speech
Very free speech absolutist of him.
Didn't Signal get big after Musk endorsed it? What gives?
4years ago yeah https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-signal
Yes, but then last year he started saying it had known vulnerabilities that weren’t being fixed, around the same time Telegram was attacking Signal’s credibility. I seem to remember him outright endorsing Telegram but have only done a quick search and that hasn’t popped up.
saying there are unspecified "known vulnerabilities" within Signal
His source: Trust me bro
Not really. It's still not big. It definitely got bigger after he supported it though.
Yup. I started using it in part because of his tweet
Been using Signal for years. Love it.
Makes sense than an anti-free speech dipshit like Elon Musk would oppose it.
same. No stupid gimmicks and whatever. Just secured messaging.
It's not easy to leave WhatsApp. I've transitioned to Signal a month ago and lost contact with a lot of people. My friends and family think I'm going crazy for attitudes like these. "You can't change the world on your own".. like that was the plan 😅
Thanks Musk, that was the motivation I needed to keep away from WhatsApp.
Obviously not a X/Twitter user, I'm not a fkin idiot.
"You can check out any time you like... But you can never leeeave."
Leaving is never really an option. But running the two apps side by side still works.
It’s a slow and constant process of onboarding people to signal. I managed to onboard my local gaming group into using Signal after Trump got elected.
I managed to get my parents and brother to switch to signal two years ago, never switched back and it's always working, very easy to use. I'm pretty sure whatsapp will enshitify at such a rate that signal will absorb the users.
I’ve never used whats app and I never plan to. Recently I’ve been trying Line for messaging my family abroad and I like how it’s a Japanese/ Korean app so I can get away from American corporations
Keep on pushing, I've been transitioning to Signal and now I've got a handful of good friends on there. People are realising what's going on but be mindful that a lot of people have businesses and work that depend on it.. They are hostages. But if everyone changes gradually it will reach a point they won't be anymore. Keep on preaching brother!
Here are some workarounds:
He's not doing anything except getting more bad press for himself.
Free speech but no Signal? Red flag.
Supposedly they're unblocked again, but there's been no explanation from Xitter about the issue. Definitely seems suspicious that this happened while DOGE is having trouble with whistleblowers using Signal, though.
They have a pattern of trying something and seeing how far they can get. Then they'll say it was an oversight or a joke.
Someone recently called it similar to "reconnaissance in force" by the military -- you go out with an uncommitted force and learn from the kind of resistance you get so you can be more effective.
The point is "mistakes" like these are not benign, or at least should not be treated as benign, since we can't ever really know for sure.
Yeah. I thought it was important context that they had backpedalled, but I did not intend to downplay the severity of the issue.
I've blocked Twitter on my Adguard Home DNS already last year, so no "X" shit in my house/our mobile devices anywhere.
I don't think it is a good idea to block twitter completely. Some countries use twitter for official announcements, including emergency warning.
It's always a good idea to block racist platforms lorded over by a troll who will delete comments that oppose him.
@cyrano The "problem" (actually, the feature) with those censorship algorithms is that they rely a lot on the "exact contents" of the message ("Scunthorpe Problem"), so X is probably programmed to detect the Signal's domain and block due to the presence of such link (similar to how Facebook was/is blocking links to the largest PixelFed instances, and then they also decided to block links to DistroWatch and official websites from various Linux distros), so it's not programmed (yet) to censor just the "hexadecimal/base64/whatever" portion of the link alone. And there's where Tox could shine: a handle is literally a hexadecimal sequence, without Tox's domains, without URI Schemas, just a bunch of digits and letters from A to F.
I don't know why Tox isn't mentioned as a "instant messaging platform for whistleblowers": it got Onion (Tor) tunneling possibility (as well as tunneling it through I2P outproxies because it actually accepts any kind of SOCKS5 proxy), it's registration-less (even Matrix needs registration) so it's effectively anonymous IMO.
SimpleX seems to be that, too, although I didn't have the opportunity to use it more than I used Tox. But from the little I've used it, it's similar to Signal in the sense that it's a link (and a large link) and not simply a hash/hex sequence.
Interesting, I did not know about that app https://tox.chat/index.html
Tox is nice. My favourite flavour is qTox.
The typical pattern over here: if someone uses Signal, you guess they're some military type (wants things to be secure, doesn't care much about anonymity, wants things to work one way and simply).
If someone uses Tox, you guess they're some hacker / anarchist type (wants things to be secure, but also anonymizable, wants things to be flexible, even if it can backfire).
Sounds like that censorship conservatives are all up in a row about... Oh not anymore fancy that
I would really like to know who is using 'X' now ? I mean apart from Musk and his bot army
A lot of people unfortunately. Specially people outside the US, I think mastodon is ready for people to switch, but nobody does, the most they do is switch to bluesky
Racists and other easily influenced weak-minded individuals.
Unfortunately, a lot of official government services and representatives are still using it. I saw someone reference a Twitter post about that Canadian plane crash, for instance.
Dude most European heads of state and institutions have Xitter accounts and just kept on using them.. It's a disgrace..
Lots of people still use it, obviously musk fans, people who actually make a living off of content creation it's hard to move a entire fandom to a new platform. People who aren't from the US probably don't care about the whole mess and stick around because everyone they know is still on the platform.
A bunch of undecided voter types that pay zero attention to anything that isn’t their hobbies.
So what’s the opinion here between Signal and SimpleX?
Signal gets all the attention, and seems more approachable but ties to a phone number which can be a big deal.
SimpleX ties to nothing but I could absolutely see people I know fucking it up and wondering where their “account” went.
So, Signal as an common man’s adoptable compromise and SimpleX to nerd out with full “opsec” and disposability? That about right?
SimpleX sounds like herpes.
So now we know what he kid's nickname will be when he gets herpes in high school
I'm trying to use simplex, mainly for the instance's chat. 2 things to say:
From the looks of it, the variety of ways you can purposefully or accidentally destroy your local database, and the strict limits on accessing your profile, really gives me the feeling SimpleX is intended to be extremely disposable and deniable.
After playing with it I just don’t see it being used for anything expected to be convenient or ongoing. Regarding the one device per account thing, I think the whole point is you just protect your one app, nobody is sneaking in your laptop or tablet, no remote leaks possible from a sync engine. On iOS you can link to a desktop app, but your phone must remain not just on, but in the app and on the pair screen. One twitch out, PC disconnects.
Feels like something for journalists, whistleblowers, protesters, and all the bad ones. It’s a burner app for your burner phone.
Signal has been under way more scrutiny than SimpleX. In both academic papers and security audits.
New certified Signal classic
Twitter should have been regulated as a common carrier and one rich asshole shouldn’t have been allowed to buy it, regardless of their politics
Most social media should be public domain or at least have standardised open APIs, it's the logical way to go for a free society with healthy governments and institutions. As it is right now it's like private companies owning the streets..
Honestly I feel all news and social messenging services would be better served if they were forced to be public owned.
The best endorsement you could get for moving to Signal.