media.ccc.de
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2020–2026
43:03 · 1.7K views · Dec 29, 2019
Moxie Marlinspike's 36C3 talk examines why distributed and decentralized technology is hard to build into consumer products, from the perspective of developing Signal. It argues that ecosystems move slowly and federation causes problems.
Cited in decentralization and federation debates as the key talk on the practical challenges, though some found it defeatist.
5 comments from Hacker News
A talk by Moxie at CCC deals with this exact question. > “ Considerations for distributed and decentralized technologies from the perspective of a product that many would like to see decentralize. > Amongst an environment of enthusiasm for blockchain-based technologies, efforts to decentralize the internet, and tremendous investment in distributed systems, there has been relatively little product movement in this area from the mobile and consumer internet spaces. > This is an exploration of challenges for distributed technologies, as well as some considerations for what they do and don't provide, from the perspective of someone working on user-focused mobile communication. This also includes a look at how Signal addresses some of the same problems that decentralized and distributed technologies hope to solve.” this video
There's a great CCC presentation by Moxie (Signal originator) on that this video ~summarized in text form [LINK]
Appreciate the clarity. It helps me focus without going off on a wild tangent. The durability/independence of the protocol being a primary driver makes sense, and aligns with the design. > "no privileged party at all" > "The network should outlive the operator, function without it." I also believe these are absolute requirements for the future of groupchats. I'd argue for stronger requirements, but I'm definitely onboard here. This protocol has strengths: 1) Per-sender buckets. This is a clever workaround for the downsides of client-side fanout, and provides reasonable sender identity decoupling. 2) Realistic membership limits. I think the number is quite low, but in general I love the willingness to draw a reasonable Schelling fence here. My criticism of MLS is that focusing on transport-level security in a 10k-person group chat seems rather moot — as the membership count grows, the largest risk comes from "inside" the group. Drawing a reasonable limit here, and basing scalability around it, makes sense. 3) It doesn't accept the status quo. Most protocols attempt to solve the whole world. Re-evaluating what's actually required from a feature set is a great approach to reducing complexity. 4) Static epoch key avoids the issues with state desynchronization due to dropped messages. Assuming the pairwise channel is reliable, this removes a whole host of problems. It's a security tradeoff, but I see the value. > but none of them seem fundamental/unsolvable I think this really dep
I saw Moxie Marlinspike's talk when it was posted on CCC's official channel [1] and was disgusted by it. The talk has been now censored and video was made private. It was one of the most defeatist talks I've ever come across when it comes to messaging and privacy. His message was basically that anything you do is pointless and that his and WhatsApp/Facebook's way is the right one. I've used Signal on few occasions in the past but his talk made me uninstall it. I simply do not trust him after hearing his opinions. I do not support centralization and other ideals he's now pushing (including the use of a phone number as Signal's primary ID). The talk was mirrored on few channels on YT [2] and you can still see it. [1] this video (it's a private video now) [2] [LINK] (working link, who knows for how long so mirror it).
Moxie (Signal Founder) gave a talk about the issues with federation at CCC in 2020, he took a crazy amount of flak for it, a lot of it from the Matrix community. Lots of the issue highlighted are in this post. this video