“Signal is being blocked in Venezuela and Russia. The app is a popular choice for encrypted messaging and people trying to avoid government censorship, and the blocks appear to be part of a crackdown on internal dissent in both countries…”
It’s like a medal of honor for a privacy preserving app 😄
Indeed. If whatsapp isn’t on the list, then I have all the confirmation I need.
The Russian government has also allegedly begun preparations to block the WhatsApp messaging app.
https://kyivindependent.com/messenger-signal-blocked-in-russia-media-says/
Maduro uninstalled whatsapp live on television a few days ago
could matrix.org be as easily blocked, since it’s decentralized I’m wondering?
At least it means that Signal is working as intended if they are blocking it, I guess that they don’t have back doors.
Being decentralized prevents DNS or IP blocks but not blocks through DPI.
Signal has an option to masquerade it’s traffic as regular HTTPS, I don’t know if Matrix can do such a thing.
I can answer this! All matrix calls are over https APIs. Ports and addresses are stored in a text file on the base domain or in DNS txt entry.
Thanks, nice to have someone knowledgeable.
Would you say matrix is censorship resistant? I’ve very limited knowledge of it but given what you said I imagine that if I was trying to block matrix I would just need to query the url of the text file and check the DNS text entry, if either exist just add the domain to the blocklist.
Matrix is in fact decentralized but in reality it is not so much, I don’t know the number exactly but the majority of users use the matrix.org server
could matrix.org be as easily blocked, since it’s decentralized I’m wondering?>
Or SimpleX?
To be devils advocate in a sense, this may mean that it doesn’t have any backdoors that Russia or Venezuela can use, but the NSA or something still could have one of their own.
Matrix doesn’t have encryption as the default
Also Signal doesn’t have any backdoors. I can say that with high certainty as it has been audited more than any other messager.
It doesn’t matter if it is a business entity operating under a government then you can never really know because gag orders. Centralized servers can be blocked. Telegram and Signal apps could have a back door. This is why open stack is important. And not just the code. Also encryption is default for p2p one on one conversations. It’s not in channels by default because it can complicate public use.
Signal honored!
Would peer to peer apps be resistant to this sort of thing?
Yes, but you’ll have to install them from sources other than what governments deem official. Like F-droid.
Now, if they block p2p traffic that’s a different story
It depends. Somehow it has to discover the peers. Other than that, they could block traffic between residential IP addresses and there goes large part of the P2P network
why telegram is not blocked? makes you think…
WhatsApp supposedly uses Signal protocol.
Why is THAT not blocked? Certainly they wouldnt roll their own encryption and bypass Signal security protocols after having Moxie come in, right? Right???
Russia is reportedly planning to block WhatsApp as well.
I mean it was blocked before Signal was blocked. Russia somewhat famously badly broke their Internet trying to shutdown telegram… and eventually gave up.
I’m guessing Signal finally has enough market share to get the Russian government’s attention but not enough market share that they think the web of proxies that kept Telegram online will keep Signal online.
and eventually gave up
or maybe they came to an agreement on mutually beneficial terms
On April 16, 2018, the Russian government began blocking access to Telegram, an instant messaging service. The blocking led to interruptions in the operation of many third-party services, but practically did not affect the availability of Telegram in Russia. It was officially unblocked on June 19, 2020
Some say it was unblocked because they made a deal with Durov. Another opinion is that too many people and services including officials continued to rely on it even during the time it was blocked. Regardless, Telegram did a huge job on circumventing those blocks.
