commit: e262263ab3c828cae79478d19faaf8c633168bd2
parent 62a087e4fdad5d8ef54533b903504a4870eed5b0
Author: Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 10:58:57 -0400
Tweak for clarity
Diffstat:
2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/blog/The-next-chat-app.gmi b/content/blog/The-next-chat-app.gmi
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
As you’re surely aware, Signal has officially jumped the shark with the introduction of cryptocurrency to their chat app. Back in 2018, I wrote about my concerns with Signal, and those concerns were unfortunately validated by this week’s announcement. Moxie’s insistence on centralized ownership, governance, and servers for Signal puts him in a position of power which is easily, and inevitably, abused. In that 2018 article, and in articles since, I have spoken about the important of federation to address these problems. In addition to federation, what else does a chat app need?
-Well, first, the next chat app should be a protocol, not just an app. A lush ecosystem of client and server implementations, along with bots and other integrations, adds a tremendous amount of value and longevity to a system. A chat app which has only one implementation and a private protocol can only ever meet the needs that its developers (1) foresee, (2) care about, and (3) have the capacity to address; thus, a protocol cannot be ubiquitous. I would also recommend that this protocol is not needlessly stapled to the beached whale that is the web: maybe JSON can come, but if it’s served with HTTP polling to appease our Android overlords I will be very cross with you. JSON also offers convenient extensibility, and a protocol designer who limits extensibility is a wise one.
+Well, first, the next chat app should be a protocol, not just an app. A lush ecosystem of client and server implementations, along with bots and other integrations, adds a tremendous amount of value and longevity to a system. A chat app which has only one implementation and a private protocol can only ever meet the needs that its developers (1) foresee, (2) care about, and (3) have the capacity to address; thus, such a protocol cannot be ubiquitous. I would also recommend that this protocol is not needlessly stapled to the beached whale that is the web: maybe JSON can come, but if it’s served with HTTP polling to appease our Android overlords I will be very cross with you. JSON also offers convenient extensibility, and a protocol designer who limits extensibility is a wise one.
Crucially, that protocol must be federated. This is Signal’s largest failure. We simply cannot trust a single entity, even you, dear reader, to have such a large degree of influence over the ecosystem.1 I do not trust you not to add some crypto Ponzi scheme of your own 5 years from now. A federated system allows multiple independent server operators to stand up their own servers which can communicate with each other and exchange messages on behalf of their respective users, which distributes ownership, responsibility, and governance within the community at large, making the system less vulnerable to all kinds of issues. You need to be prepared to relinquish control to the community. Signal wasn’t, and has had problems ranging from 502 Server Gone errors and from 404 Ethics Not Found errors, both of which are solved by federation.
diff --git a/content/blog/The-next-chat-app.md b/content/blog/The-next-chat-app.md
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ ecosystem of client and server implementations, along with bots and other
integrations, adds a tremendous amount of value and longevity to a system. A
chat app which has only one implementation and a private protocol can only ever
meet the needs that its developers (1) foresee, (2) care about, and (3) have the
-capacity to address; thus, a protocol cannot be ubiquitous. I would also
+capacity to address; thus, such a protocol cannot be ubiquitous. I would also
recommend that this protocol is not needlessly stapled to the beached whale that
is the web: *maybe* JSON can come, but if it's served with HTTP polling to
appease our Android overlords I will be very cross with you. JSON also offers
