this post was submitted on 14 May 2021
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Privacy
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I largely disagree with this video.
Given the license, it wouldn't even be legal for Signal to make the server closed source. AGPL prevents that.
After the huge migration in January, a lot of people asked for a payment feature, WhatsApp has that in some country and it is used a lot, mainly in India I think. And I think the criticism is way overblown, remember, this is just a feature that was introduced in beta in one country!
The goal of MobileCoin is not to provide decentralised currency without the need for central banks and all like other cryptocurrencies. The goal of MobileCoin is to provide an experience that is very similar to what WhatsApp and a few other apps already have, the crypto part is only here to make it private. The fact that there are transaction fees and that it is centralised doesn't make it any different from any other payment app like Paypal.
Anyway crypto currencies have completely failed at providing actual decentralisation. Transaction fees are way too high for them to be used for everyday payment, and they waste way too much energy. The instability is also a barrier (though I'm not exactly sure how will MobileCoin deal with it).
Most critics are also not neutral. They are often invested in other cryptocurrencies and would have greatly benefited economically from the increased demand if Signal had chosen to go with one of their cryptocurrencies.
This is not true. If you are the sole copyright holder to the code which the Signal Foundation AFAIK is, then you can close the source-code any time you want.
I'm pretty sure that there have been external contributions for the implementation of websocket notifications for phones without google's services, but I might be wrong.
Hmm, maybe... not sure. I would guess they have a CLA in place though, which allows them to take over the copyright.