In 2015 I was on a beach in Hawai'i helping build the prototype of what became Signal.
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In 2015 I was on a beach in Hawai'i helping build the prototype of what became Signal. I argued that the app needed pseudonyms because abusers know their victims' phone numbers. I lost the fight that day. History proved me right, and Signal would move to usernames under @Mer__edith's stewardship.
In this new essay, I trace the line from Barlow's Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace through smart-home forensics, metadata killings, and Archive Team's non-consensual Tumblr scrape to ask: when did we decide that a jpeg is a photograph, that a profile is a person, that storage is memory?
The answer involves a boat off Honolulu, the early days of Signal, Iran's missiles over Amazon's Dubai AWS facilities, and the communities already building for a world where the server goes dark. This is an essay about infrastructure, memory, archiving without consent, and what we lose when we mistake the filesystem for memory.
It is also the angriest and most personal text I've ever written. I'm furious, and you should be too. We bet an entire civilisation on a brutal and unreliable stack. Now, fate has come to collect that wager.
California has a lot to fucking answer for.
Who Will Remember Us When The Servers Go Dark?
We bet an entire civilisation on an unthinkably brutal and comically unreliable stack, and now fate has come to collect that wager. California has a lot to fucking answer for.
(newdesigncongress.org)
@shibacomputer @Mer__edith I'm pretty sure I used Signal in 2014 and Wikipedia also says it was released in 2014. Did you mix up the years here? Or what were you building in 2015?
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@shibacomputer @Mer__edith ironically, I was just discussing Signal with my wife, and she refuses to install it ever since it spammed people who had her phone number in their contacts the moment she signed up, with no warning or option. and I don't blame her one bit. so many of those "it's good for the social graph" decisions are obviously dangerous and directly at odds with the other stated/advertised purpose of "the best option if your safety is at risk". and it put up such a fight to try to force you to sync contacts, for so long.
wild, insane stuff, every step of the way. I'm still reading through, but wanted to say thanks for the attempts, and the write-up
@groxx @shibacomputer @Mer__edith also. I've never heard of this supposed "spamming" behavior. I wish more people knew about signal but I'm glad they're not being spammed
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@shibacomputer @Mer__edith I'm pretty sure I used Signal in 2014 and Wikipedia also says it was released in 2014. Did you mix up the years here? Or what were you building in 2015?
@b0rn_dead the original Signal announcement was a kind of iphone only zombie version of Redphone, Whisper Systems' earlier app. Signal as you know it (calls and messaging, cross platform, etc) didn't exist until mid 2015.
https://signal.org/blog/signal/ -
@dissident @groxx @shibacomputer @Mer__edith There’s a big difference between “I’m ok with someone who knows my number searching for me” and “inform everyone whose phone book I’m in the moment I join Signal”.
You should, of course, be able to set those preferences separately and they should default to their most private state.
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In 2015 I was on a beach in Hawai'i helping build the prototype of what became Signal. I argued that the app needed pseudonyms because abusers know their victims' phone numbers. I lost the fight that day. History proved me right, and Signal would move to usernames under @Mer__edith's stewardship.
In this new essay, I trace the line from Barlow's Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace through smart-home forensics, metadata killings, and Archive Team's non-consensual Tumblr scrape to ask: when did we decide that a jpeg is a photograph, that a profile is a person, that storage is memory?
The answer involves a boat off Honolulu, the early days of Signal, Iran's missiles over Amazon's Dubai AWS facilities, and the communities already building for a world where the server goes dark. This is an essay about infrastructure, memory, archiving without consent, and what we lose when we mistake the filesystem for memory.
It is also the angriest and most personal text I've ever written. I'm furious, and you should be too. We bet an entire civilisation on a brutal and unreliable stack. Now, fate has come to collect that wager.
California has a lot to fucking answer for.
Who Will Remember Us When The Servers Go Dark?
We bet an entire civilisation on an unthinkably brutal and comically unreliable stack, and now fate has come to collect that wager. California has a lot to fucking answer for.
(newdesigncongress.org)
@shibacomputer fantastic piece, thank you
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In 2015 I was on a beach in Hawai'i helping build the prototype of what became Signal. I argued that the app needed pseudonyms because abusers know their victims' phone numbers. I lost the fight that day. History proved me right, and Signal would move to usernames under @Mer__edith's stewardship.
In this new essay, I trace the line from Barlow's Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace through smart-home forensics, metadata killings, and Archive Team's non-consensual Tumblr scrape to ask: when did we decide that a jpeg is a photograph, that a profile is a person, that storage is memory?
The answer involves a boat off Honolulu, the early days of Signal, Iran's missiles over Amazon's Dubai AWS facilities, and the communities already building for a world where the server goes dark. This is an essay about infrastructure, memory, archiving without consent, and what we lose when we mistake the filesystem for memory.
It is also the angriest and most personal text I've ever written. I'm furious, and you should be too. We bet an entire civilisation on a brutal and unreliable stack. Now, fate has come to collect that wager.
California has a lot to fucking answer for.
Who Will Remember Us When The Servers Go Dark?
We bet an entire civilisation on an unthinkably brutal and comically unreliable stack, and now fate has come to collect that wager. California has a lot to fucking answer for.
(newdesigncongress.org)
@shibacomputer this is a fantastic read, thank you so much for putting it out there!
in the bookshelf of my mind, i set your essay alongside @Mer__edith's essay on the origins of computing strategies: https://logicmag.io/supa-dupa-skies/origin-stories-plantations-computers-and-industrial-control/
and alongside David Golumbia's Cyberlibertarianism
all excellent writing that challenge the dogma of "freedom" that white-washed so much pain caused by and amplified by digital tech
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In 2015 I was on a beach in Hawai'i helping build the prototype of what became Signal. I argued that the app needed pseudonyms because abusers know their victims' phone numbers. I lost the fight that day. History proved me right, and Signal would move to usernames under @Mer__edith's stewardship.
In this new essay, I trace the line from Barlow's Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace through smart-home forensics, metadata killings, and Archive Team's non-consensual Tumblr scrape to ask: when did we decide that a jpeg is a photograph, that a profile is a person, that storage is memory?
The answer involves a boat off Honolulu, the early days of Signal, Iran's missiles over Amazon's Dubai AWS facilities, and the communities already building for a world where the server goes dark. This is an essay about infrastructure, memory, archiving without consent, and what we lose when we mistake the filesystem for memory.
It is also the angriest and most personal text I've ever written. I'm furious, and you should be too. We bet an entire civilisation on a brutal and unreliable stack. Now, fate has come to collect that wager.
California has a lot to fucking answer for.
Who Will Remember Us When The Servers Go Dark?
We bet an entire civilisation on an unthinkably brutal and comically unreliable stack, and now fate has come to collect that wager. California has a lot to fucking answer for.
(newdesigncongress.org)
@shibacomputer@post.lurk.org brilliant, concise writing. thank you for bringing awareness to all of this
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In 2015 I was on a beach in Hawai'i helping build the prototype of what became Signal. I argued that the app needed pseudonyms because abusers know their victims' phone numbers. I lost the fight that day. History proved me right, and Signal would move to usernames under @Mer__edith's stewardship.
In this new essay, I trace the line from Barlow's Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace through smart-home forensics, metadata killings, and Archive Team's non-consensual Tumblr scrape to ask: when did we decide that a jpeg is a photograph, that a profile is a person, that storage is memory?
The answer involves a boat off Honolulu, the early days of Signal, Iran's missiles over Amazon's Dubai AWS facilities, and the communities already building for a world where the server goes dark. This is an essay about infrastructure, memory, archiving without consent, and what we lose when we mistake the filesystem for memory.
It is also the angriest and most personal text I've ever written. I'm furious, and you should be too. We bet an entire civilisation on a brutal and unreliable stack. Now, fate has come to collect that wager.
California has a lot to fucking answer for.
Who Will Remember Us When The Servers Go Dark?
We bet an entire civilisation on an unthinkably brutal and comically unreliable stack, and now fate has come to collect that wager. California has a lot to fucking answer for.
(newdesigncongress.org)
@shibacomputer Wow, amazing read, thanks for sharing!
Thanks also to @aral for boosting.
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In 2015 I was on a beach in Hawai'i helping build the prototype of what became Signal. I argued that the app needed pseudonyms because abusers know their victims' phone numbers. I lost the fight that day. History proved me right, and Signal would move to usernames under @Mer__edith's stewardship.
In this new essay, I trace the line from Barlow's Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace through smart-home forensics, metadata killings, and Archive Team's non-consensual Tumblr scrape to ask: when did we decide that a jpeg is a photograph, that a profile is a person, that storage is memory?
The answer involves a boat off Honolulu, the early days of Signal, Iran's missiles over Amazon's Dubai AWS facilities, and the communities already building for a world where the server goes dark. This is an essay about infrastructure, memory, archiving without consent, and what we lose when we mistake the filesystem for memory.
It is also the angriest and most personal text I've ever written. I'm furious, and you should be too. We bet an entire civilisation on a brutal and unreliable stack. Now, fate has come to collect that wager.
California has a lot to fucking answer for.
Who Will Remember Us When The Servers Go Dark?
We bet an entire civilisation on an unthinkably brutal and comically unreliable stack, and now fate has come to collect that wager. California has a lot to fucking answer for.
(newdesigncongress.org)
@shibacomputer I almost didn't read the text because I thought it was about Signal only.
Fortunately, I clicked on it anyway and am impressed. What a great essay on so many levels (including the literary one)! This interweaving of body, landscape, ideologies and virtual spaces says so much between the lines.
I read this text as someone who works with cultural heritage: in museums, in living traditions and storytelling. I remember when the Taliban destroyed the giant Buddhas and there was a rush -
@shibacomputer I almost didn't read the text because I thought it was about Signal only.
Fortunately, I clicked on it anyway and am impressed. What a great essay on so many levels (including the literary one)! This interweaving of body, landscape, ideologies and virtual spaces says so much between the lines.
I read this text as someone who works with cultural heritage: in museums, in living traditions and storytelling. I remember when the Taliban destroyed the giant Buddhas and there was a rush@shibacomputer to digitise everything. As if we could preserve our cultural heritage forever in the cloud, safe from threats.
And now comes the next thread, AI hallucinations, datacenters (and wars)."Violence, then rebuild; profit, then philanthropy – repeat!" This is so much the USA acting at the moment.
Thank you so much for this brillant essay, these inspiring thoughts, I'll read it several times!
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@dissident @aral @shibacomputer @Mer__edith that's UI for after signup though, related to / rolled out with the username feature, isn't it? or is that now shown before the blast when creating an account?
I'd just test it myself, but I don't have dozens of phone numbers to just throw away if it's inconclusive. or even a second handy, I'd have to go buy one just to test it once.
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
