that they are aggressive against alternative clients using their backend (which I am somewhat understandable on, servers ain’t cheap)
This argument is very weak IMHO, as Signal is a free app and anyone using it with a 3rd party client puts the same load on the servers as someone signing up for free.
They do also say that having only a first party client allows them to quickly and easily change and innovate, but then why are they hostile to 3rd parties compiling and distributing the first party app?
If you think about it a bit more closely, then it becomes apparent that by forcing everyone to only use the 1st party client and distribution channel, they can keep control of the app and change it freely without most people noticing, especially if a modified version is only pushed to certain individual devices. And maybe I am a bit paranoid, but that is exactly how an intelligence service would operate in order to compromise the communication of selected individuals.
PS.: You should rather compare it to XMPP with the Conversations client (or the fork blabber.im). Works great, is fully e2ee and has a UI and functionality very similar to WhatsApp or Signal. And you can easily get it from Fdroid or compile it yourself, so the risk of the developers messing with the binaries is minimal.
Thank you for this reply, I did not consider that. The small unseen changes due to forced use of a single client.
I always want to use a decentralized platform if I can which is why Fediverses are so nice, but my friends are not as keen. Signal is the gap for now
they can keep control of the app and change it freely without most people noticing, especially if a modified version is only pushed to certain individual devices.
Is it possible though? like Google Play updates the modified app only for certain individual devices
This argument is very weak IMHO, as Signal is a free app and anyone using it with a 3rd party client puts the same load on the servers as someone signing up for free. They do also say that having only a first party client allows them to quickly and easily change and innovate, but then why are they hostile to 3rd parties compiling and distributing the first party app?
If you think about it a bit more closely, then it becomes apparent that by forcing everyone to only use the 1st party client and distribution channel, they can keep control of the app and change it freely without most people noticing, especially if a modified version is only pushed to certain individual devices. And maybe I am a bit paranoid, but that is exactly how an intelligence service would operate in order to compromise the communication of selected individuals.
PS.: You should rather compare it to XMPP with the Conversations client (or the fork blabber.im). Works great, is fully e2ee and has a UI and functionality very similar to WhatsApp or Signal. And you can easily get it from Fdroid or compile it yourself, so the risk of the developers messing with the binaries is minimal.
Thank you for this reply, I did not consider that. The small unseen changes due to forced use of a single client. I always want to use a decentralized platform if I can which is why Fediverses are so nice, but my friends are not as keen. Signal is the gap for now
Is it possible though? like Google Play updates the modified app only for certain individual devices
Sure that is easily possible. They can also push an update to everyone and a slightly modified version the same time only to certain devices.
In fact if this is still true then Google could even dynamically push a exploit into Signal without an update to the app itself.