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  1. Embed this notice
    Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 19:50:58 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker

    📣THREAD: It’s surprising to me that so many people were surprised to learn that Signal runs partly on AWS (something we can do because we use encryption to make sure no one but you–not AWS, not Signal, not anyone–can access your comms).

    It’s also concerning. 1/

    In conversation about 11 days ago from mastodon.world permalink
    • Rich Felker repeated this.
    • Embed this notice
      morph (morph@morphnet.de)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:17 JST morph morph
      in reply to
      • Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

      @jwildeboer @Mer__edith
      ... and here 150km away I didn't notice it at all.
      ¯\_ (ツ) _/¯

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
    • Embed this notice
      Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:19 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:
      in reply to

      @Mer__edith (For me this unexpected outage was quite dramatic, as it happened at exactly the time my son was going into surgery and we communicate a lot via Signal, so my "best wishes!" didn't go through and his "All went well" arrived with a significant delay. Murphy, I know. Things go wrong when you least expect it. He is fine and all is good :)

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
    • Embed this notice
      Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:20 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:
      in reply to

      @Mer__edith What was surprising to me was that a problem in one AWS availability zone caused a persistent outage for my Signal connection that lasted at least 3 hours. I expected there would be some sort of automated failover to another zone or cloud provider happening in the background, limiting the downtime to, say, maximum 15 minutes. I hope your internal post-mortem is taking a look at how to be better prepared next time.

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
    • Embed this notice
      Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:21 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker
      in reply to

      To conclude: my silver lining hope is that AWS going down can be a learning moment, in which the risks of concentrating the nervous system of our world in the hands of a few players become very clear. And that this can help us craft ways of undoing this concentration and creating real choice ❤️ 13/

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
    • Embed this notice
      Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:22 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker
      in reply to

      So, Signal does what we can to provide a service w integrity in the concentrated ecosystem we're working in. We protect your comms w end-to-end encryption, so that we can use AWS and others as a highway across which to send Signal data in ways that don’t let AWS, or anyone else, gain access. 12/

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
    • Embed this notice
      Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:23 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker
      in reply to

      In short, the problem here is not that Signal ‘chose’ to run on AWS. The problem is the concentration of power in the infrastructure space that means there isn’t really another choice: the entire stack, practically speaking, is owned by 3-4 players. 11/

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
    • Embed this notice
      Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:24 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker
      in reply to

      o, yes, Signal runs on AWS. It also runs on your phone, which runs on iOS (Apple) or Android (Google). And on Dekstop, via Windows (Microsoft). Each of these presents similar dependencies on large entrenched tech companies, and concomitant barriers and risks. 10/

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
      Abolisyonista repeated this.
    • Embed this notice
      Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:26 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker
      in reply to

      But even if Signal had the billions needed to recreate AWS, it’s not just about money. The talent to run these systems is rare & concentrated. The expertise, the tooling, the playbooks, the very language of modern SRE came out of these hyperscalers, and is now synonymous with 'the cloud.' 9/

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
    • Embed this notice
      Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:27 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker
      in reply to

      Meaning that infrastructure like AWS is not something that Signal, or almost anyone else, could afford to just “spin up.” Which is why nearly everyone that manages a real-time service–from Signal, to X, to Palantir, to Mastodon–rely at least in part on services provisioned by these companies. 8/

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
    • Embed this notice
      Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:28 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker
      in reply to

      Such infrastructure costs billions and billions of dollars to provision and maintain, and it’s highly depreciable. In the case of the hyperscalers, the staggering cost is cross-subsidized by other businesses–themselves also massive platforms with significant lockin. 7/

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
    • Embed this notice
      Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:29 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker
      in reply to

      This isn't ‘'renting a server.' It's leasing access to a whole sprawling, capital-intensive, technically-capable system that must be just as available in Cairo as in Capetown, just as functional in Bangkok as Berlin. Particularly given the high stakes use cases of many who rely on Signal. 6/

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
    • Embed this notice
      Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:30 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker
      in reply to

      Instant messaging demands near-zero latency. Voice and video in particular require complex global signaling & regional relays to manage jitter and packet loss. These are things that AWS, Azure, and GCP provide at global scale that, practically speaking, others (in the western context) don’t. 5/

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
    • Embed this notice
      Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:31 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker
      in reply to

      Running a low-latency platform for instant comms capable of carrying millions of concurrent audio/video calls requires a pre-built, planet-spanning network of compute, storage and edge presence that requires constant maintenance, significant electricity and persistent attention and monitoring. 4/

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
      Rich Felker repeated this.
    • Embed this notice
      Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:33 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker
      in reply to

      The question isn’t "why does Signal use AWS?" It’s to look at the infrastructural requirements of any global, real-time, mass comms platform and ask how it is that we got to a place where there’s no realistic alternative to AWS and the other hyperscalers. 3/

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
      Rich Felker repeated this.
    • Embed this notice
      Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 22:33:34 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker
      in reply to

      Concerning, bc it indicates that the extent of the concentration of power in the hands of a few hyperscalers is way less widely understood than I’d assumed. Which bodes poorly for our ability to craft reality-based strategies capable of contesting this concentration & solving the real problem. 2/

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
      Rich Felker repeated this.
    • Embed this notice
      fiery (fiery@snac.bsd.cafe)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 23:44:09 JST fiery fiery
      in reply to
      • Troed Sångberg
      @troed@swecyb.com Those explanations about how something like Signal is not possible or pragmatic without AWS or the other big players felt like gaslighting . Going as far as suggesting "mastodon" (meaning actually the fediverse) also requires AWS is disingenuous at best and malicious at worst, specially considering the CEO was using the fediverse to communicate about the Signal outage as it was happening. Arguing that you need to rely on Android (Google), iOS (Apple) or Windows (MS) to run the client is straight lying as one can use the desktop version to run on Linux and requiring a mobile app to sign up is a choice Signal did, a problem of their own making. Yes I know there is a lot of nuance but the end result is the same: trust has been lost.
      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
      Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
    • Embed this notice
      Troed Sångberg (troed@swecyb.com)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 23:44:11 JST Troed Sångberg Troed Sångberg
      in reply to

      @Mer__edith Thanks for your condescending reply. I used to manage global SaaS within fintech with nodes in GCP, AWS and Azure and on multiple different continents.

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
    • Embed this notice
      Meredith Whittaker (mer__edith@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 23:44:13 JST Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker
      in reply to
      • Troed Sångberg

      @troed I don't think you have a clear understanding of this space, but I hope you have a good time digging in and learning more.

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
    • Embed this notice
      Troed Sångberg (troed@swecyb.com)'s status on Monday, 27-Oct-2025 23:44:16 JST Troed Sångberg Troed Sångberg
      in reply to

      @Mer__edith Agree - if you want to run your service centralized. Neither my Mastodon nor my Matrix-server need anything but my own self-hosting. Of course they won't handle billions of concurrent customers - but a few tens of thousands similar to mine will. Together.

      I simply don't think Signal being centralized is a good thing. It's your choice, but alternatives do exist and those do not need hyperscalers.

      In conversation about 11 days ago permalink

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