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Fix typos from Signal article
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why_not_signal.md
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@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ It was also long known that communications within walled gardens like Facebook o
It also became widely popular for integrating seemlessly with your existing contact list and message history. Its features include voice calls and messages, attachments, replies, and group chats.
Over the years, its been increasingly used by activists, journalists, and politicians alike, and endorsed by western privacy advocates like [Edward Snowden](https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/how-secure-is-signal-it-s-good-enough-for-edward-snowden-so-good-enough-for-you-1757596-2021-01-10), and [Bruce Schneier](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/12/how_signal_is_e.html). It also has several questionable endorsements and users, such as Jack Dorsey (Twitter's founder), and [Elon Musk](https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/7/22218989/signal-new-signups-whatsapp-facebook-privacy-controversy-elon-musk).
Over the years, it's been increasingly used by activists, journalists, and politicians alike, and endorsed by western privacy advocates like [Edward Snowden](https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/how-secure-is-signal-it-s-good-enough-for-edward-snowden-so-good-enough-for-you-1757596-2021-01-10), and [Bruce Schneier](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/12/how_signal_is_e.html). It also has several questionable endorsements and users, such as Jack Dorsey (Twitter's founder), and [Elon Musk](https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/7/22218989/signal-new-signups-whatsapp-facebook-privacy-controversy-elon-musk).
Until a few years ago, it was seen as an underdog, and the best secure alternative to the ["Big Five"](https://growthrocks.com/blog/big-five-tech-companies-acquisitions/) US tech giants. Its history and deficiencies, which were always out in the open, and which I'll get into below, were overlooked due to its underdog status in the tech world, its courting of the open source community, and its colorful anarchist founder, [Moxie Marlinspike.](https://www.wired.com/2016/07/meet-moxie-marlinspike-anarchist-bringing-encryption-us/)
@ -122,7 +122,7 @@ In a time where nearly all new messaging platforms are using the self-hosted+fed
Like many of Apple's adherents who were utterly convinced of Apple's commitment to privacy, and "felt" that privacy in their gut (until [evidence was made public showing the contrary long after the fact](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data)), Signal adherents base their "trust" in Signal on completely unrelated factors, such as Signal's clean UI, or Marlinspike himself: factors which have nothing to do with privacy, and **aren't falsifiable or testable.**
The evidence for or against the "privacy" of centralized services is **always circumstantial**, because ultimately we can never know what code the server is *actually running*, or if its been compromised by a malicious actor. The server is a black box we can't see into.
The evidence for or against the "privacy" of centralized services is **always circumstantial**, because ultimately we can never know what code the server is *actually running*, or if it's been compromised by a malicious actor. The server is a black box we can't see into.
Self-hosted solutions on the other hand, have much harder reproducibility requirements to pass, because the people using and running them **know what code the server is running**: they can build it from scratch using the open source code (like a recipe). They **can** test the server to be sure of its security. As [Drew Devault said in his criticism of Signal](https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/08/Signal.html): **Truly secure systems don’t require trust**.