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signal-cli uses a clearly identifiable user agent [0] that could easily be blocked if Signal wanted to. signal-cli could escalate by trying to evade that kind of a block, but as it stands signal-cli has been operating without trouble for several years.

I meant they may ask some clients not to use their servers, but they don't have any enforcement mechanism in place beyond asking them to stop on github.

[0] https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/blob/05abb3f9f6294677d2d...



They can apply measures to the users. They are not doing it right now, but they could suddenly start. By the discussion on some reddit threads [1], this moxie guy looks sketchy to say the least.

But I support the devs who work on alternative clients. The official Electron app is just bad, especially on Wayland. Hope signal-cli will keep working.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/mp2j0j/starting_a_na...


> this moxie guy

Most people here who are interested in privacy know who "this Moxie guy" is.


Isn't he deliberately pseudonymous?


His civil name is displayed right on the Wikipedia article about him. So not exactly secret.


Sorry what am I looking for in this 200 comment reddit thread? I don't see any comments from moxie himself, just a lot of other people claiming to know what moxie wants. Are there reports of specific issues with 3rd party clients or comments from a Signal employee or something?


You are looking for links to what moxie said and people's experiences of interacting with him.

The links to LibreSignal (already mentioned here) and Wire stories summarize most of what I was pointing at: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco... https://medium.com/@wireapp/axolotl-and-proteus-788519b186a7


I'm looking for people's experience interacting with the Signal server, not moxie. We're talking about if the server enforces any kind of client restrictions.

I haven't looked super deep, but to the best of my knowledge that's not something that happens really. I looked through that reddit thread (thanks for that BTW, whisperfish seems interesting) and skimmed over that enormous GitHub thread, but I couldn't find much in the way of people actually experiencing issues interacting with the Signal server. Again, would appreciate it if you could link me to such a thing. As I mentioned elsewhere, I maintain an unofficial signal client and I try to be aware of these sort of things.


moxie views the servers as his, to change policy wise as he sees fit. I'm not sure you can separate the two practically.


We know the policy, no one is confused about the policy, all 3rd party clients violate the policy.

Is the policy enforced? I've seen no evidence of it.


Most of the replies in this sub-thread are not about servers possibly disrupting the work of custom clients right now. But you react as if they were.

Other things that are being brought up here are at least as important and interesting to discuss.


Okay, that's fair. I interpreted them as a response to the original question about if the policy is enforced.


I also interpreted them that way.


If it'd be enforced, we'd see a cat and mouse game of forks spoofing their user agent, and who knows what else.




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