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Comment by billme | Hacker News Reader

Signal’s official statement on the EARN It Act is here: https://signal.org/blog/earn-it/

Thanks for the link. There's a subtle threat in there, that they'll move out of the country if they have issues which I think a lot of tech companies would.

This bill is so stupid in that tech companies can relatively easily move.

The legal entities can move to other jurisdictions, sure, but it doesn't matter because app distribution still occurs primarily through USA-based Google Play and USA-based Apple App Store—both of which can easily geofence apps as they please (or as they're required).

This is one of the reasons I've started to appreciate Matrix a lot more lately.

https://matrix.org/blog/2020/01/02/on-privacy-versus-freedom

Putting aside Signal officially declining to the add option to discover or manually add a server via the client, theirs nothing stopping anyone from going to GitHub, downloading the code for the server and client, editing the code however they see fit as long as it follows the legal guidelines.

> long as it follows the legal guidelines.

So like, as long as they add in the backdoor?

Nope. But following GPL open source license guidelines and releasing your changed codes. And not using signal name and their copyright materials.

The real solution is switching to open source mobile operating systems.

Android is open source. Alternative app stores exist. Play Services can be replaced.

Signal should at least make itself available on F-Droid.

You can get apk if you want : https://signal.org/android/apk/

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