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Don't call a bunch of selfie taking hooligans insurretionists. That's not how insurrections happen. It's a media blown overreaction because it helps their narrative. Look at how insurrections happen elsewhere. It's not done by selfie taking shamen.

I mean WTF do they think? Only "their" revolutionaries can use the app, but others can't?

It's like TOR. It can be used by dissidents but it can also be used by enemies of the state, yet the state believes on balance TOR does good.

> Don't call a bunch of selfie taking hooligans insurretionists

Just because it's a stupid insurrection doesn't mean it's not an insurrection.

Ok, so then so was Malheur and the siege of the Seattle police station.

You don’t see a difference between a local police station and your literal federal Capitol building filled with Senators?

Insurrection is a very vague word, any kind of violent protest against authorities can be called an insurrection. Funny the summer insurrections don't get to have that label.

Mmmm, yes, let's compare:

- A group storming the capitol of the US after being fed a steady stream of lies regarding an election result, with the President himself pushing them to go.

versus

- A group protesting after yet-another-person-of-color was murdered, pushing for equality and a check on police brutality.

Totally checks out. ;P

You're comparing the extremest fringe of one protest to the nonviolent core of the other. We have to compare fringe to fringe here.

The extremest fringe of the summer protests was burning cop cars and and a courthouse in one instance. There was even an area that declared itself an Autonomous Zone. That is insurrection. Not going to achieve anything though so everyone ignored it at the time. It wasn't any more of a problem than the Capitol riots.

>You're comparing the extremest fringe of one protest to the nonviolent core of the other.

I am not; I'm comparing the movements that led to each situation. You want to compare extremists, but the extremists are not the point - they'll always be there. The intent of the movements that caused these actions to happen are what matters, and it's fairly clear which side each falls on.

Many of those instances of violence in the summer protests were reactionary and driven by police exercising unnecessary force, which has been documented in troves of video.

Those who participated in the DC incident on the 6th were driven by a stream of misinformation, which has _also_ been well documented at this point.

One wanted to believe in conspiracy theories and support a failure of a President, going so far as to listen to him to attempt to overthrow the government. The other one just wants equality.

>There was even an area that declared itself an Autonomous Zone.

Yes, I live down the street from it. Having experienced it and lived around it, I would not classify it as anything remotely close to what was seen on January 6th in DC.

The movement that led to the Capitol riot was a misguided but fundamentally patriotic belief that there needs to be more of a focus on ensuring free and fair elections. You can disagree that a protest was needed and you can impugn the motivations of the organisers, but that is what the bulk of the protesters thought they were protesting.

A government installed by the people is a principle that compares on similar footing to equality.

Free and fair elections are important, but there is no evidence to suggest that the 2020 elections were not free and fair.

It was weaponized patriotism, not misguided patriotism.

I get the impression you're too smart to change your opinion on this. That's not meant sarcastically; smart people are able to rationalize away even the most extreme cognitive dissonance. I don't blame you. Looking at a situation from a viewpoint opposed to one's own is quite literally physiologically painful, and who needs that.

There's also nothing to be gained by doing so. Most likely your family and friends and co-workers, given your area, are of a similar mindset, so there's no social capital to be gained. It's unlikely that it will net you a better job or higher paying salary, or make your life easier in any way.

Seeing other viewpoints can help with compassion, though, and that might be a necessary ingredient for a society. Not that that's your concern: an individual is negligible to the behavior of the collective.

This comment is super weird, and while it's a fun attempt at a subtle insult, it just kind of falls apart.

Why would I ever change my opinion to gain social capital, or make my life easier? I base it off of documented events; we've all lived the same past year whether people want to believe it or not.

It's simply not rationalizing when an individual looks at these two events that are clearly different in buildup, intent, and outcome, and then chooses to not view them the same.

Trying to bait someone with this stuff feels really old school internet, but not in an effective way.

It's not an attempt at a subtle insult. It's not meant to be insulting at all. At most, it's a personal reflection on certainty. I guess maybe it acts as something of a Rorschach test, but that wasn't the intent either.

We could probably have an interesting conversation in person, maybe even a meaningful one; but on the internet that's pretty much impossible. I certainly don't expect to change your mind, or even to convince you there's a possibility you might be wrong. You don't seem to have anything particularly new or insighful to add, so it's unlikely my opinions will shift. So there's not really a point in having a discussion, at least not in a format where we need to type out long comments and do point by point rebuttals.

And in any case other people are already doing the point my point contentious debate thing with you, and it doesn't seem to have much of an effect on anyone so it's a pretty obvious waste of time.

You seem the argumentative sort though so feel free to respond to this and explain why I'm wrong about whatever. I'll be drinking scotch and I do recommend that instead, but whatever you decide have a nice Tuesday night.

The Black Lives Matter protests only get to be called insurrections if their goal was to supplant those authorities or forcefully override their will. Marching to put pressure on authorities to enact reforms is basically the opposite of an insurrection. Without the authorities the protests are pointless.

And look I can only speak for my city since I was there but calling the protests violent is technically true but misleading in the way “there was a fight” is misleading in zero tolerance school policies. Being at the front of the protest was terrifying because the police were itching for any excuse to escalate and purposely obstructing people, grabbing and pushing the crowd daring someone to push back. Tensions are already high and the police acting like schoolyard bullies doesn’t help, and finally some guy finally breaks with a “get your hands off me” they get pulled down to the ground and start getting beaten, people step in to defend the guy and pull the cops off him, more cops rush in and boom — “violence.”

The shit at the Capitol was absolutely moronic and they had basically zero chance of achieving their goal but the intent was there and that’s really what matters.

> The Black Lives Matter protests only get to be called insurrections if their goal was to supplant those authorities or forcefully override their will.

So, you mean like hypothetically taking over 6 blocks of downtown Seattle and declaring it an autonomous zone?

Look I wasn't there and the information about it is extremely two sided. People who liked/supported it said that it was basically a large-scale sit-in like OccupyWallSt which seems to match the photos of it and I think lives firmly on the side of protest. Otherwise more usual protests like street marches, blocking access to government buildings, or occupying streets with cars also become insurrection which doesn't make much sense.

Not even trying to play, if the Capitol shit was actually a sit-in a la #OccupyTheCapitol then I would be here defending their right to protest.

FWIW, I live down the street from where that zone was. It was indeed a large-scale sit-in-like protest, and cropped up in short term response due to SPD's insane tactics of tear-gassing the surrounding neighborhood before pulling out due to pissing everyone off.

I find that everyone who comments about this zone on here is not actually from Seattle, and just firing off the same talking points.

"That didn't happen.

And if it did, it wasn't that bad.

And if it was, that's not a big deal.

And if it is, that's not my fault.

And if it was, I didn't mean it.

And if I did...

You deserved it."

>Don't call a bunch of selfie taking hooligans insurretionists

They had knives and zip ties and intended to take hostages. The fact that they are incompetent does not obviate their intent.

https://www.insider.com/zip-tie-guy-capitol-riot-plastic-han...

Ok? So the capitol Police are equally incompetent? Not sure what point you are making.

The point is they're refuting your claim of intent.

I don't see how

They killed a police officer. Brutally assaulted others. Stole computers after breaking in.

I'm very sympathetic to the view that emergency action was justified at the time in response to the urgent threat. But if we're talking about permanently refactoring the principles of free speech, I'm not sure that a single bad event is really enough evidence to make any decisions on.

Hasn't the internet and communication tools like signal been used for many years now to coordinate far worse attacks? Not to mention the various crimes it will inevitably be used for. Surely the people involved are aware it will inevitably be used for child pornography, sex trafficking, arms trade, and a litany of other crimes.

It's just the nature of true encryption. You take both the good and the bad, we've known this for a while now.

I agree with you.

All I see here is evidence of a sensible team pondering about the future of their product in light of recent events, both the potential for their platform to be abused, and let’s face it, the potential for their platform to disappear off the face of the internet if it becomes the platform of choice for an unsavoury audience. Neither of which they have much control over.

I would be more worried if people at Signal were not thinking about this, debating the issues and reflecting on the direction of their product.

I thought the article (despite the over-egged headline) was interesting and not particularly hysterical.

What I don’t see here is anyone actually suggesting they compromise E2E or any of the fundamentals of the product that we like in Signal.

I feel strongly that Signal needs to stay moving in the direction it’s heading - which is to be a no-bullshit, secure, E2E encrypted, reliable and open platform with none of the data-hoarding of its rivals.

I do not see any harm in Signal self-reflecting in particular in light of recent events.

A “head in the sand” approach seems worse. I’m surprised by the cynical comments here so far. How about we take a charitable read of this?

Yeah you summed up what I was trying to say more clearly.

> "both the potential for their platform to be abused, and let’s face it, the potential for their platform to disappear off the face of the internet..."

The potential? Seriously? There is no question a service like this will be abused (Let's ask Erdogan this question). No serious criminal is going to NOT consider using Signal as a comms medium. People who need to evade snooping will use it. People who need privacy will use it.

As for the other. For this product, either you believe in your principles or you don't. It was the whole premise of the product. Without it, there is no need for it. There are "better" (easier) alternatives.

It's like building a back-up product and saying, you know, we could save costs by not always reliably having the expected data. Yes, true. But why have your product in the first place?

The point is that it's good for a company to be willing to discuss these things. If Signal had a culture where the principles and direction of the company are beyond discussion, that'd be a problem - both because it would make Signal a worse place to work, and because it would make compromising the spirit of the principles much easier.

It's probably helpful to look at a less emotionally charged principle like "customer focused". If your company enshrines "customer focus" as an inviolate principle, and nobody's comfortable discussing the value or meaning of "customer focus", you won't end up with a laser focus on the customer. You'll end up rudderless, because anyone skilled at office politics can justify whatever they want to do by declaring it customer focused.

> There was an insurrection on the US capitol due to extremists and online communication tools were a big part of this

...which was handily rebuffed. You're overstating it.

The question is: How much liberty and privacy are you willing to give up to prevent that from happening again?

For me, the answer is zero. The next batch of idiots are welcome to come and take their turn getting arrested next week. It is offensive and disturbing yes, but not a real threat to democracy. And there's no 8chan in prison, so this problem will sort itself out eventually.

Freedom of speech, like any ideal or philosophy eventually reaches practical limits. Everything is bad in absolutes. Tech, particularly social tech, began with noble yet naive absolutist ideals surrounding speech which has led to ham-fisted over corrections and contradictory take-downs.

It's clear that some people have done some bad things, and they used the internet (mostly facebook but whatever) to communicate.

There are 2 approaches to fixing this.

1 is to undercut the roots of radicalism and polarization. I would say to do that by radically redistributing wealth and democratizing government. Yes, the capitol stormers mostly weren't poor, but Trumpism is in large part a reaction of horror by small business owners at being squeezed by monopolies, and what popular support they have would evaporate if the government fixed things instead of being run as the public relations firm and personal military of all the large companies put together.

2 is to instead double down on physical repression (by funding police) and digital repression of dissenting viewpoints by abolishing any right to privacy. This seems to be the direction we're heading. It already happened in large part under the last few presidents but Signal is obviously in the crosshairs.

I'm not mad at you. But I am frustrated that this obviously bad approach has support - of not dealing with root causes and material problems, but committing to suppression of beliefs on both the right and left that are obviously a reaction to those root causes.

> There was an insurrection on the US capitol due to extremists and online communication tools were a big part of this

Would you be taking this principled stance if this was an insurrection on the Iranian parliament?