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Comment by frisco | Hacker News Reader

I just hope that moxie's replacement is someone with as strong a reputation for fighting for the principles at stake and the ability to defend them. How many people could have written the Cellebrite blog post? Probably not many. The hidden pressures on Signal staff must be enormous, as likely the the world's single most valuable surveillance target.

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Adding MobileCoin to Signal really changed my perceptions about just how principled the Signal foundation really is. I have a lot of respect for much of Moxie’s work, but the MobileCoin thing is still a head-scratcher.

Why so? Moxie helped design MobileCoin. Besides, his recent post on web3 lays it bare what he thinks of it.

MobileCoin, in time, I hope grows up to be a credible alternative to Facebook's USDP (Diem), like how Signal is to WhatsApp. I don't think its inclusion a head-scratcher at all. If anything, I hope it serves its purpose well, and isn't unfairly regulated to oblivion.

I got the impression that his web3 post [0] only talks about token incentives, DAOs and other decentralisation for decentralisation's sake. There's no mention of MobileCoin, which I gather he just sees as tool to facilitate anonymous payments (it's a token on top of Stellar).

[0] https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html

Though MobileCoin may have borrowed a consensus mechanism from Stellar, I've seen no indication that it's a token on the Stellar chain.

You're right, sorry I have misread this then. According to Wikipedia, MobileCoin uses its own blockchain based on mechanics from Stellar and Monero [0]. That also makes a lot more sense technically, and explains the supposed 4 years of development [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobileCoin

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26726246

Which part do you find objectionable?

I hate most of the cryptocurrency-bs, but mobilecoin seems to have been designed carefully to avoid most of the objectional aspects of blockchain stuff.

Prior discussion can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26724237

The CEO has posts in the thread as well.

Here's the direct link to the comments from MobileCoin's CEO (not Moxie): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26726246

Funny how he avoids answering any questions about financial incentives and token sales.

Edit: Also note how the mentioned primary goal of MobileCoin is to "fund Signal", not to be a payments layer for it.

Moxie presumably got rich from MobileCoin, it was reported that he recently bought an expensive house in Los Angeles.

He sold an earlier company to Twitter, pretty sure he already is "rich" (most of us here are, comparatively).

I'd like to think about Moxie as the most honourable person in all of this. Leaving the CEO role could be a sign that he doesn't agree with everything that's going on.

And left Twitter after a really short period of time. Usually, your acquihire pay depends on staying for a certain length of time.

I doubt that he was already as rich as he became last year otherwise why only buy an expensive house only now?

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing but it is an important fact that is being left out.

This is the main part, https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/mm6nad/bought_mobil...

I balk at any mention of crypto as a rule (since the landscape is so saturated with hucksters) but I have to assume it is to provide a functionality similar to WhatsApp Pay, Venmo and whatever WeChat has.

Those in app type payments are a huge part of message app usage in some parts of the world where I am sure Signal would like to increase uptake.

Mobilecoin is a quasi-security and not a stablecoin. The price went 5X in the days before Signal announced that they have built MobileCoin integration (in secret).

In a way, crypto has given non-profits a way to take profits out to personal accounts.

If that was the goal, the lightning network is a far better solution, mire privacy focused too.

It makes me nervous too. However, I will continue to use Signal but without using MobileCoin. I hope Signal will do what’s right.

[In my region we already have a good system for mobile payments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swish_(payment)]

What if you want to send money to someone outside of your country? The only reason Swish works is because it's co-owned by the major banks in Sweden.

Yeah, in that case MobileCoin might come handy.

For context - have you actually tried it? It’s pretty good.

So I think the motivation was, let's fight censorship. What gets censored? Speech, and also...money. OK then let's enable money too.

It's such a terrible idea for many reasons, but mainly because it's like waving a red flag at ignorant lawmakers: https://www.theverge.com/22872133/signal-cryptocurrency-paym...

Uncensorable private communications are useful, but become 100x more useful when they are coupled along with uncensorable private payments.

I'm also very skeptical of all things crypto but you did mention principles and I think there is an angle of mobile coin that is clearly ideological and very much fits into Moxie's reputation.

That is to take the transfer of money away from old and large institutions.

The lure if getting rich by creating your own money is irresistible and thus corrosive. Even the most principled person will have difficulty ferreting out all the wats it undermines that integrity.

Meanwhile bitcoin serves that same purpose and much mire efficiently with lightning.

Moxie just bought a $5M house in LA.

> I just hope that moxie's replacement is someone with as strong a reputation for fighting for the principles at stake and the ability to defend them

Yes, and who has a better reputation for fighting for principles than Brian Acton, one of the guys who made Whatsapp and subsequently sold it to the most morally correct company in the world: Facebook.

People make mistakes. Seems to me Acton is trying to do everything he can to correct it.

What he's been trying to do can also be interpreted as spending a few tens of millions here and there to generate PR with the goal of whitewashing his treachery when he sold out his WhatsApp userbase to Zuck and the most privacy invasive company on the planet...

I'm reminded of the old gag:

Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?

Yes, of course!

Would you sleep with me for one dollar?

What kind of woman do you think I am?

We've already established that, now we're just haggling over the price.

Acton already whored himself out to Zuck for $19billion. We've established what kind of person he is.

That gag really shouldn't be used seriously. Doing something for instant riches is not the same as doing it for day job money.

It makes sense morally speaking. Regardless of the price, someone who sins for money is a sinner.

There is still a huge difference between a one-time thing and an everyday action.

Treachery? What exactly did he owe you?

Sell out, sure, but who did he betray?

Acton has had an interesting road since selling WhatsApp to Facebook. That includes leaving Facebook with $850 million USD in shares on the table for leaving early and telling people to delete their Facebook accounts. Looking at what he's done tells the story of someone who learned many lessons since he sold WhatsApp.

i wonder if Acton figured that WhatsApp might lose to competitors and privacy-focused people would migrate to a new app anyways, and he could do more good with almost $1 billion.

And also $1 billion is quite a lot of money.

> That includes leaving Facebook with $850 million USD in shares on the table for leaving early and telling people to delete their Facebook accounts.

Honestly this action was one of the things that really made me like Acton. It was more than words. Granted, he already had a few billion dollars at that point -- and I'm under the opinion that $2bn isn't much different from $1bn (except bragging rights) (current work 2.8bn[0]) -- but it shows that money isn't his (only) motivating factor. It is also pretty hard to tell people to leave something you built.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/profile/brian-acton/?sh=13ea0bdb5cfc

WhatsApp’s other co-founder, Jan Koum, also reportedly [1] walked away from hundreds of millions by leaving Facebook due to disagreements.

Turns out he was still employed [2] despite saying it was time to “move on”, in order to get his remaining money...lol

1 - https://fortune.com/2018/05/01/jan-koum-whatsapp-facebook/

2 - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/15/whatsapps-jan-koum-left-face...

I mean, he walked away from $800 million in Facebook stock because his belief in privacy wouldn't allow him to continue working on WhatsApp, post-acquisition. I think that speaks louder than selling WhatsApp in the first place.

There are two types of people in the world: those who sell their start ups for 16 billion, and those that dont have startups people are willing to pay 16 billion for.

I am very doubtful that very many people here would turn down that sort of money if given the opportunity. Its very easy to wax poetic about virtue when nobody is trying to tempt you.

> I am very doubtful that very many people here would turn down that sort of money if given the opportunity. Its very easy to wax poetic about virtue when nobody is trying to tempt you.

Indeed, not a lot of people would be able to turn that down. Moxie? That's one of them, that I like to believe they would though.

It would be awfully hard to turn down nineteen billion dollars for the sale. The social ills caused by Facebook were also a little less undeniable in 2014.

Since the sale he has criticized the hell out of Facebook, too.

Sure, he isn't a martyr. But there are way way way worse behaviors in the valley.

You mention "principles" but Signal is yet another walled garden.

It does not protect metadata.

It requires a phone number to work.

The servers are centralized and it does not do federation by design. Development is centralized and not community-driven.

Respectfully, please don't paint Signal as some champion of Internet freedom and privacy.

This is my biggest concern. Hopefully the replacement will truly care about user privacy and have the balls to fight for it, even if it means going up against large (governmental) organizations.

For anyone curious, this is the blog post: https://signal.org/blog/cellebrite-vulnerabilities/

It’s a fun read.

I'm guessing it's why they started collecting and keeping user data

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