36C3 - The ecosystem is moving
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited in decentralization and federation debates as the key talk on the practical challenges, though some found it defeatist.
What it is
Moxie Marlinspike's 36C3 talk examines why distributed and decentralized technology is hard to build into consumer products, from the perspective of developing Signal. It argues that ecosystems move slowly and federation causes problems.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2020 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends seanieb · 2021-11 · on “Telegram Ad Platform”
A talk by Moxie at CCC deals with this exact question. > “ Considerations for distributed and decentralized technologies from the perspective of a product that many would like to see decentralize. > Amongst an environment of enthusiasm for blockchain-based technologies, efforts to decentralize the internet, and tremendous investment in distributed systems, there has been relatively little product movement in this area from the mobile and consumer internet spaces. > This is an exploration of challenges for distributed technologies, as well as some considerations for what they do and don't provide, from the perspective of someone working on user-focused mobile communication. This also includes
Recommends blfr · 2025-01 · on “Why Twitter is such a big deal (2009)”
There's a great CCC presentation by Moxie (Signal originator) on that [this video] ~summarized in text form [LINK]
Cites seanieb · 2025-12 · on “We Abandoned Matrix: The Dark Truth About User Security and Safety (2024)”
Moxie (Signal Founder) gave a talk about the issues with federation at CCC in 2020, he took a crazy amount of flak for it, a lot of it from the Matrix community. Lots of the issue highlighted are in this post. [this video]
Cites jazzz · 2026-07 · on “How should group chats work in decentralized systems?”
Appreciate the clarity. It helps me focus without going off on a wild tangent. The durability/independence of the protocol being a primary driver makes sense, and aligns with the design. > "no privileged party at all" > "The network should outlive the operator, function without it." I also believe these are absolute requirements for the future of groupchats. I'd argue for stronger requirements, but I'm definitely onboard here. This protocol has strengths: 1) Per-sender buckets. This is a clever workaround for the downsides of client-side fanout, and provides reasonable sender identity decoupling. 2) Realistic membership limits. I think the number is quite low, but in general I love the willi
Critical Jerry2 · 2020-01 · on “On Privacy versus Freedom”
I saw Moxie Marlinspike's talk when it was posted on CCC's official channel [1] and was disgusted by it. The talk has been now censored and video was made private. It was one of the most defeatist talks I've ever come across when it comes to messaging and privacy. His message was basically that anything you do is pointless and that his and WhatsApp/Facebook's way is the right one. I've used Signal on few occasions in the past but his talk made me uninstall it. I simply do not trust him after hearing his opinions. I do not support centralization and other ideals he's now pushing (including the use of a phone number as Signal's primary ID). The talk was mirrored on few channels on YT [2] and y