Given that Signal is free as a service, supporting federation only increases their expenses.
Element can do it for their Matrix servers. Process.one can do it for ejabberd. Prosody as well. Why can't Signal?
You've named several products that share your values. Perhaps those would be a better fit if you were to donate.
The most comparable system to Tor that has practical properties I can think of is maybe ipfs, but nobody will store your encrypted chat blobs for you out of the goodness of their hearts. Ipfs also tends to have high latency. A slow system of uncooperative nodes isn't what you want your messaging app built on.
A federated messaging system looks a lot more like Matrix. The obvious problems are that splitting users up over multiple nodes mean encrypted data doesn't live on your instance, it lives everywhere the people are you chat with. Another problem is what you see with bsky, where identifiers come with a domain name (like an email).
IRC is also federated (sort of), and there's a long list of tired, age-old problems. The most common one is simple: different servers have different features, so you can't reliably "just use it" like you can with Signal.
I worry a lot more about not having one single actor responsible in dealing for the communication of millions of people than about "quantum-resistant encryption".
They've talked about this, a lot.
I'm glad you worry about this. Me and other people have other priorities.
You're putting an awful lot of effort into projecting your values onto other people, which is a bit weird.
The internet would be a lot more efficient and able to evolve if we just had it controlled by one single entity like Google or Microsoft. Do you think is a good idea to do that?
The economy would be a lot more efficient and allocation of resources could be a lot more fair if we could put it all in the hands of one single corporation or government. Do you think it's a good idea to do that?
Agricultural output would improve significantly if all crops used the exact same genetic strain and if all soil was artificially managed. Do you think it's a good idea to do that?
In case you are wondering, "ability to quickly roll out post-quantum key exchange" is waaaaay down the list of my worries compared to "facing a catastrophic Black Swan affecting all of the world's communications".
Did you watch "The Big Short"? You are sounding like one of those jocks-turned-real-estate agents that are bragging about how easy it is to make money and thinking the analysts were idiots.
> You're putting an awful lot of effort into projecting your values onto other people.
We live in a world where people are bullied for not using iPhones and showing up with different bubble colors on the chat apps and family members will refuse to call you on the phone and only accept you if you use WhatsApp.
All I am saying is "please let's not collectively put ourselves in the hands of any single entity". Are you sure I'm the one projecting values, here?
I've literally no idea what this means. Who thinks who's an idiot in this analogy?
> All I am saying is "please let's not collectively put ourselves in the hands of any single entity". Are you sure I'm the one projecting values, here?
I don't care what messaging platform you use. You appear to deeply care what other people use, and therefore what should be important to them. Yes, I'm pretty sure.
There's plenty of diversity in the messaging space. Decide your values, choose your compromises, pick your platform. Simple.
Old enough that the «honemyoon» period is over, say... a decade ?