@haverholm@imaginair.es Let me play devil's advocate here. I think it wasn't about being evil, it was pure marketing. If you claim Signal being about security and privacy, most people think of app — everything that happens inside that app is secure, but it's not the case when you allow federation, you also have to trust the one operating the server you're on, but most people have no concept of protocols or servers. Had something happened on a third-party server, they'd start thinking "Signal isn't secure".
@haverholm@imaginair.es Do you remember when Proton gave the IP-address of a French activist to the law enforcement? A lot of people started thinking "ProtonMail isn't secure", but it's not the case! They didn't leak emails, they only did the bare minimum to comply with Swiss law — they've never claimed otherwise. And this wouldn't be a problem had that activist used a VPN service, even their own ProtonVPN. But after that happened, it got hard to explain that to the general public.
@haverholm@imaginair.es
BTW Proton had fedi accounts for both Mail and VPN, but gave them up in favour of Twitter, decentralization wasn't considered important by most at the time, I can imagine sacrificing that for marketing reasons. But if you look back on that from 2023, that was a really dumb move 😂
Sorry for breaking it into several comments, my instance only allows 500 characters.