Use Signal, Dammit

That's it. That's the post.

The fallout over Elon Musk’s latest high profile snit (this over Substack - you know, you’re soaking in it!) continues to, well, fall out. Musk, as is his wont, rolled back his snit-driven and frankly quite bizarre censoring of any Substack link on Twitter, but not before exchanging words with the Twitter Files (Musk’s great expose about how pre-Musk Twitter co-operated with the evil Feds by, uh, moderating tweets) authors, Matt Taibbi (previously known for writing a lot about Russia and Wall Street before losing his goddamn mind) and Michael Shellenberger (a right-wing apologist for climate change and homelessness). As part of that, Musk posted screenshots (and then deleted them, because no one would ever save anything on the Internet) of a conversation he had with Taibbi over Signal. Those conversations didn’t really reveal anything at all, other than that Taibbi and Musk talk to each other (which, uh, based on the Twitter Files we already could have guessed), but, you know, Twitter gonna Twitter.

Reading this tweet that someone else boosted, this was pretty much my reaction.

”Congressional oversight?” Look, pinheads, Musk and Taibbi are both private figures. They don’t work for the government, there are no rules on Congressional oversight of private conversations between private figures whatsoever, other than one that most people like to refer to as the goddamn First Amendment to the Constitution. Using Signal merely means that they would prefer outside agencies (like, you know, the government) not be able to have a transcript of their conversation, so that Musk can later post it himself for no apparent reason.

There is NOTHING suspicious about wanting to have your messages be private! It should be the EXPECTED DEFAULT BEHAVIOR!

And as for auto-deleting messages on a timer - there is NOTHING inherently suspicious about that either! You know what messaging app does that also? Snapchat. You know why people use that feature? Because of this:

Do you really want government oversight of that? Think it over. Do you WANT this man to be able to freely subpoena your more interesting messages?

NO, I DIDN’T THINK SO.

Use Signal, goddamit. Because, if for no other reason, everything continues to be horrible.