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by topkeks 1981 days ago
Does anyone outside Signal Foundation know how's their architecture? There are a lot of references to AWS, GCP, and Azure in the source code hosted in GitHub so they probably use them all in one way or another. It would be super interesting know more details about the infrastructure.
3 comments

interesting but doesn't really explain much. Is it really a single Signal server or can you spin many? What is stored on redis and postgresql? Maybe redis is used as cache, or as a queue, or as a store for sessions, and postgresql is used for accounts. Are these components distributed as well?
https://web.archive.org/web/20210110152154/https://old.reddi... They appear to be using IBM Cloud services too, for certain things
If they use any of it at all, Signal needs to get any/all remaining infrastructure off AWS as soon as possible.
Why?
I'm guessing this person is thinking about the risk that their cloud-provider(s) could shut them down due to political pressure, etc.
What if Amazon finds out they aren’t moderating users’ messages and Signal gets used in some future attack.

It’s not a far leap for Amazon to “take a strong stance against serious threats to our democracy” by kicking off signal.

Despite recent events, I don’t see this happening. Signal has a strong reputation as a privacy-supporting app without any weird fringe Internet subculture attached to it. And I’m unaware of any public groups like you find on Facebook or WhatsApp.

De-platforming a private messenger like Signal would be a strong signal against an open, unmonitored Internet and raise too many eyebrows. Amazon would be seen as complicit with government for not allowing citizens to communicate freely and privately with each-other.

If Signal adds features to let users post extremist views publicly, that’s a whole different ballgame and the cards are off the table.