Amazon Tells Signal's Creators To Stop Using Anti-Censorship Tool (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The team behind secure messaging app Signal says Amazon has threatened to kick the app off its CloudFront web service unless Signal drops the anti-censorship practice known as domain-fronting. Google recently banned the practice, which lets developers disguise web traffic to look like it's coming from a different source, allowing apps like Signal to evade country-level bans. As a result, Signal moved from Google to the Amazon-owned Souq content delivery network. But Amazon implemented its own ban on Friday. In an email that Moxie Marlinspike -- founder of Signal developer Open Whisper Systems -- posted today, Amazon orders the organization to immediately stop using domain-fronting or find another web services provider. Signal used the system to provide service in Egypt, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where it's officially banned. It got around filters by making traffic appear to come from a huge platform, since countries weren't willing to ban the entirety of a site like Google to shut down Signal. "The idea behind domain fronting was that to block a single site, you'd have to block the rest of the internet as well. In the end, the rest of the internet didn't like that plan," Marlinspike writes. "We are considering ideas for a more robust system, but these ecosystem changes have happened very suddenly. [...] In the meantime, the censors in these countries will have (at least temporarily) achieved their goals. Sadly, they didn't have to do anything but wait."

Comments

Fascists can die in a fire

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in: fascist corporate America doesn’t give a shit about protecting your rights if it doesn’t have a way to monetize that.

Re:Fascists can die in a fire

[GLMDesigns]

Amazon and Google are fascist. OK.

What is fascism?
What makes something fascist? I don't know anymore. It used to be relatively simple. It was defined by Mussolini but now everything is Fascist.

Hey - you libertarian over there are you for free speech and free markets? "Yup" Well, then, you're a fascist.

Now I'm not fond of either Google or Amazon.

I use Brave or Firefox, use DuckDuckGo unitl and unless I'm forced to go to Google. I've reduced my use of gmail. (Using protonmail)

It can't be because they oppose free speech and the free expression of ideas? Because then Antifa would be fascist? Right?

So, what the fuk is fascism.

Re:Fascists can die in a fire

[alvinrod]

I believe that Orwell's essay on fascism is still as apt as ever. Essentially it's just a way to describe a political (or more generally, any ideological) opponent you don't like and historically been flung at just about everyone from communists to Catholics. It's a fancier way of saying "bad guy" in most cases.

What do you want to bet....

[MAXOMENOS]

...the actual reason for the changes has to do with another country telling Amazon and Google to quit enabling Signal, or else?

Censorship! bad!!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

OK we got that part. Censorship is bad. And this domain fronting is one way to evade censorship.

So we heard about *one* legitimate noble use of domain fronting.

Amazon and Google are banning probably to improve their tracking and their own bottom line. Fine.

Now are there illegitimate uses for domain fronting? Is it used by scammers? Is it used by malware hawkers? Can we have some balance in reporting and mention the dark underbelly of domain fronting? Or has slash dot is PR fronting for some scammers and spammers?