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A single decision by Moxie or a single court order in some country can make Signal unavailable to a large part of its user base.
I think the solution here would be a "lightweight" federation of 3 or 4 entities following a common charter and covering a wide geographical area. If one drops out for some reason, the others will still ensure the service remains alive.
> Then it is a single court order and 3 people agreeing on the same decision which is quite easy to make when it has to made at gunpoint.
Not if the 3 entities reside in different countries/jurisdictions.
> decentralization, federation, peer-to-peer. pretty much what the internet was designed to be.
While I agree with you from the theoretical standpoint, it's been already shown that neither users nor providers care about that. A federation is not by any means easy to maintain (just look at the amount of work spent in keeping e-mail relatively free from spam and usable). So, either the federation in question is small enough that you can keep it under control or you're better off researching a fully decentralized system that is resilient to all the problems all other services have (doesn't sound easy to me).
I think the solution here would be a "lightweight" federation of 3 or 4 entities following a common charter and covering a wide geographical area. If one drops out for some reason, the others will still ensure the service remains alive.