Il y a eu des problèmes techniques chez AWS, la solution cloud de Amazon, qui est utilisée par beaucoup de sites et services web, notamment Signal, l’excellente messagerie instantanée.
Meredith Whittaker, CEO de Signal et présidente de la Fondation associée, a fait un thread sur Mastodon pour traiter le sujet des gens (dont je faisais partie) qui débarquent sur le fait que Signal utilisent AWS, et une partie de ces gens sont très critiques qu’une application comme Signal utilise ce service appartenant à Amazon.
Voici le texte intégral du thread, désolé c’est en anglais.
THREAD: It’s surprising to me that so many people were surprised to learn that Signal runs partly on AWS (something we can do because we use encryption to make sure no one but you–not AWS, not Signal, not anyone–can access your comms).
It’s also concerning. 1/
Concerning, bc it indicates that the extent of the concentration of power in the hands of a few hyperscalers is way less widely understood than I’d assumed. Which bodes poorly for our ability to craft reality-based strategies capable of contesting this concentration & solving the real problem. 2/
The question isn’t « why does Signal use AWS? » It’s to look at the infrastructural requirements of any global, real-time, mass comms platform and ask how it is that we got to a place where there’s no realistic alternative to AWS and the other hyperscalers. 3/
Running a low-latency platform for instant comms capable of carrying millions of concurrent audio/video calls requires a pre-built, planet-spanning network of compute, storage and edge presence that requires constant maintenance, significant electricity and persistent attention and monitoring. 4/
Instant messaging demands near-zero latency. Voice and video in particular require complex global signaling & regional relays to manage jitter and packet loss. These are things that AWS, Azure, and GCP provide at global scale that, practically speaking, others (in the western context) don’t. 5/
This isn’t ‘’renting a server.’ It’s leasing access to a whole sprawling, capital-intensive, technically-capable system that must be just as available in Cairo as in Capetown, just as functional in Bangkok as Berlin. Particularly given the high stakes use cases of many who rely on Signal. 6/
Such infrastructure costs billions and billions of dollars to provision and maintain, and it’s highly depreciable. In the case of the hyperscalers, the staggering cost is cross-subsidized by other businesses–themselves also massive platforms with significant lockin. 7/
Meaning that infrastructure like AWS is not something that Signal, or almost anyone else, could afford to just “spin up.” Which is why nearly everyone that manages a real-time service–from Signal, to X, to Palantir, to Mastodon–rely at least in part on services provisioned by these companies. 8/
But even if Signal had the billions needed to recreate AWS, it’s not just about money. The talent to run these systems is rare & concentrated. The expertise, the tooling, the playbooks, the very language of modern SRE came out of these hyperscalers, and is now synonymous with ‘the cloud.’ 9/
o, yes, Signal runs on AWS. It also runs on your phone, which runs on iOS (Apple) or Android (Google). And on Dekstop, via Windows (Microsoft). Each of these presents similar dependencies on large entrenched tech companies, and concomitant barriers and risks. 10/
In short, the problem here is not that Signal ‘chose’ to run on AWS. The problem is the concentration of power in the infrastructure space that means there isn’t really another choice: the entire stack, practically speaking, is owned by 3-4 players. 11/
So, Signal does what we can to provide a service w integrity in the concentrated ecosystem we’re working in. We protect your comms w end-to-end encryption, so that we can use AWS and others as a highway across which to send Signal data in ways that don’t let AWS, or anyone else, gain access. 12/
To conclude: my silver lining hope is that AWS going down can be a learning moment, in which the risks of concentrating the nervous system of our world in the hands of a few players become very clear. And that this can help us craft ways of undoing this concentration and creating real choice ❤️ 13/
En gros, elle explique que permettre à une application de messagerie de fonctionner dans le monde entier, demande à la fois une infrastructure ultra performante, et l’expertise pour la mettre en place et la faire fonctionner. Et ça, ben ça coûte des milliards. Voilà. Donc ce qu’il faut remettre en cause, c’est pas seulement que Signal utilise AWS, c’est que beaucoup de fonctions des aspects d’Internet et du web sont aujourd’hui hyperconcentrées dans les mains de quelques acteurs.
Bref. Je suis fan de Meredith, elle est brillante. Et évidemment le premier toot en réponse à son thread, c’est un mec qui vient la mansplain…