It doesn't surprise me that,

SimpleX is under attack by corrupt liar Wired:

"Neo-Nazis Are Fleeing Telegram for Encrypted App SimpleX Chat"

https://www.wired.com/story/neo-nazis-flee-telegram-encrypted-app-simplex/

What DOES surprise me is the reaction of developer Evgeny Poberezkin,

Here's the quote from the article:

"And Poberezkin believes that the current limitations of his technology will mean these groups will eventually abandon SImpleX.

“SimpleX is a communication network, rather than a service or a platform, where users can host their own servers, like in Open Web, so we were not aware that extremists have been using it,” says Poberezkin. “We never designed groups to be usable for more than 50 users and we’ve been really surprised to see them growing to the current sizes despite limited usability and performance. We do not think it is technically possible to create a social network of a meaningful size in the SimpleX network.”"

This is surprising because Evgeny told us that groups could scale by reducing the reliance on a single invite link, so anyone could enter via any group member or "super members".

In fact, even from his own tweets, just 2 days prior:

"We agree that once group can scale, they will help growth."

Source: https://xcancel.com/SimpleXChat/status/1841561127320199583#m

This is the danger of doing cypherpunk stuff, with government money venture capital and registered LLCs. At the slightest push from the mainstream media, he changes his tune.

I like Evgeny. He's a good guy. And I DON'T blame him for trying to stop his company from being associated with bad actors. But we need to be honest here, he's trying to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to be a cypherpunk, but collect the paycheck of a corporation.

What he should have said to Wired is: "This technology is like the printing press. It improves our lives and offers all of this freedom. But once it's made, the inventor can't control what people say. Do you really want to live in a world without the press, Wired?"

This is why SimpleX makes me nervous. They're run by a for-profit company and whether or not they are currently morally on the right side or not is irrelevant. It's why I personally trust Session more. It's a lot more traditional cypherpunk in development ethos.

While SimpleX definitely has a LOT of really cool features, it has a way to go before I think it'll be useful for most people. It's sluggish if you're in popular groups, the notifications and message catch-up is a massive pain, etc. And like I said, it's kind of hard to trust a for-profit corporation in this case, even if the developer might be on the cypherpunk side of things.

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Discussion

Is there any way to verify how many servers Session is running?

I don't think they're financial model (shitcoining) is working out for them and oxen is running them all.

I run my own Simplex relays.

AND they're not using double ratchet encryption. intercepted messages can be decrypted if an adversary gets access to the sending device.

Simplex uses model Signal encryption.

so a small number of servers run by a single entity not using modern encryption.

doesn't sound very secure to me.

I'd prefer a organization with a viable financial model.

I don't know. Possibly, but I have no idea.

Also, I don't know how we can hate on Oxen/Session Token when it's pretty much touted as primarily being used as a means of securing the network. Having the network 100% open is one of Tor's main weaknesses due to sybil attacks, something far less likely on Session. Plus, the onion routing aspect means your packets are fully decentralized and anonymized.

That said, I do agree that Session should have kept PFS but due to how the network works, it'd be difficult to decrypt enough messages to deanonymize.