Signal's president, Meredith Whittaker, addressed criticism regarding the app's reliance on Amazon Web Services (AWS) following a major outage that affected multiple services. She emphasized that the concentration of power among a few cloud providers leaves companies like Signal with little choice but to use them for global, reliable communication services. Whittaker hopes the outage will highlight the risks of such centralized infrastructure in the tech industry.
The article critiques popular misconceptions surrounding the recent AWS outage, emphasizing that it was not caused by AI and highlighting the pitfalls of adopting a multi-cloud strategy. It discusses the complexities of maintaining cloud systems and the importance of understanding the root causes of outages rather than relying on simplistic explanations or excuses.