The Platform Move

This is short.

You have security agreements. You have a champion. Now make sure you’re actually living on the infrastructure you agreed to — not just visiting it.

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This is the collective version of what you did alone back in Level 1, when you set up Signal and encrypted your devices. It’s harder now because you need everyone to move. It’s easier because you’re not alone.

If your group isn’t fully on secure channels yet — if some conversations still happen over text, or in a Facebook group, or in a group chat on a platform that logs everything — this chapter is about finishing the migration. If you’re already on Signal, skip ahead to the audit section. Either way, this should take one meeting.

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Every major platform migration in recent memory has followed the same pattern. When Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, millions of users signed up for Mastodon. Within months, most had drifted back. When WhatsApp updated its privacy policy in January 2021, Signal saw 7.5 million downloads in five days. Weeks later, usage patterns showed most people had returned to WhatsApp. When Reddit’s API changes drove users toward Lemmy in 2023, the same thing happened.

The pattern is this: initial enthusiasm, parallel running — where both old and new platforms stay active — and then collapse back to the original. The research is consistent on why. Voluntary individual migration fails because the value of a communication platform depends on who else is on it. If half the group stays on the old channel, the old channel is where the conversation happens. The new one feels empty. People check it less. Eventually it dies.

In The Matrix, the Nebuchadnezzar crew doesn’t split its communication across multiple systems. Everyone uses the same operator, the same hardline protocol, the same extraction procedure. Not because the technology is perfect — it isn’t — but because one person on a different channel is a vulnerability the Agents can exploit. When Cypher makes his deal with Agent Smith, it works precisely because he operates outside the group’s agreed communication structure. The betrayal isn’t just personal. It’s infrastructural. He opts out of the shared system, and the shared system can’t protect what it can’t see.

Your group is the same. The old platform isn’t just inconvenient — it’s a channel the group’s security agreements don’t cover. Every conversation that happens there is outside the structure you built together.

The structural fix has two parts: coordinated group migration and a sunset date.

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If you’re migrating:

Your security champion sets up the Signal group. Ideally, do this in person — the same “setup party” model from Chapter 19. Walk everyone through configuration together:

Disappearing messages on, set to one week. Notification previews off. Link previews disabled in Signal’s privacy settings — these can leak information about what you’re sharing. Registration lock enabled. Screen lock on the app itself if the device is shared with anyone.

Verify Safety Numbers with each person. In person, scanning the QR code. This takes thirty seconds per person and confirms no one’s messages are being intercepted.

Then set a sunset date. Pick a day — one week out is reasonable — when the old channel gets deleted. Not archived. Deleted. This is the forcing function. Without it, the old channel stays alive as a fallback, parallel running sets in, and the migration fails.

On the sunset date, the champion deletes the old group. It’s done.

If you’re already on Signal:

Run an audit at your next meeting. Walk through each setting together:

Disappearing messages: on, one week. Notification previews: off. Link previews: disabled. Registration lock: on. Screen lock: on. Devices locked with alphanumeric passcodes — not four digits, not a pattern.

Verify Safety Numbers with each person. Even if you did this before, do it again. Safety Numbers change when someone reinstalls Signal or gets a new phone.

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One conversation that often surfaces during migration: someone will resist leaving the old platform. They have other contacts there. It’s convenient. They don’t see the point. This is normal. Don’t argue about it — come back to the principle from Chapter 19. The group agreed on a communication platform as part of its security floor. This is that agreement in action. If someone needs help with the setup, the champion helps. If someone has a legitimate concern the group didn’t anticipate, add it to the agenda for the next meeting.

The goal isn’t to eliminate every insecure channel in everyone’s life. It’s to ensure that the group’s conversations happen on the infrastructure the group agreed to. What people do on their own time with other contacts is their business. What happens in the group happens on secure channels.

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Write in your field journal after: Did everyone move? Was there resistance? How did it resolve?

This is probably the simplest challenge in Level 2. Good. You’ve earned one.

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