this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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As a reminder, Signal is still awesome, is run by cool people who have been doing good stuff for your privacy for many many years, runs on your phone and your laptop and your dad's PC and your buddy's phone of that other brand ...
Messaging apps are useless if the people you want to message don’t have the same one.
There are many countries where WhatsApp has become the defacto messaging standard. It's really hard and isolating to refuse to use it there.
Its the default in most of the world, there is no moving anyone to Signal since WA is just enough for most of the population and basically have the exact same features. Telegram has a bit of an audience but its only because its more like a social media/chat app hybrid.
A good chunk of the world also runs on low end phones and having an extra chat app to chat with maybe 1 person at best is a waste of space to most.
It got steam because it was one of the first ways to technically "chat for free" even if it had a price tag at first. Most countries had unlimited data but still billed people for every sms sent. Whatsapp introduced the concept of an app solely to chat with others through their phones for free/a one time fee forever.
By now it has reached critical mass and its basically impossible to get people to migrate anywhere else. Everyone would have to change apps at the same time.
People don't really see any particular appeal in WA, its just the default now even if its just meh. Sadly.
In the US Apple had an early lead with the iPhone and so a lot of people converted from SMS to iMessage.
In the EU the iPhone didn't have the same adoption, so when WhatsApp came along most people were still communicating with SMS, so it was WhatsApp which captured the market instead.
The people closest to me in my life I have converted to using Signal, but I have family and friends who use WhatsApp, who also have in turn their own family and friends who use it, and so-on down the line.
Ditching WhatsApp myself would mean not being part of those groups, and I can't convince thirty people at once to all ditch a platform they are perfectly happy with (even if I don't think they should be happy with it) and has huge lock-in because everyone else in their lives also uses it.
I honestly hope that Meta cram it to the brim with ads, because if it gets shitty enough then maybe the alternatives will look more appetising.
Critical mass. When it has been the default way to message anyone and everyone for over a decade, it's pretty difficult to start converting everyone and their literal grandmother to start adopting something else. I understand it doesn't enjoy quite the same status in the US though.
Honestly, I couldn't get my dad to use signal. And personally I think that signal is lacking in a lot of features like a smartwatch app, ability to send messages through a voice assistant, among other things because of the fact it prioritizes security and privacy over everything else.
WhatsApp just recently got an app for Wear OS
Main issue for me is that no one, I know uses any other app than WhatsApp.
I use telegram for piracy but wish people would move over to Telegram or Signal. Majority seems to be stubborn on WhatsApp because of easiness and laziness.
Telegram is less private then whatsapp, unless you use the private chats it's not even encrypted.
It's not so much laziness as the reason you've given - everyone else is on WhatsApp. Why would I move to a new messaging app when I literally can't message the people I want to message on it cause they don't have it.
Majority of the people I know, forgot to include that. However if everyone else thinks like that, no one would ever change platforms.
While I still use and sort of like Signal, I feel that dropping SMS support was the wrong choice and I don't like the direction they are going. They are also against federation which I also don't like. I've stopped recommending Signal to people.
I believe them when they say that one reason to drop SMS was that some vulnerable users were mistakenly sending SMS when they thought they were safe by using Signal. That's a serious problem where a person having Signal on their phone could cause them to expose themselves to attacks. That person's life is more important than my momentary inconvenience when my mom is using SMS and my friend is using Signal.
I really wish that there were better options; some sort of incrementally-built web-of-trust like the old PGP model. But right now, Signal is still in a sweet spot for me: yes, it's centralized, but it gets certain specific benefits of centralization while also credibly assuring that the server owners can't do evil with it even if they want to ... and they credibly don't. I can get my family and my housemates to use it, instead of something from Zuckerberg.
Those are definitely all valid points, though I feel a bit of UI work making it abundantly clear that it's not encrypted in case of SMS and an option perhaps to fully disable SMS in settings if you really don't want it would have helped further adoption. I feel like they are optimizing for a rather small subset of users and thereby hurting the rest.
I think it's a good idea from a security standpoint to have a UX space in which everyone can be confident that everyone's stuff is encrypted; with a very distinct and (yes) inconvenient barrier — in this case, a different app — between encrypted and unencrypted spaces.
Everyone is using lots of different messaging systems: SMS/MMS; specific systems like Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp; email; maybe Facebook Messenger; etc. It's really important for some users' actual lives that it be totally clear when you're crossing from a secure space to an insecure space. Having the insecure space not be in the same app is one way to accomplish that.
When we need to move data between the secure space and the insecure space, we can do that through copy-and-paste, or even screenshots. It is inconvenient, but that's because it's explicit and intentional, which also means you can't move data from one to the other by accident. That's good.
As a privacy hobbyist, I want to notice what works for the people whose lives depend on privacy: the journalists, activists, sex workers, LSD dealers, etc. I don't have their risks, but I want to contribute to a world where they can be safe.
However, there are definitely lots of different needs and comfort levels. What's a sweet spot for me might be an uncanny valley for you.
You didn't have to enable SMS in Signal if you didn't want to.
It's a user-level decision, and again, it was very clear in Signal when it was going SMS already.
It certainly killed adoption. It was the only app I had any success converting people, because it was seamless.
That's a pretty poor excuse, since Signal made it very clear when a message was going SMS.
If they felt it wasn't obvious enough, make it more obvious.
I can't find any reason to remove SMS support, other than something they're not telling us.
I read some BS about it costing Signal more to support... It couldn't be much, because SMS is handled by the OS, Signal just hands it off via standardized API.
I think all personal messages ahould be encrypted! This should be a standard, not optional.
Yes, but my mom has an old phone and can't install stuff.
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I have signal, could I have a separate signal associated with my work account on the same phone do you know?
You can use Molly (a Signal fork) and have 2 accounts on same device, you need a second phone number though