391–400 of 750 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My wife out of the blue just started asking if she should switch from WhatsApp to signal. What’s causing the exodus?
WhatsApp updated/clarified their Privacy Policy, which states they share PII with Facebook (their parent company).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'll get disappointed once you actually start using it. Unfortunately. There are so many quirks, inconsistencies, poor UI/UX. I've been using Matrix for maybe a year now with a group of techie friends and I would definitely not recommend it for my family members (who I just onboarded from Whatsapp to Signal the other day). Just look at this: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix And compare it to installing the Signal ap…
While I agree with the main point of your post ("so many quirks, inconsistencies, poor UI/UX ... not recommend it for my family members"), the availability of documentation doesn't mean it can't be intuitive. Aside from entering a custom home server on login (if applicable, that's something your family will not intuitively get with all the centralized services they're used to), after that one-time login I think most…
Sure, I'm not saying that either, and Matrix has been improving a lot since I first tried it maybe 2 years ago. But there's still a long way to go. I wasn't as focused on onboarding as I was on criticizing Element's UI/UX in general.
> And we definitely don't need phone numbers and SMS verification for usability: a username will do just fine
Phone number is just the easiest thing to do. No one is confused by the process and you immediately have access to all of your contacts, while with a username you somehow need to get all the usernames of all of your friends. Inviting new users to various channels kind of works, but it's not as personal as your own contact list.
Mind you I'm not saying it's the best option. Personally I'd rather register with a username, not only because I currently have three different phone numbers in use.
> we don't have to spend 1.5 million USD from donations just on SMS codes in 2018 alone (source: tax filing)
Signal was paying that much? That's crazy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They could easily add an optional badge to avatars showing that you donated $1 that year via an optional in-app purchase. The subtle social pressure in a lot of group chats would be pretty effective, and it would help raise awareness that it is run by a non-profit foundation.
This sounds good on first pass, but consider the implication of allowing donations (and thus, payment method information) to be tied to a Signal users account. I specifically _wouldn't_ want this.
I just donated to Signal after seeing the error banner in the app. I realised I was more than happy to pay WhatsApp's yearly charge back in the pre-Facebook days (think it was 70p or so?). Figured I could give Signal a few quid every now and then, maybe keep a server up for a few seconds :) Donation link should anyone be interested: https://signal.org/donate/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a little confused because you brought up Telegram specifically. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger offer the same level of security as Telegram. In fact, I think WhastApp is more secure since it does E2E encryption by default. It's true that Telegram is about "fun" and not security. I just wasn't sure if you tried to imply Telegram is like Signal with a focus on fun as well, or you just meant most people don't care…
Telegram has optional E2E encryption (as does WhatsApp) which puts it ahead of Facebook Messenger. Unlike FB Messenger and WhatsApp, the company behind Telegram so far doesn't have a history of selling your personal data. I'd say it's fairly competitive, though obviously not ahead of Signal
WhatsApp, for all its faults is E2E-encrypted by default and all the time.
Not that it helps much unless you avoid activating backups and convince all your contacts to avoid backups.
I don't like WhatsApp (anymore), but we should stick to the facts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds good on first pass, but consider the implication of allowing donations (and thus, payment method information) to be tied to a Signal users account. I specifically _wouldn't_ want this.
It's easy. You "gift" the badge to a user via the Signal homepage when making a connection. There's no required connection between the gift-giver and the receiver. Is the person who gifted the badge the same as the receiver? Could very well be, but there's no way to prove that. All you need to store server-side is "this user has the badge until date X".
Sure, but espionage and surveillance are rarely about proving anything, they're about making good educated guesses. Besides, the receiver will very likely be among your friends and acquaintances, so the NSA would only have to look at your social circle to find them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
WhatsApp updated/clarified their Privacy Policy, which states they share PII with Facebook (their parent company).
Surely it’s not this alone. Most of the people who seem to be switching that I know still use Facebook itself anyway?
The background here is that WhatsApp previously stated that they would never share user data for profit, i.e., not selling ads [1]. Reading that blog post leaves a sour taste in HN's collective mouth, because not 2 years later they would get acquired by the ad giant Facebook and now mandate that users agree to share their data with FB. The wording made it seem like accounts that didn't agree with the new policies would get terminated on February 8th.
A few days later, WhatsApp posted [2] that their update was misinterpreted by users and media, and that the clarifications to their policies were to increase transparency. They also pushed the ultimatum for a few months.
[1] https://blog.whatsapp.com/why-we-don-t-sell-ads
[2] https://blog.whatsapp.com/giving-more-time-for-our-recent-up...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Matrix comes up a lot but even Signal is often called not polished enough. And for matrix onboarding is hard for techies and I've had zero chance for the general public. Fine to push it towards techies, but my grandma can't figure it out but she can Signal. Push matrix when it's more polished but right now it just feels silly to push it.
Exactly. I'm for decentralization, but the reality is that if "we" (we techies) tried to push Element on everyone today they would just fall back to WhatsApp. So better to go for Signal today and then switch everyone over to a Matrix (or similar) client in a couple of years. As the past week demonstrated, it's possible to switch masses out of a closed, network-effect-dominated system.