Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

It's really annoying that they didn't even acknowledge the problem officially. Till about 15 minutes ago, their status page said everything was fine. Their Twitter account still doesn't mention any technical problems. But the service has been having issues for at least 3 hours. [1]

Most people I know that started using Signal a few months ago are now back to using Whatsapp. Privacy is a nice feature to advertise, but when both your UX and your reliability suck, it's not a good combo.

EDIT: A tweet has emerged 3 hours after the outage started.

[1] https://downdetector.com/status/signal/

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#5

Post by toastercat » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 5:04 AM UTC

What's a good alternative to Signal on Android for casual messaging? I don't think Element is a good fit since it's not easy to ask a friend or family member to sign up for Element whereas it's simple to install Signal.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#6

Post by kome » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 5:08 AM UTC

toastercat wrote: post #5

What's a good alternative to Signal on Android for casual messaging? I don't think Element is a good fit since it's not easy to ask a friend or family member to sign up for Element whereas it's simple to install Signal.

Telegram?

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#7

Post by decrypt » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 5:08 AM UTC

LordAtlas wrote: post #4

It's really annoying that they didn't even acknowledge the problem officially. Till about 15 minutes ago, their status page said everything was fine. Their Twitter account still doesn't mention any technical problems. But the service has been having issues for at least 3 hours. [1] Most people I know that started using Signal a few months ago are now back to using Whatsapp. Privacy is a nice feature to advertise, but…

They did now: https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1442354759009247232

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#8

Post by na85 » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 5:10 AM UTC

toastercat wrote: post #5

What's a good alternative to Signal on Android for casual messaging? I don't think Element is a good fit since it's not easy to ask a friend or family member to sign up for Element whereas it's simple to install Signal.

SMS, WhatsApp, if you don't care about security and/or privacy.

Perhaps Telegram but I recall reading some commentary on their crypto that made me hesitant.

Conversations is a good XMPP messenger, and it supports crypto extensions, OMEMO, etc.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#9

Post by decrypt » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 5:10 AM UTC

yownie wrote: post #3

Not much info.

From these links, it seems to be a AWS issue:

Unofficial comment: https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-down-for-anyone-e...

Official comment which came later: https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1442354759009247232

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#10

Post by unclekev » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 5:11 AM UTC

It frustrates me to no end that it took them 3 hours to officially acknowledge this outage at all.

A single tweet 3 hours AFTER the outage has started is just not acceptable [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1442354759009247232

Edit: Yes I know signal is free and funded by donations. I've donated multiple times. I still don't think 'free' is a a valid reason for not informing people sooner. It's just unprofessional. This response from MrDresden is on point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28667509