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Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

status.signal.org

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Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#71

Post by fastball »

teekert wrote: post #66
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…

The people I got on Signal that dropped it (and not everyone did, it stuck for all my in-laws), did so because everyone was on WA anyway, including the people they used Signal with. But they all confessed that the usability was comparable (except for that pincode, which I turned off for some people that didn't understand it and when I explained, didn't need it).

I really wanted to keep using Signal but kept having a number of reliability / message delivery / notification issues. Last nail in the coffin was not being able to change my phone number and keep my message history.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#72

Post by Smaug123 »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #57
jeltz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp has awful usability and no desktop version.

WhatsApp has a desktop version.

WhatsApp's desktop version is crippled because it requires connectivity to your phone in order to use it. I believe they're working on a client that doesn't require that, but it's not here yet.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#73

Post by a-dub »

AYkALxknJh wrote: post #47
donkeyd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a free service with no actual income stream, driven by donations. What do you expect? I don't think we have the right to hold them to high standards because you get what you pay for. Signal has always been a bad choice for messaging in practice. In theory it's really secure and all, in practice, they have security issues that don't get fixed and no real reason to provide a quality service.

This is exactly right. lol. Its funny, take a step back and you'll see this thread is everyone complaining that a messaging app that's free had an outage and the company acknowledged there was an issue and they are working on it, but took 2 hours to do it. A free app that as you pointed out is run on donations. And the same people would also complain about alternative apps finding ways to monetize while still offerin…

it's quite funny when you think about how many commercial internet services that were originally offered to the public for free, usually to cross-promote or grow some other business (advertising, mostly, it seems), that now, as the internet has subsumed more basic functions in society, are basically as vital as a telephone was 30+ years ago.

like, imagine if gmail announced they were shutting down...

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#74

Post by fastball »

mro_name wrote: post #50
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…

how much do you spend on the service that's so crucial to you? What do you expect to get when giving nothing? Whoever is keeping a Whatsapp Account nowadays shits on the privacy of all their addressbook contacts and can't be helped, obviously. It may not be a friend.

Ummm, I've paid more for WhatsApp than I did for Signal. The money for signal kinda came (in a roudabout way) from the money I gave to WhatsApp.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#76

Post by hirako2000 »

everfree wrote: post #69
donkeyd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a free service with no actual income stream, driven by donations. What do you expect? I don't think we have the right to hold them to high standards because you get what you pay for. Signal has always been a bad choice for messaging in practice. In theory it's really secure and all, in practice, they have security issues that don't get fixed and no real reason to provide a quality service.

Are there any good paid alternatives to Signal? Looking for: Good UI, E2E, shared source native phone and desktop apps, group support, reliable push, easy setup. It seems to me that all the alternatives are either free and suffer from some of the same issues Signal does, or don't have all these features.

Element on the Matrix protocol. Not perfect UX but keeps improving. Free but it has a solid business model servicing business cases with the open source set stack that suits corporate needs.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#77

Post by [deleted] »

everfree wrote: post #69
donkeyd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a free service with no actual income stream, driven by donations. What do you expect? I don't think we have the right to hold them to high standards because you get what you pay for. Signal has always been a bad choice for messaging in practice. In theory it's really secure and all, in practice, they have security issues that don't get fixed and no real reason to provide a quality service.

Are there any good paid alternatives to Signal? Looking for: Good UI, E2E, shared source native phone and desktop apps, group support, reliable push, easy setup. It seems to me that all the alternatives are either free and suffer from some of the same issues Signal does, or don't have all these features.

[deleted]

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#78

Post by gnicholas »

abandonliberty wrote: post #43
gnicholas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't had reliability problems, but I do find it annoying that if I don't update my app frequently enough, they just cut communications entirely. That is, I don't get notifications that I've received new messages anymore. I usually find out about this when someone emails me to say they've sent me a message on Signal, but I've not responded. Instead of silently failing, I wish they would pop up a notification that…

I can't imagine this is an intentional choice by Signal. Always assumed it had something to do with the OS silencing unused applications.

I receive notifications for apps that I use less than this, like Lyft. I manage my notifications very carefully, and I have never silenced Signal on my phone. Also, I don't go that long between sessions of using Signal — just apparently long enough to trigger this issue.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#79

Post by vintermann »

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…

If you're tempted to switch back to WhatsApp because of Signal reliability issues, consider the possibility that you may be the target of a downgrade attack.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#80

Post by input_sh »

snovv_crash wrote: post #38
botto wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, no. Although Telegrams has encryption it's by default Client-Server, you have to explicitly start a secret chat with individual people. Additionally group chats are not encrypted except between client and server. I'm not sure of a good alternative as simple as Signal

By default it's not e2ee, but this makes the distributed app model sooo much more user friendly. All your history is instantly available on the web client for example. Try that with Signal. The web client works if your phone is out of battery. Try that with WhatsApp.

But I don't want my entire history to be available on a website? Who would even want that, what's the use case? Who looks at their months or years old messages?

If my message is over two weeks old, I'd prefer it not to be on anyone's server. I can keep a local backup if I wish to do so.

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