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Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

status.signal.org

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Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#81

Post by the_other »

novok wrote: post #49
emptysongglass wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For casual messaging , Telegram is fantastic. Actual multi-session clients across devices. No Electron. Truck loads of features and thoughtful touches everywhere. It's easily the slickest and if you're looking to have friends and family who don't have a lot of patience for technical issues actually convert and stay converted, it's the only one I've found to do the trick. Searching through your messages by type, reall…

WhatsApp has a better privacy story than Telegram, because every chat is a 'secret chat' by default. If your using signal, a priority for you is private chat with something the normies in your life can use, otherwise you'd just use whatever is the most popular where you live.

> WhatsApp has a better privacy story than Telegram

No it doesn’t. It’s owned by the 2nd largest surveillance capitalist; it shares a back-end with Facebook (so at a whim they can use the metadata around your chats to update their advertising models of you and your contacts); IIRC it leaks your engagement to FB (via web link previews).

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#82

Post by hulitu »

gnicholas wrote: post #39
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…

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…

Whatsapp forces you to update to be able to use it further. Not a nice thing.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#84

Post by the_other »

osamagirl69 wrote: post #34
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.

For what it is worth, creating an account on the matrix home instance using app.element.io or the matrix android app (haven't tried ios, but I assume it is the same) takes literally 3 clicks. Click register, select the matrix home server, type in your desired username, password, and recovery email (no phone # required or even requested) and click register. The one part I see people struggle with is transferring keys…

Server, keys, recovery email, wizards? That’s four steps too many for most people.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#85

Post by gnicholas »

hulitu wrote: post #82
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…

Whatsapp forces you to update to be able to use it further. Not a nice thing.

Really? I go years between sessions of Whatsapp and can still get notifications. I wouldn't mind if a messaging app forced me to update to send a new message, or even to view a message that has just been received (though that would be a little lousy if it meant updating over cellular). My issue is that Signal fails silently.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#87

Post by harry8 »

ddevault wrote: post #83

Bitten again by centralization. There's no excuse for not making Signal an open, federated protocol.

>There's no excuse for not making Signal an open, federated protocol.

This is just false. You can disagree with moxie all you like and make your case but he has been very clear on the reasons why he hasn't gone that way and the success of his project among non-technical users where so many others have failed suggests he's doing something right.

I will applaud and cheer if you show his concerns on federation aren't really a problem by making a federated, e2e encrypted message app work as well for users as moxie has with his. Seriously. I will cheer you like you won't believe. Go do it! Or do you have an excuse?

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#88

Post by bigiain »

krater23 wrote: post #48
davros wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint - I'm completely happy with signal. The useability, contrary to some comments here, is wonderful. In particular I love the desktop app, it was easy to get family to use and does everything I need smoothly and with good privacy.

Sounds like you have a relatively new smartphone and never used Whatsapp.

That does describe me nicely (Well, sort of, my daily driver phone is an iPhone XR - so only _sort of_ new?). But. I also run Signal on a ~6 year old iPad, and I've not noticed it run badly there.

I haven't tried Signal on a budget grade Android phone though. I have a few Galaxy S4s I use for various odd projects, but most "modern" apps run fairly badly on those.

I'm also "looking forward" to a weekend or two's worth of frustration failing to get Signal for Linux desktop running on my PinePhone when it arrives... ;-)

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#89

Post by bigiain »

jeltz wrote: post #56
krater23 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you have a relatively new smartphone and never used Whatsapp.

WhatsApp has awful usability and no desktop version.

I'm not a WhatsApp user, but the circumstantial evidence of every single non technical friend I have happily using WhatsApp every day strongly suggests its not a complete UX shitfight.

What do you find "awful" about it's usability?

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#90

Post by pope_meat »

ranguna wrote: post #63
cranekam wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook Messenger, Hangouts, Google Chat, and above all SMS / iMessage. Whatsapp by all accounts is the most popular (as much as I personally detest it). Given you’re calling out WhatsApp specifically as a service you detest I’m going to assume you rank it last of all these options. Why is this? WhatsApp is E2EE, has a simple UI (at least IMO) and doesn’t store messages centrally. If I claimed to be a privacy nut…

Because past experience matters and Facebook has failed quite a few times on the privacy spectrum

I'm starting to suspect fb has people here to downvote critique. Or the vast majority have drank the Kool aid.

I really hope it's the former, instead of the latter.

Whatsapp is a non starter for me because the company that owns and operates it is not trust worthy. Very profitable, and probably making some of the people here great returns on their investments...but it's not trust worthy, nor ethical.

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