Stories Are Coming to Signal • Hacker News Board

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#51

Post by jimkleiber » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

nixpulvis wrote: post #42

Whelp, there goes the neighborhood. Honestly, why can't we just make products and services that do one thing and do it well. Leave "stories" to the social media applications.

WhatsApp has had stories for years, just called statuses. Most of my American friends don't use it or know they're there, but my East African friends use them all the time. Frankly, most of my US friends aren't even on WhatsApp or Telegram or Signal. I don't know where they are :-D Maybe iMessage, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook.

How do you define the difference between a messaging app and social media app? Many seem quite blurred to me.

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#52

Post by jfim » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

jraph wrote: post #33

newscracker wrote: post #27

The development of Signal, sorry to put it harshly, seems to suffer from a split brained syndrome. On one hand they’ll focus on adding stickers, stories and other trivial features to help appeal to a broader user base, but on the other hand they’ll refuse to implement basic and important features that people need in a chat app, like chat backups (there is no backup option for iOS, only a device to device transfer…so…

It would be best to have backups built in, but in the mean time wouldn't Signal Desktop be a way to make backups? I moved my home directory to a new computer and Signal Desktop started like if something changed. Sure you would lose your messages on your phone, but you can still access them on your computer if needed. On a rooted Android phone, you could use oandbackup to backup Signal. If you care about these things,…

> On a rooted Android phone, you could use oandbackup to backup Signal. If you care about these things, maybe consider using a rooted Android phone?

You don't need a rooted phone. Signal can do backups on Android, they can be enabled through Settings > Chats > Backups.

I'm not sure why they don't have that feature on iOS though.

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#53

Post by brianmcc » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #14

barrenko wrote: post #10

First they destroyed WhatsApp, now Signal is next. Stop developing features. Fire all PMs.

If reliability and other features don't suffer, why do you care? Just don't use it. Though I do wish they'd prioritize editable messages and formatting before stories...

UX gets worse though when screens are cluttered with crap I have no intention of using.

Features that can be 100% ignored when not wanted - no problem.

Foisting more and more bloat - problem.

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#54

Post by Mystlix » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

nixpulvis wrote: post #42

Whelp, there goes the neighborhood. Honestly, why can't we just make products and services that do one thing and do it well. Leave "stories" to the social media applications.

Could you elaborate over what the "one thing" a messaging application should do actually is? Because I could argue that sending people pictures, videos, documents or general file blobs is waaaay outside of what a "pure" messaging platform should offer

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#55

Post by argiopetech » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

waah wrote: post #40

deutschepost wrote: post #11

The feature that I missed the most after switching to signal was Live location sharing. It is just so convenient to find your friends while going out or going to the street exactly at the time someone is there to pick you up.

Don't you get this if you click on the "+" icon? I see options for Camera, GIF, File, etc. then "Location" and I've sent my location this way. Using iPhone.

Same on Android.

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#56

Post by noahtallen » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #27

The development of Signal, sorry to put it harshly, seems to suffer from a split brained syndrome. On one hand they’ll focus on adding stickers, stories and other trivial features to help appeal to a broader user base, but on the other hand they’ll refuse to implement basic and important features that people need in a chat app, like chat backups (there is no backup option for iOS, only a device to device transfer…so…

Yeah, I was evaluating a few group chat options to replace iMessage for a large group, and the lack of message backup and strong multi-device support is the reason Signal probably won’t work. One of the most confusing aspects of iMessage (before recent years) was that it didn’t sync chats to all devices. Some devices could get into a messed up state, not have all your messages, etc. Apple solved that problem with iCloud backup, which lets the cloud store messages.

Not seeing your complete chat history on a new device is just not tenable for the average person, and a selling point of signal was that I could use it on windows or Linux, where I can’t use iMessage. I also heard adding signal on an iPad or second phone cousin be messy too.

Compare that with telegram, which is extremely fast across any devices, has even more features, and is slightly easier to use…

I mean, encryption in transit and at rest is good enough for most people. I agree philosophically with e2e encryption, but practically, is it all that important for average chat users, especially if it means sacrificing features people actually use?

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#57

Post by anthropodie » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

So Signal is missing a basic feature like location sharing and they chose to go ahead with implementing Stories. I guess they are focusing more on getting new users than making a great app.

The thing is none of these centralized apps will ever get messaging right. Because no matter how good the intentions of the team are sooner or later the higher management or the PM wants to have bigger piece of cake. This in the end ruins the most basic functionality that a messaging app should do right: messages.

What these teams do not understand is it's okay for an IM app to not keep adding fancy features. Focus on providing security fixes and minor improvements that improve user experience. If you keep focusing on getting more people you will end up with yet another social app like Instagram/Snapchat. We do not really need more of that stuff. Consider this: if people who built electric grids kept adding unnecessary features to it, we would not have a robust infrastructure like it today. They built them and then those people left to work on something more interesting. We need more of that in Software. What we currently have is millions and millions of engineers trying to figure out how to keep users glued to their app.

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#58

Post by tcfhgj » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:17 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #30

tcfhgj wrote: post #8

Seems like Stories will come to Matrix as well - through FluffyChat and Minestrix! https://youtu.be/tLlSGqzgzhg?t=1045

Good luck getting mainstream acceptance for something that sounds like a furry dating site.

One of the benefits of a standard like Matrix is that the adoption of individual apps is mostly irrelevant.

Curious, which app do you refer to?

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#59

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #27

The development of Signal, sorry to put it harshly, seems to suffer from a split brained syndrome. On one hand they’ll focus on adding stickers, stories and other trivial features to help appeal to a broader user base, but on the other hand they’ll refuse to implement basic and important features that people need in a chat app, like chat backups (there is no backup option for iOS, only a device to device transfer…so…

[deleted]

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#60

Post by mathnmusic » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

jraph wrote: post #33

newscracker wrote: post #27

The development of Signal, sorry to put it harshly, seems to suffer from a split brained syndrome. On one hand they’ll focus on adding stickers, stories and other trivial features to help appeal to a broader user base, but on the other hand they’ll refuse to implement basic and important features that people need in a chat app, like chat backups (there is no backup option for iOS, only a device to device transfer…so…

It would be best to have backups built in, but in the mean time wouldn't Signal Desktop be a way to make backups? I moved my home directory to a new computer and Signal Desktop started like if something changed. Sure you would lose your messages on your phone, but you can still access them on your computer if needed. On a rooted Android phone, you could use oandbackup to backup Signal. If you care about these things,…

> the centralized platform aspect and the use of phone number

Don't forget how Signal built MobileCoin integration completely in secret for a whole year. Public was kept in dark just so $MOB insiders could benefit handsomely.