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Stories Are Coming to Signal

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Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#112

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…

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Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's the blurring of lines that some users are objecting to. Instagram is a perfect example where yes, important communication happens via Instagram messages, but the problem is that once the app is open, it's exceedingly easy to accidentally spend minutes/hours listlessly scrolling. In order to avoid listlessly scrolling, users will uninstall the app or set time limits on it, or other techniques to avoid it sucking…

Why are you conflating a finite amount of content generated by only your contacts on a daily basis with the infinite amount of content suggested by an explore section? After the couple of minutes or less that it takes me to check out the stories of people I care about the content is exhausted, there is no more stuff to check and look at. When I look at all my Whatsapp stories there is no algorithm that shows me content from random people around the internet. The reason why Whatsapp (and Signal with stories) is completely different from Instagram is because everything happens only between you and your contacts and there are no other avenues into the outside world, no "discover" tab. That's what makes them a messaging application vs a social network imho, you can't be hooked on Whatsapp more than you can be hooked on MMSs

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#114
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The parent comment suggested that Matrix would support stories and the first implementation (which I guess could be considered the reference implementation) is called "FluffyChat"...

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#115

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…

I'm skeptical that chat backups are that important to the average user. It's very important to me (I even wrote a little Android app to automatically upload the encrypted backup to GDrive every time one is created), but nearly everyone who I have promoted Signal to hasn't cared much when I warn them that the chat history/backup situation is bad.

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I intentionally drop all messages from time to time (typically once I get a new device). Am I the only one who feels like loosing old conversations is just fine? After all, I don’t remember all conversations I had in person as well. I understand that loosing them at an unexpected time can be annoying and a backup is useful, but I personally never had a use for that feature and knowing that it is annoying for someone…

> Am I the only one who feels like loosing old conversations is just fine? I find text based instant messaging to be shallow and vapid and I have very little interest in them. Texting is best used (for me at least) to coordinate real life plans (I'll be in front of X at Y o'clock) or quick task-oriented notes (Hey babe, can you grab some sliced turkey if you're still at the store). If you want to actually talk to me,…

The first message I got from my girlfriend was a response to me sharing some music with her and asking for a song back. She sent a small video of her cat complaining.

If I could have backups of entire conversations, I wouldn’t have to export and save every single video and picture being sent with Signal.

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#117

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…

I intentionally drop all messages from time to time (typically once I get a new device). Am I the only one who feels like loosing old conversations is just fine? After all, I don’t remember all conversations I had in person as well. I understand that loosing them at an unexpected time can be annoying and a backup is useful, but I personally never had a use for that feature and knowing that it is annoying for someone…

>Am I the only one who feels like loosing old conversations is just fine

not only do I think it's fine I think it's actually healthy. I think the ability to search and turn over every word said in the past can produce some pretty neurotic and bad behaviors. There's a fun Black Mirror episode about this in one of the earlier seasons.

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#119
Until they allow people to make bot accounts, theplatform eill be limited to personperson communication. The actual strengh of WhatsApp is that companies are ditching their phone / support chat for whatsapp only. Which is the worst of both worlds.

Re: Stories Are Coming to Signal

#120

Until they allow people to make bot accounts, theplatform eill be limited to person person communication. The actual strengh of WhatsApp is that companies are ditching their phone / support chat for whatsapp only. Which is the worst of both worlds.

Agreed. I tried to implement a simple bot that would notify me about home security stuff but it ended in a rabbit hole that all points to a git comment of one of the devs stating possible account bans if an account is used for automated messages or even person to person messages using anything other than the official app.
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