Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon) • Hacker News Board

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#321

Post by johnchristopher » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 6:55 PM UTC

teuobk wrote: post #257

ravenstine wrote: post #174

Cue the "actually we didn't mean that" follow-up to this.

Thing is, now they've shown a willingness to make this change, so from here on out people will be worried about them trying it again at some point. The only way they have a hope of putting this genie back in the bottle is to provide a loud, strong, clear mea culpa, stating that they were categorically wrong to propose dropping SMS support, plus a strong promise that they will continue supporting SMS for the life of t…

> "if we ever propose dropping SMS integration again, you can consider that a warrant-canary type of alert".

Dropping an insecure messaging system is far from being a warrant-canary type of alert, though.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#322

Post by gophin » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

CraftThatBlock wrote: post #56

This was one of the core features of using Signal for me. I wish they had implemented RCS and more features for SMS instead of removing it. I'm very disappointed with this feature. As a side note, I'm on the beta, and recently got "Signal Stories". This immensely annoyed me, and had to dig through to remove it (since it wasn't obvious). After the whole crypto thing and these decisions, it might be time to find anothe…

Are there any Android apps that support RCS other than Google Messages?

I'm not sure exactly what is exposed in the framework API regarding RCS, and how it compares to the relative ease of receiving SMS and MMS messages.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#323

Post by alvarezbjm-hn » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

Privacy being the primary goal of the app, they should remove the phone as username tenet. This is almost as bad as it can get for privacy, e2ee or not.

"We have now reached the point where SMS support no longer makes sense."

They should have let the users decide that

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#324

Post by jeroenhd » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

I like the Signal app for my SMS messages. Almost nobody I regularly talk to uses Signal so I mostly use it for this purpose. I might as well remove it and get rid of yet another app listening for cloud notifications and draining my battery.

Maybe I'll grab the source code, rip out all the Signal parts, and just use that.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#325

Post by dylan604 » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

maratc wrote: post #313

dylan604 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if Signal couldn't change the color of the text bubbles to some shade of, let's just say, green, to indicate when a user is chatting via SMS instead of a Signal secured message.

And then everybody and their dog would accuse them of green-shaming or whatever.

No such thing as bad PR, unless you're removing features. Having people green-shame just means there are other people that are rolling their eyes and still getting their name out there.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#326

Post by alerighi » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 7:00 PM UTC

_jsnk wrote: post #34

I'm very upset by this decision. I've been using Signal as my SMS app for a very long time. Messages that I would have sent via SMS currently will automatically get sent via Signal if the person I'm sending to has started using Signal without my knowledge. This has happened in several instances where I was pleasantly surprised to see a friend had started using Signal. Now that I'm forced into a separate SMS app, this…

Well this is also a problem. As it's said in the article, you risk getting charged for an SMS, that in some countries are expensive, most mobile plan in my country have 30+Gb for 7 euros at month, but SMS are 20 cent *EACH*. Practically in my country nobody uses SMS, and SMS are used only to receive 2 factor authentication codes (and spam).

Anyway a normal person already uses multiple messaging applications: WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messanger, Instagram direct messages, the good old email, SMS (I guess somebody they are still used reading the comments), adding Signal it's not that big deal.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#327

Post by metamet » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 7:00 PM UTC

jmcphers wrote: post #203

CommitSyn wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is an idiotic decision that makes me question the decisions being made as a whole by Signal. Does anyone have recommendations for a good default SMS app on Android?

The Google Messages app is pretty good. It's a little thing, but it's the only app that supports tapbacks from iOS -- so on the (many) group threads I'm on that have iPhone users, I can see loves/like reactions instead of a flood of texts that say "Jane Doe loved an image".

I also use the "messages for web" sync that Google Messages offer: https://messages.google.com/web/

Really convenient to be able to respond to texts without having to take out my phone.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#328

Post by nextos » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 7:02 PM UTC

nicholasjarnold wrote: post #310

daedalus_j wrote: post #149

I've been using Signal for a long time. I have repeatedly been unable to convince iOS users to use Signal because "I don't want another app". Android users have been much more willing to give it a shot. As an android user myself, I much prefer having SMS built in because I use the search feature often to look back through all my SMS/Signal chats. I also regularly forward an SMS message to a Signal user, or vice versa…

I agree completely here. This is terrible news from my perspective too. I use Signal for _all messaging_ (e2e secure or not) for the reasons that you mention. I've onboarded friends and family, too, ensuring them it should be set as their default messaging app and that it _just works_. Unfortunately, people in the general population seem to have pretty much zero tolerance for any friction whatsoever. If they have to…

I don't like some of the decisions taken by Signal.

However, if "dropping support for SMS messaging also frees up our capacity to build new features (yes, like usernames)", I think it is something I would not miss.

Besides, I agree with them on the point that SMS leak metadata.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#329

Post by codethief » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

Krasnol wrote: post #246

daedalus_j wrote: post #149

I've been using Signal for a long time. I have repeatedly been unable to convince iOS users to use Signal because "I don't want another app". Android users have been much more willing to give it a shot. As an android user myself, I much prefer having SMS built in because I use the search feature often to look back through all my SMS/Signal chats. I also regularly forward an SMS message to a Signal user, or vice versa…

...and there I am here in Germany where nobody seems to use SMS anymore. I couldn't care less about this.

> in Germany where nobody seems to use SMS anymore.

That's not true at all. I assume that besides Signal you use WhatsApp, though?

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#330

Post by neogodless » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

Cannot tell if it was previously linked here, but this seems of interest.

https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing-sms...

No doubt they are in a tough spot. Some users will not accept this feature omission. But if what they claim is accurate, the insecure nature of SMS, along with Google's hoarding of their internal RCS APIs makes it tough to be a messaging provider on Android.