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I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

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Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#121

Post by cabbagesauce »

claudedopplr wrote: post #97
cabbagesauce wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NL is rather small sample to, say, larger countries like Poland that use SMS quite frequently. And depending on carrier, SMS texting most likely will be completely free with most of the current plans. Signal's rationale is just Signal's own reluctance to build an umbrella messenger. And given they do drop SMS, still won't introduce usernames it's very hard to actually sell it as a WhatsApp replacement. And now, with…

Being such a small operation, I think they're making a great decision by focusing on what matters most. "Most startups die by lack of focus". I very much believe this is their first public step towards breaking up with phone number based identity.

>Being such a small operation, I think they're making a great decision by focusing on what matters most.

Currently, it looks like they are focusing on social networking features: stories, emoji stuff, better link previews. Basically everything that competition already did. The roadmap is not public, so I wouldn't take guesses as what may come next. But...

..."dropping support of X as a feature" is some kind of new transcendent approach to product development incomprehensible to common earthlings.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#122

Post by coldtea »

microtonal wrote: post #28
modo_mario wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS is still rather common here in Europe. Even if a ton of people use whatsapp and such SMS is often a safe option to initiate with or something trough which you get certain kinds of automated messages like appointment reminders or verification codes.

I think that differs very much per country. The last time I have received an SMS from a human in NL must have been a decade ago. In many European countries, sending SMS was quite expensive, leading to early and very wide adoption of WhatsApp.

Probably per person than per country.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#123

Post by cuteboy19 »

edent wrote: post #66
esskay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure that can be said as a blanket statement for the whole of Europe. In the UK SMS isn't common at all anymore.

Not common isn't quite right. Ofcom's report shows that SMS use is shrinking, but it is still an average of 51 messages per user per month. Source https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/222401/... SMS decline is probably inevitable though.

"average person sends 51 sms a month" factoid is actually just statistical error...

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#124

Post by orthoxerox »

jbverschoor wrote: post #30
joel35 wrote: post #21

With Signal moving away from SMS, the required messaging app stack on my phone just to be able to receive everything sent do me will have to be: - Signal -> Close friends & family I've convinced to use it. - WhatsApp -> Most of my friends. - SMS -> School notifications, 2FA, shipping updates, etc. - Facebook Messenger -> Elderly relatives - Telegram -> That one relative who wants to use this instead of Signal. Is the…

I never understood Telegram. It's insecure by default, runs in a different jurisdiction. It's not even anonymous But somehow people started using it because it was "more secure" than whatsapp.

It has channels, which are a great middle ground between Twitter and Substack.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#125

Post by agilob »

shp0ngle wrote: post #86
agilob wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only large group of people who still primarily use SMS to communicate person-to-person is Android users in the USA. BS. I visited city I grew up recently, met with a few (9+) people (25-32 years old) and only one of them had WA, most haven't heard about Signal, everyone simply uses SMS. It's simply multiplatform, works with their gradmas and no one wants to install __another__ app to send messages to people. No…

but… WA also doesn’t have SMS support?

But I have 40 contacts on WA, and 4 on Signal? Everyone on Signal is also on WA and SMS.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#126

Post by angry_octet »

robobro wrote: post #25
joel35 wrote: post #21

With Signal moving away from SMS, the required messaging app stack on my phone just to be able to receive everything sent do me will have to be: - Signal -> Close friends & family I've convinced to use it. - WhatsApp -> Most of my friends. - SMS -> School notifications, 2FA, shipping updates, etc. - Facebook Messenger -> Elderly relatives - Telegram -> That one relative who wants to use this instead of Signal. Is the…

Matrix

Matrix has fundamental security problems that they seem unwilling to fix. Almost a polar opposite to Signal.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#127

Post by agilob »

grey_earthling wrote: post #96
agilob wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only large group of people who still primarily use SMS to communicate person-to-person is Android users in the USA. BS. I visited city I grew up recently, met with a few (9+) people (25-32 years old) and only one of them had WA, most haven't heard about Signal, everyone simply uses SMS. It's simply multiplatform, works with their gradmas and no one wants to install __another__ app to send messages to people. No…

If you're going to bother migrating and presumably taking people with you, why migrate to another company's proprietary service, rather than an open protocol? Or (bluntly): why not Matrix (and/or XMPP)? What makes WA so much better that you're willing to go all-in with this company?

>If you're going to bother migrating and presumably taking people with you, why migrate to another company's proprietary service, rather than an open protocol?

I'm not taking anyone with me, they already have Signal and WA and obviously SMS. I'm uninstalling Signal and not recommending it again. I can already message Signal contacts using WA or SMS. I don't need Signal for that, and I'm not keeping 3rd messaging app.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#128

Post by angry_octet »

domano wrote: post #59

I remember when Signal was called Textsecure and did E2E encryption for SMS - just to rant about argument number 5.

They've been fundamentally dishonest in their messaging. The truth is that they don't want to support SMS any more, and they don't care about usability or barriers to entry this causes. If they'd just said that I wouldn't be so annoyed with them.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#129

Post by m000 »

Tor3 wrote: post #114
cookiengineer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget 2FA from shitty European companies! And pizza delivery notifications! Jokes aside, I see SMS as a useless protocol; because it cannot be used for identification, and neither can anything be encrypted nor verified without another communication channel. It's also not in the power of the end user to decide whether or not their number gets reassigned, blocked, or does work at all. Most US people seem to thin…

I'm not sure what you mean about a reassigned number? Do you mean that people risk getting a new number, whether they want it or not? Because that shouldn't be an issue - I believe all of Europe (at least EU) demands that the customer can transfer their number to a new provider or whatever, whenever they want. So maybe you mean something else?

> Do you mean that people risk getting a new number, whether they want it or not?

It's a ̶̶u̶s̶e̶ pay it or lose it thing. AFAIK, typically applies to prepaid/pay-as-you-go SIMs, not on contracts.

For my case, it is that I have to make a 12EUR top-up every 3 months. The top-up credit will expire if I don't make another top-up on time. After a few months on zero credit, you get you incoming calls blocked. And after a couple more months, your SIM is de-registered.

Transferring your number is always possible, yes. As long as you're still the registered owner of the SIM number.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#130

Post by rjzzleep »

jhugo wrote: post #102
rjzzleep wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually mostly some parts in central Europe where texting is expensive. For most parts of the world texting is quite important. I don't understand why people on this board keep forgetting that central Europe and the US is the minority of the world population. Everyone keeps bringing up WhatsApp. But it seems that everyone has all but forgotten that WhatsApp became so popular not because they only focused on the…

The death of SMS is hardly specific to central Europe and the US. It's already thoroughly dead in most of Asia for person-to-person communication, replaced by WhatsApp/WeChat/LINE/Telegram/etc depending on country.

That's incorrect. Dead for person-to-person communication in east Asia yes, but still EXTREMELY common for everything else.

"It doesn't matter for the use cases I don't care about" - what a selfish look at the world.

Besides paying for parking by SMS and other services in Europe there's also M-Pesa and similar services[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

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