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Signal Introduces Stories

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Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#161

Post by yamtaddle »

Daniel_sk wrote: post #94
yamtaddle wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My SMS use: 1) Spam (~40%) 2) Transactional messages (~40%) 3) Conversations with old (45+) relatives (~15%) 4) Conversations with people I barely know (parents of kids' friends, people responding to a web market listing, that kind of thing) (~5%)

Yeah, but why do you need Signal to handle those messages?

Lots of people like having just one messaging app, for messaging that's basically SMS-like. Apple and Google have both chased that dream for their SMS apps, for a good reason (Apple with more success than Google—does Google still have another messaging service attached to their SMS app, or did they give up on that when the first attempt was a disaster about a decade ago?)

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#162

Post by jellicle »

barbazoo wrote: post #70
jellicle wrote: post #30

Signal has already committed suicide by removing its most important feature, "compatibility with other messaging apps", from its list of supported features. It's a dead app walking at this point, though it will probably take a few years to wind down and die.

Same applies to every other messaging app that's not federated which is almost all of them.

Yep, and if you check your local app store, it's full of thousands of also-ran messaging apps that are, indeed, dead. While Signal had SMS it had a feature that was NOT common on other apps, now it has the SAME feature set as, say, Whatsapp, and so instead of being a better Whatsapp (because it had features Whatsapp didn't) it's now a worse Whatsapp (same feature set, much smaller userbase), so it's doomed. Just like all the other also-ran apps.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#163

Post by [deleted] »

mikece wrote: post #2

I don't like this: it seems like Signal wants to morph into a social network rather than a secure messaging platform. I predict the next major features will be unencrypted public groups and API messaging access like Telegram has.

[deleted]

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#164

Post by uoaei »

mr_mitm wrote: post #77
uoaei wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand the qualms with SMS support. SMS was never secure, and it certainly doesn't become more secure when you push it through a pass-through on one app or another. There is nothing you can do to SMS to make it more secure except to send encrypted strings: but then you have the same problem of sharing secrets, etc. that requires a separate app to manage anyway.

It means I need an extra app now. Signal replaced my SMS app. I'm not going to stop using SMS completely, so if Signal drops it I need to use one more app.

One comes preinstalled with every major mobile OS...

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#165

Post by Zak »

fluidcruft wrote: post #96

I actually like the idea of Stories (vs say a giant group text), but I don't think 24 hours is workable for the people I Signal with because we're not in Signal routinely enough and everything will just delete before anyone sees it. If it were configurable I'd probably set it to a week or a month. Actually, I don't know why they would fix the time at 24hrs. We've always been able to set the time period for disappeari…

> I don't know why they would fix the time at 24hrs.

To use fear of missing out to cause people to check the app at least a couple times a day. It's an engagement hack, and the main reason I dislike this feature wherever it appears.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#166

Post by pvg »

Calvin02 wrote: post #149
nicce wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love how Signal (and WhatsApp adopting Signal's protocol) made privacy easy for the general public and technically inclined alike. Privacy will never be the default until it's made easy. WhatsApp did not really adapt it in privacy mind, to be fair. All metadata is unencrypted. Meta harvests your contact information, intervals and time when you message specific persons. Often, this information is more interesting…

I don't think that's accurate. Pretty sure both work the same way regarding metadata. Think about it: if Signal didn't know that A was messaging B, how would they route that message to B's phone? A has to be able to find B's ip address someway. B can't broadcast its ip address to all the Signal users -- that would be a huge security hole. It probably works like this: 1) A sends encrypted message + B's phone number to…

Pretty sure both work the same way regarding metadata.

They don't, that's covered pretty extensively in the many technical writeups of various Signal features. It's one of the main value propositions of Signal, that it doesn't work like most secure messengers especially when it comes to metadata.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#168

Post by boraoztunc »

dont__panic wrote: post #107
tao_oat wrote: post #95

My gut reaction to this was disappointment that Signal is working on yet another not-messaging feature a la their crypto integration... But the longer I think about it, the more positive I feel. I actually enjoyed using stories on other social media platforms before I left them. The idea of something similar, but end-to-end encrypted, is actually exciting!

I wish they would improve the app UI instead of focusing on features like this. Compared to other apps I use regularly, Signal feels kind of clunky -- the share dialog takes forever to load from another app compared to Telegram or Messages. The app feels like it's harassing me every single day to update. On open, the app often takes a few seconds of loading in my chats. Makes me wonder what core userbase Signal think…

Same here, moved to Telegram. Still use Signal though (my mother still contacts me there) but the product needs work.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#169

Post by dang »

varenc wrote: post #60

This was almost posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33509571

Comments moved thither. Thanks!

Edit: whoops - this one was the earlier post. We'll merge everything back hither.

Edit 2: je suis idiot. Will fix.

Edit 3: I think this is correct now

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#170

Post by jhoechtl »

Calvin02 wrote: post #149
nicce wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love how Signal (and WhatsApp adopting Signal's protocol) made privacy easy for the general public and technically inclined alike. Privacy will never be the default until it's made easy. WhatsApp did not really adapt it in privacy mind, to be fair. All metadata is unencrypted. Meta harvests your contact information, intervals and time when you message specific persons. Often, this information is more interesting…

I don't think that's accurate. Pretty sure both work the same way regarding metadata. Think about it: if Signal didn't know that A was messaging B, how would they route that message to B's phone? A has to be able to find B's ip address someway. B can't broadcast its ip address to all the Signal users -- that would be a huge security hole. It probably works like this: 1) A sends encrypted message + B's phone number to…

> Think about it: if Signal didn't know that A was messaging B, how would they route that message to B's phone?

There is no need for signal to know because their servers are not involved to transport the message but only ip routing infrastructure in between and of course the two parties. That's P2P

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