Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Signal Introduces Stories

signal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 480 posts

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#181

Post by barbazoo »

jellicle wrote: post #162
barbazoo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For many it's still better than WhatsApp because it implements actual E2EE.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#182

Post by patall »

sofixa wrote: post #160
barbazoo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Telegram, Whatsapp, FB Messenger, etc support SMS?

No, because SMS is obsolete and nobody outside of the US(why?!??!) still uses it for anything else other than the occasional confirmation/MFA code.

To give a counter example, here in Sweden, SMS&MMS are used quite a lot. Including bidding for housing. And it's not due to a lack of alternatives.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#183

Post by sagischwarz »

gambiting wrote: post #49
sagischwarz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people around me in Germany from all ages and bubbles use this feature in WhatsApp as if it were some kind of Instagram. I see multiple status updates every day.

Wait, what feature is this? Me and all my friends and family use WhatsApp and I've never seen anything like this.

See https://faq.whatsapp.com/643144237275579/?helpref=platform_s...

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#184

Post by barbs »

autoexec wrote: post #133
anonporridge wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget integrating and pumping a shitty crypto altcoin, completely ignoring the vastly more legitimate and well trusted privacy coin monero while also potentially opening itself up to legal attack vectors for helping to facilitate money transfers, not just protect speech. Lots of reasons recently to develop deep distrust for Signal leadership, and start calling into question whether the app is still legitimatel…

> Lots of reasons recently to develop deep distrust for Signal leadership, and start calling into question whether the app is still legitimately private. How about when Signal started storing people's contacts, their name, their photo, and their phone number in the cloud ignoring cries from their users that Signal should provide a way to opt out and bringing up security concerns, then refusing to update their privacy…

Do you have sources for the contact upload and privacy policy stuff?

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#185

Post by jacooper »

The problem with signal is its a ghost land.

Many people signed up after the new WhatsApp T&S debacle, but Facebook played it like a boss by delaying the change and draining the news cycle and they won.

Almost no body uses signal, I have chat group of my friends on signal, and I'm really thinking of moving it to WhatsApp, so they actually see the messages instead of it being 20 messages from me and 1 from the others.

Its not that they don't have signal installed, they just never open it, I use it as a video/voice call app and it works well, but messages? Its a PITA to get people to actually read them, especially since many of them are complaining of notifications not working.

I like the stories feature, especially because its totally encrypted, but its basically useless as almost no one in my social circle uses Signal.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#186

Post by [deleted] »

jacooper wrote: post #185

The problem with signal is its a ghost land. Many people signed up after the new WhatsApp T&S debacle, but Facebook played it like a boss by delaying the change and draining the news cycle and they won. Almost no body uses signal, I have chat group of my friends on signal, and I'm really thinking of moving it to WhatsApp, so they actually see the messages instead of it being 20 messages from me and 1 from the others.…

[deleted]

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#187

Post by quonn »

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…

The server does not really store IPs, since mobile phones are likely behind CGNAT.

In theory, B could publish a new public key as identity per target user.

I see two main problems: First, push notifications do require the server to actually identify the user and second efficiency: The client would like to maintain a single long connection instead of many short lived requests with pseudonyms.

Of course there would still be some timing patterns …

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#188

Post by daqnal »

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…

From my experiences, Signal has the cleanest, most functional UX and design out of nearly all my apps. I have a mid-range Pixel 4a running CalyxOS and it works without hiccups. Not sure why yours is so slow.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#190

Post by hedora »

I wish they would enable backup + moving between iOS and Android.

I'd move to a forked client that supported that, TOS be damned.

Messages that self-delete after 24 hours is the opposite of what I want.

Post reply on HN