It's been interesting to watch the Signal arc. From tech darling to "why do they think I want this" / "time to move on to what's next".
Signal Introduces Stories
201–210 of 480 posts
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#202I don't like stories but at least there is a way to opt-out. Many people do like them and expected them so it's understandable move
I find it interesting that the option to opt out of Stories exists in the Chat settings. Apparently they couldn't be buggered to even create a link to view the settings for Story inside of the Story UI's context menu.
But hey, I'm an old, biased, grumpy man. They're taking away SMS (which was what allowed me to get it onto my family's phones) and shoving TikTok in my face instead. I'm displeased by this and looking for things to pick on.
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#203Earlier 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…
https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/
Worth reading.
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not likely to happen. While it's OSS, there's still a central Signal backend, and they don't like clients other than their own to connect to it. Any fork would eventually need to have their own backend, and now you're basically no longer using Signal since you won't be able to communicate with anybody else not using yours.
Federated Signal servers!!!
I think that's called Matrix and we already have that.
Anyway, good luck getting Signal to federate with you until you have enough of a user base that they're losing users to your backend. They have zero reason to want to do this, and it introduces some privacy issues (what if your server doesn't respect deletions, etc?).
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Agreed. Android version is slim, and just several days ago I paired up with the Windows desktop version - a UI to die for.
So happy I got several people to a) drop facebook and b) contact me with/ reply to me on signal (I don't use Whatsapp); and they've done the same with others.
Both my kids (under 20) use signal more and more, especially with their new friends at a new school.
Aside: I asked - they, and their friends, don't give an f about twitter.
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#206The phone contact list becoming the root of trust for defining personal trust relationships is rather unwelcome. Then software taking that data and wordlessly interpreting it as a binary trust/do-not-trust decision is also unwelcome.
If I am networking at a conference, I frequently exchange contact info by entering info into each others' contact app or sending each other a text. I'm sure I'm not the only one to do this.
It's one thing to tell two users that both parties are using Signal and in each other's contact list (contact discovery). It's another thing to encourage users to broadcast messages to all of them (via Stories, and the default share setting is all contacts)
In summary, while I'm neutral on the Stories feature, I think the implementation/rollout has been clumsy.
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-secu...
They started storing user data in the cloud and never updated their privacy policy even though it's been brought to their attention. (https://community.signalusers.org/t/can-signal-please-update...)
The very first line of their privacy policy reads: "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information" which is a total lie. For someone like a human rights activist or a whistleblower a list of all their Signal contacts is absolutely "sensitive information". It really used to be true that they didn't collect and store anything, but it hasn't been the case now for years!
If this is the first time you're hearing about the data Signal is collecting and storing in the cloud that should tell you all you need to know about how much they can be trusted.
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#208I 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. I'm guessing some folks won't like use feature because it's too "social media-y" (myself likely included) but as they say in the post: - You can turn the feature off and you won't see other people's stories - You can choose the aud…
> 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…
> All metadata is unencrypted
And all the rest of the data too, for all intents and purposes.
After all it is Meta that provides the keys, operates the network, and controls the closed source apps. Also, it is precisely Meta's type of behaviour that warrants encrypting personal data in the first place.
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
The more useful signal becomes to the non tech crowd the better for everyone. Options are good and they are largely competing with WhatsApp although they have tiny market penetration right now
They recently announced they are removing Sms support on Android which feels vastly more useful for the non-tech crowd.
They kinda were forced to by Android limiting what they can do: https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing-sms...
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#210I wish they would figure out how to have one account on multiple devices. The work around now is using groups, but that's kludgy. I use Signal to chat with friends and family. I want to be able to switch between personal and work phone and my conversations go with me. Again, groups are a work around, but I'd rather something better.
I feel like this should be a priority over more features because it's been asked for for ages and they say they're working on it.