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Signal Introduces Stories

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Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#281

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

corytheboyd wrote: post #267

Of course my first reaction was "I hate this" but then I thought about it and whatever I don't care at all. I downloaded the update and it's a new tab. They don't force it on you at all. They very very clearly state that you can opt-out and how to do it. This was tastefully done, which is fresh air in the world of social media crapware.

I wonder how much companies lose just because people hate being forced into things, and they develop a strong aversion to something they'd actually use otherwise just because its pushed onto them.

What's worse, this even affects the few who try to introduce new things respectfully, because people are so in the "IF SOMEONE OFFERS ME SOMETHING IT'S JUST CRAP I DON'T WANT" mindset that they reject new things outright.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#282

Post by jvolkman »

1MachineElf wrote: post #174
Dylan16807 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making people juggle a different app for SMS is the opposite of being mainstream friendly.

On this new Google Pixel 7, the app launcher thing is limited to just 4 apps. Now that I can't use Signal for SMS, it has lost it's convenient spot on my home screen. I find myself using it less, so like you, I'm very displeased about their dropping SMS. The forum thread on Signal's Discourse about the change is full of snide remarks from their moderators, and it's extremely disappointing to see Signal community lead…

Tangential, but you can change the grid size to 5x5 which lets you have 5 apps in that bar. Settings -> Wallpaper & style -> App grid

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#283

Post by monetus »

Daniel_sk wrote: post #71
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadians, people in their 30s and beyond, people who aren't on Facebook, random people not in your friend group, businesses. But most of all, the people who keep complaining about SMS support! What you're saying is a bit nonsensical "if I ignore everyone in this group, the group has no one in it".

I use SMS from time to time too - especially random people that call me, but I don't see much added value of having it unified in Signal. I just use the default SMS app on my phone (iMessage app in my case, which also works for SMS). For me Signal is about E2E encrypted messages with more features, SMS is a different much more limited platform.

Discovery. If you and another were texting each other via SMS, but signal was your app, signal would just upgrade your sms to a signal msg. You didn't have to have a conversation ahead of time, or save them in your contacts and let signal scan them - it just worked.

Discovering you're not limited to sms was nice, when now you have to have an aside - "hey, have you ever heard of signal?"

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#284

Post by batiudrami »

falcolas wrote: post #218
GycDH6mb wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They actually allow you to turn off stories in settings, and that entire tab will just disappear. You have to respect that!

My curmudgeonly self would prefer if the stories were off by default. It's not a feature I'm even remotely interested in, and feature creep really isn't a positive thing. I've tried snapchat and Instagram stories, and I hate that the messages disappear with time. It seems counter-intuitive for an asynchronous communication method, and that doesn't even count how it always feels like another FOMO marketing gag to keep…

I think you don’t quite have the right mindset for the purpose of stories. The point is “this is not important enough to interrupt my friends; but here’s what I’m up to if you’re interested”. It doesn’t matter that it expires, because it’s only relevant to what is happening now.

Of course it still has all the usual social media failings where it is used to make the senders life seem more exciting and fun than it really is but I see the point of having the option.

I especially like signal’s groups implementation. I have a couple of large group chats where I am happy to share my day with people but it’s not important enough to notify everyone’s phone and it doesn’t matter if they miss it.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#285

Post by ChadNauseam »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #234
kibwen wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still of the opinion that encrypted private group chats are an impossible UX problem (1:1 chat is fine). But if I were to trust anyone to find a way to do it properly, it would be Signal.

What makes it impossible? Naively I would think that if you have a secure 1:1 communication protocol, then you can send N*(1:1) secure messages to a group of N people. To solve the "fake group message" problem where an adversarial member of the group sends different messages to different members of the group, or delays the message to some members, the protocol could simply allow for a 2nd level "vouch" message to be…

Ah, but what if I send different vouch messages to different users?

There is actually a way to do it, if you assume PKI (which signal provides) and that all messages will be delivered in some bounded time. It’s called the dolev-strong protocol and it guarantees that all honest members of the group will agree with each other. Unfortunately, it requires one round per group member and delivering all messages within a bounded time isn’t easy.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#286

Post by kilolima »

What are "stories"? What is the use case? If it's a low effort way to spam one's acquaintances, seems like a website/blog would be better for sharing images/text and also has the advantage of not being tied to some platform's walled garden.

Also, why does a secure messaging app need stories? Is this part of a trend to make signal more like social media, or to balkanize the web?

I think Telegram has something like this because often on the desktop browser I'll want to follow a link to something and it wants to open it in telegram. No thanks!

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#287

Post by vbezhenar »

yunohn wrote: post #237
dont__panic wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am using an absolutely ancient phone (2016 iphone SE) that's perpetually in low power mode, so it's possible that this isn't a big problem for other iOS users. It's also rather slow on my mac, but I have noticed that my partner's 4a runs it smoothly.

I love HN threads where the complainer is knowingly using an old device on power mode, while complaining about performance… all while the responder is using a custom de-googled niche ROM and claiming somehow it works flawlessly. I always wonder how non-HNers use such software, if even the dedicated people are struggling.

iPhone SE is an extremely powerful phone. AFAIR it uses iPhone 6S CPU. iPhone 7 CPU beat Intel Core i7700K in some benchmarks, just to put a comparison.

Not sure how much degraded battery affects it. I recently got my iPhone 8 degraded because of battery and honestly I didn't notice anything.

Even my old iPhone 4S is a little beast. I remember playing Asphalt racing game. It pushed it to 60 FPS and its graphics was stunning, better than need for speed. If phone can render AAA game at 60 FPS but struggles with some chat app, this chat app does not respect is users. I mean it's just a bunch of grey squares with some text and lame shadows. DOS on i386 could render it fast enough.

Sometimes I can't decide who's more crazy - me who demands adequate performance from simplistic apps or people who accept this state of things.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#288

Post by wilg »

broAhmed wrote: post #3

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. 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'm pretty technically inclined and I lose my Signal history every time I get a new phone because I just can't remember to transfer it. (I don't use it a ton.) I really wish this was more seamless. (I understand the complexity of the security issues around it.)

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#289

Post by codethief »

kiwijamo wrote: post #258
dont__panic wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I'm glad they update the app regularly, but the giant popup banner is an aggressive way of advertising that.

What platform? I don't get this on Android or Linux Desktop (via Flatpak). Perhaps I am just good at keeping apps on both platforms up to date?

AFAIK you only get those update notifications when you install Signal by hand via the apk provided on signal.org.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#290

Post by codethief »

robszumski wrote: post #152
dont__panic wrote: post #107

Earlier 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…

+1 on the update harassment. Are these critical security bugs or random updates!? You never know.

+1 Can we please have a changelog? I don't care whether it's in the app or on Github but it shouldn't only appear to Google Play Store users (and only temporarily).
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