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Signal Introduces Stories

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Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#301

Post by dontparticipate »

aeturnum wrote: post #269

I'm still extremely disappointed in Signal's choice to drop SMS support, which feels like a key adoption vector to me. However, I'm glad to see that they're still building privacy-first versions of popular social networking features. This does the double-duty of giving privacy conscious folks access to those features and showing that there's no need to invade users' privacy to offer these things - instead when others…

My family members will basically all stop using Signal now because they didn't want two apps for messaging. This will make all my conversations less private rather than more. It was a really dumb decision. I was able to convince a lot of people to switch because "it's just text and voice messaging except if we both have the app then it's more secure." I will basically be alone in my usage of Signal after the change goes through and am assuming I'll just uninstall it eventually as well once my family isn't there anymore.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#302

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#303

Post by dontparticipate »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #21
dewey wrote: post #12

I like it! Making it more "mainstream" is the way to go even if purists might say that it's feature bloat for their secure messenger. It's similar to how it's good if more people use Tor for all kinds of activities as it doesn't immediately label you as suspicious just because you use Tor or Signal.

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

I was only able to convince family to use Signal because they didn't need two apps for messaging. It's pretty much a dead app for me now and the decision makes my conversations profoundly less private and safe.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#304

Post by caf »

lutoma wrote: post #247
Dylan16807 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

SMS is very rarely used anymore outside of the US and a few select other countries, and for most people Signal and similar messengers serve as a replacement for text messages, not a supplement. It's probably just not a worthwhile market/feature to keep anymore. Come to think of it, I'm having a very hard time coming up with any sensible use case for using Signal over text message. Presumably both sides still need Sig…

Signal hasn't supported using SMS as a transport for encrypted messages for years now. The impending change that people are discussing is dropping support for sending and receiving ordinary SMS from non-Signal-using parties.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#305

Post by rch »

Vinnl wrote: post #209
agundy wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

This post seems say that they'd rather avoid the difficult programming challenges of working with the varied devices and protocols people use for communication generally, and just compete with other walled garden apps instead. I wish them luck, but it's a different trajectory than they were on a year or two ago.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#306

Post by caf »

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.

Signal on Android previously worked a lot like iMessage on iOS - you'd use it as your default messenger, it'd SMS if that was the lowest common denominator, or it'd seamlessly upgrade to Signal protocol if both sides had it.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#307

Post by zaik »

fooqux wrote: post #204
barbazoo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?).

We even had it long before that. It's called XMPP, it's the internet standard for instant messaging and modern clients implement Signal style encryption.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#308

Post by keithwinstein »

Signal has done a lot of nice work on building a UI that conveys what nerds/paranoid people want to know for private messaging (e.g. "Your safety numbers with so-and-so have changed") while still providing a usable app. But for the most part, the threat model of "private messaging" is one that software can defend against pretty well; everybody understands that when Signal provides "privacy," they don't mean in the face of an adversarial receiver who wants to share the message with the whole world.

For a service like "messages that the receiver can read offline but the sender can later delete [or that auto-delete after 24 hours]," I'm curious to see how they handle the UI when the threat model is harder to defend against cryptographically, because it depends on software that isn't acting as a user-agent. Are they worried about people running rogue clients that save every message (or about screenshots?)? If so, how do you do a good job communicating to the nerdy/paranoid user that deletion is not guaranteed? Or does everybody already understand that auto-deletion is best-effort and shouldn't be treated as on par with the strength of assurance that Signal provides for privacy?

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#309

Post by mbgerring »

This rules, this really cements Signal as the best real-life social networking tool out there. It’s the app I use the most to talk to my real friends, and I love all these new features that make using it more fun. Fantastic work!

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#310

Post by anigbrowl »

m12k wrote: post #239

I'm glad to see the app is actively being worked on, even if the changes aren't ones I care about personally. Here's my wishlist for Signal: - Edit previously sent messages like Telegram, Discord and Slack lets you do. I'm so damn tired of a big ugly "This message was deleted" if I try to fix a typo/DYAC - A better way to sync up clients, so when I log in on a computer and verify with my phone, it lets me sync over s…

Ability to export my conversations is a very basic feature that's lacking; I have years of conversation with my wife that I'd like to preserve but no way to do it within Signal. (I could back up the SQLite database at the OS level but that immediately starts to get complex).

Also no text formatting, how come I can't just use markdown in 2022?

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