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Signal Introduces Stories

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Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#371

Post by Fervicus »

tptacek wrote: post #368
anigbrowl wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking it up after it became available is not the same thing as asking for it. Sorry but this a frivolous cosmetic thing compared to security issues like Signal's ongoing linkage to phone numbers.

Signal's "ongoing linkage to phone numbers" is one of their more powerful security features .

Why is that? Not disagreeing but genuinely curious. One of the issues I face sometimes is wanting to stay in touch with someone I met. I'd like to do that over Signal (I don't use any of the popular social media platforms) but I don't feel comfortable sharing my phone number with them. It would be nice if I could use a unique user handle instead.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#372

Post by treve »

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.

A little while back I felt this way about 'stickers'. It seemed like a completely unnecessary feature I've never used and designed to achieve parity.

Last week I spoke to my 20-something sister and learned that it's basically a must-have for her friend group, who sometimes have entire conversations just with stickers shared in her group.

Had no idea, but in hindsight realized I'm no longer tuned in enough to know how people just 10 years younger communicate, let alone from different cultures.

My point is: 100% agree. Glad it's not in my face and not caring is the way to go. Being cynical about these features is probably ignorance

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#373

Post by sshine »

kibwen wrote: post #223
fitblipper wrote: post #199

I was worried about sharing broadly and leaking info from 1 contact to another, but it seems like the Signal team did all the right things here. When you create a story you can make it a group story or not. If you do not make it a group story, reactions and replies to stories get sent to you over your 1:1 chats and not shared across other recipients of the story. If you make it a group story, and share it with multip…

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.

https://simplex.chat/ is iterating on this. There’s a lot of pros and cons to any design of private group chats from the perspective of privacy, performance and single points of failure.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#374

Post by sshine »

throwaway0x7E6 wrote: post #338
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.

it is very trivial if you don't use unnecessarily fancy cryptographic protocols

Not if you want it to scale, remain private/hidden, and have no single point of failure.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#375

Post by izacus »

kasey_junk wrote: post #245
izacus wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's true, why do they refuse to implement backups so normal people don't lose data when their phone breaks or the app bugs out?

Because they haven’t figured out how to do that securely?

They figured out how to do secure stories and crypto payments but not how to store an encrypted file like all other messengers?

C'mon, don't bs us :)

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#376

Post by NayamAmarshe »

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…

> WhatsApp adopting Signal's protocol

Is there any solid evidence for this or are we just believing what Facebook says?

WhatsApp's APK files have obfuscated code. A few years ago they forgot to obfuscate a file and they got exposed.

Not to mention so many severe vulnerabilities discovered in WhatsApp every now and then.

People who really think WhatsApp's claims about E2EE are true and it's making them safer or private, are trusting Facebook too much.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#377

Post by cfhhgtyg »

patmorgan23 wrote: post #315
junon wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix, while kind of a PITA for non-technical people to get into, can do it quite well considering the featureset they support.

>while kind of a PITA for non-technical people to get into, In other words, it has a bad UX. Which was the original point about encrypted group chats.

Matrix is a protocol, not an App

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#378

Post by cfhhgtyg »

stavros wrote: post #222
fitblipper wrote: post #199

I was worried about sharing broadly and leaking info from 1 contact to another, but it seems like the Signal team did all the right things here. When you create a story you can make it a group story or not. If you do not make it a group story, reactions and replies to stories get sent to you over your 1:1 chats and not shared across other recipients of the story. If you make it a group story, and share it with multip…

It seems to me that, under the hood, stories are implemented as simple messages. To publish a story to 200 friends, you just send 200 photo messages to them. Group stories are a group message (and hence separate per group), which is a very good abstraction.

In groups you do the same: send a photo message to every group member

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#379

Post by iudqnolq »

treve wrote: post #372
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.

A little while back I felt this way about 'stickers'. It seemed like a completely unnecessary feature I've never used and designed to achieve parity. Last week I spoke to my 20-something sister and learned that it's basically a must-have for her friend group, who sometimes have entire conversations just with stickers shared in her group. Had no idea, but in hindsight realized I'm no longer tuned in enough to know how…

About once a week I accidentally send a sticker in Signal. It feels like it should be impossible, but somehow my subconscious muscle memory uses those positions for something. But I've never met anyone else with this problem and still haven't figured out how or why I'm doing it, so I can't blame them.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#380

Post by NayamAmarshe »

baby wrote: post #79

I really feel like the best Signal today is Whatsapp. It implements almost the same protocol and is 1) super lean and 2) everyone already has it.

Yeah and it also has the added trust of Facebook, the best privacy respecting corporation at the moment.

Not to mention that WhatsApp, even after having so many vulnerabilities and backdoors, is very functional.

They obfuscate the code but it's clearly to stop hackers from hacking WhatsApp users.

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