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Signal Introduces Stories

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Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#421

Post by top_sigrid »

ngrilly wrote: post #415

The announcement says “give the people what they want”. You know what I really want in Signal for iOS? Backups, not stories. Congratulations for launching stories, but I honestly don’t understand why it has been prioritized over backups (E2E encrypted of course). That’s a major missing piece to replace WhatsApp and other messaging solutions.

There is so much basic functionality missing in Signal as a chat client, news like this - or e.g. integrating crypto payments with a shady cyrpotcurrency [0] - upset me as it does you.

No backups, no drag-n-drop or even pasting support for many things on Mac and iOS, no list of links in chats, no jumping to the context where a media was sent, such an non-native app feel overall are just top-of-my-head annoyances that make Signal a very mediocre chat experience.

Which is a shame, as I share and support most ideas and ideals of Signal. But I so rarely see Signal as a chat app improve, it angers me.

- [0] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In...

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#422

Post by nunobrito »

willsmith72 wrote: post #404
nunobrito wrote: post #402

Don't care. They can paint that thing in whatever color they want. I'm still not using a messenger with an algorithm developed next door to the NSA headquarters.

You think the alternative messaging apps are any better?

Well.. Signal was literally sponsored by the CIA from the beginning.

OTF gave Signal 3 million USD: https://www.opentech.fund/results/supported-projects/open-wh...

The OTF was created in 2012 as a pilot program of Radio Free Asia (RFA), an asset of US Agency for Global Media (USAGM)/CIA, which is in turn funded by US Congress. The algorithm for signal/whisper was developed next door to the NSA headquarters in Hawaii.

All of this is public information at the moment.

Don't know if ALL OTHER messaging apps are better, but would at least prefer a messenger not sponsored/blessed by well-known spy agencies.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#423

Post by nanna »

ngrilly wrote: post #415

The announcement says “give the people what they want”. You know what I really want in Signal for iOS? Backups, not stories. Congratulations for launching stories, but I honestly don’t understand why it has been prioritized over backups (E2E encrypted of course). That’s a major missing piece to replace WhatsApp and other messaging solutions.

All I want from Signal is an Emacs mode, damnit.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#424

Post by peteforde »

I don't understand why so many folks are compelled by ephemeral photo sharing, even while I'm happy for those that want it to have it. It's just not for me.

First of all, the older I get, the more precious memories are because frankly, I'm forgetting more and more and it terrifies me. I don't understand why something that was worth sharing today needs to be gone tomorrow. What if I was busy that day? What if I want to see it again tomorrow? What if I'm at a party three weeks later and want to show somebody your funny puppy photo?

Second, if you think about it, it's often the most casual, lo-fi and accidental shots that end up carrying the most authentic value. Quick snaps that you don't know are "last photos with" at the time. People pass unexpectedly; too bad all of the pictures of them were set to fucking evaporate.

Third, if something is truly not photographed with enough intention or effort to keep it around for more than 24 hours... was it really worth sharing in the first place?

Finally, it's super weird to me that people don't assume that anything downloaded or displayed can be captured. In fact, having something set to self-destruct in a day probably means that people are more likely to save a copy locally than they would if you just left it there.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#425

Post by palata »

cfhhgtyg wrote: post #377
patmorgan23 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

Thanks for the nitpick. Now let's read this again as "Apps implementing the Matrix protocol...".

If one app found a way to make a nice UX for it, all the others would follow. So in practice it seems perfectly reasonable to say "Matrix" when talking about the general UX found in apps implementing the Matrix protocol, doesn't it?

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#426

Post by palata »

grapescheesee wrote: post #193
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.

I really hope they change course, and keep SMS. That is the single best feature of the android App. They will lose a lot of people if they don't.

> They will lose a lot of people if they don't.

I don't think they will.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#428

Post by izacus »

klabb3 wrote: post #326
anigbrowl wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It supports backing up to a file that you can't specify. This is unhelpful in many use cases. Example: I am running out of space on my phone. I look, and see Signal is taking 4gb of space. But I would like to preserve a lot of that media. So I buy a mini-SD card and install it in my phone. Yay! Now to turn on Signal chat backups! Oh, but the backups are hardcoded to a location on your primary storage that you can't c…

Even a cynic like me wouldn't go so far as to assume bad intent here. Signal is open source so the file format should be readable and likely this is just an oversight, I guess it's not a highly requested feature. Have you filed an issue?

Repeatedly refusing to fix this widely reported issue with non-sensical explanations does imply bad intent.

In the beginning, it might have been an oversight. Now moxie is just making seriously misleading arguments on behalf of people he doesn't know to make their service worse.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#429

Post by palata »

patall wrote: post #182
sofixa wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the same question applies: why?

It feels very weird to have both a very good end-to-end encryption (the Signal encrypted messages) and a very bad system (SMS) together in the same app. People should just move away from SMS, it's not like it's hard.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#430

Post by izacus »

codethief wrote: post #294
kasey_junk wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What I don't understand here (though admittedly I haven't been following the iOS discussions closely) is why backups are possible on Android but not on iOS?

The backups on Android are near useless as well - they expect users to remember and save a massively long string of numbers (that are pre-generated, so they can't even choose a password they remember) and then they only do backup manually and onto device storage where it'll be gone together with everything else on the device if it breaks or dies.

Getting that backup off the device is yet another manual process for most users they need to think about.

Compare this to Telegram: user doesn't have to do anything.

Compare this to iMessage: user doesn't have to do anything.

Compare this to WhatsApp: user just needs to click agree.

The last two even save backups in an E2E encrypted fashion unreadable by servers.

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