Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 158 posts

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#101

Post by neltnerb »

adamcstephens wrote: post #81
KraftKacke wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In signal you cant delete/forget contacts... And groups will haunt you to the end of days too. I started to strongly distrust signal after I learned that. It's meta information nonetheless and invites for identity fraud. But yeah, Telegram can't be trusted either. I hope matrix/element will replace both soon.

Matrix needs better clients...

True story, I've been using Matrix with Element for a while. I don't use it for anything much because no one else is on it. Some friends and I have a groupchat on Signal and we decided it would be good to have a backup method to chat if Signal breaks (or to just move to for the reasons that there are, such as not being centralized by design).

It took me at least twenty minutes to figure out how to add my friends to a room I created too long enough ago to have memorized the UI. And they added "Communities" which I created one of but cannot even tell what functionality it even provides.

I don't know if that's a client issue or not but it seems like (maybe?) it's trying to be a social network in addition to a chat app? Some kind of adding in Discord functionality or something?

I guess as long as I can not use social network features and still use it like I use Signal... to flexibly chat with whomever I know the ID of.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#103

Post by anticensor »

theshrike79 wrote: post #5
teruakohatu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might have the wrong impression but Signal has always seemed to me to be uninterested in user requests. They are privicy first & user experience second. There have been lots of Signal forks with a variety of features the official client refuses to add or merge.

And this is why I use Telegram, for them UX matters. Yes MTProto is not audited blah blah. I use IRC too and that has exactly butkus for encryption :D

MTProto has been audited multiple times.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#104

Post by Lopiolis »

jsiepkes wrote: post #84
Lopiolis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? People care. People don't want to lose years worth of chat histories with friends, family and their significant other(s). That's just how it is. I'm not sure why it's so hotly debated around here. People want to preserve their chats and their media. There's sentimental/emotional value to these things and they don't want to lose these things. That's all that should matter. I feel like these discussions…

It matters because people don't always realize that it means making trade-off's. And people often don't know what the consequences can be of those trade-offs because they didn't realise it was a trade-off to begin with. In case of whatsapp and keeping chat history it can mean years of chat history becoming public if for example your Apple / Google account (where whatsapp automatically stores your conversation backups…

> In case of whatsapp and keeping chat history it can mean years of chat history becoming public if for example your Apple / Google account (where whatsapp automatically stores your conversation backups) gets hacked.

This just isn't the threat model most people care about, nor do they have to. Given a choice between preserving their chat history with their loved ones and not having any of it in the off chance that it might be leaked somewhere, the vast majority of people will opt for the former. Once you value chat history and other media in this way, then the risk simply isn't relevant. Again, this is all irrelevant. You people keep thinking on this one track of "but it's not secure" when that isn't the overriding concern for these people. It needs to be secure enough while not completely disregarding one of their core needs (preserving history). It's non-negotiable and no amount of discussing of risk or privacy will change this. Again, I find it insufferable that tech people are so unwilling to take normal peoples' needs into account.

Signal has the opportunity to become the default secure messaging app while also providing "secure" backups. They don't even need to be cloud backups, though that would be preferred. Even local backups can be sufficient. But as long as they don't account for the needs of "normal" people, Signal isn't a real option.

If I go to my friend's girlfriend and say, here's this awesome secure messaging app that you need to switch to and she switches, then something happens to her phone and she loses all her precious chats, how do you think that's going to go over? I can blabber on about privacy and risks all I want, I'm still the asshole.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#107

Post by 0xCMP »

tinus_hn wrote: post #69

Why would you do this? Signal doesn’t care about chat history so this is a wasted effort.

People are trying to address feature requests for keeping their messages backed up. Something which many people using WhatsApp really enjoyed having.

e.g. On reddit it's common for r/dataisbeautiful to have posts which show graphs/charts on texting activity from the beginning of relationships and stuff. Which requires some way of keeping that data around.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#108

Post by fastball »

denys_maksymov wrote: post #105

Why migrating to Signal when there is a much better alternative as Telegram?

Telegram has various issues for the privacy concerned, namely that group chats are never E2EE and 1-to-1 chats are not encrypted by default, among other concerns[1].

Also Telegram is not open-source.

Also Telegram did some shenanigans with cryptocurrency a few years back[2].

Telegram does have better UX than Signal though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Security

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Telegram_O...

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#109

Post by okanesen »

shilgapira wrote: post #55
forgingahead wrote: post #23

Is there a way to get the Whatsapp messages on iOS? Years ago they were accessible via a sqlite DB, but it's been ages since I did it, and I can't find any online resources about this other than people shilling dodgy .exe apps.

You can export your message history for every chat, I believe including photos and videos. Just need to go to the Group Info screen and then scroll all the way to the bottom.

Just as a side info: unfortunately this won't work in Germany, since that feature was disabled there.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#110

Post by gegtik »

john4532452 wrote: post #54
teekert wrote: post #17

Fascinating and it sounds doable to me. However, not to my mother in law and most other people I know, which is the group that would require a method like this, but then it should be much easier.

This same argument is made over and over in many threds. I don't understand why this is so hard to understand. Even mobiles and social media were totally new to the older generation but they got used to it. How is this any different ?

I think he's talking specifically about this migration tool, not generally about using Signal as a chat app
Post reply on HN