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Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

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Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#111

Post by lucideer »

fastball wrote: post #108
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/wik…

> Telegram is not open-source

The Telegram apps are GPL. Their server is (afaik) closed-source, but having an open source server implementation doesn't mean much for a centralised service without any server-switching support anyway, so no effective practical difference to Signal here in that regard.

The E2E situation on Telegram is poor however.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#112

Post by the_arun »

est31 wrote: post #53
Semaphor wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s essentially what this is. You install it to migrate, then you remove it again and install the original Signal app, as per the steps in the repo. I would guess it was easier (or even only possible) this way.

Yeah it's probably already hard enough to expect the average phone user to know how to (un)install apps. But expecting them to know which directory the file is in and is supposed to go into? Way harder.

Also, let us think what if someone wants to migrate from another similar App - say telegram? Will we have another fork?

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#113

Post by tinus_hn »

0xCMP wrote: post #107
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.

On iOS this is trivial and you have to go out of your way to not do it.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#114

Post by goldbattle »

jl6 wrote: post #79

Is something like this possible but in reverse? Not to migrate to WhatsApp, but to export data from Signal to a neutral environment (text file, zip file, database, whatever). I can’t switch to Signal until this becomes possible.

There is a fork that has the ability to export to encrypted zip, plain text, and the full database [1]. There seems to be a general theme of the dev's not supporting export/import functionality [2].

[1] https://github.com/johanw666/Signal-Android

[2] https://community.signalusers.org/t/lets-talk-about-backups/...

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#116

Post by benlwalker »

I tried to switch to Signal the other day. In the US on Android, most people use the default messaging app and that means a lot of MMS/RCS messages. All the messages between myself and my wife are RCS, for example. Signal failed to import these - it only did SMS. I'd love to see someone tackle this problem much like this WhatsApp migration. It's essentially a deal breaker for people in this situation.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#118

Post by Vinnl »

shawnz wrote: post #96
mhaymo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably once the kinks are worked out of this process, it could be merged into the main release of Signal. No second app required.

I believe the Signal devs expressed a lack of interest in doing this since it would mean embedding secret Whatsapp encryption keys in Signal. See: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/1014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25686179

They're interested [1], but as usual, giving some though on how to do that in a privacy-maximising way:

> Thanks, we know [backup] is a big deal and think about it a lot. We're working on ways to do it that would be privacy preserving, and in the mean time we've got the p2p device transfer you mention. We'll keep working to make it better!

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/kt91qk/signal_p...

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#119

Post by isignal »

Lopiolis wrote: post #59
tomatocracy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few areas which are harder to use like backups. I suspect one of the most difficult to address is getting it to successfully evade the random vendor-built aggressive battery saving settings in Android. WhatsApp is usually whitelisted from those so "just works". If you don't do similar things for Signal, it will stop picking messages up/notifying you after a day or two of inactivity.

The backup issue makes Signal infeasible for me to suggest to family/friends as a serious alternative. It's just not up for discussion. People care about preserving their chat histories and I'm not about to put myself in a position where I'm at fault when that stuff goes lost because something or other. There's a lot of sentimental value there that is non-negotiable. Unfortunately, that leaves me with ... nothing to…

On that note, this feature - https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/1567 - to allow bulk saving of media to iOS photos also hasn’t been addressed.

Whatsapp allows media from specific chats to be auto saved to photos. It is a very important feature, not sure how these aren’t making the priority bar.

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