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Signal Introduces Stories

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Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#171

Post by uoaei »

fragmede wrote: post #73
uoaei wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not conflate "normalized" with "standard". "Standard" implies a lot, and definitely there is nothing about "enabling two-way communication between willing participants" that requires "make available a video on the screens of my contacts in a non-directed way" to be part of the offering. Signal is not social media . That is not its intention, nor its purpose, nor even its design. It is a messaging service. We al…

> Signal is not social media. I mean, it is now since they just added a stories feature. Sorry that your view of the product doesn't align with Signal's. You're also using the word bikeshedding in a way unfamiliar to me. I use that word to mean intense debate about inconsequential changes that don't matter, like the right color for a bicycle shed. Which ofc is ludacris because there is no right or wrong color for a b…

The important part of "bikeshedding" is the part about ignoring more important changes by focusing on trivial changes around the edges. If stories are more than trivial, I'd like to know how.

Personally, I think call quality and server reliability with respect to private messages are more important for a service that is explicitly (and, until this change, exclusively) about private messaging, especially considering recent outages.

If Signal changed the encryption protocol to an insecure one, or simply removed it, then they are fundamentally altering the promise of the app vis a vis its core technology, ie, the essence of the provided service. Obviously that is analogous to the foundation of a house, not to the shed in the backyard.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#172

Post by nicce »

Calvin02 wrote: post #149
nicce wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. WhatsApp did not really adapt it in privacy mind, to be fair. All metadata is unencrypted. Meta harvests your contact information, intervals and time when you message specific persons. Often, this information is more interesting…

I don't think that's accurate. Pretty sure both work the same way regarding metadata. Think about it: if Signal didn't know that A was messaging B, how would they route that message to B's phone? A has to be able to find B's ip address someway. B can't broadcast its ip address to all the Signal users -- that would be a huge security hole. It probably works like this: 1) A sends encrypted message + B's phone number to…

WhatsApp contact uplod mechanism continues here [1].

It means, that if the contact list contains numbers which have not accepted WhatsApp ToS, their content is stored only as hash. When the user starts using WhatsApp, their number and hash is being mapped.

Vaguely described as

> Each cryptographic hash value is stored on WhatsApp’s servers, linked to the WhatsApp users who uploaded the corresponding phone numbers before they were hashed so that we can more efficiently connect you with these contacts when they join WhatsApp.

Which means that WhatsApp knows the numbers of the WhatsApp users, and how they interact together.

Signal does not know numbers or how these contatcs interact.

It is described here [2]. Number is only needed for creating the unique hash. Server knows only the recipient, not the sender.

[1]: https://faq.whatsapp.com/423109552047857/?locale=en_US&refsr...

[2]: https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#173

Post by e12e »

_6hmp wrote: post #99
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.

The reason it's not the "best Signal" is that WhatsApp doesn't have reproducible builds or any guarantees that e2e isn't subverted on the client side or removed entirely. And it's run by a company with incentives that are misaligned to e2e encryption and a history of product updates that don't respect the privacy or preferences of the end user.

Otoh, maybe a small company like signal is easier to completely subvert by Cia, nsa, Mossad than meta is?

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#174

Post by 1MachineElf »

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.

On this new Google Pixel 7, the app launcher thing is limited to just 4 apps. Now that I can't use Signal for SMS, it has lost it's convenient spot on my home screen. I find myself using it less, so like you, I'm very displeased about their dropping SMS. The forum thread on Signal's Discourse about the change is full of snide remarks from their moderators, and it's extremely disappointing to see Signal community leaders disparaging their own long-time users over SMS. Turning back on the legacy of TextSecure in this way justifies framing this as a betrayal.

All that being said...

I still trust Signal's Stories implementation over any other. While I believe they could have competed with SMS-capable apps like iMessage, Google Messages, and Samsung Messages, if pivoting into WhatsApp/Instagram/Snapchat/TikTok territory is what they'd rather do, then I believe they can execute it well.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#176

Post by dont__panic »

enragedcacti wrote: post #138
dont__panic wrote: post #103

Disregard this comment. This feature, while disappointing to me, is a fine addition to Signal for many people who would like to use the Story format without snooping or ads from Meta. That is a good thing and we should celebrate it. I previously commented something much more negative and snarky. I regret it.

People aren't expecting to get quote sniped so they assume that you have read the previous section where they explain in exacting detail what value they see in the story format. > In the past years, stories have emerged as a new way to communicate, with their own unique purposes, norms, and idiosyncrasies. Ephemeral, low-stakes, and image-heavy, people use stories to share updates about their lives without the expect…

Good point. I do not like the Story format, so I'm pretty prejudiced against them. The author does a good job earlier in the announcement of explaining the reasoning, so my sniping above is exactly that -- unfair sneering.

Thanks for calling me out here. It goes to show that even when you feel very grumpy about a change, you shouldn't resort to unfair arguments like I did.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#177

Post by dont__panic »

robszumski wrote: post #152
dont__panic wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

+1 on the update harassment. Are these critical security bugs or random updates!? You never know.

Exactly. I'm glad they update the app regularly, but the giant popup banner is an aggressive way of advertising that.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#178

Post by dont__panic »

pvg wrote: post #142
dont__panic wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a smidge snarky, but it's literally the only justification Signal provides for adding this feature to their app. Why is it not OK to analyze their reasoning?

Because it's not analysis, just generic sneering. Picking N boring things to complain about is not any better than picking one boring thing to complain about.

Thanks for calling this out. I was grumpy and unfair. I'll remember this in the future and try to do better.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#179

Post by sigmar »

I'm curious how it encrypts. I've got 500 "Signal connections"... Does it do them all at once (with some kind of "group key" like in group chat) and in a way that can be decrypted by any of the individual keys? Can't find any details on github or the official forum...

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#180

Post by mynameisash »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #33

That's cool but everyone in my family that I convinced to use Signal just stopped using it because it was their default SMS app. Now it's not.

This is the boat I'm in. My version of Signal already updated and encouraged me to switch SMS out of the app, which I did. Now I'm sort of split between these two apps; my family is, for the moment, still using Signal for both, but I expect they'll soon enough be forced to use Android Messages, at which point we'll have little reason to continue using Signal.

Once my immediate family is out, I expect it'll be a domino effect with my extended family and friends -- those of us on Signal will have fewer and fewer reasons (ie, individuals in our graph) to use it. As much as I'd like this to not be the case, I think it will be. A smallish percentage of my contact list was on Signal, but every few months, another few people would join. I expect this trend will reverse.

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