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I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#201

Post by Spivak »

apexalpha wrote: post #20

I think you're forgetting the main reason: the group of people using it to communicate is really small and shrinking every year. The only large group of people who still primarily use SMS to communicate person-to-person is Android users in the USA. Every other country has settled on either Telegram, WeChat, WhatsApp or FB Messenger, or other niche apps. These apps work on both iOS and Android and often also Windows.…

> And the US is quickly becoming a de-facto iOS only country...

I love that "there are two big players in the market with a literally 50%/50% split" means that iOS dominates. iPhones have always been popular among teenagers, if Millennials are any indication it levels out over time. It's just one of many weird demographic splits, not some grand trend. People need to not fall into the fallacy that "something is popular with young people" means that thing will remain popular as they get older.

iOS is more popular among women, young people, liberals, professionals, upper-middle and high-income, people with post-secondary education, and urbanites.

As well as the inverse of the above Android is more popular with people who work in IT, and people who follow tech news.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#202

Post by tengwar2 »

IshKebab wrote: post #32
modo_mario wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS is still rather common here in Europe. Even if a ton of people use whatsapp and such SMS is often a safe option to initiate with or something trough which you get certain kinds of automated messages like appointment reminders or verification codes.

Which countries? It has zero use in the UK (apart from for stuff like parcel deliveries and 2FA). We're 100% WhatsApp.

No we're not.

There's a lot of people here claiming that their personal use is representative of their country, or of Europe as a whole. I get SMS from a lot of people. You don't, probably because a lot of the people you know are on Facebook/Whatsapp and it's more convenient for them to stay with that platform. That doesn't mean that they don't use SMS for anyone else. It just means that you are bubbled.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#203

Post by Symbiote »

jhugo wrote: post #98
edent wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not common isn't quite right. Ofcom's report shows that SMS use is shrinking, but it is still an average of 51 messages per user per month. Source https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/222401/... SMS decline is probably inevitable though.

That seems really high based on my UK experience. The link says "the average mobile connection sent 51 messages per month". What does it mean for a "connection" to send messages? Could that include messages sent to the user? If so, this number would make sense (OTPs and spam).

It's the only comment in a long and pointless Europe-does-this/no-it-doesn't that has found any statistics at all, so I think it's reasonable to accept it, unless much more detailed statistics can be found.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#204

Post by dont__panic »

lucb1e wrote: post #111
mixcocam wrote: post #87

I agree with all the points mentioned. I hope this accelerates the development of signal - especially on desktop where there is still no integrated video player!!

I was amazed to learn, a few days ago, that you can send/receive SMS via Signal. It's like being able to send faxes from google hangouts; unencrypted paid messages just seems completely opposite to what the project stands for. Which is not to say that I can't see the rationale, but I didn't know and it surprised me. The next thing I wondered is how much work it is to maintain two entirely separate messaging systems i…

Apple seems to maintain iMessage and SMS in one app just fine. Granted, they're a bigger company, but it's hard to say just how large the Messages development team is. It could conceivably be even smaller than Signal's workforce!

Apple's iMessage/SMS handling is a perfect model for how Signal should have approached SMS support: a firm hand of features and UI reinforcing the fact that SMS sucks, but reasonable enough support that you can send and receive SMS/MMS just fine.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#205

Post by monetus »

angry_octet wrote: post #128
domano wrote: post #59

I remember when Signal was called Textsecure and did E2E encryption for SMS - just to rant about argument number 5.

They've been fundamentally dishonest in their messaging. The truth is that they don't want to support SMS any more, and they don't care about usability or barriers to entry this causes. If they'd just said that I wouldn't be so annoyed with them.

> Getting someone to sort of clock the difference in a protocol layer security property, that’s an education task that is pretty steep

This is the signal president's stated reasoning on why they couldn't have a blue-message (secure) / green-message (insecure) dynamic, akin to iMessage. I think she is being disingenuous, and that the development effort of MMS is the driving motivation, but I am cynical.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#207

Post by dont__panic »

batiudrami wrote: post #56
amelius wrote: post #15

The cynic in me says this looks more like a marketing/pr technique than an honest answer to an email.

Does it? What would an honest answer look like to you?

One of:

- we don't have the dev resources to keep SMS/MMS working

- with RCS becoming more common and no Google API for RCS, we don't have the ability to fully replace Google Messages any more

- since we can't support SMS/MMS on iOS, we decided to kill the feature for Android users for the sake of maintenance

They shouldn't pull punches and pretend that this feature removal is for the "protection" of users who accidentally send SMS instead of Signal messages. That's a strawman, anyway -- if a user manages to send SMS in the Signal app, it's because the person they're trying to communicate with doesn't have Signal installed... so there inherently isn't a secure communication path. Users who pay per SMS should disable it in the app settings, and you can easily add a popup the first time you send an SMS/the first time you open the app to make that clear.

This is 50% Signal trying to streamline development, 50% Google's push for RCS (and their lack of APIs to build alternative RCS apps on Android). They should be honest about that instead of making up nonsense about misguided users getting confused.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#208

Post by brational »

sillyfluke wrote: post #149
apexalpha wrote: post #20

I think you're forgetting the main reason: the group of people using it to communicate is really small and shrinking every year. The only large group of people who still primarily use SMS to communicate person-to-person is Android users in the USA. Every other country has settled on either Telegram, WeChat, WhatsApp or FB Messenger, or other niche apps. These apps work on both iOS and Android and often also Windows.…

A bit weird for the "I don't use it so who cares" view to take a firm hold here. SMS is: 1. not controlled by a single company 2. a different network than the internet 3. a fail safe for people who don't use apps or are unable to at a given time for some reason (inc 2fa) 4. a fail safe for a "small group of people" who are suffering the consequences of a natural disaster. Though perhaps not economically feasible for…

And totally readable and accessible by any third party

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#209

Post by brational »

bewilderbeast wrote: post #47

I have 2 issues with RCS: 1. Requires data connection, either WiFi or mobile data. SMS does not. 2. On Android, it goes through Google Messages. I don't trust Google. So, I replaced Messages with another SMS app that doesn't spy on me and disabled RCS. If I wanted to do rich messaging through data connection, I would use Signal or similar. So, RCS is not a replacement for SMS. It's just another IM protocol. And we ha…

> So, I replaced Messages with another SMS app that doesn't spy on me and disabled RCS.

I think you know this based on the rest of your post but there is no “another SMS app that doesn’t spy on me”.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#210

Post by rjzzleep »

jhugo wrote: post #196
rjzzleep wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's incorrect. Dead for person-to-person communication in east Asia yes, but still EXTREMELY common for everything else. "It doesn't matter for the use cases I don't care about" - what a selfish look at the world. Besides paying for parking by SMS and other services in Europe there's also M-Pesa and similar services[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

> That's incorrect. Read before replying. I literally said "for person-to-person communication".

I was specifically referencing YOUR language. You can't on the one hand proclaim death of a protocol and in the next sentence limit it to a specific use case.

> The death of SMS is hardly specific to central Europe and the US.

I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but since you're specifically attacking my wording I have to correct you. This statement would only be correct if it was: "The death of SMS for person-to-person communication is hardly specific to central Europe and the US."

So yes, your statement is incorrect. It's not dead, far from. It might get there eventually, but definitely not yet.

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