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Signal Introduces Stories

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Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#461

Post by godelski »

anigbrowl wrote: post #322
godelski wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About once a week I get a notification that random person X I haven't talked to in a decade is now on signal. Settings > Notifications > Notify when... > turn off "Contact joins Signal"

That let's me turn off annoying notifications from other people. Guess what, it doesn't help someone who would prefer not to advertise their adoption of Signal to everyone who ever had their contact details. Really, is it so hard to think about both sides of this equation?

Hey, I was just trying to help. I didn't make Signal and don't work for them.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#462

Post by int_19h »

izacus wrote: post #445
haffenloher wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Repeatedly refusing to fix this widely reported issue with non-sensical explanations What are you referring to? An option to choose your backup location got added two years ago. It works on Android 10 and above. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/ee3d7a9a3...

Please explain how do I configure Signal for people in my family so they won't lose any message, photo or group membership if their phone falls out of the pocket. This means: * Backup must be automatic. * Backup must be done off device. * Backup must be common enough that messages aren't lost. * Restore must be available to person of average technical ability. * Restore must not require a person to remember typing in…

Your last item in particular renders the security benefits that Signal normally provides moot, so then why even bother with it?

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#463

Post by izacus »

int_19h wrote: post #462
izacus wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain how do I configure Signal for people in my family so they won't lose any message, photo or group membership if their phone falls out of the pocket. This means: * Backup must be automatic. * Backup must be done off device. * Backup must be common enough that messages aren't lost. * Restore must be available to person of average technical ability. * Restore must not require a person to remember typing in…

Your last item in particular renders the security benefits that Signal normally provides moot, so then why even bother with it?

It absolutely does not do that by itself. As proven by other secure implementations with more user friendly approaches to entering encyption keys.

It's also funny how demanding on use of phone numbers, shoving in crypto currency and demanding everyone to use out-of-date Electron app is somehow fine, but making backups user friendly is suddenly a massive "security" issue.

This is the BS security theater I despise at Signal. It's the software equivalent of having every single airplane passenger take off shoes.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#464

Post by parineum »

kataklasm wrote: post #396
parineum wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people love SMS too.

No one on this site should love SMS. It's just a huge security vulnerability and while it sucks having to reactivate the built-in SMS app I totally get their reasoning behind it. Having SMS integrated into Signal was damaging their reputation for something they could never have any control over, so why support it? Any business trying to stay alive would repeat their decision on this.

> so why support it?

Because it helps me convince new users to try it out.

I used to be able to tell people, "You can change your messaging app to Signal and it'll send secure messages to other people on Signal and you'll still be able to send text messages to everyone else." Seamless.

Now I have to convince them to use two different apps for messaging.

SMS sucks but it has a massive user base.

Their reasoning for removing SMS was that it was insecure and people didn't know when they were sending an insecure SMS or a secure Signal message. Loads of people suggested they just put SMS in it's own tab to differentiate them and that was dismissed like it was a dumb idea. Then they add "Stories" (a feature nobody is going to use because they don't have a user base for it) and put it in a separate tab.

I honestly don't understand why they think Stories, a feature that caters to social media users, is going to to be used by the new target audience (with the removal of SMS) of security conscious techies.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#465

Post by pas »

prox wrote: post #367
mynameisash wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 domin…

They stop using it because they can’t sms? Why is that… no connection to wifi?

the US is, to put it mildly, weird

my guess is that carriers/telcos offer unlimited SMS because they can data mine and monetize the shit out of it

also most people are still somewhere at the level of "the Internet is Google Chrome"

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#466

Post by batiudrami »

falcolas wrote: post #454
batiudrami wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you don’t quite have the right mindset for the purpose of stories. The point is “this is not important enough to interrupt my friends; but here’s what I’m up to if you’re interested”. It doesn’t matter that it expires, because it’s only relevant to what is happening now. Of course it still has all the usual social media failings where it is used to make the senders life seem more exciting and fun than it real…

> it’s only relevant to what is happening now See - that's the part I don't get. Photos, to me, are not ephemeral. They are valuable, even if you don't think they are at the time. I've lost too many photos because I considered them to be ephemeral, and I regret that loss because I now only have vague memories of the events they captured. My only remaining memories of some of my oldest friends who are no longer with m…

I mean the person who took the photo still has it and you can still ask for it if you like it? If anything stories make you likely to see more photos of your friends, not less.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#467

Post by totony »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #234
kibwen wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still of the opinion that encrypted private group chats are an impossible UX problem (1:1 chat is fine). But if I were to trust anyone to find a way to do it properly, it would be Signal.

What makes it impossible? Naively I would think that if you have a secure 1:1 communication protocol, then you can send N*(1:1) secure messages to a group of N people. To solve the "fake group message" problem where an adversarial member of the group sends different messages to different members of the group, or delays the message to some members, the protocol could simply allow for a 2nd level "vouch" message to be…

Why not use a merkle tree/blockchain? Usually a meme, but seems like a good solution here: every message is a blob containing the mssage and the hash of the previous received blob. As long as order and messages are the same, the message is valid.

A bad actor could screw with you in this naive implementation though

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#468

Post by paledot »

Psychotherapist wrote: post #381
treve wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little while back I felt this way about 'stickers'. It seemed like a completely unnecessary feature I've never used and designed to achieve parity. Last week I spoke to my 20-something sister and learned that it's basically a must-have for her friend group, who sometimes have entire conversations just with stickers shared in her group. Had no idea, but in hindsight realized I'm no longer tuned in enough to know how…

I'm currently 20 and mostly use stickers for “repetitive” messages, like “Good Morning” and the like. Sometimes to convey emotions that are hard to type out at that moment, too. Creating custom sticker packs is also fun, including memes or cute cats. But of course I don't speak for everyone my age, and it's different for each culture and personality.

Thank you for the insight. It's always interesting to hear how the experience of tech is different among people of other generations/demographics. Honestly, I wouldn't have pegged your generation as the one to use stickers - somehow it seems more in line with how boomers communicate.

Re: Signal Introduces Stories

#469

Post by cfhhgtyg »

palata wrote: post #425
cfhhgtyg wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not it doesnt't, unless the Protocol itself is responsible for the UX.
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