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Signal is having technical difficulties

status.signal.org

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Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#691

Post by samoa42 »

ptero wrote: post #318
hnrodey wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

United States. I'm 37. 99.9% of messaging (for me) occurs via iMessages or SMS. FB Messenger is occasionally used for people who are more acquaintances (don't have their phone number). I don't really have a good reason to not use iMessages (blue bubbles). Reasonably secure and Just Works. SMS on the other hand.... my least favorite part of SMS (besides the complete lack of security) is that media messages are cripple…

United States too. Same feeling that most messages are iMessage or SMS. But as one of two extended family members with Android against ~10 with iPhones, for me iMessages are pretty horrible. They mostly work most of the time, but frequently there are glitches on glitches. SMS between Android phones are rock solid. Just a single data point.

> SMS between Android phones are rock solid

not just android, they work with every mobile handset even with the poorest reception or (even lack of) data-plan.

i use ~200 sms per year, pretty constant since i got my first mobilephone.

kinda sad we didnt come up with something better thou.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#692

Post by charsi »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #497
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But it’s par for the course for newly popular services. It is, but most consumers don't care, they just what their stuff to work 100% of the time as frictionless as possible, and, on top of all things, for free. Otherwise they just run back to the usual free surveilanceware. I've tried and failed to convince some young, highly educated zoomer friends with good incomes to move away from WhatsApp and Facebook and even…

Loved ones. Especially seniors. Are the easiest to convince You carrot them with a unique way to ping you, over tech no one else has, and they see it like an intimate connection with you I had my elder parents and SO use it for years before friends i consider privacy aware and tech savvy... For years Added benefit: its a lot harder to share memes over a young network with no traffic. I guess that may change now....

Never looked at it this way but 100% true in my case. Got my parents on Signal three years ago and they have been perfectly happy.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#693

Post by jonnypotty »

alan5 wrote: post #71

I just donated to Signal after seeing the error banner in the app. I realised I was more than happy to pay WhatsApp's yearly charge back in the pre-Facebook days (think it was 70p or so?). Figured I could give Signal a few quid every now and then, maybe keep a server up for a few seconds :) Donation link should anyone be interested: https://signal.org/donate/

Great idea. Best response to a company having issues where we actually care about what they do for us.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#694

Post by arendtio »

tortasaur wrote: post #563
arendtio wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not so sure that we disagree. I would consider instant messaging services 'critical infrastructure'. The difference seems to be, that you want to support projects that are large already, while I would certainly put more focus on smaller projects as those are the ones which can initiate change. I find it heartbreaking, that we still depend on WhatsApp and Zoom. Neither service owner is particular trustworthy. Com…

In terms of software, Signal and Jitsi are great alternatives to WhatsApp and Zoom. People don't use them because of network effects, not because the incumbents are inherently superior.

For many use-cases they are indeed proper alternatives, but Jitsi has a much lower limit when it comes to numbers of participants. So if someone wants to organize a group call (the typical use-case) you come a with a lot more scenarios into trouble using Jitsi. And it hurts me to write this, because I hate how much growth Zoom had in the last year while being dishonest about critical encryption features. I would love to promoted Jisti and have tried so in the past, but I can't recommend something when it doesn't fit the use-case.

Signal, on the other hand, probably comes close to the WhatsApp features (I use neither one) and while I encourage everyone to to switch, I am missing the federation aspect. IMO, communication should be federated by law (which would also solve the network effect problem). Imagine a world where you could not call someone who has a phone number from a different provider? The current state of instant messaging is exactly this.

XMPP solved these problems decades ago and just because the standard didn't catch up with the speed of the mobile revolution, we don't have to reinvent everything from scratch. Properly implemented modern clients work very well (including reliability and battery consumption), the big issue though is that many traditional clients don't support all features and all companies in the business try, to build walled gardens as those tend to driver stock prices.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#696

Post by bsdubernerd »

oblio wrote: post #151
gre wrote: post #92

Centralized servers for the lose

How would things work in practice for a decentralized network? Regular people won't host their own servers.

It would work like it works for email. Most users will pick the default server. Over time other large (popular) providers will emerge and people will start to recognize the choice. Clients with branding will make that choice easy for non-technical users.

We know already it works. Federation and choice is a win for everybody. For this to start though you need either a good client/server combo for people to individually adopt, or a GREAT/POPULAR client with a default server.

I'm sorry to say that Element/Riot fails flat on this. I've used Riot and then Element for a while, and it got worse in usability and features (I genuinely can't stand it). As the reference client, it doesn't support multiple server accounts, which kill the ability to have an independent server. Federation is nice, but what's nicer currently is to be able to use matrix a teams/slack replacement where tech users can drive adoption. The central matrix.org server is slow already, and even with federation you cannot tell your users to switch servers because of this, defeating the point.

The positive side is that on the client side there's already choice. On the user front I've found FluffyChat to be vastly superior. Using Jitsi for audio/video was weird at first, but it works much more reliably than signal (I gave up on signal for audio calls due to the time it takes to establish a connection and the horrible lag it randomly has - to the point I just hang up and call via GSM to finish the conversation, defeating the point).

If I was element I'd get FluffyChat and it's author onboard as _the_ default client. On desktop I can choose multiple clients, and I have none of the "Signal" phone number/pin/central server/electron BS. It works as intended, and it will only get better with time. It's great.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#697

Post by dunefox »

muunbo wrote: post #167

This is a positive sign - it means there've been so many more signups lately! I did just convert a whole bunch of close friends over to Signal this past week, so I hope they can ride out this temporary outage and not leave the service :'( It took too much 'social effort' to move them all over

No, it's a negative sign since half of the ~dozen people I got over to Signal are complaining and will probably go back to WA since Signal is still down after almost a whole day. The other half will probably go back if this takes much longer.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#698

Post by dunefox »

afroisalreadyin wrote: post #113

This is bad. I spent a lot of time and effort getting non-techie friends to switch from whatsapp, and now what is supposed to be the best alternative is having a massive downtime. I think I'll just give up.

I have given up too - people are complaining to me (via WhatsApp since it just works) because I recommended Signal and they signed up. Now I'm the guy whose recommendations are probably going to be ignored. Signal just isn't suitable as a replacement/daily chat app...

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#699

Post by dunefox »

mackrevinack wrote: post #207
afroisalreadyin wrote: post #113

This is bad. I spent a lot of time and effort getting non-techie friends to switch from whatsapp, and now what is supposed to be the best alternative is having a massive downtime. I think I'll just give up.

has whatsapp never had an outrage?

I don't remember it having an outage of 24 hours.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#700

Post by feanaro »

pmlnr wrote: post #690
Aaronn wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of Matrix is that you don't have to use matrix.org to use Matrix. Anyone can host a server and talk to anyone on any Matrix server.

> Anyone can host a server and talk to anyone on any Matrix server. I host my web, my email, my XMPP, my TURN/STUN, etc, so I gave Matrix a try. In short: it's horrible. It's insanely resource hungry, both synapse and dendrite, plus dendrite is so not finished it hurts. Stick to XMPP until Matrix is in an actually usable shape when one doesn't need a small power reactor to run it.

When was the last time you tried? My Synapse is stably hovering around 400M RSS with about 10-15% CPU usage. It has about 20 active users, each with 2-3 devices and is joined in hundreds of rooms on the federation.
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