Don't Stand Out.

When you say "Each user can choose a different notification service" you aren't enhancing privacy you are standing out.

When you say "Each group of users can have their own servers" you aren't enhancing privacy you are standing out.

So yeah, it's only for "total normies" in the sense that if you insist on standing out from those "total normies" that's a problem.

Signal is taking advantage of the inherent camouflage of crowds, once you insist on standing out that's gone and you can't get it back.

One of the most frustrating decisions from them was to stop allowing signal to be a catch-all messenger for encrypted and non-encrypted messages. I was able to onboard so many people, including very non techy relatives, because switching to a secure app for a small subset of people was never something they really wanted to do.

For security and privacy to really win out and raise the bar, it has to be able to happen in the background without the user even realizing it.

Making an app for enthusiasts is fine but Signal is going to remain niche if they can't make it more of an open ecosystem.

>Signal hates users who aren't total normies.

No it's the other way around. Signal is explicitly designed for normies, which is why so many people use it. I doubt they sat around and thought of ways to screw certain users.

>Just as they could easily offer a Google free version

Easily? There's no easy in maintaining and releasing two different versions of your app, especially for a small non-profit.

I want to express a very different perspective here as a counterpoint: I'm really grateful for the Signal team's work.

Today, I discussed my father's health condition with my family. Signal worked smoothly (even for my aging mother!), and it's free and secure.

Over the past five years, I have donated $500 to the foundation in total. I hope they continue to maintain the app into the far future.

Yeah, the hostility toward F-Droid and wanting to run their app on LineageOS without gapps made me ditch Signal years ago. It seemed like the main gimmick back then was that it was also your SMS app, which IIRC isn't a choice anymore. So what's the draw now? Why would you not use XMPP+OMEMO or Matrix which work everywhere, don't need a phone number (at all, ever), and have free as in freedom clients and servers? It's insane to me.

Signal is not good for normies: compare sending a message with Signal to WhatsApp. Didn’t go through? WhatsApp will try try try to resend. Signal tries far less then shows the dreaded red exclamation point. Not great while travelling or with poor reception.

Signal hates anyone who even thinks about using this IM app as the de-facto IM app, or with more than that one person who also tries Singal as an annual ritual in your friend circle. I tried to use the app again after a year or so. Gave it full contact permission and it wasn't able to pick friends who are alreasy on Signal. I was not even able to send them messages using the number. But a friend was able to send it a message to me. After 2-3 days finally the app started showing friend's name that's in contact. Tut there were scary warnings (I know, I know that's for my safery). The whole UX just feels at odd with anything and everything I've used. They manage to look and feel worse than WhatsApp of today and that I'd say is an achievement.

Or this case we encountered, where on iOS Signal apparently corrupts its sqlite DB, leading to loss of all messages.

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/5813

Interestingly here, the sqlite DB would be trivially fixable, and messages restorable, with the `sqlite3` CLI.

But there's no way to get at that sqlite DB file. Even if you change Signal's code to add a feature to export the DB, it apparently cannot see your DB, because iOS sandboxes that so that it is only visible to Signal builds signed with the Signal developers' keys.

So that means your messages are all there, on your device, running open-source software, and yet you cannot get them.

This cannot have been the intention of Signal being Free Software. Where is "change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1)"?

(I do not use iOS myself but have friends suffering this issue. Everybody involved is programmers and yet we seem to be able to do nothing about it.)

So it seems that even though the messages are on the user's device, it really is the Signal developers who "own" that data, and have the exclusive and ultimate control over it.

Makes me wonder:

Does this mean users suffering this need to GDPR-request their data out from Signal?

I also would like it to have stable supported libraries. But this doesn't seem to be a focus. It's a pitty, we have a Foss solution and it's hard to integrate with it....

The number of people using F-droid is tiny.

Non-normies can continue to use PGP like they always have.

/s second paragraph.

When I got a new phone, I had to re-register in both WhatsApp and Signal.

Both send you a code over SMS. I hate giving apps SMS access, so I refuse SMS intercept permission when an app asks for it, and instead I manually enter the received code in the app.

This was possible in WhatsApp, but was not possible in Signal. It won't allow you. You must give it SMS access to read the code. So much for privacy/security/... Only app I use which didn't allow me to manually enter the SMS code.

Signal hates all users. Go away for a standard 4-week EU summer holiday? We deleted all your data and burned your account.

It’s security!

> Sometimes I get the feeling that Signal hates users

one would think this is a well known fact already after the PIN nag screen forcing users to use PIN or have half of the screen blocked (at that time we left with family and never returned back) or removal of SMS feature, which would be only reason why to keep Signal in the phone for those few people who use it since you could use it at least to receive SMS

TBH Firefox devs are not much better, I remember waiting years and years for pull down to refresh while they kept playing with features nobody asked for (on related note Vivaldi for Android supports already extensions) or Proton Mail devs requiring Android 10 minimum to install the app, while all other clients (Nine Mail, Gmail, etc) are fine with older Android (I mention it because I was setting up old extremely locked phone for my kid recently, I have A16)