Using the preinstalled Google services effectively turns your smartphone into spyware. In the standard Android that comes preinstalled on most smartphones, Google services run with system privileges and can collect all kinds of data including location data. If Signal exclusively supports this, it reinforces dependence on Google and discourages people from using versions of Android that don’t include Google’s spyware.

This argument doesn't make sense, Signal is fundamentally not an anonymity tool. It's a privacy tool.

They intentionally store very little data about their users but their "mailbox" model explicitly means that the server (or an attacker) can figure out who is talking to whom. And that's fine! Signal isn't trying to be an anonymity network, so while stuff like sealed sender are nice features it's important to remember that anonymity breaks are explicitly not part of the Signal threat model.

"Don't stand out" only makes sense as advice for anonymity tools to avoid bifurcating the anonymity set -- it doesn't make much sense when you're taking about a service which links your account to your phone number and thus every server request is explicitly identifying you.

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

You're also hedging against mandated government backdoors.

A single organisation like signal can easily compelled to add a backdoor (or leave the territory) like the EU is trying to do. Going after thousands of servers individually is a whole different problem.

The reverse is true, if more app support unified push then those using it will stand out less.

Stand out from what? Are you seriously arguing that the only things keeping Signal from being banned are that it somehow camouflages itself?

There just is a contention between software freedom and privacy that people don't want to acknowledge sometimes. Signal is firmly on one side of the divide, and their software is open source because it is the convention to have the source public and auditable, not because they are interested in user freedom and respect.

Not sure I follow or understand your argument. There's so many things with which eg Telegram stands out, but it still appeals to normies.

They could still implement these things in the app and put them behind a switch for users who care about independence more than one specific type of anonymity. Explain the tradeoffs on the settings screen.

The only valid reason to be against an optional feature is the maintenance burden, I don't think it's too much here but I also can't speak for the Signal team.

Anyone who has worked with SQL databases and graph databases can't buy this goofy "camouflage" idea.

If you don't know how computers work, yeah it sounds great. But those who do know how computers work see it for what it really is: a bucket of shit.

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