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You're describing the zip drive approach that they mention in the article, which isn't competitive with current user expectations. Signal are trying to make a

by mkj 7y ago

You're describing the zip drive approach that they mention in the article, which isn't competitive with current user expectations. Signal are trying to make a secure mass market product, not just something usable for geeks who will export a backup to their home sftp server.

gojomo 7y ago
They don't really explain any specific problems with what they've slurred as a "zip drive" approach. Offering a self-backup option would be more competitive than Signal's current nothing at all – which means total data loss on any device loss or upgrade, for iOS users. Absolutely, promise users a Signal-quality cloud experience, someday, when this novel development is finished, and when there's an economic model for reliably storing users' opaque data in the cloud – and if users trust Intel SGX. But in the indefinitely-long meantime, why deny users the proven & well-worn path of self-data management? (And shouldn't users have the right to an exportable format of their own contact/messaging data?)
- ahelwer 7y ago
  The manual backup & restore flow on Android is quite fragile - I filed two separate bugs during the process. It kinda seems like most people never get it working, which isn't surprising when you're dealing with two phone OSs interacting with a desktop OS (plus a user who is probably unfamiliar with directly accessing their phone storage over USB). The troubleshooting costs are quite high for such a rarely-used feature when their main competition (WhatsApp) has seamless backup restore. Investing time to develop the manual backup & restore feature on iOS might not be worth it.
  - gojomo 7y ago
    That's useful info on the Android experience... but if it works for anyone, it's still better than Signal's crappy answer to iOS users: "wait until someday when you can trust our new crypto & Intel SGX to upload all your data to a cloud". And yes, WhatsApp has a seamless experience – even if you never share your contact lists, or back-up your message history, to WhatsApp. It "just works" even if you only use encrypted local iOS phone backup/restores – no "unencrypted database in the remote cloud" required. That's why I find Signal's rationale, that "unencrypted remote cloud" is either the "normal approach" or "necessary for recovering the social graph", to be a hand-wavy & borderline dishonest oversimplification. There's a simple approach that works pretty well, including in their major competitor, without the flaws they allege! Debugging an "export to a single file whose format is completely under our control", then "import from that single file" cycle isn't exactly rocket science. But Signal clearly sees their desire to do rocket science as a sufficient excuse for why iOS users (& perhaps per your report, many Android users) can't have any working backup/device-migration solution for 5 years, and counting.

by mkj 7y ago

gojomo 7y ago

They don't really explain any specific problems with what they've slurred as a "zip drive" approach. Offering a self-backup option would be more competitive than Signal's current nothing at all – which means total data loss on any device loss or upgrade, for iOS users. Absolutely, promise users a Signal-quality cloud experience, someday, when this novel development is finished, and when there's an economic model for reliably storing users' opaque data in the cloud – and if users trust Intel SGX. But in the indefinitely-long meantime, why deny users the proven & well-worn path of self-data management? (And shouldn't users have the right to an exportable format of their own contact/messaging data?)

ahelwer 7y ago
The manual backup & restore flow on Android is quite fragile - I filed two separate bugs during the process. It kinda seems like most people never get it working, which isn't surprising when you're dealing with two phone OSs interacting with a desktop OS (plus a user who is probably unfamiliar with directly accessing their phone storage over USB). The troubleshooting costs are quite high for such a rarely-used feature when their main competition (WhatsApp) has seamless backup restore. Investing time to develop the manual backup & restore feature on iOS might not be worth it.
- gojomo 7y ago
  That's useful info on the Android experience... but if it works for anyone, it's still better than Signal's crappy answer to iOS users: "wait until someday when you can trust our new crypto & Intel SGX to upload all your data to a cloud". And yes, WhatsApp has a seamless experience – even if you never share your contact lists, or back-up your message history, to WhatsApp. It "just works" even if you only use encrypted local iOS phone backup/restores – no "unencrypted database in the remote cloud" required. That's why I find Signal's rationale, that "unencrypted remote cloud" is either the "normal approach" or "necessary for recovering the social graph", to be a hand-wavy & borderline dishonest oversimplification. There's a simple approach that works pretty well, including in their major competitor, without the flaws they allege! Debugging an "export to a single file whose format is completely under our control", then "import from that single file" cycle isn't exactly rocket science. But Signal clearly sees their desire to do rocket science as a sufficient excuse for why iOS users (& perhaps per your report, many Android users) can't have any working backup/device-migration solution for 5 years, and counting.