8 ms·
Ask HN: Is Signal Down?
Mac app can't connect, iOS app doesn't send or receive any messages, a friend has the same problem.
- abahlo 6y agohttps://status.signal.org https://status.signal.org says "Up and running" Edit: Downdetector says its down https://downdetector.com/status/signal/ https://downdetector.com/status/signal/, Twitter also has issues.
- 01acheru 6y agoNow the status page says: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties. We are working hard to restore service as quickly as possible. @ 2021-01-15T16:28:58.611Z
- clashmeifyoucan 6y agoYes, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25792396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25792396
- styx31 6y agoYes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25791730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25791730
- 01acheru 6y agoItaly: signal is down right now @ 2021-01-15T16:25:49.988Z
- fryry 6y agoDown for friends and I in the UK.
- neartheplain 6y agoOfficial confirmation: https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1350118809860886528 https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1350118809860886528 EDIT: Interesting geographic usage data in the tweet replies. Most replies by far coming from Indian Signal users, many comparing Signal's reliability to WhatsApp. Also strong showing in the comments from Africa (esp. Nigeria) and the Middle East. I wonder how many joined Signal just recently in response to Facebook's changes to WhatsApp [0]. [0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/whatsapp-privacy-policy-changes https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/whatsapp-pr...
- nashashmi 6y agoAs a long time signal and telegram user, I can say about 50 percent of my signal contacts joined after elon musk mentioned it. Not that there is any correlation to Elon.
- telesilla 6y agoMy telegram feed has been abuzz the last couple of days with 'your friend has joined Telegram!'. Great to see and it's a nice chance to reconnect with friends I haven't talked with in a while.
- atonse 6y agoIt's all because of FB's recent changes.
- jhayward 6y agoAs well as the Parler and Twitter purges.
- app4soft 6y agoA week before, Elon Musk: > Use Signal[0] [0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1347165127036977153 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1347165127036977153
- neither_color 6y agoEast Coast US and I'm experiencing 502 Bad Gateway errors.
- decrypt 6y agoIt has been down for roughly 90 minutes at my end. Previous thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25792136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25792136
- bennyp101 6y agoSods law, been setting up the matrix bridge, and wondered why I couldn't get anything to authenticate!
- faitswulff 6y agoThey tweeted that they went from 10M+ to 50M+ installs on Google Play recently, so that’s probably what’s happening: https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1349577579091566592?s=21 https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1349577579091566592?s=2...
- rriepe 6y agoThe new people who joined were dangerous, so it got shut down?
- x86ARMsRace 6y agoOckham alternative: the number of users exceeded the capacity of the system. This has nothing to do with being shut down like Parler if that is what you're asking. That'd be a leap of logic based on very little evidence. Were it happening, there would be statements in the news. We have precedent.
- rriepe 6y agoYou're telling me that Parler's 8M nowhere-to-go users have nothing to do with Signal's recent influx of 40M users? Here's a hint: The entire 8M from Parler are using Signal. They're still plotting all the same violence, but instead of being protected by a promise from the founder, they're protected by the design of the app itself. There's no argument to use against Parler that can't be used against Signal. They need to be shut down now, before people die again. Signal is a threat to our core tenets of freedom, security and democracy. Parler could change its moderation policy tomorrow but Signal can't change how it works.
- disruptalot 6y agoWhy don't we just shutdown the internet? We can finally get rid of it all.
- agundy 6y agoIsn’t Signal just groups and direct messages? Parler was a giant echo chamber where you can tumble down the rabbit hole, signal has no suggested groups or other broadcast to the word. Only broadcast to a channel opting into a conversation. Sure you can use it to coordinate and spread disinformation but it’s got a much lower viral spread.
- mikece 6y agoThe "downage" is intermittent; sending messages for me (middle of the US on Google Fiber) alternates between taking forever to send and straight-up failing. Desktop app keeps showing the yellow "Disconnected" banner. At first I thought Google Fiber was down again (it's snowing right now...) but checking #Signal on Twitter and DownDetector.com clued me in pretty quick that this was a Signal issue. I was wondering if a massive influx of users might lead to growth pains.
- AndrewDucker 6y agoIs there a way to be less centralised? So that it can't go down because a central server does?
- fsflover 6y agoConsider Matrix instead of Signal.
- zepto 6y agoI would love to. It’s just impractical to onboard my friends.
- Ericson2314 6y agoThe Element sign-on workflows have been getting better and better, do note. But, I think the current exodus will be good for Matrix too in the long term. The big steps is getting people off the megacorps for communication. After that, things will work out.
- atonse 6y agoIsn't matrix just federated? (but still centralized). Difference being like email. Gmail (or your own matrix server) might go down, but the overall email ecosystem wouldn't.
- fsflover 6y agoFederation is enough to avoid single point of failure.
- bilal4hmed 6y agobut If on gmail and you are elsewhere, you still cant email me or vice versa.
- 6y ago
- Ericson2314 6y agoTime for Matrix to brag about multiple home servers!
- 52-6F-62 6y agoRecently saw an influx of messages from signal: "* is now on Signal!" And yes, it's down here in Toronto-Hamilton metro, Canada as well.
- maxwellito 6y agoIt's sad to happen now, but I'm so glad to see the sudden interest for Signal :) Good luck to the engineers at Signal! <3
- cjdell 6y agoRecently joined user of Signal with same problem. Left WhatsApp due to increasing Facebookification... Just donated to the Signal non-profit to help them out buying better infrastructure: https://signal.org/donate/ https://signal.org/donate/
- lvs 6y agoDNS is resolving to 127.0.0.1 wget https://textsecure-service.whispersystems.org/v1/config --2021-01-15 11:55:13-- https://textsecure-service.whispersystems.org/v1/config Resolving textsecure-service.whispersystems.org (textsecure-service.whispersystems.org)... 127.0.0.1 Connecting to textsecure-service.whispersystems.org (textsecure-service.whispersystems.org)|127.0.0.1|:443... failed: Connection refused. Edit: Looking at the logs, it went down before the DNS started resolving to loopback. This may be part of a mitigation.
- anonme4ever 6y agoNot every dns requests returns 127.0.0.1. It might be a mitigation for some kind of DDOS or something else...
- 2Gkashmiri 6y agowell it was fun while it lasted
- npiit 6y agoThis is the only kind of downtime that makes your competitor way more furious than you are. I hope Elon Musk's tweet was the beginning of the end for Faceook, Inc.
- meibo 6y agoI'm not sure if this is because of all the new users, so maybe someone that has been using Signal for a while longer can pitch in: Is the Desktop experience really as bad as it has been over the past few days? It took 4 minutes for me this morning to replay a chat of maybe 200 messages, and that's with one person. I can't even imagine how bad it must be with multiple big groups. Sending takes ages, often being out of sync with the phone app, and I get notifications for messages I replied to half an hour ago on my Desktop when unlocking my phone. Not sure if I'd wanna stay on Signal at the moment if it stays like this, maybe Matrix is really the better choice - at least Element on the web is by far superior to signal.
- kotrunga 6y agoThe desktop experience, at least for me, has been amazing. Very fast and clean. The download times for messages / etc have been MUCH slower recently. I’m thinking it’s because of the load they are experiencing. As more people donate and as they scale for the load I imagine (and hope) it might even be faster than it was before.
- godelski 6y agoI've been using Signal for years. Normally things are good. I'm not surprised by the hiccups since their userbase went up by >5x in the past week. I imagine it is very difficult to deal with that kind of scaling in such a short period of time.
- bennyp101 6y agoI've never really had any issues with it over the last year or so, but the last week has been a bit spotty - but then my contact list has tripled in length since the whatsapp privacy update and news coverage - so I think its likely that it is demand. I've setup a matrix homeserver yesterday, and in the process of setting up bridges to Signal/IRC etc so I get a single app with all the chats. I'm not sure what you need from a web/desktop experience, for me it is a chat app, that I can send an image or txt , I don't really need anything else. YMMV I would suggest to let it settle down for a few days, then see how it is. I would think that all whatsapp replacements are going to be peaking in use for the next week or so as people try out different things.
- atonse 6y agoJust donated some money to Signal. My only issues with the app has been minor usability ones but they'll fix those. Signal the organization, the app, etc are all worthy of support and I for one thank Facebook for pushing millions of users into Signal.
- bilal4hmed 6y agoSaw this on reddit, so copy/pasting for wider audience Donate to them so they can buy more servers https://signal.org/donate/ https://signal.org/donate/ * If you work in the US, many corporations will match your donation. Easy double of your donation * Set https://smile.amazon.com https://smile.amazon.com to Signal, so your purchases on Amazon go to Signal * Use services like Paypal to donate, that sends 100% of the money to the foundation
- mzs 6y agoI don't have (and don't want) a cellphone. Is there a way for me to use signal? Maybe something that relays SMS?
- enachtry 6y agoI have to use Whatsapp to talk to people in a certain group. I use an old Android 6 phone with a prepaid SIM bought just for this single purpose, setup with a burner Google account. I only turn this phone on when I need to catch up or talk to them. It's really REALLY cheap and it works. You can do the same for Signal.
- aleken 6y agoDonated. Perhaps that helps a tiny bit. https://signal.org/donate/ https://signal.org/donate/
- tombert 6y agoSame here, I threw them five bucks. I've been using Signal on a daily basis for awhile now, the least I can do is pay them something for it.
- sean_pedersen 6y agoUse Matrix with Element! https://element.io/ https://element.io/
- aaomidi 6y ago> Matrix > https://element.io/ https://element.io/ You see why the matrix proto and apps around it are really complicated to the end user?
- sean_pedersen 6y agoNo cuz people also get that gMail or Outlook is different from eMail.
- Multicomp 6y agojust signed up with hosted element. still gonna do p2p homeservers eventually but my group chats are currently disrupted so better to go here than hangouts telegram etc
- tobib 6y agoWe tried it out yesterday and it's ridiculous how convoluted it is and how difficult to do simple direct messages and groups. Groups couldn't be joined, I either couldn't find people or they couldn't find me. I really found the system intriguing but I can't imagine less tech savvy people to join as is.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nickthemagicman 6y agoThey went from 10 million users to 50 million users virtually overnight. I think these kind of issues are understandable.
- mikece 6y agoI can't say I'm surprised.... anyone on Signal (who gave the app access to their contacts) has seen a MASSIVE influx of new uers, and it's not like Signal is running in AWS and can just scale up more EC2 instances. This may be an issue for the next month or more as hundreds -- if not thousands -- of new servers can be added to the back end.
- fredthomsen 6y agoFamily and friends have starting using it as the main messaging app the past 3 months. Definitely growing.
- replwoacause 6y agoSignal is awesome. Hoping the $5 donation I made today makes this 503 error go away