So? Signal is just a messaging client. The goal of Signal is to get it widely used by as many people as possible, so that it's a totally normal thing to have on

So? Signal is just a messaging client. The goal of Signal is to get it widely used by as many people as possible, so that it's a totally normal thing to have on your phone. If a country has gotten to the point that you would be targeted just for having an app installed, just changing to usernames wouldn't be enough, as users could be easily detected through network logging (thanks AWS and Google for killing domain fronting [0]). Your usecase sounds like it needs an app like Briar. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16970199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16970199