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It would have been more interesting to read your reaction to their answer to this concern, which is: > We’ve only been testing this in beta in one country, so

by hiq 6y ago

It would have been more interesting to read your reaction to their answer to this concern, which is: > We’ve only been testing this in beta in one country, so lots of people haven’t seen this yet and are imagining the worst. Don’t worry, it’s an opt-in feature, so if you don’t ever want to use payments in Signal, you never have to.

owenversteeg 6y ago
Of course it's opt in, it'd be patently absurd for it not to be. Nobody would use a chat app where some kind of weird crypto payments were mandatory. Advertising its opt-in nature as a feature is like advertising your cereal as asbestos free. https://xkcd.com/641/ https://xkcd.com/641/
- hiq 6y ago
  > Advertising its opt-in nature as a feature is like advertising your cereal as asbestos free. I fail to see how, care to explain? It's opt-in as any other feature which is not the core of the app. You don't have to send stickers or GIFs. If you don't want to receive messages at all, you shouldn't install Signal because it will be hard to avoid, it's a core feature, it's not really opt-in.
  - ineptech 6y ago
    a) "Install this app, it's safe" != "Install this app, but only use this part, don't click on that part" b) opt-in features that are very profitable have a funny habit of transmorphing in to opt-out
    - rOOb85 6y ago
      Except it's not enabled or visible by default. It will take the user navigating the settings to enable it. We all know non-tech users rarely if ever change default settings they don't understand.
      - qqii 6y ago
        Right, and signal has a good track record balancing privacy and usability for it's default settings.
      - ascorbic 6y ago
        Beta features are usually opt-in. I'd be amazed if it was opt-in when fully released.
martin_a 6y ago
This won't help with what follows. "Bad guys" will use the anonymity of Signal to do the usual stuff: Phishing, collecting ransom etc. etc. Signal will get a bad image, no matter whether it's opt-in or not.
- hiq 6y ago
  "Bad guys" already use Signal to communicate and some countries try to ban encryption, I'm not sure much will change here. Whether you should be able to transfer money in a private manner is a political choice. Signal is mostly showing that it's technically feasible. I don't see braving regulations to provide this feature to everyone, but time will tell.
  - martin_a 6y ago
    But before integrating payments, Signal was not a good way for phishing/ransom. Look at all the scams and whatnot where people have to go and buy some kind of coupon and pass the codes to the scammers and whatnot... Signals now integrates all of this right into the app. That's much easier than before! So... Big win... But for whom?
    - qqii 6y ago
      Signal is still not a good way for phishing/ransom anyways. Users would either have to already have the attacker in their contacts list or enable sealed sender. Enabling and funding a cryptocurrency wallet is going to be difficult. Even for WeChat who's payment service is popular it only captures 40% market share and as a result generally people are more educated about the risks.
- qqii 6y ago
  Bad guys use WhatsApp to communicate but that's not given it a bad image, in fact just the opposite. When it was revealed that WhatsApp encryption was used by terrorists in the UK and the government wanted a backdoor the image improved as more people learnt about it and learnt that it works.
resfirestar 6y ago
I think it's a non-answer that doesn't need a new response. "You don't have to use it if you don't want to" doesn't address the GP's concern around recommending the app to people who might not know better.
tw04 6y ago
So will their be a version of the app that doesn’t have payments built in at all? Because if not it will only be a matter of time before someone comes up with a playbook convincing nontechnical users they need to send mobile coin to them in order to keep using signal. Even my non technical relatives know not to install another app that some stranger tells them they need. Trying to explain what cryptocurrency is and how not to fall into that trap if using signal sounds like a nightmare.
- qqii 6y ago
  > someone comes up with a playbook convincing nontechnical users they need to send mobile coin to them in order to keep using signal. This sounds pretty unlikely, as long as signal does not integrate a payment processor (and they've made no indication they will) the majority of users will not have enabled or funded their cryptocurrency wallet(s) (whichever cryptocurrency they settle on). Funding MobileCoin requires steps of non insignificant difficulty, not to mention Signal's trust model of using your contacts by default.

by hiq 6y ago

owenversteeg 6y ago

Of course it's opt in, it'd be patently absurd for it not to be. Nobody would use a chat app where some kind of weird crypto payments were mandatory. Advertising its opt-in nature as a feature is like advertising your cereal as asbestos free. https://xkcd.com/641/ https://xkcd.com/641/

hiq 6y ago
> Advertising its opt-in nature as a feature is like advertising your cereal as asbestos free. I fail to see how, care to explain? It's opt-in as any other feature which is not the core of the app. You don't have to send stickers or GIFs. If you don't want to receive messages at all, you shouldn't install Signal because it will be hard to avoid, it's a core feature, it's not really opt-in.
- ineptech 6y ago
  a) "Install this app, it's safe" != "Install this app, but only use this part, don't click on that part" b) opt-in features that are very profitable have a funny habit of transmorphing in to opt-out
  - rOOb85 6y ago
    Except it's not enabled or visible by default. It will take the user navigating the settings to enable it. We all know non-tech users rarely if ever change default settings they don't understand.
    - qqii 6y ago
      Right, and signal has a good track record balancing privacy and usability for it's default settings.
    - ascorbic 6y ago
      Beta features are usually opt-in. I'd be amazed if it was opt-in when fully released.

martin_a 6y ago

This won't help with what follows. "Bad guys" will use the anonymity of Signal to do the usual stuff: Phishing, collecting ransom etc. etc. Signal will get a bad image, no matter whether it's opt-in or not.

hiq 6y ago
"Bad guys" already use Signal to communicate and some countries try to ban encryption, I'm not sure much will change here. Whether you should be able to transfer money in a private manner is a political choice. Signal is mostly showing that it's technically feasible. I don't see braving regulations to provide this feature to everyone, but time will tell.
- martin_a 6y ago
  But before integrating payments, Signal was not a good way for phishing/ransom. Look at all the scams and whatnot where people have to go and buy some kind of coupon and pass the codes to the scammers and whatnot... Signals now integrates all of this right into the app. That's much easier than before! So... Big win... But for whom?
  - qqii 6y ago
    Signal is still not a good way for phishing/ransom anyways. Users would either have to already have the attacker in their contacts list or enable sealed sender. Enabling and funding a cryptocurrency wallet is going to be difficult. Even for WeChat who's payment service is popular it only captures 40% market share and as a result generally people are more educated about the risks.
qqii 6y ago
Bad guys use WhatsApp to communicate but that's not given it a bad image, in fact just the opposite. When it was revealed that WhatsApp encryption was used by terrorists in the UK and the government wanted a backdoor the image improved as more people learnt about it and learnt that it works.

resfirestar 6y ago

I think it's a non-answer that doesn't need a new response. "You don't have to use it if you don't want to" doesn't address the GP's concern around recommending the app to people who might not know better.

tw04 6y ago

So will their be a version of the app that doesn’t have payments built in at all? Because if not it will only be a matter of time before someone comes up with a playbook convincing nontechnical users they need to send mobile coin to them in order to keep using signal. Even my non technical relatives know not to install another app that some stranger tells them they need. Trying to explain what cryptocurrency is and how not to fall into that trap if using signal sounds like a nightmare.

qqii 6y ago
> someone comes up with a playbook convincing nontechnical users they need to send mobile coin to them in order to keep using signal. This sounds pretty unlikely, as long as signal does not integrate a payment processor (and they've made no indication they will) the majority of users will not have enabled or funded their cryptocurrency wallet(s) (whichever cryptocurrency they settle on). Funding MobileCoin requires steps of non insignificant difficulty, not to mention Signal's trust model of using your contacts by default.