11 ms·

Stories Are Coming to Signal

131 points by decrypt 5y ago

ufo 5y ago
What are Stories? The linked commit doesn't seem to describe it.
fitblipper 5y ago
What are stories?
- brimnes 5y ago
  You can check out the Wikipedia page [1]. Apps like WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook already have the stories feature. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stories_(social_media) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stories_(social_media)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - metabagel 5y ago
    OK, I still don’t understand what a story is. Also, get off my lawn!
    - reducesuffering 5y ago
      It’s a short-lived (usually 1 day), short length video or photo on your account that any of your connections can view as part of a carousel of other stories. You can post yours and/or view your connections’ stories in sequence. I.e. You go into the app. 10/100 friends have posted stories. You watch them one after another (without needing to go to each friends account) to see what they were up to for the day.
rex_lupi 5y ago
Is this similar to WhatsApp's status feature? That'd make it much easier for me to convince some people to move to signal.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- thekyle 5y ago
  Yes, I would imagine so
- emerongi 5y ago
  Any social features are appreciated, even though I don't use them. Payments were probably a waste of engineering time, unless it somehow attracts users in oppressed countries.
tcfhgj 5y ago
Seems like Stories will come to Matrix as well - through FluffyChat and Minestrix! https://youtu.be/tLlSGqzgzhg?t=1045 https://youtu.be/tLlSGqzgzhg?t=1045
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Good luck getting mainstream acceptance for something that sounds like a furry dating site.
  - tcfhgj 5y ago
    One of the benefits of a standard like Matrix is that the adoption of individual apps is mostly irrelevant. Curious, which app do you refer to?
    - iszomer 5y ago
      Probably referring to bridges (eg: irc <-> matrix, telegram <-> matrix, etc).. https://matrix.org/bridges/ https://matrix.org/bridges/
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      The parent comment suggested that Matrix would support stories and the first implementation (which I guess could be considered the reference implementation) is called "FluffyChat"...
  - Sunspark 5y ago
    Boss, let's edit our images using GIMP. No, it's not one of the banned words in the HR guide.. I mean yes it is, but that's not what it means.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      GIMP at least has an excuse in the sense that its success doesn't depend on network effects. It can win purely on technical merit. Social apps on the other hand need network effects to win regardless of how good they are technically. A stupid name there is suicide.
vageli 5y ago
This seems like such a strange addition. My use of signal is primarily group chat or as an SMS replacement. It is hard for me to see the benefit of adding stories like this to what to me is a tool for directly messaging specific individuals. I would be interested in hearing from people who think this is a good change.
- Mystlix 5y ago
  I can discreetly share text, images or videos with a subset of my contacts all at once without bothering them in a private conversation. They all appear in order and in full without some algorithmic trickery, they get flushed after a day or so and my friends can decide if they want to give them a look or not. It's a very nice feature especially for the kind of general stuff that I wouldn't want to personally send to people and clog our conversations.
  - i5heu 5y ago
    Yes! I love stories. They are a subtle way to share cool stuff and avoid to be seen as annoying if you are the type of person that likes to share nice things ^^
    - jimkleiber 5y ago
      Exactly, and those who want to reply, can do so directly, not filling up a long group chat with messages that are meant for just the original person. It allows broadcasting to a group and people to opt in to watch and reply.
    - crossroadsguy 5y ago
      What’s stories? Any article they’ve published about it? Is it like the WhatsApp “Status” feature? Which is more like a 24 hr tweet if I can say so.
- noisem4ker 5y ago
  I share your indifference to the medium, but people out there do occasionally publish stories if such feature is available. If Signal makes it possible to say "you can keep publishing your stories too" when joining, and as a result more people move off WhatsApp (or, more generally, embrace the idea of platform independence), I can pinch my nose and enjoy the long-term side effect.
barrenko 5y ago
First they destroyed WhatsApp, now Signal is next. Stop developing features. Fire all PMs.
- stavros 5y ago
  If reliability and other features don't suffer, why do you care? Just don't use it. Though I do wish they'd prioritize editable messages and formatting before stories...
  - mdaniel 5y ago
    Your last sentence is the whole problem -- time and glucose are not infinite, and thus what goes in determines what else doesn't make it
  - brianmcc 5y ago
    UX gets worse though when screens are cluttered with crap I have no intention of using. Features that can be 100% ignored when not wanted - no problem. Foisting more and more bloat - problem.
- steelstraw 5y ago
  Apparently they have too much money? I thought I donated to help them be a strong encrypted messaging app and survive for the long term. Not to tack on a bunch of social media features.
  - CameronNemo 5y ago
    Hmm. Knee jerk I agree. But aren't stories just expiring photo/video messages sent to multiple people without notifications? Seems like the fundamental nature of the service will not need to change much.
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
    What I think keeps me and many of my friends in East Africa hooked on WhatsApp is the ability to post statuses (stories). It gives me a strong reason to come back to the app as it helps me with conversation starters. I frankly might love if signal has it.
deutschepost 5y ago
The feature that I missed the most after switching to signal was Live location sharing. It is just so convenient to find your friends while going out or going to the street exactly at the time someone is there to pick you up.
- anthropodie 5y ago
  Wow I did not realize that Signal was missing this. I think they are focusing on getting more people on board than building a great app. Too many people blame Matrix but I love it. It's UI is not as polished but hey I can work with it because sooner or later all these centralized apps run after revenue and ruin the most basic stuff that these app should do: messaging.
  - Mystlix 5y ago
    what happens in your decentralized system if one of your friends has their account registered on a naughty naughty server that just got blacklisted by the righteous admins of your instance and now you can't talk together anymore? does that person need to make a completely new account just to send some messages to you? does a migration scenario exist? and if it exists, does it warn your contacts and transfer everything seemlessly?
    - deutschepost 5y ago
      Last time I checked Matrix was researching about the topic of multiple homeservers. So you could just use a local homeserver on your device and a remote homesesrver with a fancy name simultaniously. This would also enable users to communicate P2P. But I don't know how advanced this system is yet.
- keewee7 5y ago
  >after switching to signal was Live location sharing Which messaging apps have actual Live Location sharing?
  - 5y ago
jameslk 5y ago
They're taking a play out of Facebook's strategy book: copy every feature of your competitor as quickly as possible. In this case, it seems they're going after WhatsApp and they're copying WhatsApp's status feature. This seems like a smart move for them because they can run for parity with WhatsApp and they'd still have one major benefit Facebook has been in a very tight spot to match: privacy. Most people don't seem to care about privacy, but if they start losing their (privacy aware) friends and family to Signal, they too will consider installing it as well. If they acquire enough network effects, they could hollow out a large chunk of WhatsApp, unless WhatsApp starts offering features Signal can't offer (e.g. better integrations into Facebook's other properties). It'll be interesting to watch how this plays out.
deafsquid69 5y ago
vanilla_nut 5y ago
God fucking dammit. I literally just put my reputation on the line with family last week that we should all switch to Signal. All I want is a decent E2EE messaging app. Between this and their upcoming crypto payment system, I’m thinking I made a huge mistake switching from Telegram.
- i5heu 5y ago
  What speaks against riot+matrix?
  - noman-land 5y ago
    I agree matrix is the dream but getting people to use Signal was hard enough and the UX of Element is good but not _quite_ up to snuff for the general populus yet.
  - theshrike79 5y ago
    Matrix as an underlying technology is pretty good. All of the clients are varying degrees of suck though. What I want is a 1:1 copy of Discord's client UX. That's it.
  - crossroadsguy 5y ago
    Matrix[1] is fantasising and WhatsApp/Telegram are reality. Signal is somewhere in the middle trying to be something that solves nobody’s messaging problem except a small set of people (journalists, whistleblowers?) where the communication is mostly like “A needs to discreetly communicate with B and they both can use Signal”, anything other than that it’s pretty useless (yes, I’ve tried it for really long and convinced many others to try it). 1. Especially all the clients. And not again Fluffy chat please. Name alone puts off most.
  - mlok 5y ago
    Related : I converted some friends to Element+Matrix. Then some unbearable bug showed up in Element UI and we had to move away immediately (I reported the bug to the Element project, and a year after the correction is still in progress) so I moved us to the next best solution : Signal. It works really fine. (although a pain not offering conveniences like : easy chat backups, and difficulty to move your conversations to a new phone and stuffs like that...) I can't wait for the Matrix ecosystem to be mature enough !
0xCMP 5y ago
happy they're adding this. one more important feature to replace whatsapp and instagram for normal people. stories is a great feature by letting you post however much you want and letting the viewer choose to view/skip/ignore the content easily. plus its ephemeral by default which is another good feature imo. everything should be e2ee. anything which helps convince your mom/sister/dad/friends to use signal is a good thing.
lkxijlewlf 5y ago
What the fuck are stories and what does that have to do with E2EE messages?
newscracker 5y ago
The development of Signal, sorry to put it harshly, seems to suffer from a split brained syndrome. On one hand they’ll focus on adding stickers, stories and other trivial features to help appeal to a broader user base, but on the other hand they’ll refuse to implement basic and important features that people need in a chat app, like chat backups (there is no backup option for iOS, only a device to device transfer…so if you lose or break your device or switch to a new device after selling your old one, your chats are all gone). I don’t recommend Signal to others because its priorities don’t match mine and that of others I know. I do use it, but I treat it more like a fragile platform where anything can disappear any moment. Don’t share or keep anything valuable on it. The fact that Signal is another centralized platform that not only requires a phone number but also exposes your phone number to others (like in group chats) are larger issues for me. I’ve been trying Element (from Matrix), but its UX is quite poor. I just wish chat apps would copy at least some of the UX of Telegram.
- lkxijlewlf 5y ago
  I tend to agree. I want to be able to use the same account on two phones. I'm not the only one. Yes, there are workarounds, but ffs, come on already.
- jraph 5y ago
  It would be best to have backups built in, but in the mean time wouldn't Signal Desktop be a way to make backups? I moved my home directory to a new computer and Signal Desktop started like if something changed. Sure you would lose your messages on your phone, but you can still access them on your computer if needed. On a rooted Android phone, you could use oandbackup to backup Signal. If you care about these things, maybe consider using a rooted Android phone? I agree with you on the centralized platform aspect and the use of phone number (which is both a blessing (this makes it easy for new users to join) and a curse). I also agree with you on Element's UX, but it's getting better and most people can use it fine. I have a few groups on both apps. I personally prefer Element, which seems more open than Signal and which I can actually use correctly on the PinePhone. And definitely didn't requires the hoops I had to go through because I don't have an Android phone or an iPhone. Axolotl [1] still needs some work. [1] https://github.com/nanu-c/axolotl https://github.com/nanu-c/axolotl
jraph 5y ago
I will take anything that could make people switch from Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp to Signal, even if my preference actually goes to Element / Matrix. Lately, people around me have been installing Signal, or I've met people would already have Signal, and it's been enjoyable to, at last, participate in fun group chats. They didn't miss me before but I'm happy to be there now. Signal works well. I'd like to be able to edit messages and react with multiple emojis like with Element/Matrix, but most importantly, Signal needs to look cool and to be something people want to install and use. Element/Matrix too, by the way, but they need to focus on usability first at the moment.
- jbirer 5y ago
  I skipped Element on the basis that it needs too much information, I can use a burner SIM on signal, but I need e-mail or something to use Element.
  - kitkat_new 5y ago
    it's probably easier to find a burner email address than getting a burner SIM. Anyways, while the default server in Element may require email atm, it is not a general requirement and depends on the server you select
peterangular 5y ago
Why? Stories are not something I need from a chat app. I wish these apps would stop the ideal of "constant feature growth" and focus on core competencies. Signal is a SMS/chat app for a privacy focused audience... I do not see an overlap for a stories.
nixpulvis 5y ago
Whelp, there goes the neighborhood. Honestly, why can't we just make products and services that do one thing and do it well. Leave "stories" to the social media applications.
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  WhatsApp has had stories for years, just called statuses. Most of my American friends don't use it or know they're there, but my East African friends use them all the time. Frankly, most of my US friends aren't even on WhatsApp or Telegram or Signal. I don't know where they are :-D Maybe iMessage, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook. How do you define the difference between a messaging app and social media app? Many seem quite blurred to me.
  - fragmede 5y ago
    It's the blurring of lines that some users are objecting to. Instagram is a perfect example where yes, important communication happens via Instagram messages, but the problem is that once the app is open, it's exceedingly easy to accidentally spend minutes/hours listlessly scrolling. In order to avoid listlessly scrolling, users will uninstall the app or set time limits on it, or other techniques to avoid it sucking up so much time. Compare this to a 'plain' messaging app without a broadcast stories feature - there isn't the same distraction factor and for those that abhor the algorithmic-feed and distraction factor, it's a huge turn-off to add that feature. Go into Instagram/Twitter/TikTok/Snapchat/Facebook and try and turn off the stories/feed. You can't, that's the main engagement loop for the app!
    - jimkleiber 5y ago
      Ah, yeah, fair point. When I was building an app, I tried to make it as not addictive as possible, and yet the thought that would come to my mind was that if what I make is not that addictive, they may just use the other one. So this back and forth about not wanting people to be addicted to it but also wanting to be compelling enough to pull people from the other ones. I've thought about this with podcasting—I don't want people to listen to my podcasts all day, I'd prefer they also talk with people around them. That being said, people will listen to podcasts and would I prefer they listen to me over someone else, given no matter what I do, they may spend X hours per day listening? I appreciate you saying what you did about the blurring.
Aldipower 5y ago
I miss Signal "Android Tablet". Shouldn't be too hard for them as they already have the Desktop part. Look at this close and unresolved PR from 2014. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/614 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/614
robryk 5y ago
Right now signal's infrastructure could figure out (if it stored data that everyone claims it doesn't) which IP address is sending messages to which IP address. If stories end up being implemented as a group conversation with all your contacts, everyone will be reasonably frequently sending a message to all their contacts, which changes the above into "which IPs are contacts of which IPs".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bloopernova 5y ago
Just cancelled my monthly donation. They've lost their way.
anthropodie 5y ago
So Signal is missing a basic feature like location sharing and they chose to go ahead with implementing Stories. I guess they are focusing more on getting new users than making a great app. The thing is none of these centralized apps will ever get messaging right. Because no matter how good the intentions of the team are sooner or later the higher management or the PM wants to have bigger piece of cake. This in the end ruins the most basic functionality that a messaging app should do right: messages. What these teams do not understand is it's okay for an IM app to not keep adding fancy features. Focus on providing security fixes and minor improvements that improve user experience. If you keep focusing on getting more people you will end up with yet another social app like Instagram/Snapchat. We do not really need more of that stuff. Consider this: if people who built electric grids kept adding unnecessary features to it, we would not have a robust infrastructure like it today. They built them and then those people left to work on something more interesting. We need more of that in Software. What we currently have is millions and millions of engineers trying to figure out how to keep users glued to their app.
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  As a counterpoint, if I want to share a message or photo with many people on Signal right now, I have to create a large group and choose whom to invite and I think give it a name and have it persist unless I actively delete it. If I want them to be able to reply directly to me, they may have to do some gymnastics to copy and paste the photo in a private message to me or forward it to me. Since those options doesn't easily exist, I use WhatsApp or Snap or IG to achieve that because I may still want to communicate a message to all my contacts and find the outlet that lets me do this. So I hear you on the element of focus to maintain robustness, I just think it may always be a trade off between doing one thing very well and adding new things. Also, while you may see location sharing as a basic feature, I see it as an advance feature and see stories as a basic feature. Which basic feature should they add or should they not add any new things?
- bostik 5y ago
  For a messaging application whose intended target audience includes dissidents, location sharing even as an option sounds dangerous. Especially given this from your comment: Focus on providing security fixes and minor improvements that improve user experience - when UX includes such irrelevancies such as "avoid getting users vanished and/or killed", the guiding principle should be: no footguns.
rvz 5y ago
So another unnecessary feature coming to a chat app that no-one asked for - just like including their own cryptocurrency in the messenger. After all, from a privacy perspective it is still a disaster to create an account by using your phone number to sign in. From a typical user's perspective it is basically a worse version of WhatsApp that still cannot backup your texts and conversations properly, so why bother switching at all? The users will still sit on WhatsApp due to the latter still being the case. Once your phone is lost, stolen, or you have a different phone, your conversations are lost if you are using Signal. Oh dear.
agucova 5y ago
If this gets more people to use safer, better messaging apps and/or fund Signal, I'm all in. There's no place for purism, I just hope they add a way to disable stories for unwilling users.
aksgoel 5y ago
few predictions on why this PR is an indication to Signal falling into the chasm: 1. The Signal team will soon realize that adding social messaging concepts to a private messaging app in a safe way is possible and more importantly is wanted by a big subset (early majority) of people. 2. The early adopters of Signal App will feel offended as they were looking for a strictly principled secret messaging app. 3. The target market of early majority will not see much difference in Signal and other options and they will stick to the app where their network is already at. https://www.businessillustrator.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/innovation-distribution-curve-650px.png https://www.businessillustrator.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/...
flubflub 5y ago
So long as Signal is not less secure and this does not affect battery life I don't mind. It does feel pointless though.
mbgerring 5y ago
I really like that aside from being a highly secure communications channel, Signal has now also replaced most other social networks for online interaction with my real friends.
_8j50 5y ago
Ffs! Just have cross platform backup/restore and migration, accounts not tied to phones and multi-device accounts already! I have heard others complain about this for years now. I can code but I don't code for a living, these things seem like they would take at most two weeks dev time, is there a complexity I am missing here? Or do they just not care? I have all but abandoned secure mobile messanging at this point. They either die from lack of adoption or live long enough to become the villain.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  One of Signal's main purposes is to be used by Snowden types (whistleblowers, dissidents, journalists, etc.) – or, at least, it used to be. Messages Are Private is the most important principle for Signal, even if it means messages are lost. Accounts not tied to phones, I don't really have an explanation for. It was in the works two years ago, but I haven't heard anything since.
  - _8j50 5y ago
    There are better alternatives like Briar for snowden types. Signal is always competing against telegram or whatsapp and comparing themselves. Integrity and reliability are critical security properties.
golemotron 5y ago
As much as people complain about patents, maybe patenting things like stories and stickers in social media / messaging would've kept them from being playbook items that we see in the journey of every single online product. It's tedious and rather lazy compared to developing new ideas.
brodock 5y ago
Until they allow people to make bot accounts, theplatform eill be limited to person<>person communication. The actual strengh of WhatsApp is that companies are ditching their phone / support chat for whatsapp only. Which is the worst of both worlds.
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  Good? Once bots gain access, the platform is lost to spam. Being limited to person<>person communication sounds like a feature to me.
- geek_at 5y ago
  Agreed. I tried to implement a simple bot that would notify me about home security stuff but it ended in a rabbit hole that all points to a git comment of one of the devs stating possible account bans if an account is used for automated messages or even person to person messages using anything other than the official app.
fongaboo 5y ago
Is this 'stories' in the Facebook/Instagram sense?

131 points by decrypt 5y ago

ufo 5y ago

What are Stories? The linked commit doesn't seem to describe it.

fitblipper 5y ago

What are stories?

brimnes 5y ago
You can check out the Wikipedia page [1]. Apps like WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook already have the stories feature. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stories_(social_media) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stories_(social_media)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- metabagel 5y ago
  OK, I still don’t understand what a story is. Also, get off my lawn!
  - reducesuffering 5y ago
    It’s a short-lived (usually 1 day), short length video or photo on your account that any of your connections can view as part of a carousel of other stories. You can post yours and/or view your connections’ stories in sequence. I.e. You go into the app. 10/100 friends have posted stories. You watch them one after another (without needing to go to each friends account) to see what they were up to for the day.

rex_lupi 5y ago

Is this similar to WhatsApp's status feature? That'd make it much easier for me to convince some people to move to signal.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thekyle 5y ago
Yes, I would imagine so
emerongi 5y ago
Any social features are appreciated, even though I don't use them. Payments were probably a waste of engineering time, unless it somehow attracts users in oppressed countries.

tcfhgj 5y ago

Seems like Stories will come to Matrix as well - through FluffyChat and Minestrix! https://youtu.be/tLlSGqzgzhg?t=1045 https://youtu.be/tLlSGqzgzhg?t=1045

Nextgrid 5y ago
Good luck getting mainstream acceptance for something that sounds like a furry dating site.
- tcfhgj 5y ago
  One of the benefits of a standard like Matrix is that the adoption of individual apps is mostly irrelevant. Curious, which app do you refer to?
  - iszomer 5y ago
    Probably referring to bridges (eg: irc <-> matrix, telegram <-> matrix, etc).. https://matrix.org/bridges/ https://matrix.org/bridges/
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    The parent comment suggested that Matrix would support stories and the first implementation (which I guess could be considered the reference implementation) is called "FluffyChat"...
- Sunspark 5y ago
  Boss, let's edit our images using GIMP. No, it's not one of the banned words in the HR guide.. I mean yes it is, but that's not what it means.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    GIMP at least has an excuse in the sense that its success doesn't depend on network effects. It can win purely on technical merit. Social apps on the other hand need network effects to win regardless of how good they are technically. A stupid name there is suicide.

vageli 5y ago

This seems like such a strange addition. My use of signal is primarily group chat or as an SMS replacement. It is hard for me to see the benefit of adding stories like this to what to me is a tool for directly messaging specific individuals. I would be interested in hearing from people who think this is a good change.

Mystlix 5y ago
I can discreetly share text, images or videos with a subset of my contacts all at once without bothering them in a private conversation. They all appear in order and in full without some algorithmic trickery, they get flushed after a day or so and my friends can decide if they want to give them a look or not. It's a very nice feature especially for the kind of general stuff that I wouldn't want to personally send to people and clog our conversations.
- i5heu 5y ago
  Yes! I love stories. They are a subtle way to share cool stuff and avoid to be seen as annoying if you are the type of person that likes to share nice things ^^
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
    Exactly, and those who want to reply, can do so directly, not filling up a long group chat with messages that are meant for just the original person. It allows broadcasting to a group and people to opt in to watch and reply.
  - crossroadsguy 5y ago
    What’s stories? Any article they’ve published about it? Is it like the WhatsApp “Status” feature? Which is more like a 24 hr tweet if I can say so.
noisem4ker 5y ago
I share your indifference to the medium, but people out there do occasionally publish stories if such feature is available. If Signal makes it possible to say "you can keep publishing your stories too" when joining, and as a result more people move off WhatsApp (or, more generally, embrace the idea of platform independence), I can pinch my nose and enjoy the long-term side effect.

barrenko 5y ago

First they destroyed WhatsApp, now Signal is next. Stop developing features. Fire all PMs.

stavros 5y ago
If reliability and other features don't suffer, why do you care? Just don't use it. Though I do wish they'd prioritize editable messages and formatting before stories...
- mdaniel 5y ago
  Your last sentence is the whole problem -- time and glucose are not infinite, and thus what goes in determines what else doesn't make it
- brianmcc 5y ago
  UX gets worse though when screens are cluttered with crap I have no intention of using. Features that can be 100% ignored when not wanted - no problem. Foisting more and more bloat - problem.
steelstraw 5y ago
Apparently they have too much money? I thought I donated to help them be a strong encrypted messaging app and survive for the long term. Not to tack on a bunch of social media features.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  Hmm. Knee jerk I agree. But aren't stories just expiring photo/video messages sent to multiple people without notifications? Seems like the fundamental nature of the service will not need to change much.
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  What I think keeps me and many of my friends in East Africa hooked on WhatsApp is the ability to post statuses (stories). It gives me a strong reason to come back to the app as it helps me with conversation starters. I frankly might love if signal has it.

deutschepost 5y ago

The feature that I missed the most after switching to signal was Live location sharing. It is just so convenient to find your friends while going out or going to the street exactly at the time someone is there to pick you up.

anthropodie 5y ago
Wow I did not realize that Signal was missing this. I think they are focusing on getting more people on board than building a great app. Too many people blame Matrix but I love it. It's UI is not as polished but hey I can work with it because sooner or later all these centralized apps run after revenue and ruin the most basic stuff that these app should do: messaging.
- Mystlix 5y ago
  what happens in your decentralized system if one of your friends has their account registered on a naughty naughty server that just got blacklisted by the righteous admins of your instance and now you can't talk together anymore? does that person need to make a completely new account just to send some messages to you? does a migration scenario exist? and if it exists, does it warn your contacts and transfer everything seemlessly?
  - deutschepost 5y ago
    Last time I checked Matrix was researching about the topic of multiple homeservers. So you could just use a local homeserver on your device and a remote homesesrver with a fancy name simultaniously. This would also enable users to communicate P2P. But I don't know how advanced this system is yet.
keewee7 5y ago
>after switching to signal was Live location sharing Which messaging apps have actual Live Location sharing?
- 5y ago

jameslk 5y ago

They're taking a play out of Facebook's strategy book: copy every feature of your competitor as quickly as possible. In this case, it seems they're going after WhatsApp and they're copying WhatsApp's status feature. This seems like a smart move for them because they can run for parity with WhatsApp and they'd still have one major benefit Facebook has been in a very tight spot to match: privacy. Most people don't seem to care about privacy, but if they start losing their (privacy aware) friends and family to Signal, they too will consider installing it as well. If they acquire enough network effects, they could hollow out a large chunk of WhatsApp, unless WhatsApp starts offering features Signal can't offer (e.g. better integrations into Facebook's other properties). It'll be interesting to watch how this plays out.

deafsquid69 5y ago

vanilla_nut 5y ago

God fucking dammit. I literally just put my reputation on the line with family last week that we should all switch to Signal. All I want is a decent E2EE messaging app. Between this and their upcoming crypto payment system, I’m thinking I made a huge mistake switching from Telegram.

i5heu 5y ago
What speaks against riot+matrix?
- noman-land 5y ago
  I agree matrix is the dream but getting people to use Signal was hard enough and the UX of Element is good but not _quite_ up to snuff for the general populus yet.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  Matrix as an underlying technology is pretty good. All of the clients are varying degrees of suck though. What I want is a 1:1 copy of Discord's client UX. That's it.
- crossroadsguy 5y ago
  Matrix[1] is fantasising and WhatsApp/Telegram are reality. Signal is somewhere in the middle trying to be something that solves nobody’s messaging problem except a small set of people (journalists, whistleblowers?) where the communication is mostly like “A needs to discreetly communicate with B and they both can use Signal”, anything other than that it’s pretty useless (yes, I’ve tried it for really long and convinced many others to try it). 1. Especially all the clients. And not again Fluffy chat please. Name alone puts off most.
- mlok 5y ago
  Related : I converted some friends to Element+Matrix. Then some unbearable bug showed up in Element UI and we had to move away immediately (I reported the bug to the Element project, and a year after the correction is still in progress) so I moved us to the next best solution : Signal. It works really fine. (although a pain not offering conveniences like : easy chat backups, and difficulty to move your conversations to a new phone and stuffs like that...) I can't wait for the Matrix ecosystem to be mature enough !

0xCMP 5y ago

happy they're adding this. one more important feature to replace whatsapp and instagram for normal people. stories is a great feature by letting you post however much you want and letting the viewer choose to view/skip/ignore the content easily. plus its ephemeral by default which is another good feature imo. everything should be e2ee. anything which helps convince your mom/sister/dad/friends to use signal is a good thing.

lkxijlewlf 5y ago

What the fuck are stories and what does that have to do with E2EE messages?

newscracker 5y ago

The development of Signal, sorry to put it harshly, seems to suffer from a split brained syndrome. On one hand they’ll focus on adding stickers, stories and other trivial features to help appeal to a broader user base, but on the other hand they’ll refuse to implement basic and important features that people need in a chat app, like chat backups (there is no backup option for iOS, only a device to device transfer…so if you lose or break your device or switch to a new device after selling your old one, your chats are all gone). I don’t recommend Signal to others because its priorities don’t match mine and that of others I know. I do use it, but I treat it more like a fragile platform where anything can disappear any moment. Don’t share or keep anything valuable on it. The fact that Signal is another centralized platform that not only requires a phone number but also exposes your phone number to others (like in group chats) are larger issues for me. I’ve been trying Element (from Matrix), but its UX is quite poor. I just wish chat apps would copy at least some of the UX of Telegram.

lkxijlewlf 5y ago
I tend to agree. I want to be able to use the same account on two phones. I'm not the only one. Yes, there are workarounds, but ffs, come on already.
jraph 5y ago
It would be best to have backups built in, but in the mean time wouldn't Signal Desktop be a way to make backups? I moved my home directory to a new computer and Signal Desktop started like if something changed. Sure you would lose your messages on your phone, but you can still access them on your computer if needed. On a rooted Android phone, you could use oandbackup to backup Signal. If you care about these things, maybe consider using a rooted Android phone? I agree with you on the centralized platform aspect and the use of phone number (which is both a blessing (this makes it easy for new users to join) and a curse). I also agree with you on Element's UX, but it's getting better and most people can use it fine. I have a few groups on both apps. I personally prefer Element, which seems more open than Signal and which I can actually use correctly on the PinePhone. And definitely didn't requires the hoops I had to go through because I don't have an Android phone or an iPhone. Axolotl [1] still needs some work. [1] https://github.com/nanu-c/axolotl https://github.com/nanu-c/axolotl

jraph 5y ago

I will take anything that could make people switch from Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp to Signal, even if my preference actually goes to Element / Matrix. Lately, people around me have been installing Signal, or I've met people would already have Signal, and it's been enjoyable to, at last, participate in fun group chats. They didn't miss me before but I'm happy to be there now. Signal works well. I'd like to be able to edit messages and react with multiple emojis like with Element/Matrix, but most importantly, Signal needs to look cool and to be something people want to install and use. Element/Matrix too, by the way, but they need to focus on usability first at the moment.

jbirer 5y ago
I skipped Element on the basis that it needs too much information, I can use a burner SIM on signal, but I need e-mail or something to use Element.
- kitkat_new 5y ago
  it's probably easier to find a burner email address than getting a burner SIM. Anyways, while the default server in Element may require email atm, it is not a general requirement and depends on the server you select

peterangular 5y ago

Why? Stories are not something I need from a chat app. I wish these apps would stop the ideal of "constant feature growth" and focus on core competencies. Signal is a SMS/chat app for a privacy focused audience... I do not see an overlap for a stories.

nixpulvis 5y ago

Whelp, there goes the neighborhood. Honestly, why can't we just make products and services that do one thing and do it well. Leave "stories" to the social media applications.

jimkleiber 5y ago
WhatsApp has had stories for years, just called statuses. Most of my American friends don't use it or know they're there, but my East African friends use them all the time. Frankly, most of my US friends aren't even on WhatsApp or Telegram or Signal. I don't know where they are :-D Maybe iMessage, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook. How do you define the difference between a messaging app and social media app? Many seem quite blurred to me.
- fragmede 5y ago
  It's the blurring of lines that some users are objecting to. Instagram is a perfect example where yes, important communication happens via Instagram messages, but the problem is that once the app is open, it's exceedingly easy to accidentally spend minutes/hours listlessly scrolling. In order to avoid listlessly scrolling, users will uninstall the app or set time limits on it, or other techniques to avoid it sucking up so much time. Compare this to a 'plain' messaging app without a broadcast stories feature - there isn't the same distraction factor and for those that abhor the algorithmic-feed and distraction factor, it's a huge turn-off to add that feature. Go into Instagram/Twitter/TikTok/Snapchat/Facebook and try and turn off the stories/feed. You can't, that's the main engagement loop for the app!
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
    Ah, yeah, fair point. When I was building an app, I tried to make it as not addictive as possible, and yet the thought that would come to my mind was that if what I make is not that addictive, they may just use the other one. So this back and forth about not wanting people to be addicted to it but also wanting to be compelling enough to pull people from the other ones. I've thought about this with podcasting—I don't want people to listen to my podcasts all day, I'd prefer they also talk with people around them. That being said, people will listen to podcasts and would I prefer they listen to me over someone else, given no matter what I do, they may spend X hours per day listening? I appreciate you saying what you did about the blurring.

Aldipower 5y ago

I miss Signal "Android Tablet". Shouldn't be too hard for them as they already have the Desktop part. Look at this close and unresolved PR from 2014. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/614 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/614

robryk 5y ago

Right now signal's infrastructure could figure out (if it stored data that everyone claims it doesn't) which IP address is sending messages to which IP address. If stories end up being implemented as a group conversation with all your contacts, everyone will be reasonably frequently sending a message to all their contacts, which changes the above into "which IPs are contacts of which IPs".

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bloopernova 5y ago

Just cancelled my monthly donation. They've lost their way.

anthropodie 5y ago

So Signal is missing a basic feature like location sharing and they chose to go ahead with implementing Stories. I guess they are focusing more on getting new users than making a great app. The thing is none of these centralized apps will ever get messaging right. Because no matter how good the intentions of the team are sooner or later the higher management or the PM wants to have bigger piece of cake. This in the end ruins the most basic functionality that a messaging app should do right: messages. What these teams do not understand is it's okay for an IM app to not keep adding fancy features. Focus on providing security fixes and minor improvements that improve user experience. If you keep focusing on getting more people you will end up with yet another social app like Instagram/Snapchat. We do not really need more of that stuff. Consider this: if people who built electric grids kept adding unnecessary features to it, we would not have a robust infrastructure like it today. They built them and then those people left to work on something more interesting. We need more of that in Software. What we currently have is millions and millions of engineers trying to figure out how to keep users glued to their app.

jimkleiber 5y ago
As a counterpoint, if I want to share a message or photo with many people on Signal right now, I have to create a large group and choose whom to invite and I think give it a name and have it persist unless I actively delete it. If I want them to be able to reply directly to me, they may have to do some gymnastics to copy and paste the photo in a private message to me or forward it to me. Since those options doesn't easily exist, I use WhatsApp or Snap or IG to achieve that because I may still want to communicate a message to all my contacts and find the outlet that lets me do this. So I hear you on the element of focus to maintain robustness, I just think it may always be a trade off between doing one thing very well and adding new things. Also, while you may see location sharing as a basic feature, I see it as an advance feature and see stories as a basic feature. Which basic feature should they add or should they not add any new things?
bostik 5y ago
For a messaging application whose intended target audience includes dissidents, location sharing even as an option sounds dangerous. Especially given this from your comment: Focus on providing security fixes and minor improvements that improve user experience - when UX includes such irrelevancies such as "avoid getting users vanished and/or killed", the guiding principle should be: no footguns.

rvz 5y ago

So another unnecessary feature coming to a chat app that no-one asked for - just like including their own cryptocurrency in the messenger. After all, from a privacy perspective it is still a disaster to create an account by using your phone number to sign in. From a typical user's perspective it is basically a worse version of WhatsApp that still cannot backup your texts and conversations properly, so why bother switching at all? The users will still sit on WhatsApp due to the latter still being the case. Once your phone is lost, stolen, or you have a different phone, your conversations are lost if you are using Signal. Oh dear.

agucova 5y ago

If this gets more people to use safer, better messaging apps and/or fund Signal, I'm all in. There's no place for purism, I just hope they add a way to disable stories for unwilling users.

aksgoel 5y ago

few predictions on why this PR is an indication to Signal falling into the chasm: 1. The Signal team will soon realize that adding social messaging concepts to a private messaging app in a safe way is possible and more importantly is wanted by a big subset (early majority) of people. 2. The early adopters of Signal App will feel offended as they were looking for a strictly principled secret messaging app. 3. The target market of early majority will not see much difference in Signal and other options and they will stick to the app where their network is already at. https://www.businessillustrator.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/innovation-distribution-curve-650px.png https://www.businessillustrator.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/...

flubflub 5y ago

So long as Signal is not less secure and this does not affect battery life I don't mind. It does feel pointless though.

mbgerring 5y ago

I really like that aside from being a highly secure communications channel, Signal has now also replaced most other social networks for online interaction with my real friends.

_8j50 5y ago

Ffs! Just have cross platform backup/restore and migration, accounts not tied to phones and multi-device accounts already! I have heard others complain about this for years now. I can code but I don't code for a living, these things seem like they would take at most two weeks dev time, is there a complexity I am missing here? Or do they just not care? I have all but abandoned secure mobile messanging at this point. They either die from lack of adoption or live long enough to become the villain.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
One of Signal's main purposes is to be used by Snowden types (whistleblowers, dissidents, journalists, etc.) – or, at least, it used to be. Messages Are Private is the most important principle for Signal, even if it means messages are lost. Accounts not tied to phones, I don't really have an explanation for. It was in the works two years ago, but I haven't heard anything since.
- _8j50 5y ago
  There are better alternatives like Briar for snowden types. Signal is always competing against telegram or whatsapp and comparing themselves. Integrity and reliability are critical security properties.

golemotron 5y ago

As much as people complain about patents, maybe patenting things like stories and stickers in social media / messaging would've kept them from being playbook items that we see in the journey of every single online product. It's tedious and rather lazy compared to developing new ideas.

brodock 5y ago

Until they allow people to make bot accounts, theplatform eill be limited to person<>person communication. The actual strengh of WhatsApp is that companies are ditching their phone / support chat for whatsapp only. Which is the worst of both worlds.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago
Good? Once bots gain access, the platform is lost to spam. Being limited to person<>person communication sounds like a feature to me.
geek_at 5y ago
Agreed. I tried to implement a simple bot that would notify me about home security stuff but it ended in a rabbit hole that all points to a git comment of one of the devs stating possible account bans if an account is used for automated messages or even person to person messages using anything other than the official app.

fongaboo 5y ago

Is this 'stories' in the Facebook/Instagram sense?