> they would lose the ability to deploy new privacy features I disagree, in the sense that they could still produce their own client which had those new featur

> they would lose the ability to deploy new privacy features I disagree, in the sense that they could still produce their own client which had those new features (and use feature-detection to remain compatible with forks that support them), but you seem to be making a more subtle argument about market forces and group dynamics, which I want to understand better. What sort of tradeoffs do you think competing clients would make? I can't think of any way that weakening the privacy could improve the UX enough to make people want to abandon the official client (although I could see people abandoning the official client for a fork which doesn't include the crypto-coin, and all of its attack surface). The only example I can think of (trying to steelman your position as much as possible) is that other clients would remove the requirement for providing a phone number, and this would make it harder to do key verification somehow (and thus it would happen less often). I can't quite make that argument work, and I still think that not providing Signal with a phone number is a choice that users should be allowed to make based on their own assessment of the risks. Ultimately, though, Signal closing their network cannot make users safer, since their network isn't the only way to communicate. Users who don't like the UX (or unwanted features) of their client are free to install WhatsApp instead, or just use SMS, so I really don't accept the argument that restricting free software development leads to better privacy over all.