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> Or in other words: suppose the definition of "phone number" was expanded to include alphanumeric characters and @. What aspect of Signal's current design woul

> Or in other words: suppose the definition of "phone number" was expanded to include alphanumeric characters and @. What aspect of Signal's current design would break? I feel like you're mis-analyzing a social problem or some other design goal as a low-level technical problem. I don't know their real reason, but I can say that my email contact list is waaay messier and less curated than my phone contact list. It would probably be annoying is I'd get a "So-and-so joined Signal!" notification for a bunch of randos I've emailed once and had their email auto-added to my address book.

teraflop 4y ago
That seems like a problem that could easily be solved by sending fewer notifications. Do I really need to know if somebody has joined Signal until I actually want to talk to them? Isn't it better to have a larger pool of people with whom I can communicate securely using Signal? I'm mostly just confused because this is being presented as a technical limitation: using email addresses would supposedly "require Signal to keep a database of contacts serverside". I don't understand how or why that's true.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > That seems like a problem that could easily be solved by sending fewer notifications. Do I really need to know if somebody has joined Signal until I actually want to talk to them? I don't know what the real reason is, what I said was just something that popped into my head. Another comment mentioned spam-prevention as a reason (by making it infeasibly expensive), and that actually makes more sense. Honestly, there probably isn't just one reason, but a cluster of tradeoffs. > Isn't it better to have a larger pool of people with whom I can communicate securely using Signal? IMHO, the number people who care deeply enough about the phone number thing to boycott Signal is vanishingly small; not even a rounding error. Sure they're loud on HN or maybe even Twitter, but giving tiny but loud minorities whatever they demand is bad policy.
  - teraflop 4y ago
    Sorry, just to clarify: I didn't mean "it's better if people who don't want to give out their phone number can use Signal" (although I happen to think that's also true). What I meant was: "it's better if I can use Signal to communicate with people even if all I know is their email address".
veeti 4y ago
Of course there is no real reason Signal should be spamming anybody with these crap "notifications" in the first place. Who wants to wake up at 1 AM to know some dude they texted years ago is now on Signal?
verall 4y ago
Noone wants those messages
stormbrew 4y ago
> I'd get a "So-and-so joined Signal!" notification for a bunch of randos One of the reasons I wish I could use something other than my phone number and access to my contact list to work with signal is these notifications creep me the fuck out and I would rather never get them, or have anyone get them about me. I'm fine with it being a feature for people who want it, but I don't. I want to make my own damn choices about who I talk to through it.

teraflop 4y ago

That seems like a problem that could easily be solved by sending fewer notifications. Do I really need to know if somebody has joined Signal until I actually want to talk to them? Isn't it better to have a larger pool of people with whom I can communicate securely using Signal? I'm mostly just confused because this is being presented as a technical limitation: using email addresses would supposedly "require Signal to keep a database of contacts serverside". I don't understand how or why that's true.

tablespoon 4y ago
> That seems like a problem that could easily be solved by sending fewer notifications. Do I really need to know if somebody has joined Signal until I actually want to talk to them? I don't know what the real reason is, what I said was just something that popped into my head. Another comment mentioned spam-prevention as a reason (by making it infeasibly expensive), and that actually makes more sense. Honestly, there probably isn't just one reason, but a cluster of tradeoffs. > Isn't it better to have a larger pool of people with whom I can communicate securely using Signal? IMHO, the number people who care deeply enough about the phone number thing to boycott Signal is vanishingly small; not even a rounding error. Sure they're loud on HN or maybe even Twitter, but giving tiny but loud minorities whatever they demand is bad policy.
- teraflop 4y ago
  Sorry, just to clarify: I didn't mean "it's better if people who don't want to give out their phone number can use Signal" (although I happen to think that's also true). What I meant was: "it's better if I can use Signal to communicate with people even if all I know is their email address".

veeti 4y ago

Of course there is no real reason Signal should be spamming anybody with these crap "notifications" in the first place. Who wants to wake up at 1 AM to know some dude they texted years ago is now on Signal?

verall 4y ago

Noone wants those messages

stormbrew 4y ago

> I'd get a "So-and-so joined Signal!" notification for a bunch of randos One of the reasons I wish I could use something other than my phone number and access to my contact list to work with signal is these notifications creep me the fuck out and I would rather never get them, or have anyone get them about me. I'm fine with it being a feature for people who want it, but I don't. I want to make my own damn choices about who I talk to through it.