3 ms·
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 wa
by 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 agoSorry, 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".