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Here's a (partially?) non-technical justification they shared on the Community forums. https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing-sms-support-fro

Here's a (partially?) non-technical justification they shared on the Community forums. https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing-sms-support-from-signal-android-soon/47954/56 https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing-sms...

lucideer 4y ago
That post is an excellent justification. Makes perfect sense and it's hard to find fault with it. Wonder why the blog post omitted all of that and focused on nonsense instead?
- fluidcruft 4y ago
  Yeah, I 100% agree with you about that and the more I've been digesting that explanation, the more I see why this is the correct thing to do. Hopefully this even frees them to do things we've wanted for a long time... like not being tied to a phone number and offering better features than RCS/iMessage. Maybe even having multiple independent profiles/pseudonyms for compartmentalization. That's how Signal could be growing the base and interop with SMS/MMS/RCS cruft on one platform will always lack the killer feature and be irrelevant to the other platforms. If Signal were better than SMS/RCS/iMessage people will just use it for those reasons in addition to the security and privacy. And having just installed the beta and used the SMS export and allowed it to purge all of SMS content from Signal into Google Messages it actually sort of is nice that the app is now ONLY the "Signal" context. I'm... actually pretty okay with SMS belonging to the "Stuff that Creepy Companies Like Google Know" context. Basically this just does what Signal already does in iOS: it must compete with the native messaging client. Google is already playing RCS as SMS upgrade and Signal is making the correct strategic decision to not make a play for RCS. SMS support is just going to lead to whining about lack of RCS. The bottom line is both Apple and Google are out to kill SMS. With SMS gone, Signal can just move on to feature parity with iMessage and beyond while leapfrogging whatever messaging clusterfuck Google keeps producing. Google can have SMS for all I care. We can't have iMessage on Android, but we can have Signal on both Android and iOS.
  - agilob 4y ago
    >Signal can just move on to feature parity with iMessage And fragment the market even more?
1MachineElf 4y ago
Thanks. This link should really be higher up in the comments. The community forums discussion is much more interesting than the blog post.
Vinnl 4y ago
This is a great explanation, at least for HN readers. I found two top-level comments linking it, upvoting those might help: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33181525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33181525 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33181647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33181647
agilob 4y ago
I get these are reasons against SMS, but somehow don't convince me that removing SMS from Signal is the right thing to do right now.
krlx 4y ago
They definetly should publish those points out in the open. After reading this, it just make sense they are dropping SMS, as infuriating as it is. Thanks for the link.

lucideer 4y ago

That post is an excellent justification. Makes perfect sense and it's hard to find fault with it. Wonder why the blog post omitted all of that and focused on nonsense instead?

fluidcruft 4y ago
Yeah, I 100% agree with you about that and the more I've been digesting that explanation, the more I see why this is the correct thing to do. Hopefully this even frees them to do things we've wanted for a long time... like not being tied to a phone number and offering better features than RCS/iMessage. Maybe even having multiple independent profiles/pseudonyms for compartmentalization. That's how Signal could be growing the base and interop with SMS/MMS/RCS cruft on one platform will always lack the killer feature and be irrelevant to the other platforms. If Signal were better than SMS/RCS/iMessage people will just use it for those reasons in addition to the security and privacy. And having just installed the beta and used the SMS export and allowed it to purge all of SMS content from Signal into Google Messages it actually sort of is nice that the app is now ONLY the "Signal" context. I'm... actually pretty okay with SMS belonging to the "Stuff that Creepy Companies Like Google Know" context. Basically this just does what Signal already does in iOS: it must compete with the native messaging client. Google is already playing RCS as SMS upgrade and Signal is making the correct strategic decision to not make a play for RCS. SMS support is just going to lead to whining about lack of RCS. The bottom line is both Apple and Google are out to kill SMS. With SMS gone, Signal can just move on to feature parity with iMessage and beyond while leapfrogging whatever messaging clusterfuck Google keeps producing. Google can have SMS for all I care. We can't have iMessage on Android, but we can have Signal on both Android and iOS.
- agilob 4y ago
  >Signal can just move on to feature parity with iMessage And fragment the market even more?

1MachineElf 4y ago

Thanks. This link should really be higher up in the comments. The community forums discussion is much more interesting than the blog post.

Vinnl 4y ago

This is a great explanation, at least for HN readers. I found two top-level comments linking it, upvoting those might help: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33181525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33181525 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33181647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33181647

agilob 4y ago

I get these are reasons against SMS, but somehow don't convince me that removing SMS from Signal is the right thing to do right now.

krlx 4y ago

They definetly should publish those points out in the open. After reading this, it just make sense they are dropping SMS, as infuriating as it is. Thanks for the link.