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Signal Introduces Stories
- mikece 4y agoI don't like this: it seems like Signal wants to morph into a social network rather than a secure messaging platform. I predict the next major features will be unencrypted public groups and API messaging access like Telegram has.
- Daniel_sk 4y agoI just want to share some stories with friends in my contact list. On Signal you don’t have “followers”, just people you are in contact with. This is an unobtrusive way to for example share something interesting, or some event happening near you and so on.
- millyleaves 4y agoI too am not a fan of such a move. However, their goal is to increase usage rates among the mainstream audience hence why such a feature is being introducing, just like stickers back in Dec 2019. Though I'm not sure how many will actually use Stories. WhatsApp has something similar as well but I have never seen anyone among my contacts use it
- skyyler 4y agoWould you rather live in a world where Signal is laser focused on secure messaging to the point where no one uses it? Telegram is growing rapidly because it's adopting social media paradigms. I use both, and I wish I only used Signal.
- hadlock 4y agoAbout once a week I get a notification that random person X I haven't talked to in a decade is now on signal. About two months ago the super at my old apartment building got on signal and I got a notification. My late coworker's phone number finally got recycled and the new person using it is on signal too. They appear to be reaching critical mass. Still really mad about them dropping SMS support. I'll be deleting it when that happens.
- uoaei 4y agoI really don't understand the qualms with SMS support. SMS was never secure, and it certainly doesn't become more secure when you push it through a pass-through on one app or another. There is nothing you can do to SMS to make it more secure except to send encrypted strings: but then you have the same problem of sharing secrets, etc. that requires a separate app to manage anyway.
- hadlock 4y agoBecause I already have an encrypted messaging app. It's called Whatsapp. This bumps up to E2E encrypted if both people using "SMS" have signal installed. Now this is just an alternative to WhatsApp. I will just keep using WhatsApp.
- uoaei 4y agoWhatsApp and Signal do not provide the same level of security, despite what Meta might try to tell you.
- mr_mitm 4y agoIt means I need an extra app now. Signal replaced my SMS app. I'm not going to stop using SMS completely, so if Signal drops it I need to use one more app.
- uoaei 4y agoOne comes preinstalled with every major mobile OS...
- anigbrowl 4y agoAnd one that I have been able to happily ignore for years because Signal handled all my messages. If you are not a long-time Signal user then maybe you don't remember how they made a big song and dance out of offering this feature in the first place to make Signal more usable and accessible.
- snotrockets 4y agoTelegram is an interesting comparison, because it isn't focused on security at all: it's a social network delivered through an app that looks like a messaging app.
- clnq 4y agoI'm not against social media fundamentally, I'm against the lack of privacy and emotional exploitation as means to sell more ads on social media. Social media could be done solely in the interest of its users, and I think that could be fantastic. So far, Signal has a reputation good enough to make me optimistic about it adding social network features. I definitely do not expect Signal to drop encryption by default in any feature though. That's their fundamental value.
- pavon 4y agoI don't see how Signal adding features that shift communications from insecure venues to private encrypted channels would lead you to think they are abandoning privacy.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- broAhmed 4y agoI love how Signal (and WhatsApp adopting Signal's protocol) made privacy easy for the general public and technically inclined alike. Privacy will never be the default until it's made easy. I'm guessing some folks won't like use feature because it's too "social media-y" (myself likely included) but as they say in the post: - You can turn the feature off and you won't see other people's stories - You can choose the audience and the max you can share it with is with Signal users in your contacts list Thank you Signal team for giving the general public what they want and making it private.
- nicce 4y ago> I love how Signal (and WhatsApp adopting Signal's protocol) made privacy easy for the general public and technically inclined alike. Privacy will never be the default until it's made easy. WhatsApp did not really adapt it in privacy mind, to be fair. All metadata is unencrypted. Meta harvests your contact information, intervals and time when you message specific persons. Often, this information is more interesting than the message content itself.
- dont__panic 4y agoPerhaps that's the real reason they renamed to Meta. Not for the metaverse, but because of their incredible volume of metadata.
- Calvin02 4y agoI don't think that's accurate. Pretty sure both work the same way regarding metadata. Think about it: if Signal didn't know that A was messaging B, how would they route that message to B's phone? A has to be able to find B's ip address someway. B can't broadcast its ip address to all the Signal users -- that would be a huge security hole. It probably works like this: 1) A sends encrypted message + B's phone number to the server 2) server looks up the ip address for B's phone number 3) server routes the message there. Also, both WhatsApp and Signal hash the contacts data the same way. Signal does seem to go a bit further, however. WhatsApp's implementation: https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/information-for-people-who-dont-use-whatsapp/ https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/information-for-people-who-do... Signal's implementation: https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/
- Daniel_sk 4y agoFinally!
- starsep 4y agoI don't like stories but at least there is a way to opt-out. Many people do like them and expected them so it's understandable move
- fooqux 4y agoI find it interesting that the option to opt out of Stories exists in the Chat settings. Apparently they couldn't be buggered to even create a link to view the settings for Story inside of the Story UI's context menu. But hey, I'm an old, biased, grumpy man. They're taking away SMS (which was what allowed me to get it onto my family's phones) and shoving TikTok in my face instead. I'm displeased by this and looking for things to pick on.
- ViceCitySage 4y agoDon't really care for this but more feature parity with WhatsApp or SnapChat could hopefully attract more people and make it somewhat mainstream. Personally, I know a lot of people that use these messengers just to look at or post stories.
- mcjiggerlog 4y agoPersonally I'd rather avoid the feature bloat. I also think it just waters-down the "secure" image they are clearly going for. I mean, broadcasting images to your contact list isn't exactly what I think of when I think "private messaging".
- dunefox 4y agoThen don't use it. There, it's private again.
- tptacek 4y agoEverything about Signal will make more sense if you forget every opinion you've had or read on a message board, and accept that the project's mission is simply to transition as many people off insecure systems as they can. For example: message board nerds are apoplectic about Signal's phone number requirement, but the systems ordinary people were already overwhelmingly used phone numbers already. As communications trend towards ephemeral video messages (I have trouble understanding why, too, but then I'm old), that's where they're going to head. The cool stuff about Signal is what happens under the hood. They don't want a special identity as a "private messenger"; they believe all messaging should be secure.
- izacus 4y agoIf that's true, why do they refuse to implement backups so normal people don't lose data when their phone breaks or the app bugs out?
- kasey_junk 4y agoBecause they haven’t figured out how to do that securely?
- codethief 4y agoWhat I don't understand here (though admittedly I haven't been following the iOS discussions closely) is why backups are possible on Android but not on iOS?
- endorphine 4y agoWhen I first opened the app and saw a "Stories" tab, I thought "oh no... not here too, ffs...". Then I immediately went to the settings and was mildly relieved (but perhaps I'm naive) to see that I could opt-out. Now I dread the day when they might decide to make it so that you won't be able to opt-out. Why can't we have nice things?
- candiddevmike 4y agoPerverse incentives to get folks to use signal more. Checking it when you get a message isn't good enough, need to get creators and influencers on the platform to let folks doom scroll. How many followers on Signal do you have?
- hbn 4y agoIs there anyone that actually gets excited when they see a platform has stories, or is adding them? I feel like it's just out-of-touch product managers who see everyone else doing the stories thing and blindly aping it cause it's the thing to do. In reality, the only place people seem to use stories is Snapchat, Instagram, and seemingly some people post to Facebook stories but I think it's mostly cause of the toggle in Instagram to cross-post to there.
- bentley 4y ago> Is there anyone that actually gets excited when they see a platform has stories, or is adding them? I was honestly excited when I saw the headline, not because I have any intention of using stories myself, but because my friends have repeatedly tried to explain to me why they use stories on Whatsapp and Snapchat, and I have some hope this will make Signal more attractive to them. I feel the same way about stickers and the Giphy proxy, both of which are features I would never have asked for and was initially skeptical of, but that have wound up being widely used by most of my friends who use Signal.
- varenc 4y ago> How many followers on Signal do you have? As of now, Signal still has no concept of followers. My stories are at most only visible to all my contacts on Signal. In my mind this is a big difference between all the other major platforms with stories.
- sakisv 4y agoNice, I like seeing new features being added - despite on my personal opinion about them. As someone else pointed out, the more feature parity we reach with WhatsApp (or other popular messengers) the fewer battles we'll have to fight to bring people over.
- dewey 4y agoI like it! Making it more "mainstream" is the way to go even if purists might say that it's feature bloat for their secure messenger. It's similar to how it's good if more people use Tor for all kinds of activities as it doesn't immediately label you as suspicious just because you use Tor or Signal.
- Dylan16807 4y agoMaking people juggle a different app for SMS is the opposite of being mainstream friendly.
- Blahah 4y agoI use signal for SMS. Is this an iOS thing? If so presumably it's an Apple restriction? edit: ah, they announced recently that they are removing SMS support in Android. The reasoning is solid IMO, I've accidentally sent insecure messages before.
- dewey 4y agoSounds like an Android thing: https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/ https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/
- Dylan16807 4y agoThey can remove the "accidentally" without removing the ability to access as many messages in one place as possible.
- gwill 4y agohow do you use it for sms on ios? their website says they don't support it. https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007321171-Can-I-send-SMS-MMS-with-Signal-#ios_sms https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007321171-Ca...
- denkmoon 4y agoYou can't. No alternate SMS apps on ios.
- headhasthoughts 4y agoSo did Moxie leave because Signal got overtaken by Feds? Why is a secure messenger adopting the appearance of social media? Doesn't this work explicitly against the entire claimed reason for not having an account system? I would love to hear tptacek's views on this.
- NdMAND 4y ago> So did Moxie leave because Signal got overtaken by Feds? No, he worked on Signal for so long that he probably just wanted to take a break to work on other passions too - he's still on the Signal Foundation board (https://signalfoundation.org/ https://signalfoundation.org/) > Why is a secure messenger adopting the appearance of social media? I'd argue that Stories (or equivalent) is nowadays a standard feature in many messengers. To more directly answer your question no - Signal is missing a key aspect of Social Media: discovery. Stories is pretty much equivalent to share a picture to a group of people. You can also easily disable the feature in settings. > Doesn't this work explicitly against the entire claimed reason for not having an account system? I'm not sure specifically to what you refer to but in general: phone numbers is still the primary way to find new folks, but they're working on a username feature. They will still use phone numbers for simplicity as "account" but again, Stories is simply a new interface to share pictures with your contacts.
- uoaei 4y agoLet's not conflate "normalized" with "standard". "Standard" implies a lot, and definitely there is nothing about "enabling two-way communication between willing participants" that requires "make available a video on the screens of my contacts in a non-directed way" to be part of the offering. Signal is not social media. That is not its intention, nor its purpose, nor even its design. It is a messaging service. We already have a discovery feature in Signal: using your contacts, you can see who has Signal installed or not. This feels like bikeshedding to the max, because it is.
- theCrowing 4y agoI guess its up to uoaei to define companies instead of themselves. They have a mission statement and othing more and that mission could be achieved as a social media company.
- drcongo 4y agoOh cool, "stories" are here to ruin yet another app. What is this obsession all about?
- endorphine 4y agoNot sure why you're downvoted but I'd love to know the answer to this.
- beckingz 4y agoSignal has demonstrated product-death (loss of cohesive product vision), what do we use next?
- zaik 4y agoInternet standards like IRC or XMPP? Investing in those instead of walled gardens was the right choice to begin with.
- fooqux 4y agoMy vote is Matrix. I already bridge mine to Signal anyway.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- anigbrowl 4y agoSession seems OK. I sort of like the look of Matrix but it's a lot harder to establish a security policy when 10 different people might be using 10 different Matrix clients, and nobody can do technical support for anyone else.
- thebetatester 4y agoI won't be using this. You know what I do use on Signal, SMS. But apparently useful things don't make a good Gen-Z app.
- barbazoo 4y agoI don't get this at all. If all you're using Signal for is SMS, why not just switch to a good SMS app?
- thebetatester 4y agoWhy use multiple apps to text people? I don't us FB messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, or any of that. I use Signal. Signal lets me send a message to ANYONE else with a phone number protocol agnostic. That's very useful, especially when I'm talking to committed iMessage users.
- barbazoo 4y agoI get you but it feels like a weird hill to die on. Questionable why SMS support was added to Signal in the first place but removing it makes sense in the context of where they want to take Signal (e.g. usernames).
- int_19h 4y agoThe problem is that for many other people, this one feature is the only reason to even have Signal - they won't bother with it if it can't be used to message random people already on their contact list. And then once those people drop it, you have to do so as well if you want to keep talking to them.
- anigbrowl 4y ago> where they want to take Signal (e.g. usernames) Any day now (for the last 5 years)
- yamtaddle 4y agoAm I in a bubble and these features are, in fact, widely used on WhatsApp? I'm in groups with a whole lot of other people including a few who keep up with modern social media stuff, use TikTok, use Instagram, et c., and zero of them use the Status feature or Stories or anything but messaging. For us it's just ICQ/text with better media embedding (but still really bad, somehow). Some of us regularly use similar features, but only on other platforms, never on WhatsApp. Is that unusual, and these are in fact much-beloved features by a good chunk of the WhatsApp user-base?
- jvdvegt 4y agoI'm using WhatsApp everyday, but have never encountered anybody using stories (I can't even find it in WhatsApp on Android, is it the camera-ocon in the top-left?)
- mcjiggerlog 4y agoIt's the "status" tab.
- kzrdude 4y agoWell, I don't have enough friends to give you good statistics, but there exists users of that feature on whatsapp.
- lelandfe 4y agoNone of the various Europeans I met at a hostel last year use it. So that’s a random sample of people from a dozen or so countries.
- jimkleiber 4y agoCan't speak for the world but WhatsApp Statuses (stories) are used by many many people in East Africa. It is basically what keeps me coming back to WhatsApp over Signal so I am quite thrilled to see Signal now have them. Maybe that will shift more people over.
- sagischwarz 4y agoA lot of people around me in Germany from all ages and bubbles use this feature in WhatsApp as if it were some kind of Instagram. I see multiple status updates every day.
- Zachsa999 4y agoHmm, I won't use it, but I can't. It's broken on my Samsung s20 fe. The tutorial crashes the app.
- alexb_ 4y agoWhat the fuck happened with Signal? Why did we remove SMS (step 1 into "only criminals use this app") and then start adding stuff that has absolutely nothing at all to do with messaging? Did a federal agent start running the show with the sole mission of destroying the entire app?
- NdMAND 4y agoWhy did we remove SMS (step 1 into "only criminals use this app") and then start adding stuff that has absolutely nothing at all to do with messaging? I think that "only criminals use this app" is always going to be used on anything that uses encryption by folks that are against encryption (usually governments for some reasons...). SMS or not is always going to be there. I don't think that having secure communication apps intentionally offer insecure communication is the right way to solve this. SMS was a legacy feature for Signal that just got removed now. > adding stuff that has absolutely nothing at all to do with messaging? Stories? > Did a federal agent start running the show with the sole mission of destroying the entire app? I just replied to another similar comment, not sure if it's the same person or not... but then I'd say... Use Telegram! It's unencrypted by default! Use WhatsApp - unfortunately encrypted by default, but at least Meta will collect so much more metadata than you can keep track for. Use iMessage - It will upload your encrypted chat and the decryption key to Apple servers for you. My point saying "it's the feds running it" without proof like that is not the most constructive conversation - Signal is by all accounts one of the most secure and private (not necessarily the same as anonymous) messaging apps out there with no clear competitors at the same level of privacy and security.
- alexb_ 4y ago>Use Telegram! It's unencrypted by default! You mean the messaging service with no SMS support and an assumption that criminals are the main users? Signal was great because it gave encrypted messaging to people who didn't know they needed it. When you take away SMS support, the only people who use it are people who know they need it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- CosmicShadow 4y agoThat thing nobody wants is for some reason on a chat app now
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jellicle 4y agoSignal has already committed suicide by removing its most important feature, "compatibility with other messaging apps", from its list of supported features. It's a dead app walking at this point, though it will probably take a few years to wind down and die.
- barbazoo 4y agoSame applies to every other messaging app that's not federated which is almost all of them.
- jellicle 4y agoYep, and if you check your local app store, it's full of thousands of also-ran messaging apps that are, indeed, dead. While Signal had SMS it had a feature that was NOT common on other apps, now it has the SAME feature set as, say, Whatsapp, and so instead of being a better Whatsapp (because it had features Whatsapp didn't) it's now a worse Whatsapp (same feature set, much smaller userbase), so it's doomed. Just like all the other also-ran apps.
- barbazoo 4y agoFor many it's still better than WhatsApp because it implements actual E2EE.
- renewiltord 4y agoStrange choice in terms of product. But perhaps they're seeing people clamor for broadcast stuff in a secure messenger.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoThat's cool but everyone in my family that I convinced to use Signal just stopped using it because it was their default SMS app. Now it's not.
- Daniel_sk 4y agoWho uses SMS? I am always surprised when this feature is being mentioned.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoCanadians, people in their 30s and beyond, people who aren't on Facebook, random people not in your friend group, businesses. But most of all, the people who keep complaining about SMS support! What you're saying is a bit nonsensical "if I ignore everyone in this group, the group has no one in it".
- Daniel_sk 4y agoI use SMS from time to time too - especially random people that call me, but I don't see much added value of having it unified in Signal. I just use the default SMS app on my phone (iMessage app in my case, which also works for SMS). For me Signal is about E2E encrypted messages with more features, SMS is a different much more limited platform.
- monetus 4y agoDiscovery. If you and another were texting each other via SMS, but signal was your app, signal would just upgrade your sms to a signal msg. You didn't have to have a conversation ahead of time, or save them in your contacts and let signal scan them - it just worked. Discovering you're not limited to sms was nice, when now you have to have an aside - "hey, have you ever heard of signal?"
- caf 4y agoSignal on Android previously worked a lot like iMessage on iOS - you'd use it as your default messenger, it'd SMS if that was the lowest common denominator, or it'd seamlessly upgrade to Signal protocol if both sides had it.
- mgbmtl 4y agoI can imagine it would be a useful alternative to having a bunch of group-chats for people who want to share baby/cat/travel photos. And I can disable it. Win-win.
- petre 4y agoThe chat/stories menu bar takes too much screen real estate. So I've disabled it.
- jerry1979 4y agoAnyone know of a fork of signal that disables this keeps the SMS feature?
- fooqux 4y agoNot likely to happen. While it's OSS, there's still a central Signal backend, and they don't like clients other than their own to connect to it. Any fork would eventually need to have their own backend, and now you're basically no longer using Signal since you won't be able to communicate with anybody else not using yours.
- barbazoo 4y agoFederated Signal servers!!!
- fooqux 4y agoI think that's called Matrix and we already have that. Anyway, good luck getting Signal to federate with you until you have enough of a user base that they're losing users to your backend. They have zero reason to want to do this, and it introduces some privacy issues (what if your server doesn't respect deletions, etc?).
- zaik 4y agoWe even had it long before that. It's called XMPP, it's the internet standard for instant messaging and modern clients implement Signal style encryption.
- viccuad 4y agoSignal is just XMPP implementing the Axolotl ratchet. XMPP is just SMTP and some protocol addons on top. SMTP is just FTP with RFC 469 and others. Etc.
- jcul 4y agoThere is a fork called "Molly" that has been around for a long time. I haven't used but it is supposed to be a hardened version of signal. Not that it supports SMS, but it _is_ a fork that uses Signal's servers.
- subpixel 4y ago"Give the people what they want" At least they realize we want a way to avoid stories.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- NanoWar 4y agoI am a happy user of WhatsApp's Status and am actually really looking forward to Signals take!
- oxff 4y agoIs everything just merging into the same BorgBlopApp?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zppln 4y agoI never asked for this.
- varenc 4y agoThis was almost posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33509571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33509571
- dang 4y agoComments moved thither. Thanks! Edit: whoops - this one was the earlier post. We'll merge everything back hither. Edit 2: je suis idiot. Will fix. Edit 3: I think this is correct now
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- n8ta 4y agoRemoved SMS support and then added stories. Worried about signal's recent direction. Being able to interact with my remaining non-signal contacts was huge. Really going to miss it. In contrast they are now adding a feature I do not care about at all.
- ryeights 4y agoYou can still communicate with your SMS-using friends via the normal means… IMO mixing totally secure and totally insecure communications in the same app (the same list view even!) was always a poor idea.
- bogota 4y agoI agree i don’t see how you can knock signal in anyway for removing sms. What is the argument that this was some huge misstep i just don’t see it
- dont__panic 4y agoIt's fine if you don't use SMS in the Signal app much. But a lot of us only downloaded Signal because it could replace the built-in Android SMS app. By dropping the SMS feature, we now have to use N+1 apps just to receive the occasional shipping notification or 2FA message. I'm glad that dropping SMS means nothing to you. But "i don't see how you can known signal in anyway" for dropping a feature sounds disingenuous.
- bogota 4y agoI mean thats a slight inconvenience at the cost of not letting people be confused that they are not actually having an encrypted conversation. I still stand by my original statement and don’t understand how people are so mad about that. Sure “it sucks” you need another app now but the comments about this in the threat are treating it like signal is doing something malicious
- spijdar 4y ago
- KerryJones 4y ago"Give the people what they want" feels like a slap in the face after the decision to remove SMS
- autoexec 4y agoAnd after ignoring all the people who were begging them to provide a means to opt of having their data permanently stored in the cloud. I'm glad they're giving consideration to people here, but forcing this change on people won't cost them as much as forcing people to the cloud and dropping SMS support did.
- tfsh 4y agoGroup-chat specific stories would be an interesting idea. What I dislike about social media is the wide-reaching effects, being able to constrain this to a close circle of friends (like what G+ alluded) to could catch on.
- baby 4y agoI really feel like the best Signal today is Whatsapp. It implements almost the same protocol and is 1) super lean and 2) everyone already has it.
- _6hmp 4y agoThe reason it's not the "best Signal" is that WhatsApp doesn't have reproducible builds or any guarantees that e2e isn't subverted on the client side or removed entirely. And it's run by a company with incentives that are misaligned to e2e encryption and a history of product updates that don't respect the privacy or preferences of the end user.
- e12e 4y agoOtoh, maybe a small company like signal is easier to completely subvert by Cia, nsa, Mossad than meta is?
- sasattack 4y agoBoth tor and signal are funded By one or another branch of the American intelligence community. If you want more info i recommend googling "signal radio free Asia" It's original function was to allow CIA agents posing as reporters for the CIA mouthpiece called Radio Free Asia to be able to report their discoveries. I use the app but in many ways we are actually providing cover for the military and state intelligence agencies of the United States government much in the same way as when people use tor which is openly a project of naval intelligence
- jraph 4y ago> If you want more info i recommend googling "signal radio free Asia" Could you provide a link? All I can find with DDG is a reddit post and irrelevant stuff and I don't feel like using Google. > tor which is openly a project of naval intelligence Again, do you have a source? That's the first time I encounter these claims.
- daveidol 4y agoIt’s so frustrating to see every single app out there shamelessly copying this feature from Snapchat.
- RockRobotRock 4y agoWhy would they have any shame? Snapchat is a horrible app that is only intuitive if you're 13 years old.
- somehnacct3757 4y agoThat's by design and your comment is high praise https://www.figma.com/blog/did-snapchat-succeed-because-of-its-controversial-ui/ https://www.figma.com/blog/did-snapchat-succeed-because-of-i...
- RockRobotRock 4y agoHahaha, you're kind of right. The app peaked in popularity when I was in high school, so of course I used it with everyone else. I can't stand it now, though.
- advisedwang 4y agoI like it when good ideas spread and are widely adopted.
- tao_oat 4y agoMy gut reaction to this was disappointment that Signal is working on yet another not-messaging feature a la their crypto integration... But the longer I think about it, the more positive I feel. I actually enjoyed using stories on other social media platforms before I left them. The idea of something similar, but end-to-end encrypted, is actually exciting!
- site-packages1 4y agoI had the same thought process. I still use Instagram, but only post stories. It’s fun and less pressure than posts, and get to share fun and irreverent things with friends.
- Daniel_sk 4y agoA lot of people (friends) I know on IG use it only for sharing stories.
- bogota 4y agoThe more useful signal becomes to the non tech crowd the better for everyone. Options are good and they are largely competing with WhatsApp although they have tiny market penetration right now
- agundy 4y agoThey recently announced they are removing Sms support on Android which feels vastly more useful for the non-tech crowd.
- grapescheesee 4y agoI really hope they change course, and keep SMS. That is the single best feature of the android App. They will lose a lot of people if they don't.
- Barrin92 4y ago
- fluidcruft 4y agoI actually like the idea of Stories (vs say a giant group text), but I don't think 24 hours is workable for the people I Signal with because we're not in Signal routinely enough and everything will just delete before anyone sees it. If it were configurable I'd probably set it to a week or a month. Actually, I don't know why they would fix the time at 24hrs. We've always been able to set the time period for disappearing messages.
- Zak 4y ago> I don't know why they would fix the time at 24hrs. To use fear of missing out to cause people to check the app at least a couple times a day. It's an engagement hack, and the main reason I dislike this feature wherever it appears.
- g_sch 4y agoI suppose it does function as an engagement hack, but I like ephemeral messaging like this because it is low-stakes and I often don't care strongly whether any individual sees my post or not. If I did care, I'd simply send them a message directly! So at least in this sense, the short timeframe is a feature that defines the medium for me. Of course, you could allow customization of the time interval, but that adds another layer of complexity, and other platforms that use stories have already pretty much standardized on a timeframe of 24h, so it's easier for platform newcomers to understand.
- clankyclanker 4y agoIs that 24h after receipt, or 24h after opening? I believe their text messages use the latter system and would expect the video ones to do the same.
- dont__panic 4y agoDisregard this comment. This feature, while disappointing to me, is a fine addition to Signal for many people who would like to use the Story format without snooping or ads from Meta. That is a good thing and we should celebrate it. I previously commented something much more negative and snarky. I regret it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pvg 4y agoDon't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Edit out swipes [...] Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dont__panic 4y agoIt might be a smidge snarky, but it's literally the only justification Signal provides for adding this feature to their app. Why is it not OK to analyze their reasoning?
- pvg 4y agoBecause it's not analysis, just generic sneering. Picking N boring things to complain about is not any better than picking one boring thing to complain about.
- dont__panic 4y agoThanks for calling this out. I was grumpy and unfair. I'll remember this in the future and try to do better.
- 4y ago
- frankjr 4y agoI don't quite understand the appeal but if it brings more people to using Signal, I'm all for it.
- daggersandscars 4y agoAnything that increases the load on Signal’s servers increase their need to generate income. What is Signal’s business plan to cover these costs?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tlhunter 4y agoLose SMS, gain Stories. Such a shame.
- YeBanKo 4y agoWelcome feature, as hopefully it increases adoption, but seems like Signal is going the wrong direction. Getting feature like stories right and picked up is hard. You need to do a lot of analytics and UX testing. Signal team is not set up for this. This something, that is nice to have and can be iterated on until a sweet spot found, but in the meantime Signal is missing some important features directly related to it core mission: secure communication: 1. support multiple phone numbers 2. support usernames without phone number 3. ios message export 4. Hidden chats(not visible unless a secret combination is entered) – this is really necessary, because oppressive regimes don’t crack your encrypted, they detain and ask you to unlock your phone and show your message history. 5. Call quality between the US callers is pretty good. But in Europe it wasn’t as smooth for me. 6. Offline mode - when Internet isn’t available. Either using local servers or mesh networks. This is a massive change, but it would truly boost Signal resilience.
- spidersouris 4y agoI have never understood all the song and dance about stories. I can see how they differ from simple posts in the sense that they can be interactive and last only last some time before disappearing (and even then, it seems the concept was extended by allowing permanent stories), but I just don't see the appeal. It forces me to check another section of the app to stay up to date with things, while I could just check classic posts. There's nothing technically impossible in improving classic posts and adding stories-like features to them, but it seems the main goal is to fully leverage fullscreen media and autoplay in order to retain users as much as possible in the app.
- jrochkind1 4y agoDoes Signal have a "classic posts" feature I don't know about?
- electrona 4y agoI had to leave Signal when they dropped SMS support.
- Zak 4y agoWhy? Was your device so constrained in terms of storage or memory that you couldn't have both Signal and an SMS app installed?
- tb_technical 4y agoSignals existence was too inconvenient for oppressive governments/law enforcement, so instead they've been subverted.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- RunSet 4y agohttps://getsession.org/ https://getsession.org/ * Doesn't require users to provide a phone number. * Doesn't use centralized servers. Hopefully Session will stay legit for a while. Just when I get most of my contacts to use Signal, Signal moves to embed a cryptocurrency in the app and starts pushing Storytime. https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/signal.html https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/signal.html
- user764743 4y agoF-Droid list them as having anti-features "the upstream source code is not entirely free" - how are we supposed to know if it does what it says it does if it's proprietary?
- RunSet 4y agoThat appears to be because Session uses Firebase as a dependency. https://github.com/opendocument-app/OpenDocument.droid/issues/200 https://github.com/opendocument-app/OpenDocument.droid/issue... Per F-Droid's definition of "the upstream source code is not entirely free": https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Anti-Features/#UpstreamNonFree https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Anti-Features/#UpstreamNonFree This seems to be a case of "damned if you do; damned if you don't". Session relies on Firebase to get faster notifications from Google servers. This can be disabled in the applications preferences but changes the behavior from push-notifications to polling Session's decentralized messaging network, which makes messages notifications slower. https://getsession.org/faq#push-notifications https://getsession.org/faq#push-notifications For the sake of clarity it would be nice if instead of making such a vague pronouncement, F-Droid would specify precisely what about the upstream source code is not entirely free. https://forum.f-droid.org/t/the-upstream-source-code-is-not-entirely-free/15233/4 https://forum.f-droid.org/t/the-upstream-source-code-is-not-...
- ptsd_dalmatian 4y agoThis is a great way how to keep my friends updated with my life in privacy respecting way. Thank you Signal team. I love you all.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bvinc 4y agoIs this one step closer towards signal being TikTok?
- sigmar 4y agoI'm curious how it encrypts. I've got 500 "Signal connections"... Does it do them all at once (with some kind of "group key" like in group chat) and in a way that can be decrypted by any of the individual keys? Can't find any details on github or the official forum...
- iueotnmunto 4y agoI've always thought creating a shared key which rotates as soon as a single individual is added or removed is smart. There are security implications related to whose decryption key leaked, not sure if that's a legitimate threat model for almost any scenario though.
- jacooper 4y agoThe problem with signal is its a ghost land. Many people signed up after the new WhatsApp T&S debacle, but Facebook played it like a boss by delaying the change and draining the news cycle and they won. Almost no body uses signal, I have chat group of my friends on signal, and I'm really thinking of moving it to WhatsApp, so they actually see the messages instead of it being 20 messages from me and 1 from the others. Its not that they don't have signal installed, they just never open it, I use it as a video/voice call app and it works well, but messages? Its a PITA to get people to actually read them, especially since many of them are complaining of notifications not working. I like the stories feature, especially because its totally encrypted, but its basically useless as almost no one in my social circle uses Signal.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rchaud 4y agoI was still using Signal for SMS, and they announced they'd be removing that. So it's gone from my phone. Everybody wants to be Telegram it seems.
- jacooper 4y agoI don't understand what Signal had to do SMS. its mainly a Secure messaging app not an SMS client And Telegram is the worst in terms of security and privacy.
- aendruk 4y agoIt was analogous to the “Messages” app that iPhones have—a single, zero-decision place to go for texting, that opportunistically upgrades privacy without the user having to understand anything.
- int_19h 4y agoCasual users don't understand (and don't want to understand) the difference between SMS and other messaging services. And it makes sense - it's all a kind of chat, so why would they expect two different apps with the same core functionality?
- hedora 4y agoI wish they would enable backup + moving between iOS and Android. I'd move to a forked client that supported that, TOS be damned. Messages that self-delete after 24 hours is the opposite of what I want.
- fortylove 4y agoIt's been interesting to watch the Signal arc. From tech darling to "why do they think I want this" / "time to move on to what's next".
- rafram 4y agoYou would switch to a new, incompatible messaging app because the one you use adds a single feature that you don’t personally want to use?
- jcul 4y agoPerhaps more due to frustration at prioritization of features that subjectively seem less important than some other desired feature? For example, I would like to be able to log into signal from multiple devices, which currently isn't possible. So, I could imagine switching to something like telegram (even though less secure) or matrix (even though a little trickier for non tech users), both of which allow me to do this. Personally though, I'm still using signal, donating, and have converted a few people, I'm just speculating here.
- fitblipper 4y agoI was worried about sharing broadly and leaking info from 1 contact to another, but it seems like the Signal team did all the right things here. When you create a story you can make it a group story or not. If you do not make it a group story, reactions and replies to stories get sent to you over your 1:1 chats and not shared across other recipients of the story. If you make it a group story, and share it with multiple groups each group receives their own copy of the story and replies and reactions can only be viewed by others in the same group. After having been burned SO OFTEN by other social platforms embarrassingly notifying others when I did something I thought was a passive post, or leaking information from 1 of my subgroups with another I was very worried that would happen here, but great job signal team! The only awkward part that I've noticed so far is if I have a contact in 2 groups that I create 2 group stories with, they now have 2 identical stories show up on their story board. It makes sense and I think the UI clearly indicates for which group replies and reactions to each story it would go to which is probably the safest (best?) solution, but I could see that getting a little annoying if I share multiple groups with a frequent story poster.
- stavros 4y agoIt seems to me that, under the hood, stories are implemented as simple messages. To publish a story to 200 friends, you just send 200 photo messages to them. Group stories are a group message (and hence separate per group), which is a very good abstraction.
- cfhhgtyg 4y agoIn groups you do the same: send a photo message to every group member
- kibwen 4y agoI'm still of the opinion that encrypted private group chats are an impossible UX problem (1:1 chat is fine). But if I were to trust anyone to find a way to do it properly, it would be Signal.
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
- ENOTTY 4y agoThe phone contact list becoming the root of trust for defining personal trust relationships is rather unwelcome. Then software taking that data and wordlessly interpreting it as a binary trust/do-not-trust decision is also unwelcome. If I am networking at a conference, I frequently exchange contact info by entering info into each others' contact app or sending each other a text. I'm sure I'm not the only one to do this. It's one thing to tell two users that both parties are using Signal and in each other's contact list (contact discovery). It's another thing to encourage users to broadcast messages to all of them (via Stories, and the default share setting is all contacts) In summary, while I'm neutral on the Stories feature, I think the implementation/rollout has been clumsy.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- JustSomeNobody 4y agoI wish they would figure out how to have one account on multiple devices. The work around now is using groups, but that's kludgy. I use Signal to chat with friends and family. I want to be able to switch between personal and work phone and my conversations go with me. Again, groups are a work around, but I'd rather something better. I feel like this should be a priority over more features because it's been asked for for ages and they say they're working on it.
- bkus 4y agoPlease bring back SMS support. It's hard enough to convince people to use Signal in the first place. Nobody is going to juggle multiple apps, they'll just go back to SMS default app.
- worez 4y agoso many people I've gotten to switch to signal have asked me about them discontinuing SMS support. my family members aren't going to keep using signal just to message a few others, when the majority still use text. still unsure how this decision made it through.
- m000 4y agoThe stance of Signal is insulting to anyone who lobbied to friends and family for them. In addition to making us look like idiots, when they kill the feature it is very likely that we will be called to the rescue, because the Signal archived SMS messages will dissapear. As a growing company, I don't know how they expect to get away by alienating their staunch userbase. Even Meta made concessions when Whatsapp userbase revolted against upcoming changes. In the meantime, Google have revamped their messages app, which of course continues to support SMS.
- Markoff 4y agoThey did same when they forced people into PIN code they didn't want with full screen or 1/3 screen unremovable nag message until you created PIN, it took them about week or two before they backpedalled from forcing it without option to opt out, but it was too late for me and my extended family, we all uninstalled this POS app. Just for fun now I installed it to use as my default SMS app after this whole hullabaloo with SMS removal, I use Johann's fork, so I am just curious how long it will keep working as Signal messenger with no APK expiration. Though I am definitely not telling anyone I am using it, tried to isntall it on wife's phone, never received verifying message or phone call, no matter how much I tried and mind she has the regular phone with almost stock ROM, while I use Lineage with no gapps. I will ditch it in a second, if there will be other IM with SMS support other than Facebook Messenger and Skype (Lite), ideally some Matrix client with SMS support, that I could promote even to my family.
- nikolay 4y agoYet another reason to keep off this mess! First, crypto, now, WhatsApp features I don't care about!
- midislack 4y agoDo I still need to give them my phone number though?
- Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 4y agoI was so annoyed when I saw this. Luckily you can deactivate it. I've done so, moving on with my life. Can't believe how much I hate modern design pet-peeves and features... mozilla VPN app recently switched to having a menu bar at the bottom for 'home' (default view), 'messages' (update notifications and crap) and 'settings'... because this is how to do it now... of course it has fancy rounded corners... sigh... For all the people still complaining about the SMS thing: I get it, at the same time, I don't. When I first installed Signal I was surprised and annoyed it wanted to be my default SMS app. What does SMS have to do with encrypted messaging? I immediately saw people would use Signal, send SMS, and assume they were securely messaging. Now Google is pushing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services which Signal can't implement. The official announcement back then did not provide enough context, this here does https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing-sms-support-from-signal-android-soon/47954/57 https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing-sms... Are they supposed to 'keep' people esp non-techies from using RCS 'by default' and make them use SMS? The app that cares so deeply about encrypted communication? My thinking: integrating SMS into Signal was a dubious move to aid adoption. I could make the reasonable argument it should've never been done. With the arrival of RCS and SMS falling by the wayside more and more, it just can't be justified any further. Sucks for adoption? Maybe. But honestly, Signal can't want people to use SMS, right?
- jacobsenscott 4y agoI think menus are moving to the bottom because phones are so big now - that's where your thumbs are. Probably the only reason phones ever had menus at the top is because they were just copying desktop app UI.
- screamingninja 4y ago> Are they supposed to 'keep' people esp non-techies from using RCS 'by default' and make them use SMS? The app that cares so deeply about encrypted communication? While I agree with most of what you said, it appears you are implying that RCS provides a security guarantee somehow that Signal is impeding. RCS is badly fragmented, mostly not E2E (except Google private E2E extension), and does not have Apple's buy in. Signal does clearly indicate that SMS chats are not secure. Signal originated as ChatSecure- the encrypted SMS app.
- errantmind 4y agoSadly, this was released in the shadow of them removing SMS integration. From my perspective they have really mixed up their priorities.
- m12k 4y agoI'm glad to see the app is actively being worked on, even if the changes aren't ones I care about personally. Here's my wishlist for Signal: - Edit previously sent messages like Telegram, Discord and Slack lets you do. I'm so damn tired of a big ugly "This message was deleted" if I try to fix a typo/DYAC - A better way to sync up clients, so when I log in on a computer and verify with my phone, it lets me sync over some or all of my message history. - A way to set the expiry time for your sessions. I appreciate that they want you to not stay logged in forever if you lose or forget a computer, but I'm so damn tired of having to re-log in on my desktop pretty much every time I try to use Signal there. - Faster message import when starting desktop clients. Or smarter import - e.g. prioritize the top of the chats list and throw the rest on a background queue instead of hanging the UI until it's done. None of these are huge, but they combine to make it just feel more annoying to use Signal than their competitors. I really like Signal in principle, but I wish I didn't need to give up UX and QoL-nicenesses that I've gotten used to from other apps in order to use it.
- kiwijamo 4y agoCurious about the session expiry. I can't remember the last time I had to re-login. Do you only use the Desktop client occasionally?
- bravetraveler 4y agoDitto, on at least month three to six of the same login here
- Baeocystin 4y agoNot the OP, but I have to re-sync (and thus lose my existing chat history) on various machines often enough that I know exactly what OP is talking about, and these are on machines that I use at least once a month, so they don't go that long without checking in. It's annoying.
- codethief 4y ago
- freeplay 4y agoMy initial reaction was "oh no. Signal finally broke down and has begun adding the annoying social features." After thinking about it, I actually don't mind it. I am in a big (~15 people) group chat with my family. Often times someone will spam the chat with vacation pics or something they cooked for dinner. I don't particularly dislike that, but it seems like posting those pictures to their story would be a much better way to share. The audience would remain the same and it would still be private. The viewing process would just be much better. The main problem is, and always has been, getting a bunch of iPhone users in the US to use any messaging app besides iMessage. Let alone having them post to a story within that app.
- codethief 4y ago> Often times someone will spam the chat with […] and the ever growing backups(!)
- AJRF 4y agoRather they didn't bother with this, but very pleased I can turn the entire feature off in settings.
- twstdzppr 4y agoNeat! Always good to see apps expanding in their feature-set. Modernizing Signal is the way to go!
- jakecopp 4y agoWell, I suppose the ecosystem is moving [1], and now the ecosystem has moved to stories. If you had asked your friends to get a Matrix client instead (eg. Element), at least you'd be able to move to a new client [2] if you didn't like the direction it moved in - and you'd still have your group chats and keep your contacts because it's federated. Unfortunately you're now stuck with stories (or maybe crypto payments one day [3]) because Signal doesn't federate, and likely never will, and the amount of effort to ask your friends to move _again_ is just too big. This is _exactly_ the argument I make when friends ask why Matrix over Signal. I'm exhausted of picking up and moving again. [1]: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ [2]: https://matrix.org/clients/ https://matrix.org/clients/ [3]: https://www.xda-developers.com/signal-crypto-payments-feature-worldwide-rollout/ https://www.xda-developers.com/signal-crypto-payments-featur...
- npteljes 4y agoI hate that protocols became so tightly bundled to client implementations. It's like if the WWW could only be browsed by Chrome. Really unfortunate (for the public) that IM protocol standardizations died over time (FB and Google dropping XMPP for example). Matrix shows some promise with larger adopters like the French government. I'm rooting for them to succeed even more.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- corytheboyd 4y agoOf course my first reaction was "I hate this" but then I thought about it and whatever I don't care at all. I downloaded the update and it's a new tab. They don't force it on you at all. They very very clearly state that you can opt-out and how to do it. This was tastefully done, which is fresh air in the world of social media crapware.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y agoI wonder how much companies lose just because people hate being forced into things, and they develop a strong aversion to something they'd actually use otherwise just because its pushed onto them. What's worse, this even affects the few who try to introduce new things respectfully, because people are so in the "IF SOMEONE OFFERS ME SOMETHING IT'S JUST CRAP I DON'T WANT" mindset that they reject new things outright.
- 2-718-281-828 4y agojust that they have way more important features and fixes to work on. shows wrong prioritisation in my opinion.
- jbc1 4y agoAssuming everyone you know isn't already using Signal, I think the most important "feature" for any existing Signal user is getting more users on there. As far as I can tell, lots of people love stories.
- parineum 4y agoA lot of people love SMS too.
- kataklasm 4y agoNo one on this site should love SMS. It's just a huge security vulnerability and while it sucks having to reactivate the built-in SMS app I totally get their reasoning behind it. Having SMS integrated into Signal was damaging their reputation for something they could never have any control over, so why support it? Any business trying to stay alive would repeat their decision on this.
- aeturnum 4y agoI'm still extremely disappointed in Signal's choice to drop SMS support, which feels like a key adoption vector to me. However, I'm glad to see that they're still building privacy-first versions of popular social networking features. This does the double-duty of giving privacy conscious folks access to those features and showing that there's no need to invade users' privacy to offer these things - instead when others offer them it is in order to capture more attention and personal information.
- dontparticipate 4y agoMy family members will basically all stop using Signal now because they didn't want two apps for messaging. This will make all my conversations less private rather than more. It was a really dumb decision. I was able to convince a lot of people to switch because "it's just text and voice messaging except if we both have the app then it's more secure." I will basically be alone in my usage of Signal after the change goes through and am assuming I'll just uninstall it eventually as well once my family isn't there anymore.
- gspencley 4y agoSame. Only now I will be "forced" to ditch Signal as well, for the exact same reason. And I'm an uber-paranoid privacy nut who uses GrapheneOS on my phone. Thing is, I have all of 2 close contacts who use Signal. The rest use the default messaging app on their phone. So I already had to accept the fact that most of my texts were non-encrypted while I continued to try to persuade people to install Signal. Which was easier to do when it could conveniently replace their default messaging app and give them better security and privacy without any sacrifice. But like them, I also have zero interest in using Signal to text all of 2 people and a different messaging app for everyone else. As much as I want e2e encryption for my texts, and would like SMS to be universally replaced by something secure, it's not like I text enough (or even use a phone enough) for my texts to be a particularly large attack vector in the first place. It would be way more useful to get MFA codes sent through Signal than it would to have my close contacts switch (and they're not going to anyway so what does it matter if I'm the only one who uses it?)
- psalminen 4y agoOff topic, but I've been very irritated they're removing SMS support. It was a killer feature that allowed me to adopt signal as my sole messaging app.
- kilolima 4y agoWhat are "stories"? What is the use case? If it's a low effort way to spam one's acquaintances, seems like a website/blog would be better for sharing images/text and also has the advantage of not being tied to some platform's walled garden. Also, why does a secure messaging app need stories? Is this part of a trend to make signal more like social media, or to balkanize the web? I think Telegram has something like this because often on the desktop browser I'll want to follow a link to something and it wants to open it in telegram. No thanks!
- lynndotpy 4y ago'Stories' were made popular by Snapchat in 2013, and they became the most-frequently used part of the app. They're a good way to give life status updates to a lot of friends at once, and provides a good conversation starter. This revives friendships and keeps communications going. From my experience, they are a non-optional part of socializing. By my estimation, my social and professional networking has materially suffered by not using Instagram or a Snapchat for most of my life. I wish this were not the case. Stories are popular because a lot of people have uses for them, but it's hard to articulate why they're useful. I'll try to explain: A website/blog wouldn't be better, because (1) a tiny fraction of people know about RSS, (2) a tiny fraction of people know how to make their own website/blog, (3) a website/blog is not as well-suited for on-the-fly updates like stories, and (4) absent RSS, nobody will check all $n$ of their friend's personal blogs as often as they open their messaging app. Furthermore, (1) stories are not crawled by default in an easy-to-access way (like Google or the internet archive), (2) the 24-hour time lock leads to different kinds of posts
- klabb3 4y ago> They're a good way to give life status updates to a lot of friends at once, and provides a good conversation starter. I've found with experience that whenever you share something, it needs to be deliberate to chosen people, otherwise it deteriorates into popularity seeking and least-common-denominator feel good spam. I much more prefer the "take photo/video or find a meme, send to specific people each time" flow. With snap, it takes a few seconds to choose, because contacts are sorted by recency. This is the only part of snap I'm using, and it existed before stories. Signal ended up somewhere inbetween, where you have to create a story (an imo unnecessary layer of i direction) and then add people to the story, which is minor from a tech perspective but huge issue for UX. It increases the friction for this flow.
- keithwinstein 4y agoSignal has done a lot of nice work on building a UI that conveys what nerds/paranoid people want to know for private messaging (e.g. "Your safety numbers with so-and-so have changed") while still providing a usable app. But for the most part, the threat model of "private messaging" is one that software can defend against pretty well; everybody understands that when Signal provides "privacy," they don't mean in the face of an adversarial receiver who wants to share the message with the whole world. For a service like "messages that the receiver can read offline but the sender can later delete [or that auto-delete after 24 hours]," I'm curious to see how they handle the UI when the threat model is harder to defend against cryptographically, because it depends on software that isn't acting as a user-agent. Are they worried about people running rogue clients that save every message (or about screenshots?)? If so, how do you do a good job communicating to the nerdy/paranoid user that deletion is not guaranteed? Or does everybody already understand that auto-deletion is best-effort and shouldn't be treated as on par with the strength of assurance that Signal provides for privacy?
- klabb3 4y ago> Or does everybody already understand that auto-deletion is best-effort and shouldn't be treated as on par with the strength of assurance that Signal provides for privacy? No, but this is what we should teach. Even "best effort" is misleading. Auto-deletion should be considered a UX feature that only affects your own experience, not those you talk to. That said, in a high trust relation you can assume that auto-deletion is best effort, same as with your own devices. It should be seen as "this is a hint that helps your peer to delete messages, so that they don't stick around for everyone's sake".
- mbgerring 4y agoThis rules, this really cements Signal as the best real-life social networking tool out there. It’s the app I use the most to talk to my real friends, and I love all these new features that make using it more fun. Fantastic work!
- XorNot 4y agoThis doesn't really seem to do anything I want. I have a channel with my extended family called "Baby Pictures" which is a "subscribe if you want to" channel for sharing pictures of my son without blowing up the other channels, and this seems like a use case for stories...but that 24 hour timer is kind of way too short for it? This would be much more interesting to me with more options - namely: I'd like to be able to setup an untrusted client somewhere (Syncthing can do this, but its not a social app) which would archive the stream of content into a story in encrypted form for me, and let people with channel access recover it without keeping it fully cached on their phones. That way all those photos which I would like to keep would go somewhere where I could get them. Obviously none of this is necessary, I do other things right now (Syncthing and not using inbuilt camera apps in applications).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- glennvtx 4y agoPut back handling SMS please, I don't like having 2 apps.. But i don't care about stories.
- revskill 4y agoThe issue, is, what if you fired original mobile team who released this version ? Main issue with current industry, is, the product changed eventually , but mostly for worse. As original makers have gone. Universal solution, is, everyone should have ability to make their own social circle (think contact platform), with a federated protocol to connect with other's circle contact.
- csomar 4y agoI'm guessing this is the signal for the end of these "short-snap-tik-stories". The idea about "Stories" is that making a short video is harder than a photo (which is harder than a text post); and as a result it'll generate more engagement vis-a-vis the competition. Now that everyone is doing it, the average engagement for each "Story" will be lowered; and "Stories" actually require significant effort to produce (comparing to say, a 100 words tweet). We're back full circle. I wonder what's the new, next shiny thing that will attract people. Maybe Zuckerburg is not so crazy after all. If you've seen these TikTok videos 10-15 years ago, you'd think these people should be admitted to a mental institution.
- valeg 4y ago>Easy to opt out Thank you.
- sevagh 4y ago
- DavidSJ 4y agoMeanwhile, no action on this critical sharp edge for iPhone users which has been around for years, and new users get no warning of when signing up: https://community.signalusers.org/t/ios-backup-keeping-message-history-when-switching-phones/1736 https://community.signalusers.org/t/ios-backup-keeping-messa...
- Gentil 4y agoI seriously think Signal missed the boat with this one. I was one of those folks who used the WA privacy policy change to attract folks around me to use Signal. It worked and they all started using Signal as well. It would have been an easy thing for Signal to prioritise Stories. That was the only thing that differentiated WA with Signal at the moment. Only thing we needed back then to make folks stick to Signal. Instead Signal was building some irrelevant cryptocurrency feature and split their own userbase in half. That feature was already going to be used by only a minority anyway. Everybody went back to WA after FB's stunt on retracting the privacy policy. I am back to square one on who all are using Signal around me. I don't think there is going to be a better chance than what we got with WA policy change. Signal had the funding, they had the tech and folks. The momentum, people, media and even people like Snowden, Jack and Elon Musk were with us. They chose something completely different and irrelevant to what would've helped make Signal a standard. What is the point in having this now? Majority of the users who were going to use it are already back in WA. This feature will be used only by a minority. Another fascinating learning from the whole journey was that a lot of "loud" privacy folks use privacy through obscurity (like security through obscurity) to keep themselves private. They jump ship when their tool gets popular. And these were the loud ones during the whole discussion in Signal forum with respect to Stories. With AI advancements and big corps, we need more folks in the privacy space using private tech. If we don't accommodate non-privacy folks as well, this will be a harder fight than it has to be.
- k_bx 4y agoI wish they'd introduce old media files cleanup (on desktop and mobile).
- gloosx 4y agoNeed algorithmic feed now...
- nunobrito 4y agoDon't care. They can paint that thing in whatever color they want. I'm still not using a messenger with an algorithm developed next door to the NSA headquarters.
- willsmith72 4y agoYou think the alternative messaging apps are any better?
- nunobrito 4y agoWell.. Signal was literally sponsored by the CIA from the beginning. OTF gave Signal 3 million USD: https://www.opentech.fund/results/supported-projects/open-whisper-systems/ https://www.opentech.fund/results/supported-projects/open-wh... The OTF was created in 2012 as a pilot program of Radio Free Asia (RFA), an asset of US Agency for Global Media (USAGM)/CIA, which is in turn funded by US Congress. The algorithm for signal/whisper was developed next door to the NSA headquarters in Hawaii. All of this is public information at the moment. Don't know if ALL OTHER messaging apps are better, but would at least prefer a messenger not sponsored/blessed by well-known spy agencies.
- willsmith72 4y agoWhat are your alternatives? The signal protocol is basically the gold-standard. If the NSA has a backdoor (and yes, they might), I don't know of any other protocols that wouldn't.
- nunobrito 4y ago"gold-standard", lol. Provide a source for that claim. So far you have provided zero evidence for your statements and yet demand others for them. Good approach.
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- Markoff 4y agoSignal devs are pretty much same as Firefox devs - let's introduce feature nobody asked for, while removing killer feature (SMS).
- ngrilly 4y agoThe announcement says “give the people what they want”. You know what I really want in Signal for iOS? Backups, not stories. Congratulations for launching stories, but I honestly don’t understand why it has been prioritized over backups (E2E encrypted of course). That’s a major missing piece to replace WhatsApp and other messaging solutions.
- shafyy 4y agoAll I want is a way to quickly delete media per chat without needing to select every image and video manually.
- top_sigrid 4y agoThere is so much basic functionality missing in Signal as a chat client, news like this - or e.g. integrating crypto payments with a shady cyrpotcurrency [0] - upset me as it does you. No backups, no drag-n-drop or even pasting support for many things on Mac and iOS, no list of links in chats, no jumping to the context where a media was sent, such an non-native app feel overall are just top-of-my-head annoyances that make Signal a very mediocre chat experience. Which is a shame, as I share and support most ideas and ideals of Signal. But I so rarely see Signal as a chat app improve, it angers me. - [0] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In-app-Payments https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In...
- nanna 4y agoAll I want from Signal is an Emacs mode, damnit.
- nikisweeting 4y agoI've lost my entire message history 3 times now in the past 6 years because they don't have backups. iOS -> iOS migration is buggy and prematurely wipes the old device every time. Stopped recommending Signal because of this. Seeing stories, stickers, and crypto payments prioritized over basic data integrity makes me sad.
- peteforde 4y agoI don't understand why so many folks are compelled by ephemeral photo sharing, even while I'm happy for those that want it to have it. It's just not for me. First of all, the older I get, the more precious memories are because frankly, I'm forgetting more and more and it terrifies me. I don't understand why something that was worth sharing today needs to be gone tomorrow. What if I was busy that day? What if I want to see it again tomorrow? What if I'm at a party three weeks later and want to show somebody your funny puppy photo? Second, if you think about it, it's often the most casual, lo-fi and accidental shots that end up carrying the most authentic value. Quick snaps that you don't know are "last photos with" at the time. People pass unexpectedly; too bad all of the pictures of them were set to fucking evaporate. Third, if something is truly not photographed with enough intention or effort to keep it around for more than 24 hours... was it really worth sharing in the first place? Finally, it's super weird to me that people don't assume that anything downloaded or displayed can be captured. In fact, having something set to self-destruct in a day probably means that people are more likely to save a copy locally than they would if you just left it there.
- est 4y agoLooks a lot like Moments from Wechat.
- Accacin 4y agoI'm happy to see this! I've always liked the idea of them but refuse to use any social media app that implemented them previously. I know some people are not going to like it, but let's face it, this is a feature people use and now it'll be easier for friends and family to continue using Signal.
- the-anarchist 4y agoReading the comments here I believe there is one detail that needs to be mentioned. Many seem to uphold the opinion that, while the feature is not for them, they aren't mad about it as they feel it brings Signal closer to the masses and is hence a good thing. One key aspect to consider, however, is the fact that at the end of the day the feature requires code in order to work. Code can contain flaws. When working in encryption it's usually the less code the better, as it limits the attack surface. It begs the question, just like with the introduction of their payments feature, whether the additional amount of code, which could realistically introduce new flaws, is justified by the benefit it brings to a platform that's main focus is private, encrypted communication? To put it differently: Will citizens, dissidents and journalists in authoritarian regimes be benefitting enough from this feature to justify the additional attack surface its code has introduced?
- SuperSandro2000 4y agobut why?!
- angry_octet 4y agoI hate that it is taking up so much screen space. If I receive one story a month I will be surprised, but it has to consume space all the time?
- TwoNineFive 4y agoRemoving SMS support was a mistake.