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My 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 a

My 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 ago
I 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 ago
  A lot of people (friends) I know on IG use it only for sharing stories.
bogota 4y ago
The 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 ago
  They recently announced they are removing Sms support on Android which feels vastly more useful for the non-tech crowd.
  - grapescheesee 4y ago
    I 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
      I imagine it's a lot of hassle to maintain and outside of the US SMS is basically as dead as landline phones. They probably consulted their usage statistics when they made that decision.
      - anigbrowl 4y ago
        Why? It hasn't changed in years. It's easy to use and glaringly obvious that it's a non-secure conversation. Sometimes I go to add a reaction to an SMS conversation before remembering that those don't work on SMS - the only problem I have ever had with it. > outside the US that's a 330m-person population, which is also home to Signal. Not only do I get SMS from people like neighbors and so that I don't especially want to convert, SMS is used to send payment receipts/pickup notes in restaurants, 6 digit verification codes for many websites and so on. If you are outside the US and don't have to deal with SMS congratulations, but for the large number of people in a territory where it is still a key part of digital infrastructure, arbitrarily yanking the feature is a huge pain.
        growse 4y ago
        > Why? It hasn't changed in years. It has though. RCS has come along, which means that you might send an SMS to someone, and their response gets "upgraded" to RCS. If your app doesn't support RCS (and it's impossible to support RCS right now, because the APIs aren't available), you'll never see it. The choice is between "Keep maintaining the functionality and have people get progressively angrier that their messages are going missing" or "drop it entirely".
      - Kiro 4y ago
        Why do people keep spreading these lies about SMS being dead outside the US?
        998244353 4y ago
        Probably because it is dead in a large number of places (e.g. I haven't used SMS in the last 10 years for anything except these automated things that sometimes are sent), and people tend to generalize that to "outside the US".
  - Vinnl 4y ago
    They kinda were forced to by Android limiting what they can do: 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...
    - agundy 4y ago
      Great context, though from an end user's perspective it was clear why and just left hanging with "find a new SMS messaging". The integration made adoption/integrating new users easier by allowing some to have one messaging app with progressive security for contacts on Signal.
      - Vinnl 4y ago
        Yeah absolutely, messaging wasn't great, although that's a hard thing to get right, especially considering how they have both very technical and pretty non-technical audiences.
    - rch 4y ago
      This post seems say that they'd rather avoid the difficult programming challenges of working with the varied devices and protocols people use for communication generally, and just compete with other walled garden apps instead. I wish them luck, but it's a different trajectory than they were on a year or two ago.
      - CameronNemo 4y ago
        How? They've always been keen on the centralization aspect.
      - Vinnl 4y ago
        It's not a "difficult programming challenge" if you don't even get access to the APIs for the new protocol, I don't think... But there's also certainly something to be said for deciding where to spend your time. Sure, getting regular SMS right on many different devices might be a difficult programming challenge, but if that means you can't spend time on making sure your service scales, or that people are able to hide their phone number, or... Then that's not laziness, that's making a hard choice.
dont__panic 4y ago
I wish they would improve the app UI instead of focusing on features like this. Compared to other apps I use regularly, Signal feels kind of clunky -- the share dialog takes forever to load from another app compared to Telegram or Messages. The app feels like it's harassing me every single day to update. On open, the app often takes a few seconds of loading in my chats. Makes me wonder what core userbase Signal thinks cares about Stories more than a functional app. Half the reason I started using Telegram a decade ago was simply because it was faster than most other apps!
- robszumski 4y ago
  +1 on the update harassment. Are these critical security bugs or random updates!? You never know.
  - dont__panic 4y ago
    Exactly. I'm glad they update the app regularly, but the giant popup banner is an aggressive way of advertising that.
    - kiwijamo 4y ago
      What platform? I don't get this on Android or Linux Desktop (via Flatpak). Perhaps I am just good at keeping apps on both platforms up to date?
      - codethief 4y ago
        AFAIK you only get those update notifications when you install Signal by hand via the apk provided on signal.org.
  - codethief 4y ago
    +1 Can we please have a changelog? I don't care whether it's in the app or on Github but it shouldn't only appear to Google Play Store users (and only temporarily).
- 4y ago
gnarbarian 4y ago
I agree. I feel the same way about signal payments. signal has enough critical mass to start expanding to other areas that could benefit from privacy.
Nitrolo 4y ago
I've just taken a look and if stories aren't your thing, there's a toggle to just turn the whole feature off and it disappears from the UI. I love this! I wish WhatsApp had such a toggle, since nobody in my contacts uses the "Status" feature so I just want to hide it somewhere. I'm not sure if I'll use it much, but giving me a simple setting to decide for myself makes me much more optimistic towards this.

site-packages1 4y ago

I 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 ago
A lot of people (friends) I know on IG use it only for sharing stories.

bogota 4y ago

The 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 ago
They recently announced they are removing Sms support on Android which feels vastly more useful for the non-tech crowd.
- grapescheesee 4y ago
  I 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
    I imagine it's a lot of hassle to maintain and outside of the US SMS is basically as dead as landline phones. They probably consulted their usage statistics when they made that decision.
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      Why? It hasn't changed in years. It's easy to use and glaringly obvious that it's a non-secure conversation. Sometimes I go to add a reaction to an SMS conversation before remembering that those don't work on SMS - the only problem I have ever had with it. > outside the US that's a 330m-person population, which is also home to Signal. Not only do I get SMS from people like neighbors and so that I don't especially want to convert, SMS is used to send payment receipts/pickup notes in restaurants, 6 digit verification codes for many websites and so on. If you are outside the US and don't have to deal with SMS congratulations, but for the large number of people in a territory where it is still a key part of digital infrastructure, arbitrarily yanking the feature is a huge pain.
      - growse 4y ago
        > Why? It hasn't changed in years. It has though. RCS has come along, which means that you might send an SMS to someone, and their response gets "upgraded" to RCS. If your app doesn't support RCS (and it's impossible to support RCS right now, because the APIs aren't available), you'll never see it. The choice is between "Keep maintaining the functionality and have people get progressively angrier that their messages are going missing" or "drop it entirely".
    - Kiro 4y ago
      Why do people keep spreading these lies about SMS being dead outside the US?
      - 998244353 4y ago
        Probably because it is dead in a large number of places (e.g. I haven't used SMS in the last 10 years for anything except these automated things that sometimes are sent), and people tend to generalize that to "outside the US".
- Vinnl 4y ago
  They kinda were forced to by Android limiting what they can do: 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...
  - agundy 4y ago
    Great context, though from an end user's perspective it was clear why and just left hanging with "find a new SMS messaging". The integration made adoption/integrating new users easier by allowing some to have one messaging app with progressive security for contacts on Signal.
    - Vinnl 4y ago
      Yeah absolutely, messaging wasn't great, although that's a hard thing to get right, especially considering how they have both very technical and pretty non-technical audiences.
  - rch 4y ago
    This post seems say that they'd rather avoid the difficult programming challenges of working with the varied devices and protocols people use for communication generally, and just compete with other walled garden apps instead. I wish them luck, but it's a different trajectory than they were on a year or two ago.
    - CameronNemo 4y ago
      How? They've always been keen on the centralization aspect.
    - Vinnl 4y ago
      It's not a "difficult programming challenge" if you don't even get access to the APIs for the new protocol, I don't think... But there's also certainly something to be said for deciding where to spend your time. Sure, getting regular SMS right on many different devices might be a difficult programming challenge, but if that means you can't spend time on making sure your service scales, or that people are able to hide their phone number, or... Then that's not laziness, that's making a hard choice.

dont__panic 4y ago

I wish they would improve the app UI instead of focusing on features like this. Compared to other apps I use regularly, Signal feels kind of clunky -- the share dialog takes forever to load from another app compared to Telegram or Messages. The app feels like it's harassing me every single day to update. On open, the app often takes a few seconds of loading in my chats. Makes me wonder what core userbase Signal thinks cares about Stories more than a functional app. Half the reason I started using Telegram a decade ago was simply because it was faster than most other apps!

robszumski 4y ago
+1 on the update harassment. Are these critical security bugs or random updates!? You never know.
- dont__panic 4y ago
  Exactly. I'm glad they update the app regularly, but the giant popup banner is an aggressive way of advertising that.
  - kiwijamo 4y ago
    What platform? I don't get this on Android or Linux Desktop (via Flatpak). Perhaps I am just good at keeping apps on both platforms up to date?
    - codethief 4y ago
      AFAIK you only get those update notifications when you install Signal by hand via the apk provided on signal.org.
- codethief 4y ago
  +1 Can we please have a changelog? I don't care whether it's in the app or on Github but it shouldn't only appear to Google Play Store users (and only temporarily).
4y ago

gnarbarian 4y ago

I agree. I feel the same way about signal payments. signal has enough critical mass to start expanding to other areas that could benefit from privacy.

Nitrolo 4y ago

I've just taken a look and if stories aren't your thing, there's a toggle to just turn the whole feature off and it disappears from the UI. I love this! I wish WhatsApp had such a toggle, since nobody in my contacts uses the "Status" feature so I just want to hide it somewhere. I'm not sure if I'll use it much, but giving me a simple setting to decide for myself makes me much more optimistic towards this.