6 ms·

> It's actually instant messaging without any client hiccups or latency (looking at you, Signal). This is almost certainly poor wifi / cell coverage, not Sign

> It's actually instant messaging without any client hiccups or latency (looking at you, Signal). This is almost certainly poor wifi / cell coverage, not Signal having "hiccups" or "latency." I routinely have real-time texting conversations with friends and I can see the messages are "seen" almost instantaneously, half-way across the US. I've also never had an issue with voice chat. It's been flawless, and very high quality audio. As good or better than Facetime. Also, unlike Briar, Signal is available for iOS, which is superior if you care about digital privacy, allowing users to disable a slew of data reporting (particularly location data) back to Apple that Android forces you to give Google.

Tijdreiziger 4y ago
Can you give more info on the data reporting options that we should be disabling?
Semaphor 4y ago
> This is almost certainly poor wifi / cell coverage, not Signal having "hiccups" or "latency." Signal is very finicky about that, though. I have friends who prefer Whatsapp simply because they don’t have to worry about connection stability. With Signal, you sometimes don’t even know if messages actually arrived or not.
- simfree 4y ago
  Especially on Signal Desktop, its more reliable to close the app and reopen it than wait for it to reconnect to the server. Meanwhile Element reconnects to Matrix super quick...
  - brokenmachine 4y ago
    Element + Matrix. *chefs kiss*
- dfc 4y ago
  I have never had the message delivery status icon be different than reality. Sometimes, rarely, things don't show as delivered for some time. But I have never had anyone tell me the message was delivered when the checkmark said otherwise. Have you had the checkmark be inaccurate?
toastal 4y ago
> available on iOS too Ah yes, the two operating systems: Android + iOS. You can't have an account without registering a primary device on one of those OSs. No KaiOS, no Linux phones, no desktop machines, no web-only options. I'm mad about these mobile-duopoly-app-first services because you can't participate in alternative lifestyles when it Cowes to phone usage.
- hkt 4y ago
  Amen to this. I bank with Starling and having decided to minimise my phone usage am having to move away from them. Likewise a variety of other services.
  - toastal 4y ago
    Honestly my banking situation + Signal is the biggest barriers to me switching. I pushed pretty hard to get friends and family to successfully switch off Messenger, LINE, and SMS for Signal (and now they're confused why the need a separate messaging app for SMS--thanks Moxie). I suppose I could write my own front-end wrapper around the bank, but they ain't paying me for that and would likely shut it down as insecure if they found out (even though there's no responsive design, they don't allow you to copy-paste or right-click, or use commas and other punctuation because the web system is built with TIS encoding I think, and they log you out with a meta refresh after 15 or 20 minutes of activity with no pop-up to save your work (in case you were trying to reformat another complaint message without puncuation in their messaging system), and I saw code checking for IE4 and Netscape Navigator 4).
- toastal 4y ago
  comes* to phone useage
- QuackyTheDuck 4y ago
  nicely said
- MayeulC 4y ago
  Well, while not officially endorsed, there is `signald`. With mautrix-signal, I'm able to bridge my Signal and Matrix accounts. I can also make signald my primary device. https://signald.org/ https://signald.org/ https://github.com/mautrix/signal https://github.com/mautrix/signal
anonym29 4y ago
>iOS, which is superior for digital privacy False dichotomy. GrapheneOS, LineageOS, you have options on (some) Android handsets. You have no options on iOS. Further, much of Apple's walled-garden ecosystem is closed source. Apple is HORRIBLE for user privacy, only marginally less horrible than Google. The difference is that Google isn't a tyrant who insists on making devices that MUST run their own OS. Ironically, Pixel devices have some of the best support for flashing other OS's, modded ROMs, rooting, etc.
- Klonoar 4y ago
  >GrapheneOS, LineageOS, you have options on (some) Android handsets These are not normal approaches used by the common person. Apple is not horrible for privacy, they simply help prevent certain types of surveillance capitalism.
  - anonym29 4y ago
    Apple absolutely is horrible for privacy. To insist otherwise suggests you might either be uninformed, willfully ignorant, falling victim to Apple's sham marketing around privacy, experiencing stockholm syndrome, or an apple employee. Examples include: - Apple surreptitiously recording conversations without user consent (https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Public-Statement-Siri-recordings-TLB.pdf https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Public-St...) - Apple approving apps in the app store that have libraries ostensibly singly focused on the violation of privacy, complete with behavior that would be expected from those with suspicious or questionable motives, like uploading in the middle of the night (https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2019/05/its-3-am-do-you-know-who-your-iphone-is-talking-to.html https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2019/05/its-3-am-do-you-k...) - Misleading users into thinking that their wifi and bluetooth may be disabled when they actually aren't - a UI control that merely disconnects the radios from APs / remote devices, rather than turning the radios off (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/21/ios-11-apple-toggling-wifi-bluetooth-control-centre-doesnt-turn-them-off https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/21/ios-11-ap...) - iPhones send a ton of data (including call logs) to Apple servers, which participated in the illegal PRISM mass surveillance scandal, and conceivably report to similar secret programs that the public is not aware of to this day (https://theintercept.com/2016/11/17/iphones-secretly-send-call-history-to-apple-security-firm-says/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/17/iphones-secretly-send-ca...) - iMessage reports back to Apple every phone number you've ever entered into it, data that Apple probably shares with law enforcement (https://theintercept.com/2016/09/28/apple-logs-your-imessage-contacts-and-may-share-them-with-police/ https://theintercept.com/2016/09/28/apple-logs-your-imessage...) - iCloud is enabled by default. All of your pictures, videos, documents, etc are NSA-accessible, but also rendered vulnerable to anyone with your credentials. This was the root cause of the celebrity nude photo leaks several years ago. - Mac computers had routinely sent files stored on encrypted disks to Apple servers without user permission ever being prompted for or granted (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/04/apple-data-privacy-icloud https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/04/apple-dat...) - Here's a great analysis of all the snooping Apple did on Yosemite with all privacy features enabled (https://github.com/fix-macosx/yosemite-phone-home https://github.com/fix-macosx/yosemite-phone-home) - More various articles (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/05/new-guidelines-outline-what-iphone-data-apple-can-give-to-police/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/05/new-guidelines-outli...), (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/23/iphone-backdoors-surveillance-forensic-services https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/23/iphone-ba...), (https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/privacy-advocates-worry-over-new-apple-iphone-tracking-feature-161836223.html https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/privacy-advocat...). And these are just privacy concerns. This doesn't even begin to delve into the realms of DRM, downgrade prevention, planned obsolescence, dark patterns, censorship, or open collaboration with inhumane, authoritarian regimes.
hutzlibu 4y ago
"This is almost certainly poor wifi / cell coverage, not Signal having "hiccups" or "latency." I routinely have real-time texting conversations with friends and I can see the messages are "seen" almost instantaneously, half-way across the US." Here in europe not so much. Most of the time it works somewhat instantly, but it too often happend, that a single message arrived a unknown time later. It seems signal is optimizing for real time chat, so people do not notice, but sending a single message can be delayed. The thing is, it happened too many times already, that it arrived hours or days later, up to the point that I would not use Signal anymore for any important, time critical message.
- newaccount74 4y ago
  Yeah, Signal is definitely not a reliable messenger. I've also had messages arrive with hours of delay. iMessage is way more reliable in my experience.
seb1204 4y ago
Here in Australia I can send a message from one phone in onee hand to the other phone in the other hand. Most of the time I can unlock the second phone and open signal before the message arrives. Fast enough for me but not instant.

Tijdreiziger 4y ago

Can you give more info on the data reporting options that we should be disabling?

Semaphor 4y ago

> This is almost certainly poor wifi / cell coverage, not Signal having "hiccups" or "latency." Signal is very finicky about that, though. I have friends who prefer Whatsapp simply because they don’t have to worry about connection stability. With Signal, you sometimes don’t even know if messages actually arrived or not.

simfree 4y ago
Especially on Signal Desktop, its more reliable to close the app and reopen it than wait for it to reconnect to the server. Meanwhile Element reconnects to Matrix super quick...
- brokenmachine 4y ago
  Element + Matrix. *chefs kiss*
dfc 4y ago
I have never had the message delivery status icon be different than reality. Sometimes, rarely, things don't show as delivered for some time. But I have never had anyone tell me the message was delivered when the checkmark said otherwise. Have you had the checkmark be inaccurate?

toastal 4y ago

> available on iOS too Ah yes, the two operating systems: Android + iOS. You can't have an account without registering a primary device on one of those OSs. No KaiOS, no Linux phones, no desktop machines, no web-only options. I'm mad about these mobile-duopoly-app-first services because you can't participate in alternative lifestyles when it Cowes to phone usage.

hkt 4y ago
Amen to this. I bank with Starling and having decided to minimise my phone usage am having to move away from them. Likewise a variety of other services.
- toastal 4y ago
  Honestly my banking situation + Signal is the biggest barriers to me switching. I pushed pretty hard to get friends and family to successfully switch off Messenger, LINE, and SMS for Signal (and now they're confused why the need a separate messaging app for SMS--thanks Moxie). I suppose I could write my own front-end wrapper around the bank, but they ain't paying me for that and would likely shut it down as insecure if they found out (even though there's no responsive design, they don't allow you to copy-paste or right-click, or use commas and other punctuation because the web system is built with TIS encoding I think, and they log you out with a meta refresh after 15 or 20 minutes of activity with no pop-up to save your work (in case you were trying to reformat another complaint message without puncuation in their messaging system), and I saw code checking for IE4 and Netscape Navigator 4).
toastal 4y ago
comes* to phone useage
QuackyTheDuck 4y ago
nicely said
MayeulC 4y ago
Well, while not officially endorsed, there is `signald`. With mautrix-signal, I'm able to bridge my Signal and Matrix accounts. I can also make signald my primary device. https://signald.org/ https://signald.org/ https://github.com/mautrix/signal https://github.com/mautrix/signal

anonym29 4y ago

>iOS, which is superior for digital privacy False dichotomy. GrapheneOS, LineageOS, you have options on (some) Android handsets. You have no options on iOS. Further, much of Apple's walled-garden ecosystem is closed source. Apple is HORRIBLE for user privacy, only marginally less horrible than Google. The difference is that Google isn't a tyrant who insists on making devices that MUST run their own OS. Ironically, Pixel devices have some of the best support for flashing other OS's, modded ROMs, rooting, etc.

Klonoar 4y ago
>GrapheneOS, LineageOS, you have options on (some) Android handsets These are not normal approaches used by the common person. Apple is not horrible for privacy, they simply help prevent certain types of surveillance capitalism.
- anonym29 4y ago
  Apple absolutely is horrible for privacy. To insist otherwise suggests you might either be uninformed, willfully ignorant, falling victim to Apple's sham marketing around privacy, experiencing stockholm syndrome, or an apple employee. Examples include: - Apple surreptitiously recording conversations without user consent (https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Public-Statement-Siri-recordings-TLB.pdf https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Public-St...) - Apple approving apps in the app store that have libraries ostensibly singly focused on the violation of privacy, complete with behavior that would be expected from those with suspicious or questionable motives, like uploading in the middle of the night (https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2019/05/its-3-am-do-you-know-who-your-iphone-is-talking-to.html https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2019/05/its-3-am-do-you-k...) - Misleading users into thinking that their wifi and bluetooth may be disabled when they actually aren't - a UI control that merely disconnects the radios from APs / remote devices, rather than turning the radios off (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/21/ios-11-apple-toggling-wifi-bluetooth-control-centre-doesnt-turn-them-off https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/21/ios-11-ap...) - iPhones send a ton of data (including call logs) to Apple servers, which participated in the illegal PRISM mass surveillance scandal, and conceivably report to similar secret programs that the public is not aware of to this day (https://theintercept.com/2016/11/17/iphones-secretly-send-call-history-to-apple-security-firm-says/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/17/iphones-secretly-send-ca...) - iMessage reports back to Apple every phone number you've ever entered into it, data that Apple probably shares with law enforcement (https://theintercept.com/2016/09/28/apple-logs-your-imessage-contacts-and-may-share-them-with-police/ https://theintercept.com/2016/09/28/apple-logs-your-imessage...) - iCloud is enabled by default. All of your pictures, videos, documents, etc are NSA-accessible, but also rendered vulnerable to anyone with your credentials. This was the root cause of the celebrity nude photo leaks several years ago. - Mac computers had routinely sent files stored on encrypted disks to Apple servers without user permission ever being prompted for or granted (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/04/apple-data-privacy-icloud https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/04/apple-dat...) - Here's a great analysis of all the snooping Apple did on Yosemite with all privacy features enabled (https://github.com/fix-macosx/yosemite-phone-home https://github.com/fix-macosx/yosemite-phone-home) - More various articles (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/05/new-guidelines-outline-what-iphone-data-apple-can-give-to-police/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/05/new-guidelines-outli...), (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/23/iphone-backdoors-surveillance-forensic-services https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/23/iphone-ba...), (https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/privacy-advocates-worry-over-new-apple-iphone-tracking-feature-161836223.html https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/privacy-advocat...). And these are just privacy concerns. This doesn't even begin to delve into the realms of DRM, downgrade prevention, planned obsolescence, dark patterns, censorship, or open collaboration with inhumane, authoritarian regimes.

hutzlibu 4y ago

"This is almost certainly poor wifi / cell coverage, not Signal having "hiccups" or "latency." I routinely have real-time texting conversations with friends and I can see the messages are "seen" almost instantaneously, half-way across the US." Here in europe not so much. Most of the time it works somewhat instantly, but it too often happend, that a single message arrived a unknown time later. It seems signal is optimizing for real time chat, so people do not notice, but sending a single message can be delayed. The thing is, it happened too many times already, that it arrived hours or days later, up to the point that I would not use Signal anymore for any important, time critical message.

newaccount74 4y ago
Yeah, Signal is definitely not a reliable messenger. I've also had messages arrive with hours of delay. iMessage is way more reliable in my experience.

seb1204 4y ago

Here in Australia I can send a message from one phone in onee hand to the other phone in the other hand. Most of the time I can unlock the second phone and open signal before the message arrives. Fast enough for me but not instant.