4 ms·

The main things holding back Signal usage in my case is practically nobody in my social circle using it and the desktop client not being as nice as that of Mess

The main things holding back Signal usage in my case is practically nobody in my social circle using it and the desktop client not being as nice as that of Messages or Telegram, the latter being particularly relevant for myself and contacts who primarily message with their computers rather than their phones.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago
Using Linux iMessages doesn't even have a client...
godelski 3y ago
Sounds like time to become an evangelist then. I had to do this in my group and other than security a major benefit is just that getting potatos instead of pictures has significantly declined. Here's my advice: don't sell security as the foremost feature. Sell it as "iMessage, but for everyone." You got stickers, reactions, high quality videos and images. Then mention security, it is the cherry on top.
- pavon 3y ago
  Every single person I converted to using Signal stopped using it when SMS support was removed. HN tends to be a younger crowd whose peers cycled through a number of social-networking and messaging apps as popularity waxed and waned. But older generations don't see any compelling reason why they should bother splitting their conversations over multiple apps, when literally everyone with a mobile has texting. Being a drop-in replacement for texting, so they could have additional features without additional hassle was the only thing that convinced them to switch and now it is gone. I've given up evangelizing Signal, and resigned to the idea that cross-platform RCS is the only thing that will bring encryption to the majority of my contacts.
  - godelski 3y ago
    Yeah I think this was a bad move for Signal, but I didn't see that happen to my group fortunately. In Signal's defense, my understanding is that this was really an Apple thing. That Apple only lets iMessage connect to SMS so the apps were differing significantly. I also get the fatigue. Moxie said centralized because they needed to move faster. But Signal has always moved very slow, so it does feel off. But to be fair, it's not like most messenger apps do much.
    - zchrykng 3y ago
      They were talking about on Android. Signal supporting SMS was never a thing on iOS.
      - godelski 3y ago
        That's my point though. That it is harder to maintain a feature that not only doesn't exist on both development platforms, but can't work on one of them. Signal is only like 42 people.[0] You gotta triage a lot of stuff. I wish the feature still existed, but I can totally understand why they did that. I'm pretty sure not all 42 people are programmers. [0] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824506840/202342569349300244/full https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824...
    - pavon 3y ago
      > I also get the fatigue. Agreed. I put most of the blame on Google for deciding to implement RCS as a feature of Messages, rather than an Android OS library/service that any developer could use like SMS.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    > HN tends to be a younger crowd whose peers cycled through a number of social-networking and messaging apps as popularity waxed and waned. But older generations What is your definition of younger and older? Anybody born in the 70s or later experienced an ongoing procession of instant messaging choices. I would tell you it is precisely that experience that informs my apathy towards the latest and greatest Hot Thing, and makes me appreciate boring old SMS (and by extension, iMessage) that I know will just work with anyone I meet.
  - nicolas_17 3y ago
    Are you from the USA? I don't like splitting my conversations over multiple apps when literally everyone with a mobile in Argentina has WhatsApp. SMS costs money and having it in the same app as a free messaging platform sounds risky :P
    - godelski 3y ago
      > I don't like splitting my conversations over multiple apps Most people don't. The issue isn't what country I live in (fuck man, I got SMS, WhatsApp, Signal, Slack, KakaoTalk, and I've even forced some people to not contact me through some apps so I could reduce). You missed the actual content of the message about how there is a reasoning for this change beyond Signal. You got to be careful with blame because there are often things upstream that cause things downstream but the fingers are often pointed at what's downstream, not upstream. We can't resolve problems if we only focus on downstream. You have to consider both. I hate it too, because it is the mental version of using multiple apps. But that's the way things are and I want to actually reduce the problems, not run around with a box of bandaids.
  - jdminhbg 3y ago
    > resigned to the idea that cross-platform RCS is the only thing that will bring encryption to the majority of my contacts I thought RCS explicitly wasn’t E2EE?
    - pavon 3y ago
      The current standard isn't. Google uses non-standard E2EE, and they and Apple are working on getting it standardized.
      - otterley 3y ago
        If so, how will they meet China's demand that all mobile devices support RCS, presumably because it doesn't employ E2EE?
        B5F91083 3y ago
        iOS already has different behaviours inside China compared to elsewhere, for example showing Taiwan's flag or the nine-dash line in the south sea in Maps app. Based on how those work, the answer is likely: When a SIM from a mainland mobile company is in the device, E2EE is disabled.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  "iMessage, except you can't sync message history between devices because Signal feels you're a fucking idiot who can't be trusted, and that Apple's hardware security (market-leading and resistant to near-nation-state-level attacks) is insufficient." People's eyes glaze over and they go right back to using WhatsApp, which offers nearly everything Signal does, but also full sync. Most people don't care about the differences in privacy.
  - godelski 3y ago
    We're talking about the same company who wanted to scan all your files you uploaded, right?
    - alwayslikethis 3y ago
      Uploaded? You forgot what it was about. It was on-device scanning that was the problem.
      - godelski 3y ago
        The plan was to scan (on device) files that were going to be uploaded to iCloud.
- joshjob42 3y ago
  Before anyone goes evangelizing Signal, make sure to tell your iOS friends that if they ever lose their phone they lose every message they ever sent on Signal with no way to restore them, and the same applies if they ever get an Android phone (latter also true of iMessage, but WhatsApp is totally cross-platform).
  - godelski 3y ago
    While I agree with your point and I think you're right, let's remember that part of the issue is Apple. Might be worth reading this comment from the devs[0]. I wish the feature existed too, but I get it and don't think all blame is on them. For lost devices, well... is that a bug? Where would the backup come from? Signal is anti-cloud, as they should be. BUT, I do think people store too much data. Pictures, messages, etc. I think we're getting very little value for maintaining all of this and that it is mostly laziness. Don't get me wrong, I do it too and I like it and it does come in handy time to time, but my life wouldn't significantly change were this not the case. It's something I'll be irked about when I hit the speed bump the first time but move on quickly (like quitting Facebook). 99.999% of the time it would just result in me asking someone about something months ago and it's never been anything important (because if it was, I'd have made that information redundant, and that's not a action because Signal, that's an action because the information is important and I do this wherever that type of info comes from.) Truth is that >>99.9% of that data is junk. It's only the nuggets we care about and I think it's a bit weird we treat it all the same. [0] https://community.signalusers.org/t/ios-backup-keeping-message-history-when-switching-phones/1736/182 https://community.signalusers.org/t/ios-backup-keeping-messa...
    - walterbell 3y ago
      Can't Signal export the local messages? Wire on iOS has local export.
      - godelski 3y ago
        The post addresses that a bit, but it is a few years old now. I'm not a app dev so I have no clue about these systems. But the claim is that Apple doesn't give you a lot of control and that sounds like a very Apple thing to me. I mean aren't they well known for "my way or the highway" attitude?
perardi 3y ago
I used Telegram during a time when I lived a cross-border and cross-platform lifestyle. Telegram, and really Telegram on desktop, was great. I am a stubborn old man at the age of 40, and I really prefer to type on a keyboard. It had a great UI, it always delivered messages, and syncing between devices was seemingly instant. iMessage, somehow, is still not perfect at syncing between devices, and while Signal is quite good at that, it's a pain to start using on a new device, as it doesn't bring along your message history. (For legitimate reasons, mind you.)
- jwells89 3y ago
  Yeah Telegram absolutely nails the desktop experience like few other chat apps do. The way they put all the functional bits into a library to make it easy to build high quality third-party clients helps, too; while the Qt client is quite good across platforms, users also have the option of a Swift-based client on Apple platforms, a WinUI/UWP client on Windows, GTK client for GTK-based Linux desktops, etc which takes it that extra mile. Heck there’s even CLI clients for users of that inclination. Its security is questionable but it gets users by the boatload anyway because it doesn’t consider any platform an afterthought, they all get first-class treatment. Other cross platform messengers would do well to embrace a similar philosophy.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Sure. Different projects, different goals. At every instant where Telegram had a decision to make between better user experience or user security & privacy, Telegram opted to make a better experience. Signal took significant UX hits to make the privacy promises it makes. The two projects are essentially not comparable. Like, the sane thing to compare Telegram to at this point is Matrix.
    - jwells89 3y ago
      Of course, but it’s not just UX that’s being traded off but also potential for mass adoption, and evangelism is likely not enough to close the gap.
_khhm 3y ago
Signal UX is AWFUL if you have a work PC, a home PC, a phone, and a tablet. Getting messages to flow across all of them is impossible.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Getting messages to flow across lots of different platforms for a single account has been a source for a number of very bad security problems in other messengers. (Recent example: Matrix, Nebuchadnezzar). Different projects, different priorities.
  - JoshTriplett 3y ago
    Signal already has the ability to register multiple devices with the same account, though. The only thing they haven't done with this is support sync of past messages. That seems like it should be much simpler than supporting multiple devices in the first place, and I'm wondering if there's some non-obvious attack that they're simply not talking about or if it just hasn't reached the top of their priority list yet.
- DavideNL 3y ago
  Why is it impossible? I've had 0 issues syncing between my iPhone/iPad/Mac... and i use the app daily.
baby 3y ago
Don’t worry, whatsapp uses the signal protocol and everybody uses whatsapp nowadays
DavideNL 3y ago
> "practically nobody in my social circle using it" What i did is, the people i chat with 90% of the time are those in a very small circle around me - maybe 3 people (which i think is the case for most users?) So, i just installed Signal on the phones of these 3 people; Problem solved: now most of my messaging happens via an app that respects my privacy.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago

Using Linux iMessages doesn't even have a client...

godelski 3y ago

Sounds like time to become an evangelist then. I had to do this in my group and other than security a major benefit is just that getting potatos instead of pictures has significantly declined. Here's my advice: don't sell security as the foremost feature. Sell it as "iMessage, but for everyone." You got stickers, reactions, high quality videos and images. Then mention security, it is the cherry on top.

pavon 3y ago
Every single person I converted to using Signal stopped using it when SMS support was removed. HN tends to be a younger crowd whose peers cycled through a number of social-networking and messaging apps as popularity waxed and waned. But older generations don't see any compelling reason why they should bother splitting their conversations over multiple apps, when literally everyone with a mobile has texting. Being a drop-in replacement for texting, so they could have additional features without additional hassle was the only thing that convinced them to switch and now it is gone. I've given up evangelizing Signal, and resigned to the idea that cross-platform RCS is the only thing that will bring encryption to the majority of my contacts.
- godelski 3y ago
  Yeah I think this was a bad move for Signal, but I didn't see that happen to my group fortunately. In Signal's defense, my understanding is that this was really an Apple thing. That Apple only lets iMessage connect to SMS so the apps were differing significantly. I also get the fatigue. Moxie said centralized because they needed to move faster. But Signal has always moved very slow, so it does feel off. But to be fair, it's not like most messenger apps do much.
  - zchrykng 3y ago
    They were talking about on Android. Signal supporting SMS was never a thing on iOS.
    - godelski 3y ago
      That's my point though. That it is harder to maintain a feature that not only doesn't exist on both development platforms, but can't work on one of them. Signal is only like 42 people.[0] You gotta triage a lot of stuff. I wish the feature still existed, but I can totally understand why they did that. I'm pretty sure not all 42 people are programmers. [0] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824506840/202342569349300244/full https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824...
  - pavon 3y ago
    > I also get the fatigue. Agreed. I put most of the blame on Google for deciding to implement RCS as a feature of Messages, rather than an Android OS library/service that any developer could use like SMS.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > HN tends to be a younger crowd whose peers cycled through a number of social-networking and messaging apps as popularity waxed and waned. But older generations What is your definition of younger and older? Anybody born in the 70s or later experienced an ongoing procession of instant messaging choices. I would tell you it is precisely that experience that informs my apathy towards the latest and greatest Hot Thing, and makes me appreciate boring old SMS (and by extension, iMessage) that I know will just work with anyone I meet.
- nicolas_17 3y ago
  Are you from the USA? I don't like splitting my conversations over multiple apps when literally everyone with a mobile in Argentina has WhatsApp. SMS costs money and having it in the same app as a free messaging platform sounds risky :P
  - godelski 3y ago
    > I don't like splitting my conversations over multiple apps Most people don't. The issue isn't what country I live in (fuck man, I got SMS, WhatsApp, Signal, Slack, KakaoTalk, and I've even forced some people to not contact me through some apps so I could reduce). You missed the actual content of the message about how there is a reasoning for this change beyond Signal. You got to be careful with blame because there are often things upstream that cause things downstream but the fingers are often pointed at what's downstream, not upstream. We can't resolve problems if we only focus on downstream. You have to consider both. I hate it too, because it is the mental version of using multiple apps. But that's the way things are and I want to actually reduce the problems, not run around with a box of bandaids.
- jdminhbg 3y ago
  > resigned to the idea that cross-platform RCS is the only thing that will bring encryption to the majority of my contacts I thought RCS explicitly wasn’t E2EE?
  - pavon 3y ago
    The current standard isn't. Google uses non-standard E2EE, and they and Apple are working on getting it standardized.
    - otterley 3y ago
      If so, how will they meet China's demand that all mobile devices support RCS, presumably because it doesn't employ E2EE?
      - B5F91083 3y ago
        iOS already has different behaviours inside China compared to elsewhere, for example showing Taiwan's flag or the nine-dash line in the south sea in Maps app. Based on how those work, the answer is likely: When a SIM from a mainland mobile company is in the device, E2EE is disabled.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
"iMessage, except you can't sync message history between devices because Signal feels you're a fucking idiot who can't be trusted, and that Apple's hardware security (market-leading and resistant to near-nation-state-level attacks) is insufficient." People's eyes glaze over and they go right back to using WhatsApp, which offers nearly everything Signal does, but also full sync. Most people don't care about the differences in privacy.
- godelski 3y ago
  We're talking about the same company who wanted to scan all your files you uploaded, right?
  - alwayslikethis 3y ago
    Uploaded? You forgot what it was about. It was on-device scanning that was the problem.
    - godelski 3y ago
      The plan was to scan (on device) files that were going to be uploaded to iCloud.
joshjob42 3y ago
Before anyone goes evangelizing Signal, make sure to tell your iOS friends that if they ever lose their phone they lose every message they ever sent on Signal with no way to restore them, and the same applies if they ever get an Android phone (latter also true of iMessage, but WhatsApp is totally cross-platform).
- godelski 3y ago
  While I agree with your point and I think you're right, let's remember that part of the issue is Apple. Might be worth reading this comment from the devs[0]. I wish the feature existed too, but I get it and don't think all blame is on them. For lost devices, well... is that a bug? Where would the backup come from? Signal is anti-cloud, as they should be. BUT, I do think people store too much data. Pictures, messages, etc. I think we're getting very little value for maintaining all of this and that it is mostly laziness. Don't get me wrong, I do it too and I like it and it does come in handy time to time, but my life wouldn't significantly change were this not the case. It's something I'll be irked about when I hit the speed bump the first time but move on quickly (like quitting Facebook). 99.999% of the time it would just result in me asking someone about something months ago and it's never been anything important (because if it was, I'd have made that information redundant, and that's not a action because Signal, that's an action because the information is important and I do this wherever that type of info comes from.) Truth is that >>99.9% of that data is junk. It's only the nuggets we care about and I think it's a bit weird we treat it all the same. [0] https://community.signalusers.org/t/ios-backup-keeping-message-history-when-switching-phones/1736/182 https://community.signalusers.org/t/ios-backup-keeping-messa...
  - walterbell 3y ago
    Can't Signal export the local messages? Wire on iOS has local export.
    - godelski 3y ago
      The post addresses that a bit, but it is a few years old now. I'm not a app dev so I have no clue about these systems. But the claim is that Apple doesn't give you a lot of control and that sounds like a very Apple thing to me. I mean aren't they well known for "my way or the highway" attitude?

perardi 3y ago

I used Telegram during a time when I lived a cross-border and cross-platform lifestyle. Telegram, and really Telegram on desktop, was great. I am a stubborn old man at the age of 40, and I really prefer to type on a keyboard. It had a great UI, it always delivered messages, and syncing between devices was seemingly instant. iMessage, somehow, is still not perfect at syncing between devices, and while Signal is quite good at that, it's a pain to start using on a new device, as it doesn't bring along your message history. (For legitimate reasons, mind you.)

jwells89 3y ago
Yeah Telegram absolutely nails the desktop experience like few other chat apps do. The way they put all the functional bits into a library to make it easy to build high quality third-party clients helps, too; while the Qt client is quite good across platforms, users also have the option of a Swift-based client on Apple platforms, a WinUI/UWP client on Windows, GTK client for GTK-based Linux desktops, etc which takes it that extra mile. Heck there’s even CLI clients for users of that inclination. Its security is questionable but it gets users by the boatload anyway because it doesn’t consider any platform an afterthought, they all get first-class treatment. Other cross platform messengers would do well to embrace a similar philosophy.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Sure. Different projects, different goals. At every instant where Telegram had a decision to make between better user experience or user security & privacy, Telegram opted to make a better experience. Signal took significant UX hits to make the privacy promises it makes. The two projects are essentially not comparable. Like, the sane thing to compare Telegram to at this point is Matrix.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    Of course, but it’s not just UX that’s being traded off but also potential for mass adoption, and evangelism is likely not enough to close the gap.

_khhm 3y ago

Signal UX is AWFUL if you have a work PC, a home PC, a phone, and a tablet. Getting messages to flow across all of them is impossible.

tptacek 3y ago
Getting messages to flow across lots of different platforms for a single account has been a source for a number of very bad security problems in other messengers. (Recent example: Matrix, Nebuchadnezzar). Different projects, different priorities.
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  Signal already has the ability to register multiple devices with the same account, though. The only thing they haven't done with this is support sync of past messages. That seems like it should be much simpler than supporting multiple devices in the first place, and I'm wondering if there's some non-obvious attack that they're simply not talking about or if it just hasn't reached the top of their priority list yet.
DavideNL 3y ago
Why is it impossible? I've had 0 issues syncing between my iPhone/iPad/Mac... and i use the app daily.

baby 3y ago

Don’t worry, whatsapp uses the signal protocol and everybody uses whatsapp nowadays

DavideNL 3y ago

> "practically nobody in my social circle using it" What i did is, the people i chat with 90% of the time are those in a very small circle around me - maybe 3 people (which i think is the case for most users?) So, i just installed Signal on the phones of these 3 people; Problem solved: now most of my messaging happens via an app that respects my privacy.