Removing sms texting from their android app is probably going to make me stop using Signal. It's a shame, but there are not enough people using it to make it worth having another messaging app.
Same, and I can no longer recommend Signal to all my friends and family because SMS was the only feature that would make them consider it. Otherwise every one just uses WhatsApp.
I uninstalled just because of that, I'm not futzing around with a separate messaging app. I really don't understand why they chose to drop sms support, their stated reason makes no sense. If they are concerned about ambiguity of messages being private or not, they could just change the UI. Plus, I already thought it was very clear what messages weren't encrypted already.
Sadly, because it makes a ton of sense. It's the same way Apple got so many to use iMessage. People on iOS generally doesn't realize that iMessage isn't SMS.
I really like Signal, but it's a niche thing for me. I have two friends who use it, familie is all on iMessage or SMS and SnapChat, that's it. Signal would make sense for those on SMS still, but convincing them to switch is going to be an uphill battle. Those on iMessage, why would they consider using Signal, when everything just works.
In my family circle at least, WhatsApp outweighs SMS and iMessage by at least 2 orders of magnitude. In the Chinese-speaking world, Tencent/QQ is the messaging/payment/commerce app that subsumes everything else, with iOS and Android being like the invisible and mostly irrelevant BIOS layer underneath.
I think when parent wrote "People on iOS generally doesn't realize that iMessage isn't SMS" they are not talking about so-called technically-literate people.
The very fact that you're commenting on HN probably means you're technically-literate so probably it does not apply to you.
But I am also curious about that sentiment about not realizing iMessage isn't SMS that. I heard it repeated a lot. I have not met a lot of people that share this sentiment and have not heard of research around this specific topic. So I'd love to put some data behind it.
One does not have to be tech-literate to notice the limitations of green bubble SMS/MMS versus iMessage, particularly in group chats or when you want to send or receive photos (often recompressed and received in a lower resolution on MMS), videos (very low file size limits on MMS), or any arbitrary file type (often not possible on SMS).
Data would be interesting, but we'd also need to know what people think SMS is. For my mom, SMS is the text messaging app on her iPhone. My sister knows that it's iMessage, but she doesn't care, it's still the app that allows her to send a text message, it might be iMessage, it might be SMS, but practically speaking, it's a text message. My guess is that it could be IRC or ICQ for all she cares, it move a message from her to a friend or family member. The important part is that it's able to reach anyone with a phone.
Same. Many others have said the same thing, nobody I know has trouble distinguishing between secure and non-secure and nobody is enthused about having to run 2 apps to do the same job. Signal foundation doesn't seem to care.
Only two? Between regular texting (sms), WhatsApp, Facebook and Facebook messenger, Signal, Instagram, Twitter, Slack, Discord, Snapchat, Tinder, and finally WeChat, which are currently installed on my phone (space is cheap these days) I'm jealous. I probably make regular use of like seven of those. They mostly have different groups of people on them, though there's a lot of overlap when sharing content within an app (eg Instagram content is shared via Instagram, Twitter content via Twitter, even when that person has other ways of contacting me). I wonder why our use cases are so different! Is it down to the fact that the people I talk to are terminally online?
Mostly the same and I agree. So many messaging apps sometimes. Though it's not quite so bad. IIRC all the Meta apps (Instagram and Facebook, I don't think Whatsapp though) can communicate with each other's DMs on any of the apps. And I don't use Slack for anything but work. I've refused to put Discord on my phone as well. Tinder seems like an odd one though - you can't get in touch with a random person you met otherwise on there, and if you have met them and want to keep seeing them it seems better to move to some other form of communication.
Oh yeah totally, after forming an in-person connection with someone from Tinder, I'll move off platform, but rushing that is (at least where I am) bot behavior and hasn't lead me to success. Nor do I really trust someone pushing me off platform. It's just that there's so much texting that happens on-platform given even a low steam of matches that I chose to include it. I didn't include Hinge or Bumble in that list though, didn't want to inflate the app count.
I have none of those, my father has none of those, all we had was Whatsapp and Signal, after the SMS drop it is back to Whatsapp and built in SMS app, my mother and wife have some other apps but not that many, wife has only wechat, mother I think only facebook messenger, so one extra app makes a lot difference especially if none of the contacts outside family use it.
I use other messaging platforms, but when I'm sitting at my desk. If I'm relying on my phone then most of those communications are less important and I don't need to be fully connected/notified/tracked.
Same. I only have a small handful of contacts that use Signal and I'll probably just switch back to using Messages. Secure when possible was a killer feature.
Signal won't stop spamming me for donations nor does the IOS version give me the ability to turn off notifications without displaying "Do you wish to turn on notifications" after x times of opening the app.
Same here, I've been happily using signal for years and will probably have to drop it since I won't be able to communicate with a majority of my contacts :(
They're basically kicking me out as a happy user. I would love to continue using Signal, not sure what the motivation for this change is in the first place.
They're dropping it because the world is moving to RCS, and there's no API they (or anyone) can use to interact with RCS.
Not dropping SMS would mean people getting annoyed at signal silently losing messages, as people use it to send SMS to which the recipient responds over RCS.
1. RCS is coming, and it doesn’t play well with Signal. I once had a situation when I was sending SMS to one of my friends via Signal, but I wasn’t seeing any of their responses
Same will happen for iOS users. If Google/Android breaks SMS that badly for everyone I'll be dropping Google's Messenger. I expect most people would.
2. Proper SMS/MMS support is hard.
No, I've done it, it's not hard. There aren't that many API's, and they've been stable for yonks. Yes, it may cause support issues. In fact I generated one. I sent my wife an SMS, and it didn't arrive. I posted a support question. Moxie(!) responded: we just use the Android API to send the message. I looked at the source. He was absolutely right, of course (why did I doubt it). It was a Samsung bug in the end.
3. SMS/MMS has plenty of it’s own bugs.
Really? You are claiming the most used messaging platform on the planet is so riddled with bugs you can't support it.
4. Spam.
What? I will still have SMS. Everyone will. We will all continue to get the get the same spam. It will just come through another app.
5. Finally, Signal having SMS support gives a lot of people the wrong impression of SMS. They think that because it’s Signal sending it, it’s actually secure.
This where it clicked this was a marketing post.
After reading all that I still don't know what engineering justification is. I presume there is one - maybe it's the level of support calls. Hell maybe they plan to introduce a paid version that does support SMS. If they do and it's a few bucks a year, I would pay it and say "nicely played boys".
Not only I uninstalled Signal, but I also deleted my account, and in the process Signal made a huge mess of my SMS.
First thing, I am not an activist like Moxie. I think end-to-end encryption is a good thing, but it is not on top of my list. My primary reason for choosing a messaging app is to actually be able to message people, then there is the app general quality (fast, light on resources, stable, with the features I need, ...), encryption comes third. Signal had all three, SMS is almost universal in my country, it looked like a decent app that holds it own against dedicated SMS apps, and you have encryption as a bonus, nice.
With SMS gone, it lost #1, I don't have any friends who are on Signal that can't be reached by other means, so that's enough to let it go.
So I exported my SMS, and for some reason it exported it all as both SMS and MMS, making a huge mess that took a while to fix. In the process, in order to recover my data, I took a peek at the code, and while not terrible, it wasn't the best, for example, I stumbled upon some dead code. So with data loss involved, #2 is seriously compromised. Other issues include Signal "eating" SMS, not allowing them into their standard location (probably deliberate, but a negative for me), and for the final releases, SMS acknowledgment not working. I had trouble importing SMS at first too.
And finally, while it has top notch encryption, and probably a good choice for targeted individuals, I consider the "X is on Signal" notifications questionable with regard to privacy. Just because we share entries on our address book don't mean we want to get in touch. In fact what if the reason I have someone in my address book is to block him? I know it has caused major trouble to someone. Also, when I first entered Signal, I was greeted by a scammer sporting the Amazon logo. Not a big deal, not the worst, spam is almost unavoidable, but it is another thing Signal don't protect you much against.
With SMS support, I tolerated all these little quirks, it wasn't so bad, but without SMS, then it is out. And I am also a little pissed off for that export mess.
As for why I also deleted my account. It wasn't in anger. Problem is, what if I uninstall signal and if someone I recently texted installed Signal? Most likely he would send his next messages via Signal instead of by SMS. If I didn't delete my account, the message would have been lost in limbo. By deleting my account, they will know I don't have the app anymore, and if they really wish to contact me, do it another way (ex: by SMS).
The point is that I can use one app for all messaging, and if the other party has opted in, it's encrypted. Generally, I don't care whether or not any particular message is encrypted, but I want the world's communication to be encrypted by default. Using Signal as my main messaging app was a frictionless way to do that, while it included SMS. Now that they are dropping support for that, I will likely stop using Signal altogether, which means that more messages will be unencrypted. It's a loss for the world, but the friction is too high for me to use multiple apps.
Zillions of people in the US use SMS exclusively and convincing them to switch to a more secure platform required making it easy. You might not have a problem with using multiple messaging apps but it sure confuses the hell out of my mother.
I still feel that discontinuing SMS support was misguided, but I need to give Signal kudos for adding functionality to transfer your SMS history back to your phone, so that your messages won't get trapped into their app.
We are not used to companies being that nice to their user base when their business plans change.
I've always found the SMS integration to be lackluster and subpar. I switched back to using a dedicated App because there was no added value to using their SMS capabilities.
If the only thing keeping Signal on your phone is supporting SMS then you don't need Signal.
I see this one a lot, mostly on HN. Nobody I actually know who uses Signal has raised that complaint. Having used multiple messaging apps for my entire adult life, I find resistance to it from technically literate people kind of surprising.
On any given day, I'm likely to use Signal, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Discord, Slack, Matrix, and IRC. I'd like to get my contacts off a couple of those, but mostly not because it would reduce the number.
Signal keeps pestering me to allow access to contacts and to turn on notifications. There is no “No, I don’t want to” option. Only a “Not Now” option where the app will tell you “We’ll remind you later”. Within a few days, it will pester again. It has been this way for years, IIRC.
How such an obnoxious and intrusive set of features continues to exist baffles me. One would think that a self-proclaimed pro-privacy app would know to leave the user alone and to respect the user’s choice.
So no, Signal is not for everyone. Signal pretending to be for everyone is disingenuous.
All-or-nothing is not a sufficient replacement for this use case. Given access to contacts, it's the app's choice to not give the user a "never (for this contact)" option. This is a blatantly pricacy-disrespecting feature with no off switch.
When announcing that a workaround works for you, you derail the conversation with disingenuity unless you're entertaining the notion that your workaround is not actually equivalent to a solution.
Sorry, just got around to reading all that nonsense you wrote there. I'm not sure if you have problems with comprehension or something but you seem to have misread what I wrote.
I simply asked what platform he was on as I don't actually have the same problem he seems to have. No workaround offered - simply curious as to why he was getting repeated notifications and I wasn't.
You're a bit disingenuous in the way you seem to be handing out unwanted and unwarranted moral guidance based on simple questions people ask.
> There is no “No, I don’t want to” option. Only a “Not Now” option where the app will tell you “We’ll remind you later”.
These kind of shenanigans are a good indicator of whether a product team is worth trusting or not, and whether they have any faith in their product decisions or not.
I wish they would drop the support of phone number registration. As stated in the article, not everyone has access to a phone number and not everyone can maintain the same phone number.
I miss the old internet where you only needed a username and a password.
Telegram solved this problem, they just sold a fake numbers on blockchain where you can get a number without leaving a trace and stay completely anonymous while keeping number-based model. Plus, additional monetization.
Pretty recently (one year or so), they started their blockcain numbers. You can get a random one for free, or a "vanity" one if you buy it... I guess they are mined somehow? They all start with 888.
> and I cannot register on Linux without a phone number.
Yep, but it doesn't have to be a real, publicly routable one. You can get one from Telegram without having to provide government provided ID like I have to for real phone numbers. See sibling comment.
> As stated in the article, not everyone has access to a phone number and not everyone can maintain the same phone number.
The article does not say that. I would argue that having a phone number is a very basic thing, and if you don’t have it, you are unlikely to have access to the Internet either. Phone numbers are a nice way to ensure you’re a human.
The article you linked requires them to have access to the old phone.
There was a post a few weeks ago about how homeless people struggle to retain their phones, going through a new phone every week [0].
Personally, when I travel, I don’t always have my US phone number available. If my phone is stolen while I’m abroad, I can’t get a new phone or recover my phone number until I return, which could be months later.
Signal is not for everyone and them claiming it is makes me trust them less.
It's pretty common to buy/beg/borrow an old cell phone and just use it over wifi. Especially kids or anyone who is tight on money. Food/water/shelter ranks much higher than cell service and monthly server + Data plan (required for signal) isn't cheap.
I get the use of "stickers" and voice messages (btw "stickers" uugh this is just a new name for an old thing, it's just image-based emojis, phpbb back again.. but well, someone thought this feature needed a name). These are actually ok communication tools.
But stories ffs. Having stories in a privacy oriented chat app feels like building an electric hummer and calling it climate friendly. The whole "stories" ux is short-video attention bait for viewers, and "get more data online" bait with addictive reward for uploaders. Just zoom out and look at what you're doing, perhaps some stuff is plain user-hostile ux and should not just get slapped a "organic" stamp. And yes, perhaps some users will have grown into the habit of using this thing. Maybe this isn't a reason for accepting everything.
edit: i get it, i'm screaming at clouds, at this point it's pretty clear that signal's position is quite consensual in its social-media and tech establishment critique. For one they actually are part of it and second they market themselves as "mainstream".. But still, every time they blog on how they're such good guys i'm getting triggered. It's nice they exist but they bow down to so much.
My family uses Signal for both real-time messaging and sharing very low priority photos of what everyone is up to. Stories sounded like a perfect way to declutter the group chats.
Unfortunately the 24h expiration period made it unusable; most of us have pretty good habits around screen time and frequently missed expired posts.
> This has resulted in a too-familiar pattern, where tech companies based in the US make assumptions and decisions grounded in the instincts, perspectives, and relatively narrow experiences of US-based engineers, designers, and product managers. This isn’t because the people at these companies are necessarily trying to project their view onto others. But we all are shaped by our context, and in the worst case, these assumptions are exported as though one size fits all.
This sounds particularly tone deaf with them removing SMS support despite relatively vocal opposition. Signal made a one size fits all assumption, taking an extreme position that their users are just too stupid to tell unencrypted SMS messages apart from encrypted Signal messages, and so in the interest of "protecting the privacy" of their users, many are going to drop Signal entirely instead of enjoying the benefits of gradual encryption that Signal provided.
In my experience convincing friends, relatives, acquaintances to give Signal a chance only worked because it wasn't just another useless app on their phone that they would have to use just to talk to me, it was a useful replacement with clear benefits - they could use it to talk to anyone, but we (and anyone else they convinced to join) could enjoy encrypted conversations, inside of the same app.
Everyone IS different, that's why Signal is not for everyone, not anymore. It's just another app in the sea of communication apps and I don't see myself or any of the Signal contacts that I've onboarded sticking around.
Ultimately though signal is yet another centralized messaging platform that can pull the rug on you at any time, and using a different client to use that platform is officially forbidden.
I was fooled by the relatively open nature of the client, but ultimately it's still a closed, private network.
If your social circle allows this, push for a true open network.
All Skype and Facebook Messenger both with SMS support have same issues as Signal, centralized and from even worse big corps. AFAIK there is no IM with SMS support, I wished someone made Matrix client with SMS, it would be insta replacement for my dedicated SMS app and I need SMS support pretty much just to receive verification codes, delivery information etc and once in a few months writing SMS to kidnergarten my sick kid won't come, nobody use and will use RCS, so Signal can keep that BS excuse.
The financial situation of Signal is fine. that hasn't prevented them from asking for more, similar to Wikipedia asking for money despite being quite adequately funded.
I have been a huge fan of Signal for the last few years, but now it has me scratching my head with their questionable product decisions. This article not only doesn't help, but makes me even more worried about them getting infected with the progressive fever dream. It sounds like another company that went from "we protect your chats" to "we solve society's ills". I mean, call me crazy, but I just want to send a message without worrying about Big Brother, not join a crusade to save the world.
I like this app. Zero real annoyance with it. They have some pin they ask me to keep typing in which I have no idea what it's for but I do it anyway out of muscle memory.
Ha, I agree that the pin prompt is confusing. If you're curious, it's used as a passcode for the on-device key. You need it e.g. if you're transferring messages to a new device.
I hate that I lost all my Signal conversations after I replayed a backup onto my iPhone. The reason is simply: Signal excludes itself from the iPhone backup. And there is no way to change or configure that. You will only find out about that „feature“ when it is too late.
I will continue to use Signal. I refuse to use WhatsApp, instagram, Facebook... What am I missing out on? Hell if I care. Eventually if you want to communicate with me you will use the channels I require, otherwise so long. Really has helped me to pair down on useless long distance relations that offer nothing to my life other than obligation.
Why not every messaging app leveraging on-device voice recognition systems to transcribe voice messages I receive in my messaging apps (WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal etc) is beyond me. It doesn't cost much...
The greatest barrier to me pushing people I know to use Signal is the lack of features real-world needs and wants from its users in an infuriatingly paternalistic manner.
For example: most people want to be able to back up and/or transfer messages to a new device (which can happen every few years) or sync to another device such as their desktop so that (gasp) they can see message history when corresponding with someone.
Probably half a dozen times in the last 5-6 years I have lost all my Signal messages.
Most recently, I did a full, encrypted backup of my iPhone to my Mac (which has FDE via the T2 chip) prior to doing a device wipe because it was starting to feel sluggish. All the devices involved have the best security of any handheld/portable computer commonly available and the data was DOUBLE encrypted on my Mac. Every other app's settings restored fine....but not Signal. They exclude their data store from the backups so I lost numerous messages, photos, etc from a couple of friends. Those messages are gone forever.
I can't use Signal for any transactions with other people, even something like a simple Craigslist deal, because there's no way to export messages to provide them as evidence, other than to take a screenshot. So Signal is also useless to lawyers and business executives, too.
When you ask them why they don't support the various things like exports and syncing, there's a lot of general, paranoid hand-waving about how if you're a reporter or human rights worker in a third world country those features could be abused...like said reporter or human rights worker wouldn't simply be tortured until they unlocked their device...also ignoring that it should be perfectly possible to allow the user to choose (gasp!) whether they want to enable such features. Ie: let them decide for themselves what their risk profile is.
You know why their claims are bullshit? Because they've never implemented a duress password that unlocks the app but only shows messages from, say, friends but hides messages and contacts you don't want people to see.
When I mention syncing people start shrieking about cloud storage this and that...which you don't need to sync two devices, as demonstrated by syncthing, magic wormhole, and a slew of other programs that are device-to-device with, at most, a zero-knowledge coordinating proxy, which Signal already has.
So can I please be allowed to back up / export my messages and call history? Can I please see my message and call history in the desktop app? Would you please support backing up my message history to another device with the best fucking device security in the world, that is double-encrypted?
I think that was fixed a year or more ago. Just install new signal on new phone and when it launches it asks "migrate messages?". Click yes, the phone figure it out, and you approve the transfer on your old phone.
I've done it several times without problem. I had something like 40k messages, so it does take awhile, but has a helpful progress bar.
About 2 years ago, it was much more painful involving a back and restore, which I got working, but was kinda painful.
> So can I please be allowed to back up / export my messages and call history?
You can totally back up and export your Signal messages on Android. You export to a file (encrypted with a generated pin), copy that file to a new device, and import that file into Signal. I've done it several times and have never lost a message.
They won't let you decide where the backup goes. I have a huge, almost empty SD card that I bought specifically to back up my data onto, but since you can't choose the save location you're limited to whatever free space exists in the phone's itneral storage. The only way I can back up my Signal data would be if I uninstalled everything else from my phone, in which case I might have enough space.
And I don't want it only as an encrypted blob to bring back into Signal though of course that option should be available. I would actually like the abilityt o export it in a format of my choosing.
> They won't let you decide where the backup goes.
I don't think so. At some point I setup my Signal to send backups to (I think) the "/Signal/Backups2" directory on my phone. My phone doesn't support SD cards, so there may be some quirk with those, but I definitely had some control.
> And I don't want it only as an encrypted blob to bring back into Signal though of course that option should be available. I would actually like the abilityt o export it in a format of my choosing.
That's a nice to have, but it's totally reasonable for them not to support a bunch of random formats someone might like, but hardly anyone would ever use.
If you want a different format, just write a converter. It wouldn't be very hard. The backup is literally an encrypted SQLite DB, and there's a command-line decryptor available (if you have your key).
I'm looking at it right now and you can see the folder it's saved to, but there is no way to change it. The Desktop version doesn't include any backup option at all.
The backup is literally an encrypted SQLite DB
I know this, but they don't exactly make any effort to tell you. While I agree that they can't support every possible format they could certainly offer CSV, JSON, and SQLite.
> As we continue to build Signal to be an alternative to the surveillance tech that dominates most of our digital communication, we will remain attuned to the different ways that people want to connect and build ways for them to do so without compromising on their own privacy, wherever they are.
You require a phone number for your service to be used. That is a clear compromise on privacy, and you have no intention of changing it. Spammers can easily use my number to send me garbage. (Edit: you also require that users have Google Play or the App Store.)
You are anti-diverse since you are hostile to desktop users. Also, you are pro-harassment (Edit: people here think harassment requires intimidation) because you teach people that no doesn't mean no; I say no to donating and you keep asking me.
It's a compromise on anonymity, not privacy. But I agree with it, it's a compromise on anonymity because it avoids having to use another identifier and another social graph.
My entire extended family uses Signal, and I didn't even onboard them, my 69 year old mother (a retired special education teacher) did, because it uses your existing contact list to message people. I didn't need to walk people through account creation, we didn't need to exchange usernames. Even my 92 year old grandfather was able to get Signal to work. He's not great at typing on a smartphone, but he's figured out video calling, opening pictures, and voice memos.
No it doesn't. You can't export/backup on desktop, for example. I'd like to back up signal database to the SD card on my phone, because I don't have enough space to d it on the internal storage, but the app won't let you choose where your backup goes. So if you have a large message database that takes up more than half your built-in storage, you're SOL.
Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? You've unfortunately been doing that more than once recently. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Harassment is defined as "aggressive pressure or intimidation." Can you help everyone here understand how occasional requests for donation for a free service you voluntarily use constitute harassment?
Since when does harassment require intimidation? Maybe it's a regional thing. Anyway, the basic principle is respecting someone's refusal of something. Signal can harp on about how good they are, but they are far worse than even WhatsApp in this respect.
You might think dark patterns are okay when they're in a free app, however they're still dark patterns.
From what I recall, the donation prompt says "not now" to dismiss, in which case you're consenting to being reminded later by picking that option.
If you wish to never see the prompt again, you would have to uninstall the application altogether as no "do not remind me again" option exists, which makes perfect sense considering they're a free service.
I say "from what I recall" because I chose to donate. But back to the point: considering you consented to be reminded later by keeping the app installed and choosing "not now," where's the consent violation? (the term you're looking for specifically, since harassment is not the correct word choice)
> It lays the groundwork for the introduction of usernames and phone number privacy which will offer new privacy controls around your phone number’s visibility on Signal.
and
> Usernames have been one of the most requested features throughout Signal’s existence. Making usernames and phone number privacy a reality in Signal is a massive technical undertaking. It’s something we’ve been working on for a long time and will continue to work on for several more months or longer before it’s ready.
I wish I could get one without my phone number, but it is a way to control spamming and limit people to one signal, and to find each other. But I don't think they are anti-diverse, that is an extreme over-reach. They have desktop signal for all 3 major desktops and it works just fine by all reports. The only thing they don't have is the ability to have it on 2 phones at one time. If you think signal is pro-harassment then the entire world is pro-harassment by your standard, that's a very silly claim.
Exactly. It is for 'everyone'. Including criminals, gangsters, money launderers like SBF and those using Signal's encrypted cryptocurrency wallet (MobileCoin), terrorists and illegal drug traffickers.
If Microsoft, Google, and Amazon wanted to, they could just refuse service to Signal due to this and cut them off their services for facilitating that since they are centrally using their services.
If they can do it to Parler, they can also do it to Signal as well. Easy.
I too am a moral narcissist that loves when massive corporations project their power outside the market to coerce people into certain behaviors. I can't possibly imagine that ever backfiring.
Why are people so focused on the "messaging" aspect of crime? You don't hear them calling for anything else to be cancelled that allows criminals to be criminals. Window shades give criminals privacy too, but nobody's is calling for the cancelling of window shades.
I would guess because law enforcement can go into your house and peek at whatever it is you’re hiding behind the curtains but encrypted messages prevent this.
I really hope they reconsider their decision.