238
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
238 points (87.4% liked)
Technology
59710 readers
2005 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
good job Remi, that was the main concern lmao
Just use signal ffs.
Signal sucks from a UI/UX standpoint, when they dropped SMS support I lost any ability to convince people to switch, and everyone who had already switched left.
Then there's the seamless switching between devices...which it doesn't do.
Using SMS through signal defeats the purpose of signal...
The UI is fine, what more do you expect out of it? It has a list of chats, a menu button with menu options, like it's a messaging app not a social media platform akin to discord or telegram.
I'm a signal donor and while I disagree with your point regarding UI (have you used in the past couple of years? It's went from feeling dated to feeling pretty modern), I agree with the rest.
Even worse, though, is that the EU offered them the opportunity to become relevant on a silver platter, by forcing WhatsApp to open up their app and be cross-platform with others who want to. Signal said no thanks.
I get it, WhatsApp stores metadata, and Signal doesn't like that. But they were fine with (way way worse) SMS for a while? The day Signal chose that path was the day Signal willingly chose to be irrelevant for the vast vast vast majority of people.
I love this app but the way the project is managed baffles me sometimes.
.... agreeing to be directly compatible with Whatsapp would mean they agree to surrender the privacy for every single instance of Signal-WhatsApp communication.
If the whole reason for your foundations existence is privacy, it seems that it would be an existential danger to create a partnership with the implicit understanding that it will destroy privacy.
Some level of privacy, yes. Solely in WhatsApp-signal chats. And users can be notified of that, like they were with SMS.
But you know what the alternative is? Nobody using signal. And that's objectively worse.
Cross-compatibility with WhatsApp would mean way more people on signal, and way more people willing to try, meaning more signal-signal chats. Meta would scrape metadata like when two accounts send messages and the like, but the contents of the chats would of course still be E2EE.
Signal-SMS is FAR less private, but they were fine with that for years, and people are still angry about it being removed.
Cross-compatibility removes the biggest hurdle for Signal - the chicken and egg problem of nobody using signal because they can't talk to anyone. It would act as a Trojan horse for pushing signal-signal communication.
Those choices don't occur in a vacuum.
What do you think happens to the nonprofit foundation built entirely around a fanatical devotion to privacy, if they partnered with Facebook. Not just partnered with, but in doing so, weakened the overall privacy of their platform.
Putting aside adoption rates, how does that impact their organizational sustainment and viability e.g. their ability to draw in donations, retain talent, or stay independent?
That all gets better due to having far more users. You can't just say "let's ignore adoption rate" - that's a pretty huge deal. It's by far and away the main thing that holds them back.
And again, they were fine with SMS, which is far far worse.
don't have to tell me that, I even donate to signal
The uae is a huge concern. Their terms demand they get to see your code. When the vPBX company I worked for tried to get into the uae, it was a 10mil boondoggle that ended up ruining them.
so it's a concern for the company, not the users, you're saying?