On the one hand I admire Signal for its cryptography and privacy features in general, but on the other hand, the user experience always has been severely lacking. The article sounds like they are...
On the one hand I admire Signal for its cryptography and privacy features in general, but on the other hand, the user experience always has been severely lacking.
The article sounds like they are trying to change exactly that, but I think it's too little, too late. A billion users within five years sounds downright ludicrous as a goal.
Personally I stopped using it a long time ago because of their restrictive "you may not use more than three desktop clients"-policy. Dual-booting a single machine of course takes up two slots, so I was limited to two machines total.
That limit was apparently since raised to five, but it's still strange. Is it a technical limitation? Is it so you can recognize when foreign devices are added to your account? They could at least tell you why the limit is in place, but "There is a limit of 5 linked devices. Confirm you have not hit this limit." is all I could find about it on their website just now.
Call me a pessimist, but with WhatsApp having introduced e2e crypto and Matrix.org rapidly approaching maturity (with device cross-signing and end-to-end by-default on the horizon), I can only see Signal dying a slow death.
Thank you for that counterpoint, maybe I'm simply caught up in my own filter bubble. I thought Riot was leagues ahead of Signal, even for one-on-one chats, but with the caveat that I haven't used...
Thank you for that counterpoint, maybe I'm simply caught up in my own filter bubble.
I thought Riot was leagues ahead of Signal, even for one-on-one chats, but with the caveat that I haven't used the latter in a while. I generally don't really use SMS anymore, and that seems to hold for most people I know (Germany) -- WhatsApp is free, whereas SMS still cost money. You generally get some free per month (depending on your contract), but those can be used up quickly in a back-and-forth chat, so people are almost exclusively using WhatsApp, rarely Telegram or, in my case, Matrix.
I'm sorry to hear you had such a bad time on Matrix; I mostly use it to communicate with a few trusted friends (using a self-hosted server), and we're also using it for communication at work as a Slack replacement.
The porn channels struck me as mere annoyance; there is going to be some spam in a decentralized system after all. I can see how this can be a turn-off, but then again, I'm not browsing random channels very often, so it's rarely a problem.
I don't think overall popularity can be judged by personal experience since each group of people can standardize on something different. In fact, personal experience can be actively misleading....
I don't think overall popularity can be judged by personal experience since each group of people can standardize on something different. In fact, personal experience can be actively misleading.
For the people I know, SMS is the most common, a few people use Facebook Messenger or Google Hangouts, and I don't know anyone who uses WhatsApp.
But I'm not going to go by that because I know from the media that WhatsApp and iPhone's messaging system are both extremely popular.
@Keegan: I'll echo the sentiments from @DataWraith ... I'm so sorry that you had a negative experience - both from the awful content in a matrix room, and of course the doxxing. Its still early...
@Keegan: I'll echo the sentiments from @DataWraith ... I'm so sorry that you had a negative experience - both from the awful content in a matrix room, and of course the doxxing. Its still early days for matrix and apps like Riot; not unlike spam from the early email days.
I do think that matrix seems focused on group messaging first - not unlike IRC - while signal seemed focused on 1-to-1 messaging first. I do however think there will be a point of some convergence in the future. My hope is that users will benefit from both efforts.
Also, i do agree that - at least in the U.S. - text/SMS has a lower barrier due to cost vs data costs (as compared to mobile networks outside the U.S.)...So for either a network (e.g. matrix), or an app (e.g. riot or signal app) to succeed in the U.S. these considerations need to be remembered by the relevant devs, and these considerations need to be part of any overall dev. effort. (My opinion only of course.)
All that being said, I'm biased because of my support of matrix. Also, my most frequent use-case for matrix is for private rooms for my immediate family to of course communicate but also privately share photos among us, etc. Matrix's api access also allows for me to set up little automated, command line clients (scripts really) to download/archive the media that we share...why? for automated backups. Signal was slightly easier for family to wrap their brain around (e.g. - "its just a different texting app, right?") initially...but after they understood that matrix is like slack, MS Teams, IRC, etc., and that different contacts in SMS are like diff. rooms in matrix, they understood it...and now as a tech enthusiast i have access - again for archival purposes - to all of our family's chats and media...and they are thankful for this preservation! ;-)
Yes, that makes sense. I find it interesting that the SMS/data plan balance is exactly inverted in the two countries. If you go over your data allowance here, you're generally throttled to a lower...
Yes, that makes sense.
I find it interesting that the SMS/data plan balance is exactly inverted in the two countries. If you go over your data allowance here, you're generally throttled to a lower speed but don't lose access or have to pay extra. SMS on the other hand cost about 0.10€ per message.
I like Signal. I used it for over a year as my default SMS app because, at the very least, even if not a single person in my contacts list used it, I could still send regular texts with it. But it...
I like Signal. I used it for over a year as my default SMS app because, at the very least, even if not a single person in my contacts list used it, I could still send regular texts with it.
But it felt so superfluous after a while because ultimately I'm just using it for regular texting, and at that point I really gain nothing with it. I can't even integrate regular texting with my PC, only the e2e encrypted messaging integrates with it (unless that has changed), so I was just replacing my default sms app with another sms app, and after that realization I kinda just gave up.
Everyone I know just uses WhatsApp, and that includes people related to any job I may do, so I have to have that installed regardless, making Signal even more pointless.
I also tried Telegram X in the meantime and actually have a legitimate use for it, as several apps I follow have active Telegram channels with updates.
So Signal just... gives me nothing. It's a fine app, it works, but that lack of adoption after years, coupled with the lack of any innovative features (that I know of) really is a hard sell. And if I just want a texting app... then I'll stick with whatever app my phone came with, which funnily enough actually lets me text from my PC (talking about Google Messages), unlike Signal.
And this isn't even getting into the features Signal lacks in comparison to other messaging apps, because if I got into that it'd just get even sadder.
I wish them the best, but I really find it hard to see the light for this project.
If my texts could be encrypted even if people don't use signal that would be so helpful. Not many of my friends use it so the encryption is sort of moot unfortunately.. I'm not sure how this would...
If my texts could be encrypted even if people don't use signal that would be so helpful. Not many of my friends use it so the encryption is sort of moot unfortunately.. I'm not sure how this would be done it's just something I've thought of
On the one hand I admire Signal for its cryptography and privacy features in general, but on the other hand, the user experience always has been severely lacking.
The article sounds like they are trying to change exactly that, but I think it's too little, too late. A billion users within five years sounds downright ludicrous as a goal.
Personally I stopped using it a long time ago because of their restrictive "you may not use more than three desktop clients"-policy. Dual-booting a single machine of course takes up two slots, so I was limited to two machines total.
That limit was apparently since raised to five, but it's still strange. Is it a technical limitation? Is it so you can recognize when foreign devices are added to your account? They could at least tell you why the limit is in place, but "There is a limit of 5 linked devices. Confirm you have not hit this limit." is all I could find about it on their website just now.
Call me a pessimist, but with WhatsApp having introduced e2e crypto and Matrix.org rapidly approaching maturity (with device cross-signing and end-to-end by-default on the horizon), I can only see Signal dying a slow death.
Thank you for that counterpoint, maybe I'm simply caught up in my own filter bubble.
I thought Riot was leagues ahead of Signal, even for one-on-one chats, but with the caveat that I haven't used the latter in a while. I generally don't really use SMS anymore, and that seems to hold for most people I know (Germany) -- WhatsApp is free, whereas SMS still cost money. You generally get some free per month (depending on your contract), but those can be used up quickly in a back-and-forth chat, so people are almost exclusively using WhatsApp, rarely Telegram or, in my case, Matrix.
I'm sorry to hear you had such a bad time on Matrix; I mostly use it to communicate with a few trusted friends (using a self-hosted server), and we're also using it for communication at work as a Slack replacement.
The porn channels struck me as mere annoyance; there is going to be some spam in a decentralized system after all. I can see how this can be a turn-off, but then again, I'm not browsing random channels very often, so it's rarely a problem.
I don't think overall popularity can be judged by personal experience since each group of people can standardize on something different. In fact, personal experience can be actively misleading.
For the people I know, SMS is the most common, a few people use Facebook Messenger or Google Hangouts, and I don't know anyone who uses WhatsApp.
But I'm not going to go by that because I know from the media that WhatsApp and iPhone's messaging system are both extremely popular.
@Keegan: I'll echo the sentiments from @DataWraith ... I'm so sorry that you had a negative experience - both from the awful content in a matrix room, and of course the doxxing. Its still early days for matrix and apps like Riot; not unlike spam from the early email days.
I do think that matrix seems focused on group messaging first - not unlike IRC - while signal seemed focused on 1-to-1 messaging first. I do however think there will be a point of some convergence in the future. My hope is that users will benefit from both efforts.
Also, i do agree that - at least in the U.S. - text/SMS has a lower barrier due to cost vs data costs (as compared to mobile networks outside the U.S.)...So for either a network (e.g. matrix), or an app (e.g. riot or signal app) to succeed in the U.S. these considerations need to be remembered by the relevant devs, and these considerations need to be part of any overall dev. effort. (My opinion only of course.)
All that being said, I'm biased because of my support of matrix. Also, my most frequent use-case for matrix is for private rooms for my immediate family to of course communicate but also privately share photos among us, etc. Matrix's api access also allows for me to set up little automated, command line clients (scripts really) to download/archive the media that we share...why? for automated backups. Signal was slightly easier for family to wrap their brain around (e.g. - "its just a different texting app, right?") initially...but after they understood that matrix is like slack, MS Teams, IRC, etc., and that different contacts in SMS are like diff. rooms in matrix, they understood it...and now as a tech enthusiast i have access - again for archival purposes - to all of our family's chats and media...and they are thankful for this preservation! ;-)
Yes, that makes sense.
I find it interesting that the SMS/data plan balance is exactly inverted in the two countries. If you go over your data allowance here, you're generally throttled to a lower speed but don't lose access or have to pay extra. SMS on the other hand cost about 0.10€ per message.
I like Signal. I used it for over a year as my default SMS app because, at the very least, even if not a single person in my contacts list used it, I could still send regular texts with it.
But it felt so superfluous after a while because ultimately I'm just using it for regular texting, and at that point I really gain nothing with it. I can't even integrate regular texting with my PC, only the e2e encrypted messaging integrates with it (unless that has changed), so I was just replacing my default sms app with another sms app, and after that realization I kinda just gave up.
Everyone I know just uses WhatsApp, and that includes people related to any job I may do, so I have to have that installed regardless, making Signal even more pointless.
I also tried Telegram X in the meantime and actually have a legitimate use for it, as several apps I follow have active Telegram channels with updates.
So Signal just... gives me nothing. It's a fine app, it works, but that lack of adoption after years, coupled with the lack of any innovative features (that I know of) really is a hard sell. And if I just want a texting app... then I'll stick with whatever app my phone came with, which funnily enough actually lets me text from my PC (talking about Google Messages), unlike Signal.
And this isn't even getting into the features Signal lacks in comparison to other messaging apps, because if I got into that it'd just get even sadder.
I wish them the best, but I really find it hard to see the light for this project.
If my texts could be encrypted even if people don't use signal that would be so helpful. Not many of my friends use it so the encryption is sort of moot unfortunately.. I'm not sure how this would be done it's just something I've thought of