This situation to me is it seems like it’s a echo chamber bubble situation. The way Signal gets feedback for their app is kinda bullshit. It disproportionately values the input of their own developers and the very most evangelical signal users. They don’t request feedback from users at all before making changes. They push out notifications of upcoming changes through banners at the top of the app, but they never use this same mechanism to be like “Hey, doing a quick poll. Whatchu folks want?”
I don’t think it’s malice in this case. Just blind incompetence.
The announcement of dropping SMS at the time gave those vibes. They were basically saying to users “we know what’s good for ypu better than you do”.
It was a huge strategic misstep. SMS was the perfect route to get people to use Signal - you’d start with SMS conversations and then as people joined signal conversations could switch to secure chat. Now its very hard to persuade people to switch to Signal.
Now google has used the same trick to push its own messaging standard RCS.
Yeah and when people were like “hey, this decision sucks, can you not?” They were like “where was this feedback before, we’ve been discussing this on our forums for months” and its like… Obviously most people who use your app aren’t on your forums. The usage patterns of people with that much dedication to signal will be different from people who are just using the app to talk to their friends and family and treat it as a tool.
Agreed. Another change that got me was removing the ability to set a unique color for your contacts.
“We’ve removed the ability to set color for your contacts. Our users are too sophisticated to need at-a-glance ID of chat by color, but we’ve added the useless ability to change the color of your own messages you send. That’s useful, right?”
There’s no shortage of loud feedback from the userbase in their forums, but they dismiss it all and force ahead indifferently.
I thought the real reason was that RCS was finally kicking off, but Google wasn’t exposing an RCS api to normal apps. Signal never said that was the reason, but it was the only thing that made sense at the time.
Privacy preserving tool has to prioritize privacy. Otherwise it’s actively harming their users. What good would it be for to have an appeal to a larger audience, if it meant sabotaging the main point of the app?
That’s my main problem with Signal. They refuse to add features because they can’t be perfect. I damaged my old phone beyond it being usable and got a new one. Now it’s impossible for me to get my conversation history, because the only way to keep it is to do a backup in the app and then manually move the backup file, then restore it on your new phone. Oh, but you can’t backup and then restore to your laptop. That would be crazy talk. It’s impossible to get your conversation history to your laptop.
I’m a little late in my reply but I believe they stopped SMS support because it’s pretty expensive in the long run. Signal took off over lockdowns like a lot of platforms, and SMS texts cost quite a bit (at scale) to route and process. My anecdotal evidence (take it or leave it) is that I worked at a fairly major ecomm tech company around that same time who discontinued 2FA verification via SMS in regions like India (etc) because collectively it was costing the company millions to use that route for that purpose.
They actually offloaded the 2FA flows to free (for the user anyhow) services such as Google Authenticator and Authy etc etc (which those companies now have to spend the money on each SMS interaction and/or server costs, not the one I was working for.
Ultimately I think Signal did it because it was costing them a lot of money with not a lot of benefit as more people adopted the platform.
I agree with the comments about how Signal has treated its users, and that has fucked me, but they also are a lifeline for people in very unsafe situations.
I see a parallel to how Mozilla treated Firefox users under Baker, perhaps we need a Mull build for Signal.
Honestly, SMS in signal turned out problematic for me. One of my contacts had uninstalled Signal, yet any SMSs I sent him would default to Signal messages and were never delivered.
I miss when Signal still handled SMS. It was so effing convenient.
Their justification for that is so bullshit to me. They let perfect be the enemy of good
Makes me wonder what the real reason was.
This situation to me is it seems like it’s a echo chamber bubble situation. The way Signal gets feedback for their app is kinda bullshit. It disproportionately values the input of their own developers and the very most evangelical signal users. They don’t request feedback from users at all before making changes. They push out notifications of upcoming changes through banners at the top of the app, but they never use this same mechanism to be like “Hey, doing a quick poll. Whatchu folks want?”
I don’t think it’s malice in this case. Just blind incompetence.
I think you’re absolutely right.
The announcement of dropping SMS at the time gave those vibes. They were basically saying to users “we know what’s good for ypu better than you do”.
It was a huge strategic misstep. SMS was the perfect route to get people to use Signal - you’d start with SMS conversations and then as people joined signal conversations could switch to secure chat. Now its very hard to persuade people to switch to Signal.
Now google has used the same trick to push its own messaging standard RCS.
Yeah and when people were like “hey, this decision sucks, can you not?” They were like “where was this feedback before, we’ve been discussing this on our forums for months” and its like… Obviously most people who use your app aren’t on your forums. The usage patterns of people with that much dedication to signal will be different from people who are just using the app to talk to their friends and family and treat it as a tool.
Agreed. Another change that got me was removing the ability to set a unique color for your contacts.
“We’ve removed the ability to set color for your contacts. Our users are too sophisticated to need at-a-glance ID of chat by color, but we’ve added the useless ability to change the color of your own messages you send. That’s useful, right?”
There’s no shortage of loud feedback from the userbase in their forums, but they dismiss it all and force ahead indifferently.
I thought the real reason was that RCS was finally kicking off, but Google wasn’t exposing an RCS api to normal apps. Signal never said that was the reason, but it was the only thing that made sense at the time.
Reduce mass appeal… They appear to stiring it I this weird direction for “journalists” when there better apps for that now.
It seems like their main goal is to ensure it doesn’t have mass appeal and relate to “privacy weirdos”
Privacy preserving tool has to prioritize privacy. Otherwise it’s actively harming their users. What good would it be for to have an appeal to a larger audience, if it meant sabotaging the main point of the app?
The meta data that feds get is not enough privacy for anyone within US doing real journalism
But ok
That’s my main problem with Signal. They refuse to add features because they can’t be perfect. I damaged my old phone beyond it being usable and got a new one. Now it’s impossible for me to get my conversation history, because the only way to keep it is to do a backup in the app and then manually move the backup file, then restore it on your new phone. Oh, but you can’t backup and then restore to your laptop. That would be crazy talk. It’s impossible to get your conversation history to your laptop.
Same with your contacts. There’s people I was in regular contact with that I’ve lost the ability to get in touch with.
On the other hand the three and a half years me and my ex fiance were together have also been wiped out. So that’s a load off my mind haha
I’m a little late in my reply but I believe they stopped SMS support because it’s pretty expensive in the long run. Signal took off over lockdowns like a lot of platforms, and SMS texts cost quite a bit (at scale) to route and process. My anecdotal evidence (take it or leave it) is that I worked at a fairly major ecomm tech company around that same time who discontinued 2FA verification via SMS in regions like India (etc) because collectively it was costing the company millions to use that route for that purpose.
They actually offloaded the 2FA flows to free (for the user anyhow) services such as Google Authenticator and Authy etc etc (which those companies now have to spend the money on each SMS interaction and/or server costs, not the one I was working for.
Ultimately I think Signal did it because it was costing them a lot of money with not a lot of benefit as more people adopted the platform.
It doesn’t anymore?
They stopped about a year ago.
Not for a couple years now.
Is there something wrong with Silence for SMS?
I agree with the comments about how Signal has treated its users, and that has fucked me, but they also are a lifeline for people in very unsafe situations.
I see a parallel to how Mozilla treated Firefox users under Baker, perhaps we need a Mull build for Signal.
Had never heard of Silence thanks for that. Gonna check it out.
No updates in several years so it’s stuck in 2020. May be good, may have vulnerabilities as a result.
Honestly, SMS in signal turned out problematic for me. One of my contacts had uninstalled Signal, yet any SMSs I sent him would default to Signal messages and were never delivered.