My feelings vs Signal have thawed a little bit, for three reasons.
First, there’s one semi-allowed fork.
The fact that using forks (including Molly, technically) actually break Signal’s terms of service is still bad. Gotta use their servers exactly and gotta use their clients exactly. We have a word for that and that word is proprietary.
Second, you no longer need to sign up with the phone number for the device you’re using it on. You can give a dumbphone number and get the verification code over SMS. Ergo people like me who don’t have smart phone can use it. The fact that I literally could not use the app (without buying a new device) was a pretty big showstopper before.
The fact that using the app requires me to give them my phone number is still bad. That’s not something that Postfix or Prosody requires for me to join the SMTP or XMPP networks.
Third, it no longer gives out your phone number to everyone you’re chatting with. This is huge! That was an incredibly showstopping showstopper before. And this one completely fixed, unlike the previous two issues where there’s a “slightly better but still bad” update. Good job. It was only recently fixed. So people who are like “what how come you are are on Signal now after hating it so much?!?!”, well, it’s because they only super recently fixed a huge flaw in it. But massive kudos to them: they did fix it.
The fourth issue, that it is tied into texting on your phone so people can’t SMS normally to you if their phone thinks you’re still on Signal but you’ve uninstalled it, I believe that’s being fixed also or maybe even was fixed a while ago, as part of the move to usernames. I’m not sure, so make sure you deregister properly before you install and/or accidentally drop your phone into wet concrete.
Most people do not switch messaging apps lightly. Well, a lot of people seem to join messaging apps lightly but then it’s hard to get out of them.
Saying “We can switch to Line because it’s at least better than Discord” or “We can switch to WhatsApp because it’s at least better than Line” or “We can switch to Signal because it’s at least better than WhatsApp” are all true statements, and for what it’s worth, I would stay even further from Discord, Line, and WhatsApp than Signal. I’ve never had a Line or WhatsApp account and I hate the Discord account that I made in a moment of incrediby poor judgement. So saying “Why do you complain about Signal, it’s objectively better than WhatsApp” is so wrong headed to me someone who has never been on WhatsApp or “Viber” or “Line” or “Messenger” or “AIM” or whatever the junk du jour is.
Asking people to join a network is a huge ask not because how hard it is to join (not always that hard) but how incredibly hard it is to get out once you have joined.
Perfect is the enemy of good, right? Ergo “good enough” is better than perfect since you can get to it in reality, the thinking goes. I would agree with that when and only when that “good enough” solution is a stepping stone towards a better tomorrow or at the very least not a hindrance against it. To the extent that the “enh, good enough” solution paints us into an even deeper and messier corner it’s not actually good enough.
Signal is a proprietary chat app that ties accounts to phone numbers.
I saw a blog post titled “How To Use Signal Without Giving Out Your Phone Number”. It… said to get new phone number to give out instead.
“How To Drive To Work Without Using Your Car: Get A New Car”
“How To Keep Food Cold Without Using Your Fridge: Get A New Fridge”
I’ve found a super good solution that works for me:
“How To Not Give Out Your Phone Number When Using Signal: Don’t Use Signal”
The blog post said to get a Google Voice number (which requires giving your own phone number to Google 💔, and living in US or Canada) and using that.
And also the method involved buying a whole new $340 laptop and not using that laptop for anything else. It was bizarre.
Signal leaks your phone number to everyone you talk to, and if you want to quit using it, everyone who had you on there can no longer text you, and if, when you get a new phone number, you get the used phone number of someone who used to have signal, you’re SOL. It literally destroys the texting capability of phones.
A phone needs to do three things and it destroys one of them, infects that feature and locks it into its own network. It’s more of a virus than an app.
moddedBear says Signal isn’t proprietary.
But the truth is that they discourage other clients connecting to their servers (so godspeed, users of Punkt MP02 Pigeon) and running other servers. Client: gotta use their version. Server: gotta use their version.
However, Signal has been hampered by Iranian blocking of SMS validation text codes that Signal attempts to send to its users.
No duh. The phone number requirement strikes again.