this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024
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Privacy
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And then there is the kinds of people who cry about Signal dropping support for SMS.
Yeah, I'm one of em. I'm well aware it's not secure, but as a frontend, signal certainly was more customizable and pleasant to use even for just the few people I had to sms till I could convince to use signal.
It was so much easier to convince people to use Signal when it had SMS support. I think while Signal needed to drop it, it wasn't the time yet.
I'm not convinced it ever should've. Make it obvious sms mode is in use, etc etc. But it was great to have everything in one place. One blocklist, great photo editing etc
Maybe. For me the worst change they made was removing custom colours for my contacts.
I agree that it helped with adoption. In a way I wish they still had it so I could get my text messaging family to use a messaging app instead.
The flip side was, if somebody tried signal and didn't like it and uninstalled it, then any SMS message to them from signal went to their signal account that they no longer had installed so they didn't get it. You had no way of knowing so it really sucked.
Ah yeah, I'd forgotten about that.
I'm certain the engineering team considered it, but I wonder why they didn't pursue having accounts that haven't signed in for a while issue a notice to the sender, or even have the account deactivate itself.
Make an opt-out default, you could disable that behaviour if your threat model needed to account for that 🤷
How are you going to grow the user base without including the normies?
I am one of those. I ditched Signal and went back to the stock sms app and adopted matrix. Haven't looked back since. The reality is that Signal dropping support for sms wasn't going to stop me from using SMS. For that, other people need to be convinced to stop using it at the same time. Signal didn't have nearly the market size needed to make that happen. And now that card is played, and nothing has changed. Signal is just another messaging app among hundreds. At least matrix offers a real paradigm shift.
signal and matrix are both CIA. i'd say it's worse for your privacy than using your standard messengers since they know that's where all the juicy stuff is.
Source?
They might be trying to express that the Matrix protocol makes it easier for Israel to spy on someone using it. That idea came up somewhat often about 2 years ago, but I don't know many relevant facts. It's also common for people to say that the CIA and Israel cooperate, so that might be the connection to the CIA.
As for Signal, I am greatly annoyed that Signal requires your phone number for registration. Some people justify the centralization of Signal by saying that using a centralized network means that everyone using the network is using the same (good) security practices, and I've been told that the developers for Signal periodically express that they're trying to remove that requirement, but I still try to avoid using Signal (or any networks that I can't access without involving a phone number). The lack of progress on removing the requirement of your phone number from Signal (and the lack of information on where any centralized infrastructure is located) invites ideas about conspiring with the CIA.
Despite any uncertainty or discomfort, I defer to https://www.privacyguides.org/en/real-time-communication/ and https://soatok.blog/2024/07/31/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-signal-competitor/ to determine what methods of communication might be suitable for me to use.
Not really a work around, but you could get a VOIP number from MySudo or Hushed or a similar service and use that to sign up for Signal. Might at least be more private if you go about it with like a prepaid card and temp email or something.
I thought signal switched to allow usernames a few months ago
You can hide your phone number from other users, bit still need a phone number to sign up or to use your account.
They aren’t though…?
Lol apparently the juicy stuff is every meme my friends have shared with each other for the last several years
What evidence do you have to support that claim?
Matrix is Israeli so it is likely Mossad.
Per their website
Afaik UK != Israel. Like sure they may work together, but I'm pretty sure they're different countries, meaning Matrix is British, so it would be MI6. Of course, being that they're
I doubt it's MI6 as well, and if it is find the back door in it for us all by having the open source code audited, please and thank you.
Btw this applies to "The Matrix Foundation," they're just the devs and run the largest instance, other instances (especially if you self host) are run by "not them" anyway.
No Matrix was invented by an Israeli company.
That’s kind of like if iMessage dropped SMS support. Yeah, I know if it’s a green bubble it’s not encrypted. But I wouldn’t want them to just not allow it.