Comment on What's the deal with Signal?

• zergtoshi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Handling SMS and handling secure/encrypted messages could’ve made people think they communicate securely while relying on text messages instead.
  Not handling SMS fixes this source of confusion and I applaud their decision.

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  • AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The problem is that most people don’t want multiple text apps, they just want one. I had gotten a number of people using signal, and it was secure when we talked, but when signal dropped SMS, almost every one of them stopped using it, so then none of their conversations were secure.

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    • zergtoshi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah, the never-ending weighting between convenience and security.
      But are you going to tell me that those people don’t have Whatsapp, Threema, Telegram or any other IM installed and just use plain SMS instead?

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      • AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yep, just the default messaging app on their phone.

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      • FinnFooted@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Americans do a lot of SMS.

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  • Acamon@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think the number of people who care deeply about privacy and cannot tell the difference between an sms or signal message is minimal. There were plenty of ways signal could have highlighted DANGER UNSECURE CHANNEL if they had wanted to, or made it an off-by-default option, rather than drop SMS entirely. For myself and many other people it meant that family members dropped Signal rather than have an extra messaging app, and so I’m still stuck with WhatsApp on my phone…

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  • guy@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If only the was some indicator for unsecure messages, such as a grey send button and an open padlock. 🙄

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  • Landless2029@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think having an unlocked symbol for standard SMS would’ve helped that…

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    • zergtoshi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      And you seriously think most people would look at and act on such an icon instead of just ignoring it?

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      • voracitude@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Or just accept that not everyone will be having a secure conservation, but more will be secured as more and more people like me convince our family members to use it and eventually we transition everyone away from SMS?

        No, of course not, why would we build a critical mass of users like that?

        Since they removed SMS support my entire family and all my friends uninstalled signal, except a few who keep it to talk to me, and my half dozen friends privacy-conscious enough to care. Objectively, removing SMS support harmed Signal’s popularity and made everyone less secure. The argument for why they did it was at best myopic and also, in my opinion, utter bullshit.

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  • bg10k@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There were ways to make it clear that it was insecure that didn’t alienate an arguable majority of their casual userbase.

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• kn33@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It was very unpopular with my girlfriend, who I had just gotten into using Signal a few months prior.

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