It’s incredible that everybody was fine with SMS in Signal behaving this way, which is vastly less secure.

There will be more privacy, because there will be more Signal-to-Signal chats.

Also, SMS support is vastly less secure, yet Signal users loved that, and there was backlash/mass exodus when they dropped support.

and there needs to be a reason for people to switch; what’s that then?

As I already stated: privacy. People want privacy, but they also want people to talk to.

If Signal can only speak to Signal, nobody will get Signal because then you can’t talk to anybody. And there’s no point of a chat app where you can’t talk to anybody.

Add interoperability and suddenly people are more willing to try Signal because you won’t be a social outcast with nobody to talk to anymore. Suddenly you have a few contacts that are on signal and find the app convenient to use. Then the users grow from there. Meaning more Signal-to-Signal chats.

I’ve started that 3 or 4 times now.

There would be more people willing to try Signal because they would still be able to talk to people and not become a social outcast.

More people using signal would then mean more Signal-to-Signal chats.

More Signal-to-Signal chats is a good thing.

How could it not lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats?

The biggest problem with signal is that nobody uses Signal. Everybody uses WhatsApp.

If you make it so people can switch to signal without it completely cutting you off from the world, then more people will use it, which will lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats, which will lead to signal becoming widespread enough that people shift from WhatsApp.

Ok, that’s your guess.

90% of my contacts did leave Signal because of the SMS removal. And that’s SMS, which nobody uses.

People being able to use Signal without being cut off from the world would be massive in terms of getting people to use signal. Which like I said, would mean more Signal-to-Signal chats, which would bring more and more people to signal once they see that it’s an actual worthwhile platform.

Because more people would be on signal, which means more Signal-to-Signal chats.

As I explained in my post.

I’ve tried extensively. For years. I was a regular Signal donor, too.

I don’t know where you’re from, but in much of the world, asking someone to use something other than WhatsApp is like saying “stop using email”, it’s an extremely difficult sell.

Unfortunately this doesn’t actually work. Even if people do try Signal, they see they only have one or two contacts, and they go back to WhatsApp.

would it, though

Yes? 100% it would?

A fair amount of people don’t want to use WhatsApp, but they have no real choice because it’s practically a requirement for living in modern society.

If you make it so they can still chat to people on WhatsApp, they can go to Signal without worrying about that.

why would anyone move away from Whatsapp if they could talk to Signal users without switching apps?

Why would anybody play games on Linux via proton if they could just stay on Windows? Because they don’t like Windows.

Like I said above, plenty of people don’t like Meta, they use WhatsApp because there’s no real choice. Offer them a choice, and more will take the plunge.

And why would anybody move to Signal if they can’t talk to anybody?

The massive drop in users after getting rid of SMS support shows that people are willing to use Signal if they can still talk to people, but aren’t willing to use it when they can’t.

Signal declined, despite the EU bending over backwards and handing them the chance on a silver platter to become relevant.

IMO it’s a mistake, like getting rid of SMS support was (which is far less secure than WhatsApp yet Reddit/Lemmy seem to be angry about that but glad about lack of WhatsApp interoperability?? I guess it’s because Americans don’t really use WhatsApp so it’s not a big deal to them, whereas SMS is).

It would have been an amazing opportunity to help those that want to use Signal actually use it.

Yes, I’m aware Meta scrapes what metadata they can from messages, but if you make this clear in Signal when you talk to a WhatsApp user then I don’t see the issue, after all it’s what they did for SMS chats yet everybody loved that feature!

People trying Signal because it’s compatible with WhatsApp that everybody uses would lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats, and that’s a good thing.

The Signal foundation seems to care more about being ideologically pure for its 10 users than they do about making a small compromise that leads to far more users and far more Signal-to-Signal chats. It seriously disappointed me, and I stopped my £10 monthly donation hearing that bad news. I was so invested in Signal because I thought it was a great app, but there’s no point of financially supporting the growth of an organisation that vehemently rejects growth, I was throwing my money away.

I went from having 10 contacts on Signal down to just one after the SMS purge. I want to use this app but it’s pointless. Nobody wants to use an app that nobody uses, and Signal doesn’t seem to want any users either.

Frankly, I don’t buy their excuse. If they were truly that ideologically pure about absolute privacy, they’d never have added SMS support in the first place! And they wouldn’t have tied accounts to phone numbers either!

I think the reason they ditched SMS was down to development costs. Maintaining that functionality, as well as building RCS support, is far more expensive than simply cutting the feature out and trying to salvage some “it’s about privacy!” PR. I think the same is true for WhatsApp integration.

E: I knew this would start getting heavily downvoted once the Americans started logging on. Please try to understand that WhatsApp is big in much of the world. Everybody uses it. My bank wouldn’t let me take out a mortgage without WhatsApp. That’s how ingrained it is. Being able to use Signal and still receive messages from people would go a long way in getting people to install the app.

Surprising nobody. This is like when Instagram and WhatsApp introduced Snapchat stories “Updates”.

Maybe it varies by country, but I’ve seen no shortage of far-right content on TikTok.

I mean shit, look at the Romanian elections - TikTok was aggressively pushing a right wing, pro-Russia candidate who declared that he spent 0 on campaign finances.

I go on there and there’s a lot of ReformUK (Nigel Farage’s party) and GB News (British Fox News though thankfully far less watched) clips.

I have a French friend and he says the same is true there.

I mean sure, but if you look at it that way, vertical also ‘works’ on TVs.

The point is that when you’re scrolling through stuff on your phone, you do it portrait.*

*Since this is the internet, I know I’m going to get a “But I scroll through everything on my phone landscape”, because of course I will. That’s cool. Go chat about it with the other 0.002% of people who do that.

Part of me is in amazement we have technology like this.

Then I’m reminded that it’s often used for very shitty purposes. Wooo, now photo backup services, social media, and (extremely dedicated) social media stalkers have your location data without any geotagging done by the user.

How long before some creepy incel tracks down one of those twitch streamers using tech like this? I think we should take bets.

I know I’m missing out, big time. Everything I hear about it is good, and supposedly attention to detail is incredible. But launchers annoy me to an almost unbelievable extent.

GTA:V is also pretty great and I was really into it. When they added a launcher I opened the game, saw the new launcher/login requirement, pressed X, and never opened GTA:V again. To this day I’ve still not completed it, and I never will unless I find out the launcher has been removed.

Maybe I have some weird mental quirk, but for whatever reason, when I see stuff like launchers, I completely disengage. It becomes impossible for me to enjoy the content.

I’m the same with ads. On TV, I refuse to watch anything unless it’s on a BBC channel (no ads in the UK). If I’m at the cinema, I will literally stand outside the screening room for 30 minutes staring at the ceiling or counting stains on the carpet until they’re done. My partner even messages me when the film is about to begin, then I head inside lol.

I’d genuinely be more likely to buy a PlayStation, buy RDR2, then sell them both for a loss when I’m done than go through their PC launcher.

I realise it’s not normal and I sound like a right weirdo. There’s clearly something… odd with me in that regard, but I can’t really shake it off. It’s compulsive.

Besides, I already have so many other games that I need to play, so it’s not like I’m stuck without anything to do.

Really? That’s great news

I’ll have a go of Civ6 again and pick up Civ7 plus all the DLC in 5 years when it’s £4 lol

Agreed. I just don’t buy anything with launchers. All my friends say RDR2 is an incredible game, and I believe them.

But I’ve had enough ballaches with Far Cry 3, Civ VI, and GTA:V that I’m out. I’ve accepted I won’t play that game. No more launchers.

Annoyingly, they now often add them months or years after the game releases, so you often don’t even get a choice (cough GTA:V cough).

I don’t care.

People that want to spend that much on a game can, and I can wait until it’s the right price for me (£12-20). I’m patient enough, there’s plenty of good games in the meantime.

Bonus: it’ll probably run like butter on a Steam Deck 3 2: Episode 1 😉

I just hope they don’t push that shitty rockstar login/launcher crap anymore, and I hope the bullshit online stuff is kept well away from the single player game.

Cutting edge materials science and manufacturing is 100% technology.

I’m still waiting for you to show me this law that says sharing personally-identifiable information without consent is completely fine.

Will you ever provide it? Yes or no?