I don't understand the complexity or see the blind spot. Your use case is not a priority for them right now.
(1) allocating developer time and organizational priorities; or,
(2) a technical incompatibility with Signal's existing, phone number-based model?
Based on your response I'm inferring (1), but I'm frustrated that this is never directly answered when the topic comes up.
I seriously don't understand what people expect in these discussions, though. The situation is straightforward. A small but vocal minority of Signal's user base wants non-phone-number identification. Signal hasn't prioritized that feature. Put up, or use a different messenger. How is this complicated?
Don't pick horrible messengers, like ones where encryption isn't enabled by default, or doesn't even exist for group messages, or isn't built on a protocol anyone understands or has reviewed. But even with that constraint, you have options.
Have you done a survey before arriving to this conclusion. If so, I'd love to take a look at it, if possible. Otherwise, I can't see how you can make this assertion; everything can be dismissed as a "small but vocal minority".
As a previous signal user, I stopped using signal because I discovered this issue.
(Also, it's kinda funny that Signal has reimplemented the iMessage problem -- you have to unregister your phone number on your website so people can SMS you again rather than continuously sending you Signal messages unintentionally.)
(There are also other problems that have bubbled up in Signal in the past year since I stopped using it -- I've heard there's an auto-backup process that takes more than an hour and makes your phone unusable and you cannot change when it happens.)
More importantly, I'm still very interested in seeing the data behind your vocal-minority assertion.
Comparing those two userbases doesn't make much sense to me.
I think it's really you who is making the extraordinary claim here and you should be providing the evidence. Signal's goal, as has been repeated many times in these threads is to replace SMS and other less-secure forms of messaging for as many users as possible, not to cater to somewhat off-the-beaten-path concerns over phone numbers. They are aiming for users of messaging. And they are making the very reasonable inference that most of those users are not hung up on identifying themselves with a phone number.
Additionally, if Signal's current users cared about the phone number thing that much, they wouldn't be using Signal to begin with. Where's your survey data that says Signal users just can't stand the phone-number-as-id thing?
What I was trying to convey is that I would expect people who don't understand or care enough about their personal privacy would use more popular and mainstream messengers. Whether people who care about privacy consider phone numbers private or not is something we need data to determine.
> Where's your survey data that says Signal users just can't stand the phone-number-as-id thing?
That's exactly what I'm asking for. At this point, we're both speculating. None of us can make solid claims about either userbase without providing evidence. tptacek most certainly can't claim " a small but vocal minority of Signal's user base wants non-phone-number identification" without providing evidence either, which is the original objection that started this thread.
Don't expect people to take your reason for dismissing their concerns seriously when you base it on your personal perception or beliefs in stead of facts, and don't make unsubstantiated claims to discredit their concerns.
But they ‘know’ the phone number is a non starter because that’s how other social networks outed them. So they will also often end up using a string of bad tools as an awkward way to keep several worlds separate.
Most won’t admit it, but this second reason is why they, as iPhone users, aren’t in encrypted Messages for those chats. Neither end wants the chats in their phone number world.
While you can argue this use case is for hiding that one even participates in chats others might frown on, that to me sounds like a use case that matters, since today, most of the world doesn’t agree what should be frowned upon.
// This is not a technical assessment, it’s from the non-technical users’ point of view, how they think it’s working or not working. Same folks assume phone number is more identifying than finding an app that doesn’t need phone number because it can accept their FB log in. It’s a pretty rough world for non-techies.
Yes, it is some, but it's not a ton.