Against my better judgement, I'm setting family members up on Matrix right now specifically because they don't have phones and I can't switch them to Signal. A consequence of that is that I'm setting up a bunch of people who
do have phones with Matrix, because the alternative is excluding people. In a world where Signal was even just a tiny bit more open, I'd be able to use it for my family right now, and I could at least wait longer for Matrix's E2E solutions to mature more. That would definitely be the world I prefer.
> "This is not just for hyperparanoid security researchers, but for the masses," says Acton. "This is something for everyone in the world."
If you want encryption for the masses, delivering 90% solutions and dismissing unconventional use-cases is going to put a ceiling on adoption. It's not just technical users who balk at phone numbers. I'm dealing with elderly users, I'm dealing with kids.
"It's not designed for you" is a reasonable response if you're building a niche product for a niche audience. But it's important to note, that is explicitly not Signal's goal. Signal is advertising itself here as an encryption platform for everyone. A ubiquitous chat problem has higher requirements -- even if 99% of my family has a smartphone, that's not good enough, because we're talking about shared group chats. The solution has to work for 100% of my contacts.
I don't think Matrix is mature enough to trust for super-sensitive communication, I think it's a lot less unpolished than Signal, I think it's a lot more annoying and a lot more buggy. I'm irritated that I'm using it this early in development. But I don't see what the alternative is, because it works for 100% of my contacts, and that's what encryption for the masses requires: 100%.
Heck, I can even bridge Matrix (albeit, poorly) to other clients, a feature that Signal has specifically rejected. Which is a fine decision for a niche product. It's not fine if you want a chat application that everyone can use. I need to be able to talk to users who aren't on Signal.
The "minority" argument is bullcrap given Signal's stated goals in this very article. Sure, Moxie is talking about eventually getting rid of phone number requirements as a highly-theoretical, future event after contact integration, and key retrieval, and whatever. But I'm not going to wait literally years to have a secure E2E conversation with my nieces.