> The difference, today, is that Signal is finally reaching that mass audience it was always been intended for—not just the privacy diehards, activists, and cybersecurity nerds that formed its core user base for years—thanks in part to a concerted effort to make the app more accessible and appealing to the mainstream.

Seriously, Signal is probably the app that’s focusing least (and also slowly) on being more appealing to the mainstream and to large groups of people (protesters and activists) who might benefit from it, because:

1. It relies on a phone number for signing up. Worse, it exposes your phone number to everyone who has your number in their contacts list, thus allowing enumeration attacks (like what was done with Telegram in Hong Kong, where Telegram quickly pushed a fix).

2. It’s 2020, and it has no chat backups on iOS. Change your device and you lose not only all your old chats, but also group memberships (you have to figure out how to rejoin groups and then face issues like not seeing other members).

Overall, the “breakneck speed” of development that the article speaks of doesn’t actually exist. If they want to see real breakneck speed in adding features, they have to look at Telegram for comparison and then decide what words to use.

If you want better accessible alternatives and E2E and cross device sync and backups, take a look at Wire. Support wise you don’t get much from it, since the company is focused on paying clients. For the free tier users, it already provides more than Signal can in 2020.