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Comment by wheybags | Hacker News Reader

> I’m not a beta tester, but cryptocurrency is the worst

100% this. I'm not a beta tester, but I am a signal user. I reeeally don't want to have to hedge my recommendation of signal because it's involved with some cryptocurrency BS. Please, just be a chat app.

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I somewhat disagree. Sometimes I need to send payments internationally; in the US most chat apps allow for this. Or people use CashApp/PayPal. Sometimes I'm chatting with friends outside of the US and the choices to send money are very limited and problematic (e.g.: Argentina inflation, low PayPal adoption outside US and I think CashApp isn't available)

I don't know the specifics of the cryptocurrency being used, but adding the ability to send money is welcome

> low PayPal adoption outside US

As a European I have the opposite impression. Pretty much all online sellers I know that don't offer Paypal are in the US.

And sending money is one thing, having yet another weird cryptocurrency is not the right solution though.

> having yet another weird cryptocurrency is not the right solution though.

Maybe we disagree on the problem. From the US one of the most convenient solutions is Xoom; in my experience the turnaround is around 24-48 hours depending on the country and institution that's receiving funds. First there is a transaction fee, I usually pay $3 - this seems to be flat so 3% if I'm sending $100 and 1% if I'm sending $300 (I've sent $300 maybe once, more commonly I need to send <$100). Then they double dip by using a favorable exchange rate. I would be surprised if we can't do this better with crypto (note I am not a huge crypto supporter in its current state)

Companies is one thing, individuals are another. Rough estimating using the people I know barely anyone has or uses PayPal.

>in the US most chat apps allow for this

and those would be? The top chat apps are: https://www.statista.com/statistics/258749/most-popular-glob...

That list is global, and the US list[0] seems weird, but I'll go over some apps that are and aren't on the list:

FB Messenger (#1): looks like it does

Snapchat (#2): did, but killed it in 2018. Don't think it ever had significant traction

WhatsApp (#3), Instagram (not listed, probably because it isn't primarily a messenger, but from personal experience it is commonly used as one): nope, but might be getting it soon[1]

Messenger by Google (#4): looks like it does from their website, but I don't use Android

Discord (#5): nope

iMessage (not listed, but hard to believe that's correct): does, via Apple Cash

So yes, messengers with send-money features are fairly common in the US. That being said, at least in my experience (college age, PNW) nobody uses them—we use use dedicated apps like Cash and Venmo.

[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/350461/mobile-messenger-...

[1]: https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-pay-will-let-you-send-pay...

Yeah in the US CashApp/Zelle/PayPal works great. FB/Apple/Google messenger apps support this but adoption is relatively low especially compared to something like WeChat

How are you going to a cash a crypto whose value is very volatile, like unless you cash out immediately its value in "real money" is in loss or is much higher?

You could peg the value to USD like DAI does.

Agreed, please just be a chat app.

Why should signal be the only client I use without it.

Ever heard the expression “do one thing well”? Unix applications were built on this principle, if you need a reference.

Let the chat app be a chat app. Let the payment app be a payment app.

Or, to put it another way, do you recognize that a chat app and a payment app have different incentives? Combining them means now your chat app has payment app related incentives. Do you see this as a good thing? If so, why?

This is an often said criticism but the reality is that the mobile app ecosystem fundimentally breaks this principle.

When was the last time you saw an mobile app taking advantage of another one apart from tre camera? The only and most common time Android apps communicate is with Google Play Services.

Context switching on mobile or GUIs in general also don't follow this principle. Modern GUIs integrate plenty of things (file explorer, image editor, basic camera, etc) becuase mobile package management doesn't resolve dependancies automatically or allow for a great deal of UI customisation. Especially in a messaging client imagine not being able to send photos, videos, audio, or files!c

GUIs are here to stay so until we figure out a composable and we'll adopted GUI solution "doing one thing well" is not really an option.

> When was the last time you saw an mobile app taking advantage of another one apart from tre camera? The only and most common time Android apps communicate is with Google Play Services.

I do this all the time when I use mobile payment apps. Website has a link that opens the app, I do my payment, back to the safari afterwards. It also works from within other apps.

Alternative question: Why does every client need it?

I think signal is and have been very clear that they won't remain "just a chat app". I don't have anything against cryptocurrency but I'm taking this as an opportunity to evaluate my alternatives.

It would have been more interesting to read your reaction to their answer to this concern, which is:

> We’ve only been testing this in beta in one country, so lots of people haven’t seen this yet and are imagining the worst. Don’t worry, it’s an opt-in feature, so if you don’t ever want to use payments in Signal, you never have to.

I think it's a non-answer that doesn't need a new response. "You don't have to use it if you don't want to" doesn't address the GP's concern around recommending the app to people who might not know better.

This won't help with what follows.

"Bad guys" will use the anonymity of Signal to do the usual stuff: Phishing, collecting ransom etc. etc.

Signal will get a bad image, no matter whether it's opt-in or not.

"Bad guys" already use Signal to communicate and some countries try to ban encryption, I'm not sure much will change here.

Whether you should be able to transfer money in a private manner is a political choice. Signal is mostly showing that it's technically feasible. I don't see braving regulations to provide this feature to everyone, but time will tell.

But before integrating payments, Signal was not a good way for phishing/ransom. Look at all the scams and whatnot where people have to go and buy some kind of coupon and pass the codes to the scammers and whatnot...

Signals now integrates all of this right into the app.

That's much easier than before!

So... Big win... But for whom?

Signal is still not a good way for phishing/ransom anyways.

Users would either have to already have the attacker in their contacts list or enable sealed sender. Enabling and funding a cryptocurrency wallet is going to be difficult. Even for WeChat who's payment service is popular it only captures 40% market share and as a result generally people are more educated about the risks.

Bad guys use WhatsApp to communicate but that's not given it a bad image, in fact just the opposite. When it was revealed that WhatsApp encryption was used by terrorists in the UK and the government wanted a backdoor the image improved as more people learnt about it and learnt that it works.

So will their be a version of the app that doesn’t have payments built in at all? Because if not it will only be a matter of time before someone comes up with a playbook convincing nontechnical users they need to send mobile coin to them in order to keep using signal.

Even my non technical relatives know not to install another app that some stranger tells them they need. Trying to explain what cryptocurrency is and how not to fall into that trap if using signal sounds like a nightmare.

> someone comes up with a playbook convincing nontechnical users they need to send mobile coin to them in order to keep using signal.

This sounds pretty unlikely, as long as signal does not integrate a payment processor (and they've made no indication they will) the majority of users will not have enabled or funded their cryptocurrency wallet(s) (whichever cryptocurrency they settle on).

Funding MobileCoin requires steps of non insignificant difficulty, not to mention Signal's trust model of using your contacts by default.

Of course it's opt in, it'd be patently absurd for it not to be. Nobody would use a chat app where some kind of weird crypto payments were mandatory. Advertising its opt-in nature as a feature is like advertising your cereal as asbestos free.

https://xkcd.com/641/

> Advertising its opt-in nature as a feature is like advertising your cereal as asbestos free.

I fail to see how, care to explain?

It's opt-in as any other feature which is not the core of the app. You don't have to send stickers or GIFs. If you don't want to receive messages at all, you shouldn't install Signal because it will be hard to avoid, it's a core feature, it's not really opt-in.

a) "Install this app, it's safe" != "Install this app, but only use this part, don't click on that part"

b) opt-in features that are very profitable have a funny habit of transmorphing in to opt-out

Except it's not enabled or visible by default. It will take the user navigating the settings to enable it. We all know non-tech users rarely if ever change default settings they don't understand.

Right, and signal has a good track record balancing privacy and usability for it's default settings.

Beta features are usually opt-in. I'd be amazed if it was opt-in when fully released.

Sinal wants to protect their users. Sometimes those users ask each other to Venmo them some funds. Venmo isn't to be trusted with privacy.

This seems like a natural next step to me.

If I wanted to use the external money app they're piggybacking on, I can use that. I don't need it to be all one app. I have a web browser app for all-in-one app when I want that.

Yeah, you get to choose if you're the one sending the money. But sometimes people who want to send you money think that they're being helpful and find you on Venmo before you've had the opportunity to talk about payment privacy.

If you're using a privacy focused app, it should guide you towards defaults that maintain that level of privacy. Explicitly choosing a medium that has different privacy profile should be non-default behavior.

Letting people who don't want to think about it say "good-enough-for-signal-is-good-enough-for-me" and use the built in wallet is totally in line with Signal's mission.

Will they also block people from sending links? I cannot trust random websites with my privacy.

Adding the ability to attach crypto to your messages is nothing like blocking links.

It's like providing an option to send links which will by default open in a tor browser.

> Please, just be a chat app.

Chat apps used to be just: send text.

Over time the standard expectation for a chat app has become send text + online status + image + gifs + video + link previews + typing indicators + @ mentions + emoji reactions + stickers

Fundamentally I don't see why adding "send money" violates it being just a chat app.

You're right, chat apps have evolved. That's the problem; Signal is good, but it's not the best. I wish it'd focus on matching or overtaking WhatsApp feature-wise rather than getting distracted 10 meters from the finish line.

When I'm trying to convince people to switch, privacy isn't the main draw, but if the features they care about are there, then privacy can push them over the edge to switch. I view this foray into payments as a sign that Signal feels its already "good enough" in the chat app department and will be spending its effort elsewhere.

Learn from SnapChat: if you're going to shoot the king, don't miss.

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