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Comment by SheinhardtWigCo | Hacker News Reader

It looks like:

1. Signal planned this as a PR stunt, anticipating that Facebook would reject the ads.

2. After setting up their ad account, the account or payment method was flagged for additional verification, triggering the dialog they showed in the screenshot in their blog post.

3. That dialog has a big red padlock that says "Ad Account Disabled". That's perfect for Signal's needs, so they stop here and don't even bother getting the actual ads reviewed and rejected.

Signal's post is careful not to say that the ads were rejected, only that their account was banned.

In response to the pushback, on Twitter, they posted another screenshot showing that the account was restricted, but still no evidence that they actually attempted to run the ads.

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> Signal planned this as a PR stun

I would say both Signal + Facebook. I only use iMessage.

In Apple I trust =)

The Signal target group is people who value privacy. You appear to not be in that group.

You only use iMessage up until the point you need to SMS a device that isn't an Apple device. Then its not in Apple's ecosystem anymore.

I mean it's similar with Signal: you can send Signal messages until someone in your contacts (which are most) doesn't use Signal so you have to send an SMS.

The problem is that Signal prefers to also set itself up as the default SMS app and doesn't clearly show which messages in the feed are what kind. As someone who has to explain this difference to his father about twice a month I don't like this "feature", it's utterly confusing to people who don't know or don't care about the distinction between web-based messaging, SMS and MMS(now defunct here) when they want to send a picture.

Perhaps Signal should adopt blue and green coloring so people know they’re getting protected chats, or maybe a padlock to communicate security.

It's already visible on the "send" button IIRC. I think it's blue when it's secured, grey otherwise

I don't understand this, so I'm guessing this is a "feature" of Android... but Signal _mixes_ SMS messages and Signal messages inside the Signal app, and doesn't visually differentiate?

One of the fundamental differences between iOS and Android is that on Android you can replace most preinstalled apps with a third-party app for the same purpose. You can use third-party camera apps, keyboards(iOS too for some time), messaging(SMS) apps, web browser engines, ...

Signal requests the status as default messaging app, which imho is a problem when combined with inexperienced users who tend to just click "OK" to get rid of popups and error messages, and now don't understand why they can't send a picture to someone in their contact list. And yes, Signal just lists everything in the same interface. For non-technical users this can lead to a lot of unexpected behaviour.

However, you don't have to make it the default. I have separate SMS and signal apps, it's not hard to set up.

Thanks for the explainer. I think I now see why so many Android users are so totally wedded to WhatsApp.

It really does differentiate. I just checked, and the input box you have to tap on to type says "Unsecured SMS". Now, some folks might not know what that means, but I think it's a stretch to say is not clearly marked.

This is incorrect, there are small minor identifiers but you need to have an eye out.

How do you know that they aren’t using iMessage to only send iMessages?

I don't but my point still stands, Signal and Messenger are software agnostic (to a degree). There is every possibility that when I send a person an SMS, it will fall outside of the iMessage ecosystem.

If I send someone a message on Signal or Messenger, it will only come through to them via that platform. With iMessage you cannot guarantee that.

I've been using Signal as an SMS app replacement since it was called TextSecure, and it still works that way - if you send to a non-Signal-registered number, it sends over ordinary SMS (with a visual indicator to let you know), very similar to the way iMessage works.

Difference being that Apple doesn't have a visual indicator before you send the message to let you know you're sending it to a non-iMessage device.

Edit: I was completely wrong, iMessage does do that, my apologies.

Sure it does. Apple shows the phone number/contact name and the send arrow in green if it is being sent to a non-iMessage recipient.

I haven't paid too much attention, but that hasn't been my experience. As recently as today when I type in a new number the text in the window defaults to green (a text message), after a brief lag it turns to blue when it validates it as an iMessage account. This all happens before you enter any text in the body.

I've never understood corporate tribalism.

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