Stories Are Coming to Signal
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Lately, people around me have been installing Signal, or I've met people would already have Signal, and it's been enjoyable to, at last, participate in fun group chats. They didn't miss me before but I'm happy to be there now.
Signal works well. I'd like to be able to edit messages and react with multiple emojis like with Element/Matrix, but most importantly, Signal needs to look cool and to be something people want to install and use.
Element/Matrix too, by the way, but they need to focus on usability first at the moment.
Anyways, while the default server in Element may require email atm, it is not a general requirement and depends on the server you select
It allows broadcasting to a group and people to opt in to watch and reply.
stories is a great feature by letting you post however much you want and letting the viewer choose to view/skip/ignore the content easily. plus its ephemeral by default which is another good feature imo.
everything should be e2ee. anything which helps convince your mom/sister/dad/friends to use signal is a good thing.
Between this and their upcoming crypto payment system, I’m thinking I made a huge mistake switching from Telegram.
All of the clients are varying degrees of suck though.
What I want is a 1:1 copy of Discord's client UX. That's it.
Signal is somewhere in the middle trying to be something that solves nobody’s messaging problem except a small set of people (journalists, whistleblowers?) where the communication is mostly like “A needs to discreetly communicate with B and they both can use Signal”, anything other than that it’s pretty useless (yes, I’ve tried it for really long and convinced many others to try it).
1. Especially all the clients. And not again Fluffy chat please. Name alone puts off most.
I can't wait for the Matrix ecosystem to be mature enough !
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27206569
Since then basically none of the specific bugs I cared about got fixed (that I think could be unbearable to me, some of them definitely are, not sure about all), which are: 8751, 9437, 9811, 10287, 10577, 13263, 13485, 14323, 14424, 15416, 15565, 16123, 16184, 16763, and 16807, all these were all opened before my comment, and everything earlier than 16123 is more than one year old and still open. Maybe one of those is miok's. Newer ones raised since then that also look important to me at first glance: 20046, 20005, 19929, 18458, 17838, 17218.
Also there is this closed bug still attracting comments: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/15500#issuec....
As much as I hate NPS scores in the industry, I think these bugs are preventing Matrix from getting new promoters.
Same issue is discussed here : https://github.com/vector-im/element-android/issues/1192
(I cannot find my own ticket which was a dupe of these ones)
The first mention of it is 2.5 years old.
For my non tech friend this was so annoying (whatever she tried that stuck message was still there) that she wanted a solution fast. I gave up after a few tries to solve this. (Like the classic : uninstall / reinstall) And I decided she didn't have to suffer this, just because I have ideals about software philosophy. Thanks god, Signal exists and my friends were okay to trust me on this one more time :)
I really hope to come back to Matrix one day ! (We really enjoyed it for nearly a year before this bug came up)
Not trying to add snark, just genuinely curious why the addition of stories would detract from its e2ee nature.
But where is progress taking us? Should we follow it blindly?
> I’m thinking I made a huge mistake switching from Telegram.
Does not compute.
There's no place for purism, I just hope they add a way to disable stories for unwilling users.
Too many people blame Matrix but I love it. It's UI is not as polished but hey I can work with it because sooner or later all these centralized apps run after revenue and ruin the most basic stuff that these app should do: messaging.
Which messaging apps have actual Live Location sharing?
Payments were probably a waste of engineering time, unless it somehow attracts users in oppressed countries.
I don’t recommend Signal to others because its priorities don’t match mine and that of others I know. I do use it, but I treat it more like a fragile platform where anything can disappear any moment. Don’t share or keep anything valuable on it.
The fact that Signal is another centralized platform that not only requires a phone number but also exposes your phone number to others (like in group chats) are larger issues for me.
I’ve been trying Element (from Matrix), but its UX is quite poor. I just wish chat apps would copy at least some of the UX of Telegram.
I moved my home directory to a new computer and Signal Desktop started like if something changed. Sure you would lose your messages on your phone, but you can still access them on your computer if needed.
On a rooted Android phone, you could use oandbackup to backup Signal. If you care about these things, maybe consider using a rooted Android phone?
I agree with you on the centralized platform aspect and the use of phone number (which is both a blessing (this makes it easy for new users to join) and a curse). I also agree with you on Element's UX, but it's getting better and most people can use it fine. I have a few groups on both apps.
I personally prefer Element, which seems more open than Signal and which I can actually use correctly on the PinePhone. And definitely didn't requires the hoops I had to go through because I don't have an Android phone or an iPhone. Axolotl [1] still needs some work.
You don't need a rooted phone. Signal can do backups on Android, they can be enabled through Settings > Chats > Backups.
I'm not sure why they don't have that feature on iOS though.
Don't forget how Signal built MobileCoin integration completely in secret for a whole year. Public was kept in dark just so $MOB insiders could benefit handsomely.
> I’ve been trying Element (from Matrix), but its UX is quite poor. I just wish chat apps would copy at least some of the UX of Telegram.
I think Signal may be trying to copy some of the UX features that drive people to WhatsApp and Telegram, while maintaining the security. Adding stickers and stories with e2ee is probably quite the challenge and maybe less challenging than a creating secure solution, especially connected to the cloud.
I personally am grateful they're adding more features and agree, would love for Signal to add UX elements at the rate of Telegram. BTW, I don't think Telegram has stories, which is a feature I really love on WhatsApp, so I think if Signal has that, it may be easier for me to get people to switch to Signal.
I don't think Moxie insists on this. I remember reading this on the Signal blog[0] a few years ago:
> Social apps need a social network, and Signal’s is built on the phone numbers that are stored in your device’s address book. The address book on your device is in some ways a threat to the traditional social graphs controlled by companies like Facebook, since it is user-owned, portable, and accessible to any app you approve. For Signal, that has meant that we can leverage and contribute to a user-owned portable network without having to force users to build a new closed one from scratch.
> However, many Signal users would also like to be able to communicate without revealing their phone numbers, in part because these identifiers are so portable that they enable a user’s conversation partner to contact them through other channels in cases where that might be less desirable. One challenge has been that if we added support for something like usernames in Signal, those usernames wouldn’t get saved in your phone’s address book. Thus if you reinstalled Signal or got a new device, you would lose your entire social graph, because it’s not saved anywhere else.
> Other messaging apps solve this by storing a plaintext copy of your address book, social graph, and conversation frequency on their servers. That way your phone can get run over by a car without flattening your social graph in those apps, but it comes at a high privacy price.
I understand that loosing them at an unexpected time can be annoying and a backup is useful, but I personally never had a use for that feature and knowing that it is annoying for someone to keep all my messages around forever is something I consider positive.
I’m switching my social networks to Telegram after Signal burned up its good will focusing on features they want versus what their users want. Do I care if it’s as secure? No, I prefer the convenience and superior UX iMessages and Telegram offers.
Really unfortunate, as it was Signal’s race to lose after their bump in usage and shoutouts from popular folks using it.
It seems to me like Signal has been focusing on making their UX closer to Telegrams. This seems to be what many users want?
Same here - but maybe if doing Business then somebody might want to keep them (e.g. to keep track of whatever your customers told you in the past? Just a guess...).
(btw. I think it's not "loosing" if you don't mean something like "letting them free", but "losing". "losing" vs. "choosing", I kept mixing that up until recently... :P )
What I would like as a feature in Signal is "polls" (e.g. to choose with a few friends to which bar/restaurant to go, when to meet, whatever).
But now unluckily I'm back on Whatsapp as even after having abandoned it, within almost 2 years most of my friends refused to install Signal -> in the end, on 31.Dec.2021, I decided to admit that I failed, and I reinstalled Whatsapp :(
Not everything needs to live on forever.
Cheers.
I find text based instant messaging to be shallow and vapid and I have very little interest in them. Texting is best used (for me at least) to coordinate real life plans (I'll be in front of X at Y o'clock) or quick task-oriented notes (Hey babe, can you grab some sliced turkey if you're still at the store). If you want to actually talk to me, call me or let's meet in person.
This attachment to one's messaging archive is IMO a symptom of data hoarding. 99.9% of text conversations won't be interesting in the future because they weren't interesting when they were happening.
That said I do like enjoy the feature where all of the photos from a given conversation are easily accessible.
If I could have backups of entire conversations, I wouldn’t have to export and save every single video and picture being sent with Signal.
On the other side, when I broke up with her I also used the chat history to point out some times she had tried to lie to me. That was a bitter satisfaction I could probably have done without.
not only do I think it's fine I think it's actually healthy. I think the ability to search and turn over every word said in the past can produce some pretty neurotic and bad behaviors. There's a fun Black Mirror episode about this in one of the earlier seasons.
Fwiw most people I use signal with have auto-disappearing messages enabled, so all our comms are ephemeral anyway.
And for private messages, that turns out to be totally fine. I read it, act on it if necessary, open any links in a browser, download any files sent, and then have no need for the message to persist beyond that.
This isn't Twitter where I'm deliberately creating a public record of commentary for like-minded folks to find and engage with me on, that needs to persist for a long time. Signal for when I've already found those folks and need to have private OTR conversations with them.
Not seeing your complete chat history on a new device is just not tenable for the average person, and a selling point of signal was that I could use it on windows or Linux, where I can’t use iMessage. I also heard adding signal on an iPad or second phone cousin be messy too.
Compare that with telegram, which is extremely fast across any devices, has even more features, and is slightly easier to use…
I mean, encryption in transit and at rest is good enough for most people. I agree philosophically with e2e encryption, but practically, is it all that important for average chat users, especially if it means sacrificing features people actually use?
What the Matrix solution gives me:
- chat from multiple devices with history upon login (I read they're working on downloadable exports/backups) from any client;
- zero knowledge webapp logins (e.g. the work laptop on VPN, app.element.io in a Chrome tab) just use your Security Key like MFA;
- trivial and easy bridging with other endpoints (IRC, XMPP, etc.) it's not perfect but it works and I use this daily chatting with friends on other networks;
- choice of many clients whether actual apps or web interfaces (yes, it's early days and rough around the edges but the capability is there and happening) unlike Signal;
- distributed (federation) server designs baked in to avoid single company server lock in (Signal is opposed to this, goes hand in hand with using only their clients);
- less trouble and better client experiences about around the above than XMPP ecosystem. I just get annoyed using the XMPP versions of my bullet points above (and I've really tried, honest)
Is Matrix/Element perfect? no, lots of rough edges being worked on especially with the e2ee keys (my opinion). But I see healthy work, continual improvement and a good future ahead.
Do you mean the talk he gave at C3?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8
Never heard anything about him not wanting it recorded, presenting at C3 means your talk will be recorded and distributed.
But I agree : no easy backup in Signal is a major pain !
From the Electron based computer version of Signal you can use some js and backup conversations though. (No "restore" option though)
Once bots gain access, the platform is lost to spam.
Being limited to person<>person communication sounds like a feature to me.
This seems like a smart move for them because they can run for parity with WhatsApp and they'd still have one major benefit Facebook has been in a very tight spot to match: privacy.
Most people don't seem to care about privacy, but if they start losing their (privacy aware) friends and family to Signal, they too will consider installing it as well.
If they acquire enough network effects, they could hollow out a large chunk of WhatsApp, unless WhatsApp starts offering features Signal can't offer (e.g. better integrations into Facebook's other properties).
It'll be interesting to watch how this plays out.
The thing is none of these centralized apps will ever get messaging right. Because no matter how good the intentions of the team are sooner or later the higher management or the PM wants to have bigger piece of cake. This in the end ruins the most basic functionality that a messaging app should do right: messages.
What these teams do not understand is it's okay for an IM app to not keep adding fancy features. Focus on providing security fixes and minor improvements that improve user experience. If you keep focusing on getting more people you will end up with yet another social app like Instagram/Snapchat. We do not really need more of that stuff. Consider this: if people who built electric grids kept adding unnecessary features to it, we would not have a robust infrastructure like it today. They built them and then those people left to work on something more interesting. We need more of that in Software. What we currently have is millions and millions of engineers trying to figure out how to keep users glued to their app.
Since those options doesn't easily exist, I use WhatsApp or Snap or IG to achieve that because I may still want to communicate a message to all my contacts and find the outlet that lets me do this.
So I hear you on the element of focus to maintain robustness, I just think it may always be a trade off between doing one thing very well and adding new things.
Also, while you may see location sharing as a basic feature, I see it as an advance feature and see stories as a basic feature. Which basic feature should they add or should they not add any new things?
Especially given this from your comment: Focus on providing security fixes and minor improvements that improve user experience - when UX includes such irrelevancies such as "avoid getting users vanished and/or killed", the guiding principle should be: no footguns.
Sounds like people differ on what they consider to be "getting messaging right".
I was happy with TextSecure; all I ever wanted was encrypted SMS.
this is not discrete, it also shares it with google and all their advertising etc
>Or your GPS coordinates?
Not super user friendly.
Signal does have location sharing, but not live location sharing. You can share your location, but it will not update your location for the recipient as you move around. Here's a tutorial: https://www.hardreset.info/devices/apps/apps-signal/share-lo...
If you would like Signal to implement live location sharing, the feature request thread is here: https://community.signalusers.org/t/live-location-sharing/25...
Curious, which app do you refer to?
No, it's not one of the banned words in the HR guide.. I mean yes it is, but that's not what it means.
Social apps on the other hand need network effects to win regardless of how good they are technically. A stupid name there is suicide.
It does feel pointless though.
I.e. You go into the app. 10/100 friends have posted stories. You watch them one after another (without needing to go to each friends account) to see what they were up to for the day.
After all, from a privacy perspective it is still a disaster to create an account by using your phone number to sign in. From a typical user's perspective it is basically a worse version of WhatsApp that still cannot backup your texts and conversations properly, so why bother switching at all?
The users will still sit on WhatsApp due to the latter still being the case. Once your phone is lost, stolen, or you have a different phone, your conversations are lost if you are using Signal.
Oh dear.
Honestly, why can't we just make products and services that do one thing and do it well. Leave "stories" to the social media applications.
How do you define the difference between a messaging app and social media app? Many seem quite blurred to me.
Go into Instagram/Twitter/TikTok/Snapchat/Facebook and try and turn off the stories/feed. You can't, that's the main engagement loop for the app!
I appreciate you saying what you did about the blurring.
I like the idea of MMS tho, so I'd personally like messages to be like short and quick e-mail. Packaged up media is nice to be able to send as opposed to just links, since they are more direct. Though links are good too, esspecially when files are large and might be shared with multiple people.
Building a streamlined interface still remains an unsolved problem it seems, which is why it pains me to see yet another chat app fail to prioritize features effectively.
1. The Signal team will soon realize that adding social messaging concepts to a private messaging app in a safe way is possible and more importantly is wanted by a big subset (early majority) of people. 2. The early adopters of Signal App will feel offended as they were looking for a strictly principled secret messaging app. 3. The target market of early majority will not see much difference in Signal and other options and they will stick to the app where their network is already at.
https://www.businessillustrator.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/...
Stories are not something I need from a chat app. I wish these apps would stop the ideal of "constant feature growth" and focus on core competencies. Signal is a SMS/chat app for a privacy focused audience... I do not see an overlap for a stories.
I can code but I don't code for a living, these things seem like they would take at most two weeks dev time, is there a complexity I am missing here? Or do they just not care? I have all but abandoned secure mobile messanging at this point. They either die from lack of adoption or live long enough to become the villain.
Accounts not tied to phones, I don't really have an explanation for. It was in the works two years ago, but I haven't heard anything since.
Stop developing features. Fire all PMs.
Though I do wish they'd prioritize editable messages and formatting before stories...
Features that can be 100% ignored when not wanted - no problem.
Foisting more and more bloat - problem.
Seems like the fundamental nature of the service will not need to change much.
What other apps are common among you and your peers?
> What other apps are common among you and your peers?
Ironically, I'm in the US but used to live in East Africa and have lots of friends out there. So I'm not sure what's too popular out there nowadays besides WhatsApp and TikTok. Some apps probably for managing mobile money, but not sure.