It is kind of beyond me why people would submit to monthly donations to a company which only care about its own interests.
Signal kind of hits a sweet spot of usability and security, but it's incredibly tenuous and I don't trust the company to hold my interests at heart. It seems like we should be able to do better.
I think it was about spam
https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/privacy-policy
https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/security-and-privacy/end-to...
It doesn't mean these aren't important issues. Until Signal drops the phone number requirement (nothing beats that for efficient user tracking), allows desktop use without requiring a smartphone anywhere in the process, open sources their server code, and allows for third party clients in a reasonable way; I agree with dfkajglag: not yet an ally of user freedom.
I could handle the closed server for enabling me to use IM to talk to people. But these two points are what make it a non-starter for me.
The actual problem with Signal is that they took US State Department funding. That doesn't mean it's an op necessarily, but suspicious nonetheless.
Network effects.
If you’re only findable via custom handle versus the phone number your network already has, you’ve reduced the network’s value to your contacts. Put another way, if I join a messaging service and it says two of my contacts are on it (but many more may be), that’s close to a non-starter.
That’s a private gain at the network’s cost. For a challenger, their decision to bar that albeit limited form of free-riding is perfectly rational. For a dominant network, I am much more sympathetic to the call for anonymity.
Network effects make these virtually indistinguishable. If a network is unusable it doesn’t help anyone.
There may be an argument, however, for charging for the opt out.
Even if that was the case, " it's strictly less usable than WhatsApp" is not true, because other messengers can provide other quality of life features.
" That means in practice, it's unusable." is not true either. Remove "Status" support from WhatsApp and you get strictly less usable than WhatsApp. Still, it is not unusable.
Signal is pretty close to being strictly less usable than WhatsApp btw.
And everyone with a phone has a phone number.
Why should everyone be forced to give away their phone number?
Why should everyone be forced to use the same app including it's limitations?
Why should everyone be forced to make a contract with the same vendor?
It could well be that it's not a requirement, because people don't think about it or take it as given.
Imagine Email or phones would work the same way Signal works (with respect to the above concepts).
Is non profit a requirement for most messaging app users?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10451559/One...
TLDR: people are just not aware of their requirements
Concessions have to be made somewhere.
Good reminder for those that don't know, but did anyone ever claim otherwise? From the very start, releasing the source code was meant exclusively as a way to ensure trust == security. It was never about software freedom - the only freedom the devs mentioned was freedom of speech (encryption and censorship-resistence).