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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

Biggest issue with Signal IMO is that not enough people use it. (and, technically, the horrible dependency on PSTN addresses, but I don't expect the Signal foundation President to fix that).

Someone with wild consumer app adoption experience (100mm+ users globally) who is ALSO super into privacy/self-sovereignty/security seems like the ideal fit. Not sure if there's anyone who fits the bill there, especially not anyone who would want this specific job.

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And it is facilitating in using a privacy-based cryptocurrency and forcibly shoving it in the app, just like what Keybase did but with a different crypto project.

If guess it has given Signal more of a use case for scammers, terrorists and criminals to hide and now fund their illegal activities with no trace. [0]

[0] https://www.theverge.com/22872133/signal-cryptocurrency-paym...

I keep hearing about this crypto stuff but as a daily Signal user I don't think I've ever seen anything "forcibly shoved" at me about crypto in Signal.

Just my experience though..

I use Signal daily to communicate with family and friends via text, audio and video.

I remember reading about this crypto stuff when it launched but I see no mention of it in my usage of the app.

> but I see no mention of it in my usage of the app.

I understand it is country-dependent. Not sure if it users a whitelist or a blacklist, but not everybody will see it.

Yeah this is my experience too. I went looking out of curiosity, and I guess it’s if you press + on a message, then “payment,” and then you’re prompted to set up payments, which then pops up a modal to set up a thing to send MobileCoin. Certainly wouldn’t have seen it if I wasn’t looking for it, but if you’re messaging use case involves a lot of payments, I could see it feeling more forward

Funny this actually makes me like it more. Any feature with no potential for abuse also provides no privacy and security.

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