Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

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It supports backing up to a file that you can't specify. This is unhelpful in many use cases.

Example: I am running out of space on my phone. I look, and see Signal is taking 4gb of space. But I would like to preserve a lot of that media. So I buy a mini-SD card and install it in my phone. Yay! Now to turn on Signal chat backups!

Oh, but the backups are hardcoded to a location on your primary storage that you can't change. so even though I have 126gb of free space on the SD card I installed, I can't back Signal up to it and I am still running out of space.

My only option is to try removing every other app I have installed, and hope there is enough space reclaimed to perform a backup, which I can then copy off my system so I can reinstall my apps...WTF.

Meanwhile there is no way to back up a single chat. You can archive it, but that just removes it from your Signal home screen, it doesn't actually create an archive of any kind. And there is no way to back anything up on desktop.

This isn't a feature, it's an antipattern.

Even a cynic like me wouldn't go so far as to assume bad intent here. Signal is open source so the file format should be readable and likely this is just an oversight, I guess it's not a highly requested feature. Have you filed an issue?

I never said anything about intent. If it's an oversight then maybe they should be thinking a little harder and listening to feedback from beta testers, of which I am one.

Backing up to the same device on which are running out of space is an extremely obvious problem, to which the solution is to just ask the user where they want the backup stored instead of deciding for them.

Repeatedly refusing to fix this widely reported issue with non-sensical explanations does imply bad intent.

In the beginning, it might have been an oversight. Now moxie is just making seriously misleading arguments on behalf of people he doesn't know to make their service worse.

> Repeatedly refusing to fix this widely reported issue with non-sensical explanations

What are you referring to? An option to choose your backup location got added two years ago. It works on Android 10 and above.

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/ee3d7a9a3...

Please explain how do I configure Signal for people in my family so they won't lose any message, photo or group membership if their phone falls out of the pocket.

This means:

* Backup must be automatic.

* Backup must be done off device.

* Backup must be common enough that messages aren't lost.

* Restore must be available to person of average technical ability.

* Restore must not require a person to remember typing in a 20+ character pregenerated number they probably lost in last 2 years of having Setup signal.

This is the bar other messaging apps have set.

Your last item in particular renders the security benefits that Signal normally provides moot, so then why even bother with it?

It absolutely does not do that by itself. As proven by other secure implementations with more user friendly approaches to entering encyption keys.

It's also funny how demanding on use of phone numbers, shoving in crypto currency and demanding everyone to use out-of-date Electron app is somehow fine, but making backups user friendly is suddenly a massive "security" issue.

This is the BS security theater I despise at Signal. It's the software equivalent of having every single airplane passenger take off shoes.

> So I buy a mini-SD card and install it in my phone.

That's probably your answer. I don't know anyone who uses a mini-SD card. The last time I bought a phone no phone I considered had an SD slot.

It's a very First World take on it, though. Mid-to-high-end phones are usually the ones that pack a considerable amount of integrated storage but ditch the SD card slot. Budget ones are the other way around, though.

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