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Comment by aquova | Hacker News Reader

I don't really buy this argument. Is signing up with a phone number really that much easier for the average user than using a username/email account? Billions of people seemed to have no problems making a Facebook or Google account.

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With WhatsApp, your phone number allowed you to see everyone in your contacts that you could message on there, so you could see everyone straight away. Without that, you'd have to bring your friends along and have them sign up as well, then give you their username so you can connect.

Even Instagram allows you to search your contacts. If they have their number set in their profiles, it'll find a match

It’s the building a social network part that’s frictionless not creating user name process that’s frictionless.

The lack of a social network is why I settled on Signal. Before using Signal I tried Telegram, which requires a phone number and if they recognize your number in any of their user's contact list (which many people seem happy to allow access to), they'll send them a notification telling them their contact has joined. I got a nasty message within 10 minutes of making an account from a woman accusing me of pretending to be her deceased father. I had inherited his phone number a decade prior, and it told her I had made an account. I was so shocked they not only allowed, but encouraged such behavior that I deleted it promptly and swore I'd never use it again.

Signal does the same thing. Or maybe it used to but they changed it. I have a bunch of notifications of "so and so is on Signal" from when I joined years ago.

Can't say I've ever gotten any psycho responses from it though.

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