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Comment by jenny91 | Hacker News Reader

I've been a Signal beta tester on iOS for as long as I remember, knowing that they were going to introduce usernames, and I wanted to get my (relatively common) name as my username. Now they finally introduced it, but they require it to end in at least 2 digits "a choice intended to help keep usernames egalitarian and minimize spoofing".

Edit: this is not actually a serious problem for me, don't worry! Rather, I think it's funny. And honestly I kind of like having the numbers required, it's a good idea. It does remove a lot of the vanity from usernames.

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It’s an excellent design choice, it more or less completely eliminates “vanity names” and the “value” of shorter names.

It's a brilliant design choice. At first I was like "What?" and now the more I think about it, the more I realize it is an absolute genius move.

People need to get trained out of (even informally) assuming they can identify someone because their username looks familiar, and this is a great way to do it.

> more or less completely eliminates “vanity names” and the “value”

With notable exceptions, i’m sure, being username69 and username420 and a few others (a similar phenomenon happened in magic the gathering, when they introduced limited edition 500 print runs of cards with the serial number stamped on them, and the only ones you can really sell or command a good price for are 1, 69, 420 and 500)

I can't wait to talk to elonmusk420! I'm sure it'll be the real Elon. His online antics are such anyone with that username will instantly trigger Poe's Law. Getting rid of phone numbers as identifiers is a good idea but I think it would be better to just assign user IDs or generate hashes based on user inputs or something.

> generate hashes based on user inputs or something.

Because friend codes were so popular on Nintendo.

Hey add me real quick, my id is 12716472-83647281746-8172649! Or use the hash code, 0x28A56ED9! Super easy to remember, way better than giantrobot22 or vel0city66.

Given nintendo's user base includes a LOT of children who are very young, the long codes may have been a feature, not a bug - the equivalent of a child latch - to slow down/discourage young users from adding people themselves so their parents have a better idea of who they are interacting with.

Don't get me wrong I get there were intentional reasons for it in regard to friend codes and I don't necessarily fully mind with that in mind in that use case. I do kind of wish there was an "I'm 13/18+, let's take the training wheels off" feature though.

I expect it's more a combination of several factors:

- if we don't have usernames we don't have to deal with obscene usernames, trademarked usernames, impersonation claims, and similar

- if we don't have usernames and our generated friend codes aren't guessable, we don't have to worry about people getting random unexpected friend requests from people they don't know

The issue there is "veI0city66". Depending on the font that capital "I" might look identical to a lower case "l". A hash with an alphabet that doesn't include homoglyphs would reduce ambiguity.

There's also the "weedlordbonerhitler69" issue. A user name that seemed hilarious at 16 likely seems less hilarious at 26.

If users were identified with a hash derived from an input user name you could type in "weedlordbonerhitler69" and what would be displayed is a hash on the client side. The contact add UI could simply return the UID for the input username. So you could give out the UID or username and another user could still add you.

> The issue there is "veI0city66". Depending on the font that capital "I" might look identical to a lower case "l". A hash with an alphabet that doesn't include homoglyphs would reduce ambiguity.

They're not going to get mixed up typing it in from me verbally telling me the name. They're not going to get confused typing it in. And even then, validate the user after, that's another feature of signal is in person/out of band validation of the ends. So start the convo the verify through a channel you otherwise trust.

> There's also the "weedlordbonerhitler69" issue. A user name that seemed hilarious at 16 likely seems less hilarious at 26.

And with their setup you can change it at any time, so once again not really an issue.

> Getting rid of phone numbers as identifiers

Unless I got the wrong end of the stick, that's exactly what they are not doing.

As you may already know, getting a commonly used username is also somewhat of a curse (do you like getting "forgot your password" emails every hour?)

Or tons of (mistaken) conversation requests?

Usernames are only used for the initial connection, so "getting" a username doesn't really gain you anything other than the "username" you give to people who don't already have you as a contact: "a username is not the profile name that’s displayed in chats, it’s not a permanent handle, and not visible to the people you are chatting with in Signal"

I’m politely putting it away into the not-a-problem drawer.

Well, I got stavros.01, if anyone wants to chat.

Could have gotten stavr.05

I thought of that, but it's much harder to say. "stavr dot zero five" is going to confuse people.

At least 8675309 ends in two digits!

I don’t think this is necessarily something to lose sleep over.

> require it to end in at least 2 digits

... notes HN user jenny91

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