Signal refusing to federate with WhatsApp, even though meta says they will still use the signal protocol is the most bone headed decision I have ever seen from them.
There no better chance to break the network effect than this.
I really wish my country didn’t rely so much on whatsapp
In a statement to the publication, Signal president Meredith Whittaker says, “Our privacy standards are extremely high and not only will we not lower them, we want to keep raising them. Currently, working with Facebook Messenger, iMessage, WhatsApp, or even a Matrix service would mean a deterioration of our data protection standards.”
Ugh, okay Meredith, let’s pretend it’s impossible to handle this with user experience that makes the user acknowledge their conversation with a WhatsApp user is not secure. Meanwhile if the only viable way for this conversion to occur is to have WhatsApp on both ends, the situation less secure. So according to Meredith, the choice is between less overall security or not having conversations with people who don’t use Signal. That could makes sense for her salary but it surely is a net negative for Signal users some of which will have to install WhatsApp since they won’t be able to afford not to have those conversations.
Ugh, okay Meredith, let’s pretend it’s impossible to handle this with user experience that makes the user acknowledge their conversation with a WhatsApp user is not secure. Meanwhile if the only viable way for this conversion to occur is to have WhatsApp on both ends, the situation less secure.
I don’t agree with this. The only way to have the conversation is to have Signal at both ends.
while i see where you’re coming from, being able to message WhatsApp users from a client app that respects privacy would be better than being forced to have WhatsApp installed on your device, with it snooping casually on your everyday device usage and your contact list and so on.
WhatsApp is the only Facebook app on my phone and i’d love to get rid of it without losing the ability to message all those buffons using it (which make up for 99% of my social circle)
Exactly. Let us choose if we want to interact with WhatsApp or not.
I’d be ready to sacrifice some security in order to not have WhatsApp installed on my phone.
Of course it would be cool to just get rid of WhatsApp but I can’t force my whole basketball team to go on Threema…
Extremely bad take in my opinion. Not supporting alternatives means you force users into installing the alternatives
People could be using WhatsApp if they cared about it, but they chose signal for a reason. And making signal weaken its privacy for the purpose of reaching more people is against everything they stand for.
The trouble is we end up having to install both when we could be only using Signal
I was hoping to move to signal in the whatapp network. Unfortunately in Brazil you cannot live without whatapp.
You could try and run both
Keep whatsapp, and slowly switch contacts to Signal (it might just be close friends and family). That’s what people around me are doing
My wife told me to fuck off when I installed signal on her phone 😔
Haha, that’s kinda funny. Then people are like.
Just tell your friends and family to stop using iMessage. Like everyone will be ok to switch their routine just like that.
I have both WhatsApp and Signal installed.
In the 3 years or so since I installed Signal, I haven’t had a single conversation on it. Only a handful of people from my Contact book are showing as Signal users, and none of them people I speak to regularly.
I live in anticipation of someone deciding to message me on there, but I’m not exactly optimistic at this point.
I met one person a few months ago who also used signal primarily. It did feel weird adding someone normally. Usually when I add someone it’s their first time with signal
On the one hand I agree with them sticking to their guns re: adamantly protecting privacy.
On the other, the number of contacts I have using signal has dropped off a cliff, from 12 to just one. It certainly isn’t rising. The people I know who used it have abandoned it and went back to WhatsApp.
Getting rid of SMS support was a mistake.
I’d personally prefer that when messaging with someone using WhatsApp, they make clear to you that Facebook can and will have some metadata, but not the contents of the chat itself. Shit, make it opt-in.
A big part of why nobody uses signal is because… nobody uses signal. If you could still talk to people on WhatsApp, the de facto standard in most of the world bar the US and China, more people might give it a try, and thus more people over time would be having signal-to-signal conversations.
IMO a good but imperfect solution is preferable to nobody using Signal, which is the realistic alternative.
I’ll continue donating to Signal, but much like their SMS decision, I believe this to be a mistake that will severely hamper adoption.
Perfect is the enemy of good
This is exactly the problem. If they support interoperability then they will allow their users to continue using the Signal app which has high security standards, even if the particular conversation is not as secure as native signal conversations and they can’t control what the third-party app does. This will help grow the Signal network (because now it is easier for WhatsApp users to incrementally switch to Signal) and become more secure.
By rejecting interoperability they may be slightly improving the privacy of the 1% of users where their conversation partner would have switched to Signal, but are harming privacy the 99% of users that will now need to switch to WhatsApp for those converstions and are harming their future network growth (which would bring even more users to a private solution).
