Comment on Telegram says it has 'about 30 engineers'; security experts say that's a red flag
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 2 months agoI’m a signal donor and while I disagree with your point regarding UI (have you used in the past couple of years? It’s went from feeling dated to feeling pretty modern), yeah the SMS thing is a joke.
Even worse, though, is that the EU offered them the opportunity to become relevant on a silver platter, by forcing WhatsApp to open up their app and be cross-platform with others who want to. Signal said no thanks.
I get it, WhatsApp stores metadata, and Signal doesn’t like that. But they were fine with (way way worse) SMS for a while? The day Signal chose that path was the day Signal willingly chose to be irrelevant for the vast vast vast majority of people.
pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
… agreeing to be directly compatible with Whatsapp would mean they agree to surrender the privacy for every single instance of Signal-WhatsApp communication.
If the whole reason for your existence is privacy, it seems that it would be an existential danger to create a partnership with the implicit understanding that it will destroy privacy.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Some level of privacy, yes. Solely in WhatsApp-signal chats.
But you know what the alternative is? Nobody using signal. And that’s objectively worse.
Cross-compatibility with WhatsApp would mean more people on signal, meaning more signal-signal chats.
Signal-SMS is FAR less private, but they were fine with that for years.
pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Those choices don’t occur in a vacuum.
What do you think happens to the nonprofit foundation built entirely around a fanatical devotion to privacy, if they partnered with Facebook. Not just partnered with, but in doing so, weakened the overall privacy of their platform.
Putting aside adoption rates, how does that impact their organizational sustainment and viability e.g. their ability to draw in donations, retain talent, or stay independent?
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That all gets better due to having far more users. You can’t just say “let’s ignore adoption rate” - that’s a pretty huge deal. It’s by far and away the main thing that holds them back.
And again, they were fine with SMS, which is far far worse.