<story><title>Signal Desktop</title><url>https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal-desktop/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>HappyTypist</author><text>Perhaps Signal just isn&amp;#x27;t for you. No one who I&amp;#x27;ve introduced signal to has ever had a problem with it. Now if you add a randomly generated 128 bit account identifier, then people WILL have problems with it. Not with you, but with your mum&amp;#x2F;grandma.&lt;p&gt;I really think Signal might not be for you. Signal is not about building the most secure or private system, it&amp;#x27;s about building the first mass-market encrypted that that&amp;#x27;s Good Enough. Signal is a infinite percent improvement over plaintext&amp;#x2F;https. It&amp;#x27;s not supposed to be as good as OTR.</text></item><item><author>darklajid</author><text>If we ever meet I&amp;#x27;ll buy you a beer for the year of the Linux desktop line.&lt;p&gt;But honestly: I understand mobile support for iOS&amp;#x2F;Android only. I don&amp;#x27;t understand Chrome as a platform (FF isn&amp;#x27;t dead. And the biggest reason for that is that I fail to understand why that client needs to be &amp;#x27;web based&amp;#x27; and then again not. A web app in a silo)&lt;p&gt;Mobile numbers.. Why? I mean, if 90% of the population WANT mum to see that they use a service and when they&amp;#x27;re online (or whatever metadata you want to exchange for contacts), just because they happen to know the phone number: Fine. But why isn&amp;#x27;t it possible to sign up, hit a box that says &amp;#x27;no phone number associated&amp;#x27; and .. add contacts manually? I don&amp;#x27;t want the 99.999% to change, to make it harder for them. I just wish that Christmas brings an option that lets me opt-out of that. Chat contacts don&amp;#x27;t need my phone number. People that know my phone number are not chat contacts.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll get back pretending that Linux has won and will try to surf the web in FxOS for 30min just .. to prove you wrong. :)</text></item><item><author>moxie</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a pretty big holiday wishlist.  =)&lt;p&gt;This is the world we live in: people do most of their communication on mobile devices running iOS or Android, use Chrome on the desktop, and expect contact discovery to be automatic in their social apps.  The browser has won the desktop, iOS and Android have won mobile, and the velocity of the ecosystem is unlikely to make &amp;quot;distributed&amp;quot; communication mechanisms possible for some time.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re trying to make mass surveillance impossible within this world of ours.  We want to produce technology that is privacy preserving but feels &lt;i&gt;just like&lt;/i&gt; everything else people already use, not somehow convince everyone to fundamentally change their workflow and their expectations.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;d be sweet if we lived in an alternate reality where everyone ran SailfishOS or something (and maybe &lt;i&gt;this year&lt;/i&gt; will be the year of Linux on the desktop!), but we can&amp;#x27;t just pretend that&amp;#x27;s already the case.</text></item><item><author>darklajid</author><text>Thank you for your reply. I really appreciate it. As I stated earlier, I feel bad about &amp;#x27;expecting more&amp;#x27; here - I certainly see the appeal of a popular ~decent~ option. Without trying to derail this further, let me look at those points:&lt;p&gt;If I use throwaway numbers: What happens if I lose access? Do I _need_ the number for anything in the future (say, device died)? Can someone else mess with me if they get access to this number, if the number gets reassigned? Searching for this kind of information is hard, because &amp;#x27;Signal&amp;#x27; isn&amp;#x27;t exactly a word that search engines understand in context.&lt;p&gt;Chromium and Chrome are the same thing for me: A browser I don&amp;#x27;t care for and only install on a dev machine for some tests. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t install either on my personal rig, ignoring the suffixes. And certainly not for an &amp;#x27;app&amp;#x27;.  It&amp;#x27;s both &amp;#x27;Not liking Google&amp;#x27; and &amp;#x27;No general web browser to run an IM client&amp;#x27;. The latter isn&amp;#x27;t solved by Chromium.&lt;p&gt;As far as I&amp;#x27;m aware there are no Google Play Services for FxOS (looking at this Flame right here) and I expect that there&amp;#x27;s no easy solution for SailfishOS either.&lt;p&gt;I understand that I&amp;#x27;m not the target audience. Please believe me when I say that I don&amp;#x27;t feel that I can (as in, it suits me&amp;#x2F;feels okay to do so) use Signal right now. I&amp;#x27;m writing these messages here not to hit on your work, but to express that there is an audience with other preferences&amp;#x2F;goals. It&amp;#x27;s Christmas soon, after all - consider this my public, unrealistic, idealistic wishlist.&lt;p&gt;(Edit: And I apologize that my critical comment ranks rather high right now. I might believe that I&amp;#x27;m not completely bonkers and there are other people that feel the same way, but it still sucks to see this kind of feedback on an announcement post)</text></item><item><author>moxie</author><text>If we were going to rank our priorities, they would be in this order:&lt;p&gt;1) Make mass surveillance impossible.&lt;p&gt;2) Stop targeted attacks against crypto nerds.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not that we don&amp;#x27;t find #2 laudable, but optimizing for #1 takes precedence when we&amp;#x27;re making decisions.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t want to use your phone number, don&amp;#x27;t use it.  You can register with any GV, Twilio, Voicepulse, or other throwaway VoIP number.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t want to run Chrome, use Chromium instead.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t want to use Google Play Services, use GcmCore.&lt;p&gt;The world you want this software for is not the world that everyone else lives in.  You can certainly make it work in that world with a little effort, but because of how we&amp;#x27;ve prioritized our objectives, that&amp;#x27;s not the default experience.</text></item><item><author>darklajid</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m feeling dirty, because I don&amp;#x27;t like to be that negative, especially if we&amp;#x27;re talking open-source software. And I feel that I kinda hold this project to higher standards: If I compare this to WhatsApp&amp;#x2F;Telegram&amp;#x2F;Threema&amp;#x2F;Whatever, I inheritently, somewhat subconciously expect more from Signal.&lt;p&gt;And I&amp;#x27;m disappointed. I tend to repeat the &amp;#x27;central server&amp;#x27; and &amp;#x27;a phone number is not an address and not public information, it certainly is no identity&amp;#x27; criticism.&lt;p&gt;When I read the headline&amp;#x2F;title, I thought &amp;#x27;Now maybe that would be enough to be ~good enough~ to ditch Telegram&amp;#x27; in spite of these problems (which Telegram has as well, ofc). But really. A Chrome app. And works only (yeah, I think I said it before: Phone numbers suck) as a secondary client. And only if the first client is Android?&lt;p&gt;I seriously don&amp;#x27;t get it. And it certainly is not for me: I don&amp;#x27;t like that browser (I do have it installed for testing and to follow it at times, but there&amp;#x27;s no &amp;#x27;app&amp;#x27; I&amp;#x27;d run in Chrome). I don&amp;#x27;t want to tie something to my phone and I don&amp;#x27;t think that it should matter what platform my handset runs on - SailfishOS looks nice, FxOS progresses slow but ticks a good number of boxes for me.&lt;p&gt;Full circle to the first line: I don&amp;#x27;t _like_ to be negative and the headline gave me hope for a couple seconds. Unfortunately this release just deepened my belief that Signal wasn&amp;#x27;t meant to be for me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>andreyf</author><text>Non-technical people I&amp;#x27;ve introduced to Signal on iOS stop at the &amp;quot;upload your contacts&amp;quot; stage and go &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t want this random little company to have access to my contacts&amp;quot;. These are non-technical people who understand the importance of keeping their contact list private, and there are a lot of them.&lt;p&gt;Making it a de facto requirement that users on your network be personally identified via a phone number (&amp;quot;get a burner number&amp;quot;? really?) and that you have a copy of their contact list and phone calls, all within US jurisdiction, means mass metadata surveillance a single judicial order away (as it is now with the telecoms).&lt;p&gt;Unlike POTS, Signal prevents phone taps, yes, but it does not hide your social network, and so does little to provide you with the ability to associate with someone anonymously.</text></comment>
<story><title>Signal Desktop</title><url>https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal-desktop/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>HappyTypist</author><text>Perhaps Signal just isn&amp;#x27;t for you. No one who I&amp;#x27;ve introduced signal to has ever had a problem with it. Now if you add a randomly generated 128 bit account identifier, then people WILL have problems with it. Not with you, but with your mum&amp;#x2F;grandma.&lt;p&gt;I really think Signal might not be for you. Signal is not about building the most secure or private system, it&amp;#x27;s about building the first mass-market encrypted that that&amp;#x27;s Good Enough. Signal is a infinite percent improvement over plaintext&amp;#x2F;https. It&amp;#x27;s not supposed to be as good as OTR.</text></item><item><author>darklajid</author><text>If we ever meet I&amp;#x27;ll buy you a beer for the year of the Linux desktop line.&lt;p&gt;But honestly: I understand mobile support for iOS&amp;#x2F;Android only. I don&amp;#x27;t understand Chrome as a platform (FF isn&amp;#x27;t dead. And the biggest reason for that is that I fail to understand why that client needs to be &amp;#x27;web based&amp;#x27; and then again not. A web app in a silo)&lt;p&gt;Mobile numbers.. Why? I mean, if 90% of the population WANT mum to see that they use a service and when they&amp;#x27;re online (or whatever metadata you want to exchange for contacts), just because they happen to know the phone number: Fine. But why isn&amp;#x27;t it possible to sign up, hit a box that says &amp;#x27;no phone number associated&amp;#x27; and .. add contacts manually? I don&amp;#x27;t want the 99.999% to change, to make it harder for them. I just wish that Christmas brings an option that lets me opt-out of that. Chat contacts don&amp;#x27;t need my phone number. People that know my phone number are not chat contacts.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll get back pretending that Linux has won and will try to surf the web in FxOS for 30min just .. to prove you wrong. :)</text></item><item><author>moxie</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a pretty big holiday wishlist.  =)&lt;p&gt;This is the world we live in: people do most of their communication on mobile devices running iOS or Android, use Chrome on the desktop, and expect contact discovery to be automatic in their social apps.  The browser has won the desktop, iOS and Android have won mobile, and the velocity of the ecosystem is unlikely to make &amp;quot;distributed&amp;quot; communication mechanisms possible for some time.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re trying to make mass surveillance impossible within this world of ours.  We want to produce technology that is privacy preserving but feels &lt;i&gt;just like&lt;/i&gt; everything else people already use, not somehow convince everyone to fundamentally change their workflow and their expectations.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;d be sweet if we lived in an alternate reality where everyone ran SailfishOS or something (and maybe &lt;i&gt;this year&lt;/i&gt; will be the year of Linux on the desktop!), but we can&amp;#x27;t just pretend that&amp;#x27;s already the case.</text></item><item><author>darklajid</author><text>Thank you for your reply. I really appreciate it. As I stated earlier, I feel bad about &amp;#x27;expecting more&amp;#x27; here - I certainly see the appeal of a popular ~decent~ option. Without trying to derail this further, let me look at those points:&lt;p&gt;If I use throwaway numbers: What happens if I lose access? Do I _need_ the number for anything in the future (say, device died)? Can someone else mess with me if they get access to this number, if the number gets reassigned? Searching for this kind of information is hard, because &amp;#x27;Signal&amp;#x27; isn&amp;#x27;t exactly a word that search engines understand in context.&lt;p&gt;Chromium and Chrome are the same thing for me: A browser I don&amp;#x27;t care for and only install on a dev machine for some tests. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t install either on my personal rig, ignoring the suffixes. And certainly not for an &amp;#x27;app&amp;#x27;.  It&amp;#x27;s both &amp;#x27;Not liking Google&amp;#x27; and &amp;#x27;No general web browser to run an IM client&amp;#x27;. The latter isn&amp;#x27;t solved by Chromium.&lt;p&gt;As far as I&amp;#x27;m aware there are no Google Play Services for FxOS (looking at this Flame right here) and I expect that there&amp;#x27;s no easy solution for SailfishOS either.&lt;p&gt;I understand that I&amp;#x27;m not the target audience. Please believe me when I say that I don&amp;#x27;t feel that I can (as in, it suits me&amp;#x2F;feels okay to do so) use Signal right now. I&amp;#x27;m writing these messages here not to hit on your work, but to express that there is an audience with other preferences&amp;#x2F;goals. It&amp;#x27;s Christmas soon, after all - consider this my public, unrealistic, idealistic wishlist.&lt;p&gt;(Edit: And I apologize that my critical comment ranks rather high right now. I might believe that I&amp;#x27;m not completely bonkers and there are other people that feel the same way, but it still sucks to see this kind of feedback on an announcement post)</text></item><item><author>moxie</author><text>If we were going to rank our priorities, they would be in this order:&lt;p&gt;1) Make mass surveillance impossible.&lt;p&gt;2) Stop targeted attacks against crypto nerds.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not that we don&amp;#x27;t find #2 laudable, but optimizing for #1 takes precedence when we&amp;#x27;re making decisions.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t want to use your phone number, don&amp;#x27;t use it.  You can register with any GV, Twilio, Voicepulse, or other throwaway VoIP number.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t want to run Chrome, use Chromium instead.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t want to use Google Play Services, use GcmCore.&lt;p&gt;The world you want this software for is not the world that everyone else lives in.  You can certainly make it work in that world with a little effort, but because of how we&amp;#x27;ve prioritized our objectives, that&amp;#x27;s not the default experience.</text></item><item><author>darklajid</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m feeling dirty, because I don&amp;#x27;t like to be that negative, especially if we&amp;#x27;re talking open-source software. And I feel that I kinda hold this project to higher standards: If I compare this to WhatsApp&amp;#x2F;Telegram&amp;#x2F;Threema&amp;#x2F;Whatever, I inheritently, somewhat subconciously expect more from Signal.&lt;p&gt;And I&amp;#x27;m disappointed. I tend to repeat the &amp;#x27;central server&amp;#x27; and &amp;#x27;a phone number is not an address and not public information, it certainly is no identity&amp;#x27; criticism.&lt;p&gt;When I read the headline&amp;#x2F;title, I thought &amp;#x27;Now maybe that would be enough to be ~good enough~ to ditch Telegram&amp;#x27; in spite of these problems (which Telegram has as well, ofc). But really. A Chrome app. And works only (yeah, I think I said it before: Phone numbers suck) as a secondary client. And only if the first client is Android?&lt;p&gt;I seriously don&amp;#x27;t get it. And it certainly is not for me: I don&amp;#x27;t like that browser (I do have it installed for testing and to follow it at times, but there&amp;#x27;s no &amp;#x27;app&amp;#x27; I&amp;#x27;d run in Chrome). I don&amp;#x27;t want to tie something to my phone and I don&amp;#x27;t think that it should matter what platform my handset runs on - SailfishOS looks nice, FxOS progresses slow but ticks a good number of boxes for me.&lt;p&gt;Full circle to the first line: I don&amp;#x27;t _like_ to be negative and the headline gave me hope for a couple seconds. Unfortunately this release just deepened my belief that Signal wasn&amp;#x27;t meant to be for me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>darklajid</author><text>See, that identifier might be an option. Or .. it might not be necessary. If that identifier would be the core &amp;#x27;me&amp;#x27; on Signal, why wouldn&amp;#x27;t you be able to add me by phone number - if I gave Signal one to share&amp;#x2F;associate with? Mum and Grandma would see no change. People like me could run around without a phone number.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not as if that hasn&amp;#x27;t been done. twitter.com&amp;#x2F;darklajid is me (not worth checking it out). See? A name, tied to an identity. Same here. I used to have a FB account and even _there_ you can have a profile name that is unique and shareable. I really think you conflate things here: I DO NOT want to make life harder for mum&amp;#x2F;granny&amp;#x2F;the average WhatsApp fan. If you love that random people show up in your roster because you store their number (or vice versa: You show up on your Ex&amp;#x27;s roster because she didn&amp;#x27;t delete you yet) that&amp;#x27;s fine. And could continue to work like that.&lt;p&gt;I really have a hard time understanding why it isn&amp;#x27;t impossible to opt out. If I have a key, registered with Signal - why would I need a number on top? _Especially_ given that there&amp;#x27;s no federation to speak of, so I assume they don&amp;#x27;t need to &amp;#x27;shard&amp;#x27; base on the identifier. foo@example.com -&amp;gt; talk to example.com? That&amp;#x27;s not happening here. And I don&amp;#x27;t see why&amp;#x2F;how they&amp;#x27;d shard on numbers? +49 -&amp;gt; route to a German server?&lt;p&gt;Why is a phone number (and all the things that come with it: Discoverability for example) a requirement? You didn&amp;#x27;t answer that.&lt;p&gt;Yes, Signal might not be for me. I&amp;#x27;m reasonably sure that I mentioned that before in this thread ;-)</text></comment>