I understand that it may be problematic sometimes but this was very smooth. I didn’t even say anything.
A: what’s your number for the whatsapp group Me: I don’t have whatsapp because of facebook. B: ok, we have to use signal then A: ok
And that was it. Life can be very easy sometimes
Before Signal made the boneheaded move of removing SMS support, it was so much easier for me to pitch the idea of using Signal to my friends and family, most of which eventually did make the shift from SMS to Signal messages for reasons like ease of use when it came to group chats, sending images/videos, voice clips, etc.
But now? Now it’s one of those embarrassing moments where I hear back from people basically all saying "your tech recommendations are usually on point but uh, what happened with Signal???" because the app just abruptly stopped supporting SMS and ruined the seamless appeal. SMS support was the perfect way to ease people into shifting towards Signal messages and now the only damn people I know who still know Signal are my most privacy-minded friends/family, while everyone else has switched back to WhatsApp.
Clearly I’m not bitter…😅 But I mean like, come on. I had the most notorious luddites in my social circle make the switch to Signal and they loved it. The shift from SMS to Signal messages was so smooth so many of them didn’t even have that "I miss [SMS stuff]", plus they LOVED that Signal could be used on their laptops in addition to their phones. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this annoys me so much.
I totally agree. And to make matters worse, one of their arguments was that supporting SMS was taking resources away from developing other features. But what mind blowing features have come out since they dropped SMS? Usernames, I guess, which they were working on anyway. New app icons…
Think it was related to the messages being insecure and signal didn’t want people to be confused.
If your using signal your messages should be secure. SMS messages aren’t secure. It may have been clear to you when Signal send an sms or an encrypted message, but they need to cater to everyone.
That just feels like shooting themselves in the foot. Just inform the user SMS isn’t secure. That’s it.
Not being willing to trust the user with the information so they can make a choice is asinine. It’s the same reason why I stopped using Tuta. Complete privacy and security are great but if there’s no option to make things a little more open for the sake of convenience or interconnectivity, I’m just not interested.
Security and privacy shouldn’t be a prison.
https://www.howtogeek.com/787957/why-sms-needs-to-die/
SMS is bad, and on the way out. Besides that, I barely noticed when Signal stopped allowing SMS.
I guess in some circles it matters, but seems like most people use messengers nowadays.
I guess what I want now is a client for both protocols that works like the old app. That would cater to me - I don’t remember which person is on which app so I keep ending up on SMS because it has everyone.
Doesn’t every phone have an SMS app? What’s the benefit of having SMS in signal?
