Signal and Giphy (opens in new tab)

People underestimate a lot the power of "useless" features, if well designed, to attract new users.

Telegram's Stickers are probably one of the features that most people feel other messengers lack to make people enjoy using it. Lots of friends are actually communicating daily through GIF's.

And when she has them, it'll be something different ridiculous. Seriously, this is what whatsapp is for. I don't see why we have to dump down EVERYTHING for those people.

From my own experience the biggest reason is that "my friends are elsewhere". I force my gf to use signal, her mother started to use it too because of that and because she wants to have PC problems solved by me. Same goes for other people that want to interact with me through an communication app like Signal. Other just have to call or write an SMS. Those functions are still there.

I've given up on Signal (for now at least). Yes the encryption and privacy is great but without a decent desktop client it's hard to get others in my network to switch to it.

Two things bothered me about the desktop application - it runs as a Chrome application rather than in a tab (not sure if there is a technical reason for this?). If I care enough out privacy to run Signal then I probably don't want to broadcast to anyone watching my screen that I'm running it (like a boss walking past etc) and would rather bury it amongst my other open tabs. I also couldn't find any obvious way to sign out of or lock the desktop client - if this isn't just user error then it seems like a significant oversight for a secure messaging app to not allow the user to control access if someone else was able to access the computer.

It also really bothered me that signal doesn't give me better control over what contacts can see my phone number. When I signed in I could see phone numbers for a contractor I had used for remodelling my home. The desktop client had them listed as someone to message on the default page. It's not a huge deal in this situation but if the phone number was for someone I no longer wanted to be in touch with (a former partner etc) then there was no obvious way in either the Android app or desktop client to block them. I assume that the other user can also see my details - security should include having control over who can see your phone number.

Edit: Screenshots from the desktop app as a response to comment below:

http://imgur.com/5nK07ER - the default screen http://imgur.com/mmEyQWH - the settings UI

http://imgur.com/gjdyPsF - showing Signal in my dock for all to see.

Because I know moxie comes here sometimes:

I can live with it being a Chrome app, but I'd really like it if I could use it to send messages to people who don't have Signal (like I can with the Android app). Signal mostly takes the path of being a drop-in replacement for my SMS app, so it seems a shame not to do the same here.

Yes, exactly. You'd think those should be basics for a chat application that is so focused on security. You would expect that.

What you would not expect is gif search...

Telegram supports non-phone-number IDs btw.

Sure they do. But how this go together with security awareness? We are talking about a different market here and as I've posted somewhere else: sure we can have all that trendy crap in there at some point but please don't move that BEFORE the bigger issues out there. Let's not forget that we are talking about a free app here. If this app is being developed with an eye on monetizing at some point, chances are it will become insecure with that and just join the rows of chat apps out there already covering all that trending features. Which will lead to a different app covering the needs of people who use Signal today because they need secure messaging not another app with dancing puppies.

History shows us that you can't compete by being a lesser version of something else. There's nothing wrong with trying to make the application more attractive, but at the same time trying to shoehorn in features rather than doing things where you have an advantage is less likely to be meaningful.

EDIT: Deleted the comment because the of attacks in responses, which I can’t respond to due to "Submitting too fast".

@dang: If you want users to be able to actually discuss things, allow them to respond to comments attacking them. This is a retarded system.

Well, than I guess I got the wrong idea about them. I thought WhatsApp was supposed to be "for the common people", and Signal was more targeted towards the paranoid.

I also think it's fine as long as they clearly communicate to the user that their search queries will be transmitted to a server not controlled by OWS.

Someone else made that media. They're the one expressing something. You, the consumer of that media, are just a distributor of their work.

So, I am an "HN bro" now... Because I don't think this feature can possibly be up to the highest standards of security, despite being very cool and clever? I guess there are worse things to be called.

I'm just a Matrix (and Signal) user, I haven't yet had a look into its encryption implementation yet, but for those who are interested, I think these are the docs:

http://matrix.org/speculator/spec/drafts%2Fe2e/client_server...

Came in to suggest Matrix and its client http://riot.im. Otherwise XMPP with http://conversations.im is also a great option.

Conversations is one of the highest-quality apps I've ever used. Buy it!

It's XMPP with everything you'd expect. Inline image, videos, presence, everything.

(if you cannot buy it, you can get it for free from FDroid but really, buy it!)

Unless the API can somehow place proper phrase instead of image. If text would be matching all images, this should work fine.

Which unique id? I thought the point of sending it via Signal was to not include any user id or any other id.

Are you kidding me? Do you consider this Chrome extension as a 'real app' (sic!)?

I won't install Chrome just to host Signal extension.

Meanwhile, people are accidentally leaking their phone numbers and their contacts' phone numbers because Signal replaced fingerprints that could safely be posted publicly with QR codes that can't, and didn't explain it: https://twitter.com/webster/status/793657469381713920

It clutters the UI with unecessary stuff. Wire also provides such a misfeature. I would rather disable it, but cannot.

Yes, but it's done at a lower level, which enables a host of attacks, like the announcement says. What I'm talking about would just encrypt the payload, so none of the metadata would be encrypted (and thus preserved).

Although I guess you'd also need to specify a "reply" public key in the encrypted data, so this is becomes more of a protocol.

But you can determine that nobody at signal has used or even seen an android phone.