> They resisted this change for years, but eventually gave in and fixed it.

I believe that one big reason for that is that it was not trivial to get with the quality they wanted. I respect the fact that they "resisted" instead of just adding some bad implementation for the sake of it.

Nitpick: AFAIK, revealing a phone number is required for registration. But it’s no longer required in order to communicate with other Signal users.