> privacy was not their objective. Only secure communications was.
> Signal is demonstrably anti-privacy by design.
But your second is uncharitable and misses Signal's historical context.
The value of a phone number for spam prevention has been mentioned, but that's not the original reason why phone numbers were central to Signal. People forget that Signal was initially designed around using SMS as transport, as with Twitter.
Signal began as an SMS client for Android that transparently applied encryption on top of SMS messages when communicating with other Signal users. They added servers and IP backhaul as it grew. Then it got an iOS app, where 3rd party SMS clients aren't allowed. The two clients coexisted awkwardly for years, with Signal iOS as a pure modern messenger and Signal Android as a hybrid SMS client. Finally they ripped out SMS support. Still later they added usernames and communicating without exposing phone numbers to the other party.
You can reasonably disdain still having to expose a phone number to Signal, but calling it "anti-privacy by design" elides the origins of that design. It took a lot of refactoring to get out from under the initial design, just like Twitter in transcending the 140-character limit.
> You can reasonably disdain still having to expose a phone number to Signal, but calling it "anti-privacy by design" elides the origins of that design.
They introduced usernames without removing the requirement for phone numbers.
The parent attempted to excuse them by pointing out that the initial design was based on phone numbers. Putting aside the fact that initial design is irrelevant to present design criticism, they went out of their way to design usernames yet deliberately disallow signup without phone numbers.
> Not a very good case made since you obviously didn’t read the parent discussion.
This isn't an argument, do you have anything to back up your assertion?
I don’t understand, you know what I will ask next.
And broadcasting on FM radio is then what?
You’re just redefining words, there’s no need for this. We agree it would be better from a privacy point of view if Signal did not require a phone number but you’re nit picking: it’s a one time thing, and you can take a public phone that no one can associate with you for this. And then never need it again if you have proper backups.
> privacy was not their objective. Only secure communications was.
> Signal is demonstrably anti-privacy by design.
But your second is uncharitable and misses Signal's historical context.
The value of a phone number for spam prevention has been mentioned, but that's not the original reason why phone numbers were central to Signal. People forget that Signal was initially designed around using SMS as transport, as with Twitter.
Signal began as an SMS client for Android that transparently applied encryption on top of SMS messages when communicating with other Signal users. They added servers and IP backhaul as it grew. Then it got an iOS app, where 3rd party SMS clients aren't allowed. The two clients coexisted awkwardly for years, with Signal iOS as a pure modern messenger and Signal Android as a hybrid SMS client. Finally they ripped out SMS support. Still later they added usernames and communicating without exposing phone numbers to the other party.
You can reasonably disdain still having to expose a phone number to Signal, but calling it "anti-privacy by design" elides the origins of that design. It took a lot of refactoring to get out from under the initial design, just like Twitter in transcending the 140-character limit.