> As someone who's been enthusiastic about Signal since it was TextSecure and RedPhone, the changes made over the years to broaden the userbase have been really exciting from an adoption perspective, and really depressing from a security perspective.

As always, it depends on your threat model.

I use signal because I value my privacy and don't trust Facebook. Not because I'm an activist. So I'm in the target group for Signal's new behavior and I welcome it (especially since to use it to share personal information that I don't want Facebook or advertisers to get, I need my parents and in-laws to use it as well, so it must be user friendly enough).

I wish they continue moving forward in that direction by the way and allow shared pictures to be stored directly on the phone's main memory (or at least add an opt-in setting for that), because the security I get from it not being is zero and the usability suffers significantly.

You're absolutely right that the appropriate level of security does depend on someone's threat model, but I do want to point out that you don't need to be an activist to benefit from privacy.

I'm a really big fan of the airport bathroom analogy. When you use the restroom in the airport, you close the stall door behind you.

You're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide, and everyone knows what you're doing. But you take actions to preserve your privacy anyway, and that's good.

Everyone deserves privacy, and the psychological comfort that comes with it. Dance like nobody's watching, encrypt like everyone is :)