Does Signal scale?

Until recently, I think the only way to join a Signal was to be explicitly added by a member. It doesn't have all the channels etc. of something like Discord.

It doesn't have enough mindshare by normies either. In San Francisco, my entire social graph was on Signal. In NYC, I'm the weirdo that uses Signal for everything. Most locals seem to only use it for things that they explicitly want to be private. Among Euro friends, only the ones with ties to the US/tech industry use it.

Won't disagree about channels and mindshare, but will note that Signal got public group links in 2020, not that recent.

https://signal.org/blog/group-links/