Using the preinstalled Google services effectively turns your smartphone into spyware. In the standard Android that comes preinstalled on most smartphones, Google services run with system privileges and can collect all kinds of data including location data. If Signal exclusively supports this, it reinforces dependence on Google and discourages people from using versions of Android that don’t include Google’s spyware.

This argument doesn't make sense, Signal is fundamentally not an anonymity tool. It's a privacy tool.

They intentionally store very little data about their users but their "mailbox" model explicitly means that the server (or an attacker) can figure out who is talking to whom. And that's fine! Signal isn't trying to be an anonymity network, so while stuff like sealed sender are nice features it's important to remember that anonymity breaks are explicitly not part of the Signal threat model.

"Don't stand out" only makes sense as advice for anonymity tools to avoid bifurcating the anonymity set -- it doesn't make much sense when you're taking about a service which links your account to your phone number and thus every server request is explicitly identifying you.

> When you say "Each group of users can have their own servers" you aren't enhancing privacy you are standing out.

You're also hedging against mandated government backdoors.

A single organisation like signal can easily compelled to add a backdoor (or leave the territory) like the EU is trying to do. Going after thousands of servers individually is a whole different problem.

The reverse is true, if more app support unified push then those using it will stand out less.

Stand out from what? Are you seriously arguing that the only things keeping Signal from being banned are that it somehow camouflages itself?

There just is a contention between software freedom and privacy that people don't want to acknowledge sometimes. Signal is firmly on one side of the divide, and their software is open source because it is the convention to have the source public and auditable, not because they are interested in user freedom and respect.

Not sure I follow or understand your argument. There's so many things with which eg Telegram stands out, but it still appeals to normies.

They could still implement these things in the app and put them behind a switch for users who care about independence more than one specific type of anonymity. Explain the tradeoffs on the settings screen.

The only valid reason to be against an optional feature is the maintenance burden, I don't think it's too much here but I also can't speak for the Signal team.

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Where once it was a messaging app for everybody, now it is a mailbox they forget to check.

It's just two compilation profiles, at least thousands of minuscule open source projects do it

Hates users who are not total normies and designed explicitly for normies are not opposite. In fact an app that hates not normies would be designed for explicitly for normies.

> Easily? There's no easy in maintaining and releasing two different versions of your app, especially for a small non-profit.

It's literally just another job on your CI. They got a 50 million seed donation in 2017 and reported almost 30 million in revenue in 2024. They are not exactly small. If they were VC founded and not a non profit they would be a unicorn.

To put it simply, I need a messenger app to talk to other people. Most people I talk to are not programmers or very tech savvy.

Putting them on Signal requires me to convince them to download an app from the play store, with thr same name. The app is very similar to messenger or whatsapp and they're used to the functionality already. So many of my friends made an account so we can talk.

Anything more involved and they stay on meta's garden. Any successful messaging app needs to prioritize "normies" to get users.

Do you support what the above user contests?

I spend about half of every year traveling the mountains and deserts of the world, often ones with poor infrastructure. I use Signal more than any other messenger app, and I have never had the deliverability issues you complain about; messages do all get through eventually.

> Even if you change Signal's code to add a feature to export the DB, it apparently cannot see your DB, because iOS sandboxes that so that it is only visible to Signal builds signed with the Signal developers' keys.

This is not something exclusive to iOS; Android does the same thing.

Something doesn't connect here. I have a workout tracker app I use, and while I can't access the sandbox from the outside, the app has a feature to import/export workout history and it lets me dump a sqlite db copy via iOS share sheets just fine.

No. Turn on backups. Write the encryption key somewhere safe.

Copy the backup off your phone and use https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-tools to extract everything.

I'm not sure about Signal, but I had a similar issue with another app, a SQLite db inaccessible. I found that you could take a computer-based full backup and then there are various 3rd party tools that will poke through that backup for whatever "hidden" app data you need. One I previously used is iMazing, but I'm sure there are free open source ones as well.

Best of luck!

> Interestingly here, the sqlite DB would be trivially fixable, and messages restorable, with the `sqlite3` CLI.

It seems to me like the app itself should be able to perform this operation and restore data? Why is this not just fixed in the app?

To be sure this would mean Apple has to allow for 3p installs that have self signing keys that can let one gain visibility into the data of the app(in this case its in the sandboxes), yeah?

The whole point of signal is that they cannot provide you with your data - they do not store it.

Further, I have been frustrated with similar design decisions with Signal - but how can they ensure you can export your messages without allowing letter agencies to do the same? Falling back on platform security guarantees is a rather good choice in terms of the economics - Signal need not gatekeep access to their private data - it is android and iOS that do the heavy lifting there. I’d love to move my messages between devices and sims - but I understand why that is not feasible for now.

Yes it's tiny but it's the kind of people that tend to influence others. Not in using F-Droid, but using signal yes. It could help adoption overall.

I've used F-Droid for years. It's simple, has good apps that aren't full of ads, just works. PGP... sucks a lot, I never really got along with it. Maybe an age thing, but hardly anyone I've met uses PGP/GPG. Yet I have many friends/family on Matrix.

Having signal on fdroid and having it build reproducibly would make me trust it.

As it stands it's a proprietary app with a lot o marketing to convince me otherwise.

I’m pretty sure it’s for security reasons, it allows the app to ensure the code comes from a correct Signal phone number and not from a third party actor. It’s hand holding yes but it’s a trade off in favor of non-technical users.

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Hate to say it, but if you don’t trust Signal to read your texts… you’ve already lost - stick with Facebook Messenger.

You need to fix your shill propaganda. It's 4 months i.e. 120 days, not 4 weeks, before they delete your account https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server/blob/7f5097bd3317...