[a_imho]

To me it feels Signal just wants to become the new WhatsApp more than anything. Yes, I'm basing this on the gif support and that it requires a phone number. The security argument only worked as long as whatsapp and co. did not roll out e2ee. I could support a sincere attempt that want to do good which OWS seemed to be doing, but now that they are competing on the emoji front they have lost their edge for me*

*I don't really have a horse in this as I use none of them

[bradyo]

Except is rather everyone be using an open source, minimal logging version of WhatsApp

[heyAaronHatch]

Presuming the signed app code is the same as the published source; and of course we can't see the server code.