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by Sir_Cmpwn 3466 days ago
GCM depends on Play Services, so I'm really not.
1 comments

GCM is merely one minor component. The existence of the microg project proves that you can implement one without the other.
MicroG does not implement GCM.
MicroG does implement the GCM client! I've been getting push notifications through that thing for several months.
No, it implements one half of it.

Signal still has to be linked with a proprietary binary, which contains lots of tracking code.

Through Google, yes, but you can't bring along your own push notification delivery service.
Your argument has become circular, because the what Signal uses push notifications for isn't security-relevant: the messages are empty and used only as a wakeup.
They still contain information, though. They say when you're talking on Signal. Matched with someone else's messages at about the right frequency to indicate a conversation, they give a pretty decent idea of who you're talking to.