| >>You are defending why phone numbers are useful, but are completely choosing to ignore the point I am making about the tradeoff of who you trust. You're swiftly jumping to conclusions on a comment that only describes a point of view. Not my own perception of how the trust model should be established and the capabilities current messaging services provide. >>... but, being able to join some large group chat with a ton of strangers to talk about some open source project or whatever you are doing without any of those people now knowing your phone number--an identifier which is tied to a large number of "real world" concerns and is ridiculously difficult to change--is actually extremely valuable. As someone who suffered harassment by getting the p/n exposed at Whatsapp and being followed by the same person almost everywhere where's it serves as an id (Signal, Telegram) i wholly share your concerns. But it's a privacy matter that almost none of the current messaging platforms really offers bundled with solid UX and data transparency. What am i trying to convey by how i comprehend Moxie's rhetoric is that Signal tries to be a Whatsapp alternative (given the latter really can access messages in a group conversation when a participant reports contact) by not harvesting the user data (cheers Telegram) and providing little bit more control over the conversation on both ends (self destructing messages). Signal has bigger focus on security right now however the use case is to be accessible to a wider audience. From that point of view Signal really stands out. And it helps me personally to, sort of, separate communication spaces. >>Honestly, even if you aren't quite in those sets, the trade off still isn't an obvious win for Signal. As an example, let's say you are in a group of people talking about a protest. Look, if you propose Signal needs to accommodate guerillas, rioters and protesters organize and act with impunity it's a privacy issue and Signal isn't serving this purpose. |