[soiler]

The common criticisms of Signal to me often come down to letting perfect be the enemy of good. Yes, I want a perfectly secure and private messaging app, but Signal is an incredibly important stepping stone in that direction. It's moving the Overton window.

[izacus]

Except that it doesn't seem to be better than existing Whatsapp in any way? They even use the same protocol and it barely made a dent in WhatsApps market share.

Outside the small % that rejects Meta... Who is it for and how exactly is it reaching it's objectives?

[glenngillen]

Projecting from personal anecdote here, but... my social circles have almost no intersection with my life in tech. They are not "tech people". Yet I have only a single contact that still messages me via WhatsApp. Everyone else and all of the groups I'm in moved to Signal.

[batiudrami]

Mine too, but I think we’re uncommon. Far more people use WhatsApp than Signal.

On the plus side; existing familiarity with WhatsApp makes moving to Signal easy to understand for people as they are very similar apps.

[abdullahkhalids]

Its for those who reject Meta. No one else. People who want to disconnect from the surveillance-advertisement network of Meta. Remember that Meta likely uses your Whatsapp contacts web for its advertisements elsewhere. Signal does not.

[warkdarrior]

> Remember that Meta likely uses your Whatsapp contacts web for its advertisements elsewhere. Signal does not.

Signal does not uses your contacts web elsewhere, that you know of.

[Nextgrid]

Signal has less incentive and ability to do so than Facebook/Meta, so all else being equal, the former still deserves more trust.

[izacus]

That doesn't match what tptacek said though - it seems like Signal wants to be bigger while refusing to actually be better as a product.

[akvadrako]

Even if Whatsapp was as good as Signal, Signal would have been the stepping stone. Signal developed the protocol first and assisted Whatsapp in adopting it.