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by jwr 931 days ago
I think you are confirming my point. "without consideration for practical requirements"

I can tell you that my daughter cared about this. She cried for a long time when her phone just suddenly died (while charging, no reason, total loss) and her Signal history wasn't restored. I couldn't explain why Signal was the only app that didn't get backed up.

I can tell you that my friend's parents cared about this. The photos of their grandkids were suddenly gone. My fried couldn't explain the reason for this, all the other data did get backed up.

And sure, between us geeks we will keep saying "well ACTUALLY they SHOULD HAVE kept the photos elsewhere", and we'll say "this is good because it makes us more secure" and we'll say "most people don't care about this". We'll all "well actually" ourselves, while patting ourselves on the backs.

And they'll just switch to WhatsApp.
1 comments
jraph 931 days ago
> I think you are confirming my point. "without consideration for practical requirements"

I don't think I am. A practical answer is: "Install Signal Desktop".

And I still think we are few who care about chat history. I'm sure there are people who care. I'm such a person.

It's also only a missing feature for iOS user, so that makes it: "of the few people who care about chat history, the minority of people who use iOS are only covered by installing Signal Desktop". A pain for these users, but they have at least two workable solutions. Using Android or installing Signal Desktop somewhere. (yes, caveat, you need to do that before losing your phone)

By yes, I agree that it would be better to have the backup feature.

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dig1 931 days ago
> I don't think I am. A practical answer is: "Install Signal Desktop".

IMHO this is not always practical. Signal Desktop can easily get out of sync if you change versions and the only proper way to fix it is to clear all the local data, including your chat/contact database. AFAIK, the only source of truth is your phone.

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jwr 930 days ago
> A pain for these users, but they have at least two workable solutions. Using Android or installing Signal Desktop somewhere. (yes, caveat, you need to do that before losing your phone)

"These users" don't even have a desktop computer :-)

"These users" will just use WhatsApp. It works it doesn't lose data, and everyone around them uses it anyway.

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