I understand that it may be problematic sometimes but this was very smooth. I didn’t even say anything.

A: what’s your number for the whatsapp group Me: I don’t have whatsapp because of facebook. B: ok, we have to use signal then A: ok

And that was it. Life can be very easy sometimes

271 points

Surprised that happened. Very rare to see that these days.

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116 points

Maybe OP works on infosec and the team was like yeah, makes sense?

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123 points

Let’s say I work in an IT area (but not infosec)

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-16 points

Should have used Matrix

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14 points
*

They only realized that when he said that? What a weird infosec team. I guess they also could use SimpleX if they wanted the most secure, private and anonymous option, but I think Signal is pretty well balanced as a messenger. Good privacy and usability.

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3 points

I think you’re over estimating people who works in infosec. All the people I know that work in infosec in corporations are just regular windows support people assigned to keep the security updates on day.

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25 points

There may have been discussions around it beforehand. I didn’t ask why it went so smooth.

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7 points

What you didn’t realize is that your value to the company is way more than you realized.

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3 points
*

Often times people have resolved all the rational arguments to act on a decision but lack on an emotional excuse to figuratively pull the trigger. I’d bet on someone high up had already made up their mind and you not using WhatsApp was the perfect excuse to just have the whole team finally migrate.

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197 points

At first from the title it seemed like they changed app to avoid you

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54 points

yeah, that was funny. Creating a group without OP wasn’t enough, they had to change apps lol

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17 points

That’s exactly what I thought as well from reading the headline. It definitely could have been worded better.

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3 points

I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how it plans out.

A regular group chat and another signal one for when you specifically need to talk to OP.

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2 points

yeah, some title gore going on here.

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95 points
*

Before Signal made the boneheaded move of removing SMS support, it was so much easier for me to pitch the idea of using Signal to my friends and family, most of which eventually did make the shift from SMS to Signal messages for reasons like ease of use when it came to group chats, sending images/videos, voice clips, etc.

But now? Now it’s one of those embarrassing moments where I hear back from people basically all saying "your tech recommendations are usually on point but uh, what happened with Signal???" because the app just abruptly stopped supporting SMS and ruined the seamless appeal. SMS support was the perfect way to ease people into shifting towards Signal messages and now the only damn people I know who still know Signal are my most privacy-minded friends/family, while everyone else has switched back to WhatsApp.

Clearly I’m not bitter…😅 But I mean like, come on. I had the most notorious luddites in my social circle make the switch to Signal and they loved it. The shift from SMS to Signal messages was so smooth so many of them didn’t even have that "I miss [SMS stuff]", plus they LOVED that Signal could be used on their laptops in addition to their phones. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this annoys me so much.

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26 points

I totally agree. And to make matters worse, one of their arguments was that supporting SMS was taking resources away from developing other features. But what mind blowing features have come out since they dropped SMS? Usernames, I guess, which they were working on anyway. New app icons…

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19 points

Why did they remove SMS support?

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44 points

Think it was related to the messages being insecure and signal didn’t want people to be confused.

If your using signal your messages should be secure. SMS messages aren’t secure. It may have been clear to you when Signal send an sms or an encrypted message, but they need to cater to everyone.

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16 points

That just feels like shooting themselves in the foot. Just inform the user SMS isn’t secure. That’s it.

Not being willing to trust the user with the information so they can make a choice is asinine. It’s the same reason why I stopped using Tuta. Complete privacy and security are great but if there’s no option to make things a little more open for the sake of convenience or interconnectivity, I’m just not interested.

Security and privacy shouldn’t be a prison.

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5 points

https://www.howtogeek.com/787957/why-sms-needs-to-die/

SMS is bad, and on the way out. Besides that, I barely noticed when Signal stopped allowing SMS.

I guess in some circles it matters, but seems like most people use messengers nowadays.

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5 points

Which is a BS argument because the app was VERY clear about it

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1 point

I guess what I want now is a client for both protocols that works like the old app. That would cater to me - I don’t remember which person is on which app so I keep ending up on SMS because it has everyone.

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2 points

They expected to get a marginal number of additional users from vendor lock-in of existing Signal users

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6 points

What were you using SMS for?

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20 points

SMS is still the dominant message format in some countries

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6 points

Doesn’t every phone have an SMS app? What’s the benefit of having SMS in signal?

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4 points

Sms is also not secure, kinda not what signal is…

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1 point
*

But you are already on Signal.

Also I live in a country where SMS is very common

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86 points

I have a feeling B wanted to use Signal, but expected it to be difficult to make others shift. When OP gave the opportunity, B came in and swyped it right away,

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2 points

Exactly my thought as well

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58 points

This headline sounds a lot funnier if you assume “it” means Signal, like I did.

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7 points

Fuck this one guy in particular.

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