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  • Hacker News
  • Lots of ranting here. Signal is a WhatsApp alternative. That's it. No money to Meta which is at the end of the day just an arm of American imperialism.

    If you want privacy you shouldn't use the internet at all.

    by expedition32
  • Maybe I'd pay $2 for this.
    by drewbitt
  • I don’t understand the FUD and negativity I see about Signal on platforms like this. I’m not gonna argue that they are perfect but of all organizations involved in secure messaging I trust them the most. Their CEO appears sincere in her conviction for privacy and I see no reason to not trust them, at least to the extent you can trust any third party. And yet people seem to nitpick certain aspects of what they build with a level of criticality that is seemingly never applied to the alternatives. It seems like suspicious criticism.

    But it’s a smart technique eh? Signal is not literally perfect across every dimension. Might as well use the totally insecure alternative that governments have backdoored amirite?

    by slopinthebag
  • Will they accept Monero?
    by armchairhacker
  • > Signal Login, one-time payment, price unknown

    Of course price is unknown, because it doesn’t matter, what matters is linking your real identity to signal. As I mentioned before, many times, that the main purpose of the phone requirement isn’t to fight “spam”, is to fight privacy and always have the option to expose the real person behind that account whenever needed. Most countries around the world require an ID to be issued a new phone number, rest will require payment of any sort to activate it, not to mention the ability to accurately track someone’s location only knowing their phone number, which is why it’s still used almost anywhere online as an ID, sometimes as “2FA” too, is to find you with little recourses whenever needed, and Canada now are having a unified single “login portal” for anything government wise, and as you guessed, the 2FA is only a phone number!

    So Signal will try to fool some privacy conscious people with the “no phone number required anymore, we are private, woohoo!!” While linking your whole payment and KYC to that account. Hard pass.

    by tamimio
  • If this works without proprietary software, it might actually convince me to use Signal.

    I already have a VoIP phone number through JMP and would be happy to use it for Signal, but I've read that registration isn't an option on the desktop client, even if I also have a phone number. I looked for a fork or alternate compatible client that allows registration but didn't find one.

    by JacobKfromIRC
  • Are they going to let you create bots now then? I'd love to organize me and my friend's dinner group using a bot that reads and responds to messages and pins something.
    by HaloZero
  • > The ability to register for Signal without a phone number is a frequently requested feature.

    I wonder if Signal missed the forest for the trees with a paid registration. I imagine privacy is the primary reason for registering without phone number and yet they ask one to register by giving them money which 99% of the case involves means of payment tied even tighter to one's identity than a phone number.

    by tomkarho

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