I don't think that post is accurate, perhaps because (based on the RSS feed) it is from 2015.
> Telegram’s source code is not an SDK or a library. [--] But to be fair, the messaging app doesn’t state they have an SDK. All they did is put their source code in the open.
I have been regular, everyday user of Signal for over four years. Myself and my friends use it as our primary communication method. In the last two or so years, it has been what I can only describe as "complete and utter shite".
When I send an image to a friend, it can take hours to send a half-megabyte image despite my internet connection being fine. When this happens, none of the consequent messages send. If I close my phone, messages stop sending. So I must violate my privacy by keeping my phone open for sometimes, hours at a time, just to send a stupid little image.
Despite the fact that sending an image will cause consequent messages to be delayed by hours, messages have started, in the last 6 to 12 months, to be sent out of order. This can be disasterous, as a fair number of my friends have depression and other problems, which means (as an example) my "haha" responses can sometimes be seen to be responding to /other/ messages (And yes, I can use the quote function, but sometimes that interrupts the flow of messaging).
This, plus stupid little problems like, backups not being tested to be forward-compatible (something that is ridiculously easy to test, but that they could not be bothered to do), mean that relying on signal is a fool's game at this point.
I've had the same issues and a similar experience after using Signal the past few years. It took so much effort to convince my closest friends to install Signal and the single most frustrating thing it would do is force us back to SMS because sending of encrypted messages would continuously fail.
What really sucks is that there's no hope of me convincing them to switch again if a better messenger were to come along.
Signal has some serious problems and I'm glad other people out there are talking about this, too.
I ended up stopping using Signal (except for a few holdouts) because of the message delivery problems; it caused way too many social problems.
I mostly use Telegram now, and it's been great. The worst part about it is everyone saying "but it's russian spyware!!" whenever I suggest it. It isn't, folks, and I'm well apprised of the theoretical vulnerabilities. They're just a compromise I'm more than happy to make, when the alternative is a chat tool that fails at chatting even 5% of the time.
I'm a heavy signal user for about 5 years, never had any of the issues you're describing. Regularly sending 3-4 minute videos it all goes through fine. Exported/imported my chat history 4 times now when changing phones, never had an issue. Never seen messages to be sent out of order either. I really wonder if we're using the same app!
This is amusing. I am not "Signal bashing", I am talking about problems I (and many other people) have experienced.
The fact that you have it good, and have never had problems, does not contradict the fact that I and other people have had problems. Talking about these problems is not 'Signal bashing', just like talking about traffic problems is not 'car-bashing'.
1:1 chats have worked fairly well for me, but groups have been utter chaos with messages being delivered only to random subsets of the group and things like that.
Using Signal for years also. I don't have any of these problems except during group messages. Group messages for whatever reason are inconsistent, don't send, or sometimes break apart into single messages and then join again into the group. There was one group message between me and my two cousins that broke for hours. I didn't get any texts or couldn't send anything and signal was constantly trying to download images.
Some of it could be cleaned up fairly easily - like the use of Yoda conditions and other anti-patterns, numerous spelling mistakes, dead (commented out) code, redundant casts, unused variables etc. But the major problem is no separation of concerns (business logic is tightly coupled with UI logic and Android framework dependencies), which makes writing any automated tests for the thing next to impossible right now. Resolving this issue would require major refactoring.
Signal intentionally breaks interoperability and disallows forks and alternative implementations. Let's not standardize on something that backs us into a corner.
I refuse to use a messenger that is spearheaded by a man who adamantly refuses to participate in the wider FOSS community. Moxie only wants others to play by his rules.
I might use it once it allows federated access, otherwise only WhisperSystem can control the fate of the protocol. I mean there are much worse company out there, but I don't want to put my eggs in the same proverbial basket.
Yeah no way. WhatsApp already does e2e. Signal doesn't bring anything else that's significant for me as a techie, much less the general population.
Matrix can replace Slack and the various mobile messengers, meaning there's a hook for companies as well. I don't think it's ready yet, but I'd rather be a condescending preachy asshole to my friends and family only when there's a very compelling reason.
Onboarding friends and family to Matrix or XMPP is almost impossible. Signal is dead simple and automatically discovers your contacts, while being secure, open, and developed by a non-profit.
Ideally I'd like it to be a federated system, but I'm not going to use untrustworthy systems like Messenger/WhatsApp because I'm not getting every feature I want.
Thats also probably the main reason why it is sucessful. Everybody gets the same. They focus on one thing and don't delute it with funky in a year maintainer lost interest rust clients.
I don't care. Give me ethical, privacy minded software not some phd experiments.
You have to pardon me. By unified i meant mobile. I am not sure about state of desktop. I from time to time use mac app with no issues but Signal in my eyes is sms alternative.
You probably missed the point here. Messenger is just a use case. The license is pretty liberal and you can reuse the code in pretty much any app, not necessarily Messanger. social, dating, customer support.
This.
Matrix/Riot is federated and works. Lets please use and support systems with open standards that have the perspective to interoperate in that space (irc, telegram bridge etc)
Considering the fact that Signal devs refuse to improve several glaring user experience holes (things like losing all group chats when switching phones, which are deal breakers for many people), we might need another messenger.
Use the built in backup and restore and you dont lose your groups. Signal's primary design direction is encryption and privacy, you're going to have to compromise somewhere.
It works, I honestly didn't expect it to be so easy. It complied without any errors and running. However it is not WhatsApp yet at least the UI is not as good as WhatsApp but a great start and one of the best open source implemention.
There is no point talking about an app that implements a messaging protocol without talking about how that protocol compares to existing standard messaging protocols. I couldn't even find a comparison to XMPP.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] threadMy dream of creating a new kind of messenger just got a little closer.
> Telegram’s source code is not an SDK or a library. [--] But to be fair, the messaging app doesn’t state they have an SDK. All they did is put their source code in the open.
TDLib is that SDK.
When I send an image to a friend, it can take hours to send a half-megabyte image despite my internet connection being fine. When this happens, none of the consequent messages send. If I close my phone, messages stop sending. So I must violate my privacy by keeping my phone open for sometimes, hours at a time, just to send a stupid little image.
Despite the fact that sending an image will cause consequent messages to be delayed by hours, messages have started, in the last 6 to 12 months, to be sent out of order. This can be disasterous, as a fair number of my friends have depression and other problems, which means (as an example) my "haha" responses can sometimes be seen to be responding to /other/ messages (And yes, I can use the quote function, but sometimes that interrupts the flow of messaging).
This, plus stupid little problems like, backups not being tested to be forward-compatible (something that is ridiculously easy to test, but that they could not be bothered to do), mean that relying on signal is a fool's game at this point.
I am thinking if this is happening could google be throttling signal somehow? That is the thing i have always worried about.
What does Google have to do with it?
What really sucks is that there's no hope of me convincing them to switch again if a better messenger were to come along.
I ended up stopping using Signal (except for a few holdouts) because of the message delivery problems; it caused way too many social problems.
I mostly use Telegram now, and it's been great. The worst part about it is everyone saying "but it's russian spyware!!" whenever I suggest it. It isn't, folks, and I'm well apprised of the theoretical vulnerabilities. They're just a compromise I'm more than happy to make, when the alternative is a chat tool that fails at chatting even 5% of the time.
I'm a heavy signal user for about 5 years, never had any of the issues you're describing. Regularly sending 3-4 minute videos it all goes through fine. Exported/imported my chat history 4 times now when changing phones, never had an issue. Never seen messages to be sent out of order either. I really wonder if we're using the same app!
The fact that you have it good, and have never had problems, does not contradict the fact that I and other people have had problems. Talking about these problems is not 'Signal bashing', just like talking about traffic problems is not 'car-bashing'.
The code is quite messy in general.
uhhhh yeah, I'm sure that will go well.
Signal is only atleast somehow secure app that regular people use because it has great unified ux and just works.
Just use Signal. Please
Matrix can replace Slack and the various mobile messengers, meaning there's a hook for companies as well. I don't think it's ready yet, but I'd rather be a condescending preachy asshole to my friends and family only when there's a very compelling reason.
Onboarding friends and family to Matrix or XMPP is almost impossible. Signal is dead simple and automatically discovers your contacts, while being secure, open, and developed by a non-profit.
Ideally I'd like it to be a federated system, but I'm not going to use untrustworthy systems like Messenger/WhatsApp because I'm not getting every feature I want.
I don't care. Give me ethical, privacy minded software not some phd experiments.
You mean besides freeing them from the Facebook ecosystem? That alone is worth it to me.
Guess what company is also on both of those ends? If people could stop parroting this as if fucking Facebook was trustworthy, that'd be great.
I miss using Adium as my native Mac chat client for everything, alas AIM is dead and Google killed their Jabber interoperation.