Re:Facebook to integrate the infrastructure for WhatsApp, In...
by wtmt on Friday January 25, 2019 @03:26PM
(#19002159)
> It's basically a good crypto library with a terrible UI around it.
In my experience (after trying it a few times every year for the last few years), even its backend platform is unreliable and slow. So I'd call it as "It's basically a good crypto library with a terrible UI and a flakey backend behind it."
I want to like Signal but it's kind of the worst of both worlds for me. Since they absolutely refuse to allow for easy modification of the client it means that I'm stuck with their crappy Electron app on the desktop that lacks some basic features (like being able to select the spellchecking language for instance). I can't script anything, migrating conversation histories between devices is messy and complicated etc... And of course on top of that it easily swallows half a GB of RAM to do all that.
On the other hand if I put myself into a random user's shoes it doesn't "just work" like WhatsApp does. I don't have a web browser client that I can use from anywhere. It doesn't have stickers and stuff like that that seems to be popular on WhatsApp.
It's basically a good crypto library with a terrible UI around it.