I think there was a lot of miscommunication/misinformation shared around. Honestly, even now I'm not entirely sure what the whole thing entails. It's a change of policy that was already in effect, but you have to accept it now? What exactly is now being shared? Being in Europe, there was a lot of talk about how it didn't apply, and yet we still have the message?

I'd not be surprised if a lot of people got "FB (evil!) wants to read everything or they will close your account". Given how often I have received "share this message 10 times or WhatsApp will delete your account" from relatives, I think it also plays into this fear of losing access to your contacts. And it was all over the mainstream news, with the alternatives readily available (and their own shortcomings often not described).

It's funny to me how misinformation can be used to combat (further) misinformation. Food for thought.

Dito. I watched and counted how many are moving to Telegram and Signal and Signal is winning so far. Those aren't HN people.

But I take the bet they are moving to Telegram in a month or two when Signal's shortcomings hit them (mainly chat history and some sync issues).

Agree. This has been the interesting thing to me: that so many non-nerd friends have popped up on Signal. Totally fascinating that the shift is happening to a group who are typically not that bothered about the presence of FB. I'll have to ask them about their motivations in more detail...

Yes, I’ve seen this over here in The Netherlands as well. Just about every day I log in and can see another non-tech acquaintance having joined signal. It’s been at least 50 over the past few weeks, it’s really weird.

This was my experience as well. The signups extend far beyond the tech bubble in the circles I’ve seen adopting signal.

Maybe it was Elon's Tweet that also persuaded people to switch. His other tweet got the SEC after him for market manipulation.