Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

Re:Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cry... by crtasm on Tuesday April 06, 2021 @09:29PM (#26719536)

I don't disagree that Telegram storing everything on their servers is very convenient, but:

> you don't even sync between active devices

I use Signal on a phone and a laptop, switching between the two frequently throughout the day and see the same conversations on both. (Edit: I realised you probably meant multiple phones, yes I see that's not yet supported.)

>and you can forget about having old conversations on a new device.

There's been a manual, secure transfer process between Android devices for years. More recently they've added an easy OTA transfer process for Android->Android, or iOS->iOS.

Here's the iOS announcement: https://signal.org/blog/ios-device-transfer/

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Re:Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cry... by reader_mode on Tuesday April 06, 2021 @11:05PM (#26720153)

> I use Signal on a phone and a laptop, switching between the two frequently throughout the day and see the same conversations on both.

I've had multiple issues with this before I gave up on Signal, it wouldn't show history when I initially paired up even when importing forever, then randomly stopped being connected and required me to pair again (losing everything on PC again)

> There's been a manual, secure transfer process between Android devices for years

Doesn't help much when you lose your phone.

I guess what I'm trying to say for most people the value of having your chat messages hosted in the cloud > security.

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Re:Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cry... by simias on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @03:53AM (#26721619)

Same experience here. I'm absolutely flabbergasted that the Signal devs decided to implement something like stickers (which, btw, are a pale imitation of what Telegram offers in terms of ease of use and discovery) before they implemented full message sync between devices.

I have a smartphone that I control. I have a desktop computer that I control. I use an application on both computers that lets me send secure messages between device. The application somehow can sync new messages but refuses to let me import old ones. How insane is that? But apparently integrating with cryptocurrencies was above that in the todolist.

Signal is clearly a great protocol, but man is it seriously in need of a great implementation...

>But Marlinspike and Goldbard counter that Signal's new features won't give it any control of MobileCoin or turn it into a MobileCoin exchange, which might lead to more regulatory scrutiny. Instead, it will merely add support for spending and receiving it.

Oh, that's going to be a recipe for a great user experience again. You can send MobileCoin super easily... after you've gone on some crypto exchange platform to trade a highly speculative asset into one of your wallets. It's basically like Venmo indeed.

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Re:Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cry... by CorrectHorseBat on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @04:42AM (#26721967)

I'm not surprised at all. 3 out of 4 big message apps (Line, WhatsApp and Wechat) don't support full message sync, it's clearly not a showstopper for mass adoption. 99% of the people don't need it and it's hard to implement correctly. Not importing old messages could be a security feature.

Stickers on the other hand are something that does attract many casual users and has no security implications.

Payment features... I think it's a bad idea for many different reasons but it might attract many users if it's not too complex.

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Re:Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cry... by dunefox on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @08:59AM (#26724215)

Stickers probably were much easier and quicker to implement and they're important for many people. It's not a difficult decision.

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Re:Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cry... by dunefox on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @08:58AM (#26724201)

> I use Signal on a phone and a laptop, switching between the two frequently throughout the day and see the same conversations on both.

Frequently messages aren't even synchronised between those two or they're out of order. Also, the desktop client itself is a bit of a joke.

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