> It's almost as if there's a frustrating unmet need with signal as it stands

Do you have an alternative suggestion? Is there an app and platform you'd rather use over Signal? Maybe Wickr? Matrix? (AN0M? <smirk>)

My take is there's a very small "unmet need" that frustrates such a small number of people that everybody who's tried to usurp Signal has effectively failed.

Signal has literally become "SMS but secure" for everybody I know.

> signal is the only thing that can talk to people on signal

That's untrue. There is nobody in my signal messages that I cannot talk to over the phone, via SMS, and almost everybody I can talk to via email (with a vanishingly small number of those for whom I have trusted PGP keys).

A agree with your premise that it'd be really nice to piggyback Signal's contact graph without having to do the work and make the compromises Signal have done to create that graph. But that's a totally unreasonable expectation.

(And FWIW, I think Signal totally lucked out early on by being in the right place at the right time to build their contact graph. My network of friends/colleagues exploded back when WhatsApp fucked up their messaging/policy a few years back, and practically overnight my "normal" and non privacy focussed or recreationally paranoid friends all rage quit Facebook messaging and encouraged each other to move to Signal. There was a super obvious step change in who my available Signal contacts became back then, and I'm not convinced Signal would be what it is today without that fuckup by Facebook back then.)

Why are you saying they need to grow? You of all people are the first to admit that everyone you need to talk to already uses it.

I'm not saying they need to grow. I'm saying that arguments resting on the importance of phone numbers to the growth of their social graph are also resting on the idea that signal must grow. I am, in fact, saying that while this may be important to them it is not strictly important to me.

And I never said everyone I need to talk to is on it. I have like 6 different messaging apps and accounts because nothing has everyone. And I'm pretty conservative about which ones I'll use compared to most people I know.

I would rather use signal than most of those, other than the fact that I also frequently need to communicate with people who have no business knowing my phone number.

I guess I missed where the growth argument was being used. Sounds like we agree that there's no implicit need for signal to explode into oblivion like a unicorn prancing over a rainbow.

I've never regarded a phone number as something extraordinarily personal. The amount of spammers that happen across my phone number is ridiculous. It's nice when you interact with a real human using your phone number (unless it's a recruiter ffs), so the more I give it to the more likely that is to happen. I guess I just don't understand what's personally revealing about a phone number. I give my phone number to mundane things all the time so people can communicate with me. The "need to know" bar for my phone number is pretty low. It plays about the same role as an email address in my life.

I think that people's experience with the privacy and significance of their phone number varies a lot by demographic.

They're not a business.