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.