Yeah, I've hit this interesting attitude from Signal developers when I noticed they hijack the SMS datastore which then becomes inaccessible to tools like SMS Backup & Restore and tools that forward SMS notifications to other devices.

The developers were adamant that they know better than me what I want from my SMS tool. And then proceeded to work on crypto and stories.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that if you want an app with strong security, the less code you have, the easier it is to achieve the goal.

By definition, Signal is not going to have bells and whistles and niche features, to keep the codebase lean and easier to avoid security weaknesses.

If you want an app with many features, use Telegram.

(They did however ship emoji reactions in Signal because most people actually like it and the other apps do have it; curiously missing in Telegram).

Telegram has emoji reactions as well

And yet, they added crypto, stories, reactions, animated stickers and all that stuff while refusing to allow people to keep their loved-ones messages when their phone falls in to a toilet.

I don't think the reasoning for their implementation is as well thought out as you claim here.

>> curiously missing in Telegram

Telegram has had emoji reactions since 2021 -- https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/now-y...

Agreed. I remember when - years ago - they unilaterally switched all Android devices to use the Apple emoji. No consultation, no investigation with users, no reason other than they wanted consistency across their apps.

Took a lot of grumpy users before they backtracked.

I use and like Signal. I'm not smart enough to disagree with some of their technical decisions, but I wish they could have found a way to make SMS/RCS work.

Just to add some citations.

You can see various threads where people complained about the forced Apple emoji e.g. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/3712 and https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/3675

Signal's own FAQ says

> Signal Android includes built-in emoji functionality for consistency between platforms

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360017561992-Wh...

I can see why some people would want a toggle, but defaulting to Apple emoji seems like the obviously correct thing to do. I suspect a major reason why HNers hate emoji in general is because they see different images from what gen-z sees and therefore have a hard time understanding jokes that rely on how these images look.

This used to be a problem but has been largely solved for the last 3-5 years. Emoji while slightly different looking are tonally consistent across devices.