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Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

(www.wired.com)
544 points josh2600 | 22 comments | 06 Apr 21 16:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.76s | source | bottom
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meowfly ◴[06 Apr 21 21:24 UTC] No.26717573[source]▶
The comment from the article echos my own sentiments:

> Speaking solely as a person who is really into encrypted messaging, it terrifies me that they're going to take this really clean story of an encrypted messenger and mix it up with the nightmare of laws and regulations and vulnerability that is cryptocurrency.

Moreover, there are three other points I'd add:

1. I don't like "do everything" apps like WeChat or Line. One of Signals strengths was UX that focused on it's core competency. Early in Signal's development they would add privacy features. Lately they have been adding social features. This, however, feels especially out of left field and likely to hurt the UX.

2. This smells like dev resources will be spent building and maintaining something not related to messaging.

3. I've always had a "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" rationalization that gives Signal autonomy to grow a privacy centric messaging app despite the deficits (e.g lack of federation). In contrast, I personally associate "crypto" with "scam". There have been so many shady ICOs and pump-dump schemes around crypto. This will taint the product for those of us who don't think of crypto currency as being anything more than pump-and-dump schemes and a way to buy dab rigs online.

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sequoia ◴[06 Apr 21 21:43 UTC] No.26717739[source]▶
> Early in Signal's development they would add privacy features. Lately they have been adding social features.

This is intentional and relates to Signal's growth in the past few years. It's not "a hacker tool for nerds" it's "a friendly, easy to use chat app with stickers & voice messages (also strong encryption)."

IRC does one thing and does it well, and barely anyone uses it. The "clean technical vision" story isn't enough on its own.

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1. reader_mode ◴[06 Apr 21 23:53 UTC] No.26718841[source]▶
> a friendly, easy to use chat app with stickers & voice messages (also strong encryption).

Except it's not, strong encryption and privacy emphasis goes against easy to use. I recently got my family to switch to Telegram (because I like the interface) - my sister works in an environment where she has to have a separate work phone without a camera and everything synced up out of the box, history, etc. Brother lost his phone - same thing, has chat histories and everything is back to normal. I use Telegram on desktop and mobile and it synces instantly.

Compare that to Signal, you don't even sync between active devices and you can forget about having old conversations on a new device. And just to give you a scope of how important messaging history to people is (I've seen people say nobody cares about IM history) - designer from work is lugging around her Android phone year after switching to iPhone just for WhatsApp history (it doesn't sync between OS-es).

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2. glsdfgkjsklfj ◴[07 Apr 21 00:17 UTC] No.26719014[source]▶
> goes against easy to use

or just respect reasonable limits?

Does it make sense to destroy one feature for the illusion of having both?

Elements.io and telegram (to a much lesser extent) are safes. You place something there and it is locked. Signal, whatsapp, et al promise to be safes, but as soon as you place something, a hidden camera scan all the documents and print copies in a hidden printer at your home safe.

Would you trust that safe? would you still even call them safes? Yet some product manager/marketer convinced you that these are essential features for a "easy of use safe".

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3. crtasm ◴[07 Apr 21 01:29 UTC] No.26719536[source]▶
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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4. reader_mode ◴[07 Apr 21 03:05 UTC] No.26720153[source]▶
> 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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5. jameshilliard ◴[07 Apr 21 03:20 UTC] No.26720242[source]▶
Yeah, the history sync issue is a huge problem, signal doesn't even support Android BackupAgent based client side encrypted backups or device to device transfers at all which should not be difficult to add, see: https://community.signalusers.org/t/support-native-android-b...

Signal should in theory also be able to just sync/backup everything to the desktop client, this would largely solve the inability to transfer between Android and iOS issue.

I don't understand why such basic quality of life improvements have yet to be implemented, especially since they are especially desirable for less technical users.

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6. godelski ◴[07 Apr 21 03:24 UTC] No.26720267[source]▶
> Except it's not... my sister ...

I don't see how these relate. Signal isn't explicitly aimed at high security targets, although it works for them (seeing the Snowden endorsement). Signal is about bringing encryption to the masses. Making E2EE the default choice for everyone. Is is much more about mass surveillance. Your sister has a different threat model, one where they are also concerned about the physical device being compromised (i.e. stolen, hacked, or being physically accessed).

These are different threat models. For E2EE for the masses you need things like stickers and for it to be "fun" in addition to being a tool. In your sister's threat model she's more concerned about the tool over the fun part. It is a work phone after all (I mean this is why they take out the camera).

E2EE for the masses is pointless if you can't appeal to the masses. Cypher nerds will always have their fun toys to communicate with but we are also in dire need for something that prevents mass surveillance. That is, after all, one of the fundamental necessities of a democracy: being able to speak your mind without fear of government spying/involvement (this is the reason they got funding from Radio Free America in the past). Unfortunately this means some compromises need to be made. But as far as I'm concerned Signal has done far better than any service I've seen and the relative leak is near zero. The weak points are SGX and pins, which only hide some minor metadata (even fully leaked this would be better than WA or Telegram).

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7. mmahemoff ◴[07 Apr 21 03:42 UTC] No.26720361[source]▶
I recently switched WhatsApp from Android to iOS and I was flabbergasted there was no official mechanism to retain message history. As annoying as it is, it goes to show most people don't actually value it highly.

Facebook would have no trouble funding a basic iCloud-GDrive bridge if there was enough demand for it.

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8. sequoia ◴[07 Apr 21 04:03 UTC] No.26720475[source]▶
You’re totally correct that there are trade offs. Coming from a background of using IRC, google chat & Facebook chat with and without e2e encryption and deleting accounts etc I’m used to not always having forever message history and I can see how not having that would be a nonstarter for some users.

Yes there are sacrifices and trade offs for the security signal offers and it’s not 100% as convenient as Facebook messenger in that regard, but it’s also not 100% as cumbersome and impractical as GPG email. It strikes what I consider a decent balance of being secure and private and usable enough for non-technical users. Yes the message history story is lacking, I lost my messages moving iPhone to iPhone because I did it wrong and yeah it made me sad for a moment but I’m philosophical about it I guess. Dust to dust and all that.

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9. petre ◴[07 Apr 21 04:33 UTC] No.26720633[source]▶
They're orthogonal to good security. Missing data is always better than encrypted data. I wish it had a global keep messages for X time feature like iNessage instead of tge per yser configurable dissappearing messages.
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10. jameshilliard ◴[07 Apr 21 05:32 UTC] No.26720904{3}[source]▶
Implementing these sort of backup options should not result in a meaningful reduction in security as they don't effectively change the security model, encrypted client side backups are equivalent to the existing signal specific encrypted backups on android, device to device transfers are the equivalent of coping the existing signal specific encrypted backups to a new phone and restoring them. The desktop client receives copies of signal messages normally as well so it effectively keeps backups already(they just often end up incomplete and can't be restored properly).
11. reader_mode ◴[07 Apr 21 05:33 UTC] No.26720911[source]▶
I'm just giving real world scenarios where people might have two phones, plenty of people have them for different reasons, it's useful to sync between them - I should have worded that differently.
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12. reader_mode ◴[07 Apr 21 05:37 UTC] No.26720931[source]▶
I don't see the incentive for them to work on it - by the time you need it you're already deep into using the app so it's an inconvenience.

You can get away with this when you're the established player, but when you're the new guy every annoyance is a reason to revert to the previous app.

13. godelski ◴[07 Apr 21 05:50 UTC] No.26720975{3}[source]▶
Oh, I understand now. Though I would argue in your sister's case she would explicitly not want to sync. But other people might. I'm actually highly in favor of Signal allowing multiple devices and their platform to be expanded (it'd be nice for IOT bots). Or even allowing for decentralization while maintaining the core official node.
14. lxgr ◴[07 Apr 21 07:45 UTC] No.26721568[source]▶
How is Telegram a ”safe“ but Signal isn‘t? This doesn’t make sense.

Telegram stores all history (except secret chats, which are a pain to use) server-side and effectively unencrypted.

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15. simias ◴[07 Apr 21 07:53 UTC] No.26721619{3}[source]▶
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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16. CorrectHorseBat ◴[07 Apr 21 08:42 UTC] No.26721967{4}[source]▶
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.

17. bilal4hmed ◴[07 Apr 21 11:49 UTC] No.26723456[source]▶
https://9to5mac.com/2021/04/05/whatsapp-chat-history-migrati...

happening right now as a test

18. dunefox ◴[07 Apr 21 12:58 UTC] No.26724201[source]▶
> 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.

19. dunefox ◴[07 Apr 21 12:59 UTC] No.26724215{4}[source]▶
Stickers probably were much easier and quicker to implement and they're important for many people. It's not a difficult decision.
20. dunefox ◴[07 Apr 21 13:03 UTC] No.26724267[source]▶
Matrix is an industrial-strength steel safe. Telegram is one of those transparent plastic safes you can buy for 20€.
21. alexvoda ◴[07 Apr 21 13:26 UTC] No.26724564[source]▶
The lack of portability of WhatsApp between the two mobile OS platforms is infuriating.

Of the three (WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal) I find WhatsApp to be the worst from a UX pov and Telegram the best. Personally, I find this exodus of users from WhatsApp to be a good thing even for no other reason than having to deal less with their UX.

Signal is not much better UX wise, but at least it gives hope of being better because they have to compete and because they are open source. If they fail to bad at growing the project or providing the infrastructure, someone will eventually fork and setup a separate network. WhatsApp has no pressure. It is in Facebooks interest to eventually migrate everyone to FB Messenger.

22. M2Ys4U ◴[07 Apr 21 13:35 UTC] No.26724682[source]▶
>You’re totally correct that there are trade offs.

Sadly, Signal's developers don't think trade offs exist