zlacker

>>mikece+(OP)
Signal can be better, IMHO, by separating from phone number requirements. In other words, let users have secure random ids, rather than forcing each user to hand over their phone number for phone company verification.

It turns out the budget shows the phone number registration problem: the costs to deal with phone number verification seem to be $6MM, which seems to be 10% of the entire budget.

If Signal staff are reading this, I'd gladly pay $100/year for a phone-free solution for all users.

>>jph+e7
The phone number requirement is why WhatsApp won the space over in the first place. There were loads of username+password-based services before it, but none reached the market it did. Why? An incredibly wide user funnel, singing up is frictionless.

You might understand that it's a bad idea, but that makes you an outlier.

>>zamale+la
I don't really buy this argument. Is signing up with a phone number really that much easier for the average user than using a username/email account? Billions of people seemed to have no problems making a Facebook or Google account.

>>aquova+lb
It’s the building a social network part that’s frictionless not creating user name process that’s frictionless.

>>Retric+kc
The lack of a social network is why I settled on Signal. Before using Signal I tried Telegram, which requires a phone number and if they recognize your number in any of their user's contact list (which many people seem happy to allow access to), they'll send them a notification telling them their contact has joined. I got a nasty message within 10 minutes of making an account from a woman accusing me of pretending to be her deceased father. I had inherited his phone number a decade prior, and it told her I had made an account. I was so shocked they not only allowed, but encouraged such behavior that I deleted it promptly and swore I'd never use it again.