This feature (or lack thereof) is pretty much my biggest gripe against Signal. I still don't understand why they won't let you use the same account in paralel on an Android tablet. And the weird part is they provide no explanation for this limitation while this limitation does not exist for iPad users.
If this new feature proves to work as advertised, I might as well sell my soul to the Facebook devil and go back to WhatsApp full time due to how frictionless the experience is (and everyone in the EU already being on it), and leave Signal only for private info sharing, as I grew tired of convincing people in my circles to move to Signal for privacy only to receive complaints that X,Y, Z features from WhatsApp are either missing, buggy or super frustrating to use on Signal. Oh, and receiving calls on Signal for Android is a mess (known bugs for years) where some calls just won't come through to my phone even if the desktop client is ringing, only to have it show up as a missed call notification on my phone a few minutes later. Unacceptable.
I do support the Signal team for their work and what they stand for, but my patience (and that of those around me I convinced to switch from WhatsApp) is wearing thin.
This is why I use Telegram as a "good-enough" alternative to the tech monopolies. No, you don't get E2EE without opting in (and Secret Chats don't exist at all for groups) but it's one of those products that makes joy in the hearts of anyone, enthusiast or no, who uses it. Its clients are fully open-source and the man behind it, Pavel Durov, is truy a hero in my book for his consistent stance against big powers, from state actors to tech giants.
I also selfhost a Matrix homeserver and bridge all-the-things to it, possibly its finest feature but there's no way any of its client implementations is going to spark joy in the hearts of the mainstream.
It's important, much like in our politics, to find the fine line between the extremes so that we can leverage and exploit good-enough choices for more freedom for everyone. I use Linux but for most people it's enough to at least get them to consider some FOSS alternatives in their Windows or macOS environments. We can use these small victories to chip away at the mortar of surveillance.
I will never, ever, return to Facebook products. The global damage wrought by that company will go down in the history books, I'm sure. So let's pick those things that are "good enough" as our chisels for a better future for all.
EDIT: Telegram has a chat export feature if you're a WhatsApp user considering the switch [1].
I've used the chat export feature of Telegram before deleting my WhatsApp account. It works well and convinced me to use Telegram over Signal in cases where I had contacts on both platforms.
(Personally, I'm also bitter that Signal Android supports backup while Signal iOS doesn't...and transferring from one iOS device to another isn't considered backup).
So others who find this comment someday have the full story, Pavel wrote a defense here [1]. I don't really see how he had a choice with the boot heel of Apple and Google always at his neck.
Can anyone explain to me the main obstacles for Signal to succeed ? I keep thinking about how strange is that we can maintain complex open-source projects like linux but we cannot join forces and create a good open-source messaging app, which is a thing almost everyone with a smartphone uses, I know its not the same thing and you need someone to take care of infrastructure etc, but I still think its strange.
Signal does have this feature. It's just that their mobile clients do not support it (as a "slave" device), from what I understand this is no different than WhatsApp multi device feature
This article is regarding a new beta feature in which you can have multiple "host" devices connected to the same WhatsApp account. It's not the same as the previous "WhatsApp Web"/"Signal desktop" experience.
> It's not the same as the previous "WhatsApp Web"/"Signal desktop" experience.
The traditional "WhatsApp Web" and "Signal desktop" are completely different experiences though.
Though the details differ, WhatsApp's new approach, outlined in this article, is much closer to what Signal has always been doing since it introduced Signal Desktop - which, once linked, functions independently of your phone.
Yeah, the implementation described in the article seems almost exactly how I understand Signal has been doing it all along. It's purely a client software choice not to allow a phone to be a secondary device. There's a fork which adds this feature to the Android app, though I forget what it's called.
WhatsApp "harvests “data linked to you,” including your device ID, for “developer’s advertising and marketing.” It also collects your contact info, user ID and device ID for ominously vague “other purposes.” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2021/03/06/stop-usin...)
As an individual, no, there's no need, you can use your phone number as a user ID (although this comes up as a concern whenever Signal is mentioned as an alternative). There's also a practical factor - using device IDs allows end-to-end encryption to multiple devices without the user needing to manage keys themselves. (ie: WhatsApp can just create a new key pair for each device).
As Facebook however, there is a business need to be able to identify a single user across multiple devices in order to properly track them for marketing reasons.
If Facebook are unable to do this, then the business case for operating a free messaging service falls apart. Each individual needs to make their own decision as to whether they are prepared to pay the price of sharing the data that Facebook collects in exchange for simple, free-of-cost, international messaging. It's not an easy decision.
I'm confused by your post. I use signal seamlessly between my desktop, iphone, and ipad using the same account. I can take photos with my phone, post them to a chat, then go back to my desktop to type longer messages more easily.
Is your problem that a phone is required to be the primary device when doing this?
Then you clearly haven't read my post thoroughly. I repeatedly mentioned my issues being with Signal not allowing multiple instances on Android devices using the same account, while you're talking about Signal on Apple devices.
Its very hard to do this without opening up to a lot of potential fuckups and exploits.
The way e2e works is by exchanging public keys (kinda like a cryptographic username), imagine having multiple devices and verifying + keeping track of the keys from each device.
This is why im not surprised fb was the first to come out with this feature, you need fb level resources to get this out first and from a quick look at the article it seems like they're not using centralization to solve the problem.
"WhatsApp multi-device uses a client-fanout approach, where the WhatsApp client sending the message encrypts and transmits it N number of times to N number of different devices — those in the sender and receiver’s device lists."
If this new feature proves to work as advertised, I might as well sell my soul to the Facebook devil and go back to WhatsApp full time due to how frictionless the experience is (and everyone in the EU already being on it), and leave Signal only for private info sharing, as I grew tired of convincing people in my circles to move to Signal for privacy only to receive complaints that X,Y, Z features from WhatsApp are either missing, buggy or super frustrating to use on Signal. Oh, and receiving calls on Signal for Android is a mess (known bugs for years) where some calls just won't come through to my phone even if the desktop client is ringing, only to have it show up as a missed call notification on my phone a few minutes later. Unacceptable.
I do support the Signal team for their work and what they stand for, but my patience (and that of those around me I convinced to switch from WhatsApp) is wearing thin.