TBH this was my reason not to use Signal at all... same with WhatsApp super annoying linking between mobile and desktop :/
Why can't we use XMPP where you can have multiple device and accounts without required mobile phone? Oh I know - because dumb walled gardens and BigTech not liking it... it's a mirracle we got away with e-mail before they came to power :/
Unfortunately linked accounts don't count as primary devices so you will always have to keep the original device active or else they'll eventually delete your account.
I have the opposite use case where I need to have two Signal accounts on a single phone. Having Molly alongside the official Signal app was always the solution, but I wish Signal would allow switching between profiles, or Android would allow arbitrary user accounts (I don't really want to add Signal to my work profile).
Someone in that thread notes that when you install the Signal APK from here [1] it "doesn’t get updates tho", but this isn't the case. Signal will update itself; you get a notification to update. Often earlier than the Play Store, probably due to its reputation to randomly delay updates.
Yes, it notifies of updates (once it did wake me up in the middle of the night), but last time I checked, it does not update itself automatically. Obtanium works, though, but a bigger issue is the extreme power drainage of the websocket.
Signal sends you a notification that says "new version available, tap here to update", but tapping it never did anything for me. I have to re-download the apk their website every time there is an update.
Yeah. Installed Signal as raw apk in GrapheneOS and you just need to open it to install the update. It does not update automatically in background. But anyway, works.
If anyone is interested, I run my own minimalist fork of Molly named Polly.
I just released a stopgap with the fixes:
- RingRTC 2.73.0-1, which includes the call-teardown fix (the hangup/hot-mic issue)
- Signal's blacklist of the eight compromised eMudhra TLS intermediates
It's still based on Signal 8.19.2. The build is arm64-only and Android 14+.
Plug: I also maintain my own UnifiedPush distributor app that optionally pairs with a notification gateway: https://git.lonecloud.dev/lone-cloud/prism-android
My motivation for Prism was to get Proton Mail email notifications delivered via UP, which requires a self-hosted Prism server.
Sometimes I get the feeling that Signal hates users who aren't total normies. Unified Push, which works flawlessly on Molly, could easily be implemented in the regular client. Just as they could easily offer a Google free version for F-Droid or simply for people who want nothing to do with Google. But they just refuse. Just like it took years for nicknames to be introduced, and registering without a phone number has only recently become possible and only through the Google Play Store.
One of the most frustrating decisions from them was to stop allowing signal to be a catch-all messenger for encrypted and non-encrypted messages. I was able to onboard so many people, including very non techy relatives, because switching to a secure app for a small subset of people was never something they really wanted to do.
For security and privacy to really win out and raise the bar, it has to be able to happen in the background without the user even realizing it.
Making an app for enthusiasts is fine but Signal is going to remain niche if they can't make it more of an open ecosystem.
No it's the other way around. Signal is explicitly designed for normies, which is why so many people use it. I doubt they sat around and thought of ways to screw certain users.
>Just as they could easily offer a Google free version
Easily? There's no easy in maintaining and releasing two different versions of your app, especially for a small non-profit.
Yeah, the hostility toward F-Droid and wanting to run their app on LineageOS without gapps made me ditch Signal years ago. It seemed like the main gimmick back then was that it was also your SMS app, which IIRC isn't a choice anymore. So what's the draw now? Why would you not use XMPP+OMEMO or Matrix which work everywhere, don't need a phone number (at all, ever), and have free as in freedom clients and servers? It's insane to me.
Signal hates anyone who even thinks about using this IM app as the de-facto IM app, or with more than that one person who also tries Singal as an annual ritual in your friend circle. I tried to use the app again after a year or so. Gave it full contact permission and it wasn't able to pick friends who are alreasy on Signal. I was not even able to send them messages using the number. But a friend was able to send it a message to me. After 2-3 days finally the app started showing friend's name that's in contact. Tut there were scary warnings (I know, I know that's for my safery). The whole UX just feels at odd with anything and everything I've used. They manage to look and feel worse than WhatsApp of today and that I'd say is an achievement.
Signal is not good for normies: compare sending a message with Signal to WhatsApp. Didn’t go through? WhatsApp will try try try to resend. Signal tries far less then shows the dreaded red exclamation point. Not great while travelling or with poor reception.
Interestingly here, the sqlite DB would be trivially fixable, and messages restorable, with the `sqlite3` CLI.
But there's no way to get at that sqlite DB file. Even if you change Signal's code to add a feature to export the DB, it apparently cannot see your DB, because iOS sandboxes that so that it is only visible to Signal builds signed with the Signal developers' keys.
So that means your messages are all there, on your device, running open-source software, and yet you cannot get them.
This cannot have been the intention of Signal being Free Software. Where is "change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1)"?
(I do not use iOS myself but have friends suffering this issue. Everybody involved is programmers and yet we seem to be able to do nothing about it.)
So it seems that even though the messages are on the user's device, it really is the Signal developers who "own" that data, and have the exclusive and ultimate control over it.
Makes me wonder:
Does this mean users suffering this need to GDPR-request their data out from Signal?
I also would like it to have stable supported libraries. But this doesn't seem to be a focus. It's a pitty, we have a Foss solution and it's hard to integrate with it....
As I understand it, Signal falls back to a persistent websocket when Play services are not available. FWIW.
I agree that working around a reliance on FCM by default would be a position that better aligns with the expectations from the freedom & privacy set, though.
2 years ago when I got a new phone, I had to re-register in both WhatsApp and Signal.
Both send you a code over SMS. I hate giving apps SMS access, so I refuse SMS intercept permission when an app asks for it, and instead I manually enter the received code in the app.
This was possible in WhatsApp, but was not possible in Signal. It won't allow you. You must give it SMS access to read the code. So much for privacy/security/... Only app I use which didn't allow me to manually enter the SMS code.
> Sometimes I get the feeling that Signal hates users
one would think this is a well known fact already after the PIN nag screen forcing users to use PIN or have half of the screen blocked (at that time we left with family and never returned back) or removal of SMS feature, which would be only reason why to keep Signal in the phone for those few people who use it since you could use it at least to receive SMS
TBH Firefox devs are not much better, I remember waiting years and years for pull down to refresh while they kept playing with features nobody asked for (on related note Vivaldi for Android supports already extensions) or Proton Mail devs requiring Android 10 minimum to install the app, while all other clients (Nine Mail, Gmail, etc) are fine with older Android (I mention it because I was setting up old extremely locked phone for my kid recently, I have A16)
It explains perfectly why Signal does not want third-party clients.
To the haters: I am not saying that it is perfect, in an ideal world we could have secure third-party clients. I am just saying that it is pragmatic: in our world, we don't.
Signal has forever been a pragmatic approach to private messaging, and it succeeded at that: Signal literally put E2EE on the map!
Signal has a threat model, and they do the best app they can addressing that threat model. Which means that they cannot accept third-party clients or federation. They don't say "you cannot use XMPP or SimpleX or Matrix on the side", they just say "we provide this, if you benefit from it, use it for free".
Still, there is a very vocal minority that takes every opportunity they take to explain how "insane" that is, and how they "cannot imagine how anyone with some kind of intelligence wouldn't be revolted". I believe it is the same posture as those complaining about Android or GrapheneOS not giving root access ("even in the advanced settings"). The fact is that if you want root access on your phone, you should install a system that gives you root access, and not select a system that does not and then complain.
Signal is great at what it does. It's okay to also want something else while acknowledging that Signal is great at what it does.
I have my own third-party client called Corvus. However, it's only for the desktop, and uses a native Qt GUI. I haven't gotten the impression that Signal is doing anything to block third-party clients per se. https://github.com/ada-h00k/Corvus
I have been a signal user from very early on, converted most of my family and quite a few friends. I did use Molly to register my second phone (just found I can do that with signal now, so uninstalled Molly and installed signal).I have the impression that the calling experience significantly degraded over the last year, i.e. calls just not ringing at the other end, sometimes even not showing as missed calls, Video calls being very low quality even though both ends are on high quality connections (and switching to other apps yields high quality). Just yesterday I was standing in a queue inside and a friend was outside. We both tried to call each other but the call was just giving ringtone without ringing on the other end. It's become so bad that I'm now considering setting up my own matrix server and transition to that.
Anyone else experiencing the same? I have been wondering if it might have been me using molly, so will test now after going back to signal for second device.
Now should be quite a good time to set up a Matrix server fwiw; we are finally at the tail-end of the journey to Matrix 2.0 (instant sync; auth via OAuth; native multiparty e2ee calling; encryption which operates invisibly). https://matrix.org/blog/2026/10/30/this-week-in-matrix-2026-... gives an overview of where things are at. I'm biased, but by far the easiest and most robust way to run a Matrix stack should be https://github.com/element-hq/ess-helm#ess-community.
Signal only has one recent CVE, one which lets an attacker keep an audio or video stream open after you hang up. It doesn't disclose e.g. your chats with other users.
Network-connected application developers have as a community, desensitized me to this. They are the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Continuous mandatory updates in the name of security. Guilting you into thinking each update is critical due to "security".
I don't care. It's a hassle, and I don't believe the threats they warn of are something to warrant my attention in the landscape of things I should worry about in my life. Anecdotes don't help. To overload with another analogy: Security is a "think of the children" or "full stop": it's a thought-terminating cliche, and I don't believe people who use it.
The incorporated 501c3 named Signal is, in IT terms, a vendor. Is it not?
The Signal client software is open source and some of the clients have reproducible builds. The Signal server software is open source, though has a history of being over a year out of date at some points. Other deployments of this server software for production use are rare.
Suppose you configured an instance of the Signal server software and others you know ran also a somewhat modified Signal client that could access that instance of the Signal server software.
But the centralized namespace of the hosted Signal service hosted by the incorporated 501c3 named Signal would not be accessible through that server instance now would it.
And, as dictated by the incorporated vendor of the centralized namespace, and other reasons, in practice, this client would have to run as a separate piece of software. "Another app".
This is vendor lock-in.
The service hosted by the 501c3 named Signal seems widely open yet is a permissioned namespace. A physical location tracking number aka phone number or a credit/debit card is required to access the namespace. This is for slaves. The profane.
Open Signal on your phone to keep your account active
This vendor is abusive.
And, I don't think this is what Moxie wanted.
Signal 501c3 is a centralized service. XMPP and Matrix are decentralized/federated. SimpleX is distributed.
> Moxie knows about everything I’ve said in this article. He’s a very smart guy and I am under no illusions that he doesn’t understand everything I’ve put forth. I don’t think that Moxie makes these choices because he thinks they’re the right thing to do. [...] Moxie can’t come out and say it openly, but he’s made the decisions he has made because they serve his own interests.
And it looks like it's working. The Signal social network is growing. Revenue is growing (revenue pays for ongoing maintenance). Alternative servers are not sapping user metrics. It's still easy to push both security fixes and eye-catching new features because one central server, and client upgrades are aggressively pushed. Spam is not a plague because registration remains expensive - you need a genuine phone number you control, or Google to vouch for you (who in turn have their own robust defences against account creation).
If it was a free sign up where you just need an IP address to play, spammers would have hundreds of millions of accounts and you'd get as much nuisance friend requests as you get email spam. Most people would leave. You've seen the scraperpocalypse, every sketchy person on the planet has money to fund a million sign ups each from a unique US residential IP (thanks to "smart" TV vendor neglect/corruption allowing residential proxies), IP reputation is worthless.
Personal instances of Signal would hide until spammers found them but you'd better have your own locked down registration because you can't hide forever. Not to mention that sending ongoing traffic to your own server tells everyone where and when you're posting, moreso than using Signal's centralised services.
Moxie as far as I know is still involved in the project and is the source of decisions such as requiring a phone number. My understanding is he is leaning hard on "encryption for anyone and everyone" over all other considerations such as decentralization.
A common criticism is "huh, not very anarchist of him!" Which, maybe? If decisions like that can get Signal into as many hands as possible, and if Signal can continue to operate in such a way as to have basically nothing to offer governments that demand data other than account join date, I think that's an improvement in material conditions.
Your bio has a pretty frank indication of the maximally decentralized, encrypted alternative, and how user hostile that still is:
> If you want to DM, I am generally open to chat. Generate a https://SimpleX.chat invite and paste it into a file simplex-invite.txt, then run the commands below and include pasted contents of DM.txt in one of your comments in any thread we're both participating in.
Signal's rigid anti-fork stance allows it to stay compliant with its 9-figure government contract, which requires it to include a backdoor in final builds that are not reproducible from the official source code.
All these poor, starving users who can't have any freedom unless they compile their own builds don't even have proof that Signal _doesn't do that_. And the worst thing is they probably have no idea there are already free and verifiable alternatives like Delta Chat and SimpleX.
Signal has reproducible builds for Signal Android.
Maybe some of Android users who are naive enough to use Google Play to manage a package like Signal could over time consistently inspect what APK they have and share results.
But reproducible builds for Signal Desktop are "experimental" and "may not work on the public releases yet", which in real terms means Signal Desktop doesn't actually have reproducible builds yet.
Maybe reproducible builds of apps for iOS and macOS will happen some day but the people with the necessary competencies to do reproducible builds are unlikely to believe in others using those systems enough to attempt reproducible builds for them.
Even with reproducible builds, whether packages on iOS can be verified seems to be a grey area at best and with no source code for iOS there is no starting point to believe anything iOS tells us.
SimpleX has been inconsistent with integrity of releases. Some releases have the expected GPG signatures but more do not.
For any release to not have at least one GPG signature on the source tarball is a serious concern.
Evgeny, the head of the SimpleX project, is doing much better with Git commits now than he has in the past. But a cursory look at the Git commit history at the link below shows an RSA4096 key that is over three years old.
What many would like to see from the SimpleX project are a combination of signatures on release source tarballs with RSA, ECC, and PQ keys where at least two of those are on hardware wallets.
I know there are some have urged Evgeny to use hardware wallets for signing source tarball releases and to be forthcoming that he is using a hardware wallet (something built into a Macbook is not sufficient) but there isn't anything on the SimpleX blog showing this.
https://simplex.chat/blog/
_
> users who can't have any freedom unless they compile their own builds
Those who don't have cicd don't have any freedom and have questionable security at best. Whether this is how things should be, I'll let others argue that. It's how it is.
>Signal's rigid anti-fork stance allows it to stay compliant with its 9-figure government contract, which requires it to include a backdoor in final builds that are not reproducible from the official source code.
TIL: The official Signal app can now use one account, shard over two devices.
This was my main reason to use Molly over Signal.
https://aboutsignal.com/news/signal-allows-iphones-to-be-lin...
TBH this was my reason not to use Signal at all... same with WhatsApp super annoying linking between mobile and desktop :/
Why can't we use XMPP where you can have multiple device and accounts without required mobile phone? Oh I know - because dumb walled gardens and BigTech not liking it... it's a mirracle we got away with e-mail before they came to power :/
That article only mentions iPhones, for which Molly was never an option anyway.
But, apparently Android is also supported: https://aboutsignal.com/news/signal-allows-android-phones-to...
So glad they finally added this!
Unfortunately linked accounts don't count as primary devices so you will always have to keep the original device active or else they'll eventually delete your account.
I deployed my own Matrix server for exactly this reason. Now it's too late. I'm not ever going back to Signal.
I have the opposite use case where I need to have two Signal accounts on a single phone. Having Molly alongside the official Signal app was always the solution, but I wish Signal would allow switching between profiles, or Android would allow arbitrary user accounts (I don't really want to add Signal to my work profile).
Wow, they have not done a good job advertising that when I needed that feature.
I’ve been using Beeper to keep using Signal on my older iPhone when I upgraded.
They do not support Android tablets as a second device. Molly is the only choice. It is why I stopped my annual contributions to them.
That has been my main reason for Molly as well. Good they finally understood that people might be using more than 1 phone.
Have you managed to transfer from Molly to Signal?
Molly backups stopped working (probably due to lack of updates) and I can't seem to transfer between the two apps on the same device.
Someone in that thread notes that when you install the Signal APK from here [1] it "doesn’t get updates tho", but this isn't the case. Signal will update itself; you get a notification to update. Often earlier than the Play Store, probably due to its reputation to randomly delay updates.
[1] https://signal.org/android/apk/
Yes, it notifies of updates (once it did wake me up in the middle of the night), but last time I checked, it does not update itself automatically. Obtanium works, though, but a bigger issue is the extreme power drainage of the websocket.
Signal sends you a notification that says "new version available, tap here to update", but tapping it never did anything for me. I have to re-download the apk their website every time there is an update.
Yeah. Installed Signal as raw apk in GrapheneOS and you just need to open it to install the update. It does not update automatically in background. But anyway, works.
If anyone is interested, I run my own minimalist fork of Molly named Polly.
I just released a stopgap with the fixes: - RingRTC 2.73.0-1, which includes the call-teardown fix (the hangup/hot-mic issue) - Signal's blacklist of the eight compromised eMudhra TLS intermediates
https://github.com/lone-cloud/polly/releases/tag/v8.19.2-6
It's still based on Signal 8.19.2. The build is arm64-only and Android 14+.
Plug: I also maintain my own UnifiedPush distributor app that optionally pairs with a notification gateway: https://git.lonecloud.dev/lone-cloud/prism-android My motivation for Prism was to get Proton Mail email notifications delivered via UP, which requires a self-hosted Prism server.
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Sometimes I get the feeling that Signal hates users who aren't total normies. Unified Push, which works flawlessly on Molly, could easily be implemented in the regular client. Just as they could easily offer a Google free version for F-Droid or simply for people who want nothing to do with Google. But they just refuse. Just like it took years for nicknames to be introduced, and registering without a phone number has only recently become possible and only through the Google Play Store.
Don't Stand Out.
When you say "Each user can choose a different notification service" you aren't enhancing privacy you are standing out.
When you say "Each group of users can have their own servers" you aren't enhancing privacy you are standing out.
So yeah, it's only for "total normies" in the sense that if you insist on standing out from those "total normies" that's a problem.
Signal is taking advantage of the inherent camouflage of crowds, once you insist on standing out that's gone and you can't get it back.
One of the most frustrating decisions from them was to stop allowing signal to be a catch-all messenger for encrypted and non-encrypted messages. I was able to onboard so many people, including very non techy relatives, because switching to a secure app for a small subset of people was never something they really wanted to do.
For security and privacy to really win out and raise the bar, it has to be able to happen in the background without the user even realizing it.
Making an app for enthusiasts is fine but Signal is going to remain niche if they can't make it more of an open ecosystem.
>Signal hates users who aren't total normies.
No it's the other way around. Signal is explicitly designed for normies, which is why so many people use it. I doubt they sat around and thought of ways to screw certain users.
>Just as they could easily offer a Google free version
Easily? There's no easy in maintaining and releasing two different versions of your app, especially for a small non-profit.
Yeah, the hostility toward F-Droid and wanting to run their app on LineageOS without gapps made me ditch Signal years ago. It seemed like the main gimmick back then was that it was also your SMS app, which IIRC isn't a choice anymore. So what's the draw now? Why would you not use XMPP+OMEMO or Matrix which work everywhere, don't need a phone number (at all, ever), and have free as in freedom clients and servers? It's insane to me.
I want to express a very different perspective here as a counterpoint: I'm really grateful for the Signal team's work.
Today, I discussed my father's health condition with my family. Signal worked smoothly (even for my aging mother!), and it's free and secure.
Over the past five years, I have donated $500 to the foundation in total. I hope they continue to maintain the app into the far future.
Signal hates anyone who even thinks about using this IM app as the de-facto IM app, or with more than that one person who also tries Singal as an annual ritual in your friend circle. I tried to use the app again after a year or so. Gave it full contact permission and it wasn't able to pick friends who are alreasy on Signal. I was not even able to send them messages using the number. But a friend was able to send it a message to me. After 2-3 days finally the app started showing friend's name that's in contact. Tut there were scary warnings (I know, I know that's for my safery). The whole UX just feels at odd with anything and everything I've used. They manage to look and feel worse than WhatsApp of today and that I'd say is an achievement.
Signal is not good for normies: compare sending a message with Signal to WhatsApp. Didn’t go through? WhatsApp will try try try to resend. Signal tries far less then shows the dreaded red exclamation point. Not great while travelling or with poor reception.
Or this case we encountered, where on iOS Signal apparently corrupts its sqlite DB, leading to loss of all messages.
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/5813
Interestingly here, the sqlite DB would be trivially fixable, and messages restorable, with the `sqlite3` CLI.
But there's no way to get at that sqlite DB file. Even if you change Signal's code to add a feature to export the DB, it apparently cannot see your DB, because iOS sandboxes that so that it is only visible to Signal builds signed with the Signal developers' keys.
So that means your messages are all there, on your device, running open-source software, and yet you cannot get them.
This cannot have been the intention of Signal being Free Software. Where is "change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1)"?
(I do not use iOS myself but have friends suffering this issue. Everybody involved is programmers and yet we seem to be able to do nothing about it.)
So it seems that even though the messages are on the user's device, it really is the Signal developers who "own" that data, and have the exclusive and ultimate control over it.
Makes me wonder:
Does this mean users suffering this need to GDPR-request their data out from Signal?
The number of people using F-droid is tiny.
Non-normies can continue to use PGP like they always have.
/s second paragraph.
I also would like it to have stable supported libraries. But this doesn't seem to be a focus. It's a pitty, we have a Foss solution and it's hard to integrate with it....
As I understand it, Signal falls back to a persistent websocket when Play services are not available. FWIW.
I agree that working around a reliance on FCM by default would be a position that better aligns with the expectations from the freedom & privacy set, though.
2 years ago when I got a new phone, I had to re-register in both WhatsApp and Signal.
Both send you a code over SMS. I hate giving apps SMS access, so I refuse SMS intercept permission when an app asks for it, and instead I manually enter the received code in the app.
This was possible in WhatsApp, but was not possible in Signal. It won't allow you. You must give it SMS access to read the code. So much for privacy/security/... Only app I use which didn't allow me to manually enter the SMS code.
> Sometimes I get the feeling that Signal hates users
one would think this is a well known fact already after the PIN nag screen forcing users to use PIN or have half of the screen blocked (at that time we left with family and never returned back) or removal of SMS feature, which would be only reason why to keep Signal in the phone for those few people who use it since you could use it at least to receive SMS
TBH Firefox devs are not much better, I remember waiting years and years for pull down to refresh while they kept playing with features nobody asked for (on related note Vivaldi for Android supports already extensions) or Proton Mail devs requiring Android 10 minimum to install the app, while all other clients (Nine Mail, Gmail, etc) are fine with older Android (I mention it because I was setting up old extremely locked phone for my kid recently, I have A16)
Signal hates all users. Go away for a standard 4-week EU summer holiday? We deleted all your data and burned your account.
It’s security!
It explains perfectly why Signal does not want third-party clients.
To the haters: I am not saying that it is perfect, in an ideal world we could have secure third-party clients. I am just saying that it is pragmatic: in our world, we don't.
Signal has forever been a pragmatic approach to private messaging, and it succeeded at that: Signal literally put E2EE on the map!
Signal has a threat model, and they do the best app they can addressing that threat model. Which means that they cannot accept third-party clients or federation. They don't say "you cannot use XMPP or SimpleX or Matrix on the side", they just say "we provide this, if you benefit from it, use it for free".
Still, there is a very vocal minority that takes every opportunity they take to explain how "insane" that is, and how they "cannot imagine how anyone with some kind of intelligence wouldn't be revolted". I believe it is the same posture as those complaining about Android or GrapheneOS not giving root access ("even in the advanced settings"). The fact is that if you want root access on your phone, you should install a system that gives you root access, and not select a system that does not and then complain.
Signal is great at what it does. It's okay to also want something else while acknowledging that Signal is great at what it does.
I don’t understand where this energy that signal doesn’t want 3rd party clients is coming from.
Their open source code is permissive of commercial forks.
Like, if their goal was to block third-party clients, then they would look more like Facebook or Reddit
I have my own third-party client called Corvus. However, it's only for the desktop, and uses a native Qt GUI. I haven't gotten the impression that Signal is doing anything to block third-party clients per se. https://github.com/ada-h00k/Corvus
Well that's timely, and a bummer. I was just wondering about this yesterday, I use signal on my primary phone and Molly on a secondary phone.
Signal got an update yesterday and when I saw the notification I couldn't remember the last time Molly was updated...
I have been a signal user from very early on, converted most of my family and quite a few friends. I did use Molly to register my second phone (just found I can do that with signal now, so uninstalled Molly and installed signal).I have the impression that the calling experience significantly degraded over the last year, i.e. calls just not ringing at the other end, sometimes even not showing as missed calls, Video calls being very low quality even though both ends are on high quality connections (and switching to other apps yields high quality). Just yesterday I was standing in a queue inside and a friend was outside. We both tried to call each other but the call was just giving ringtone without ringing on the other end. It's become so bad that I'm now considering setting up my own matrix server and transition to that.
Anyone else experiencing the same? I have been wondering if it might have been me using molly, so will test now after going back to signal for second device.
Now should be quite a good time to set up a Matrix server fwiw; we are finally at the tail-end of the journey to Matrix 2.0 (instant sync; auth via OAuth; native multiparty e2ee calling; encryption which operates invisibly). https://matrix.org/blog/2026/10/30/this-week-in-matrix-2026-... gives an overview of where things are at. I'm biased, but by far the easiest and most robust way to run a Matrix stack should be https://github.com/element-hq/ess-helm#ess-community.
Signal only has one recent CVE, one which lets an attacker keep an audio or video stream open after you hang up. It doesn't disclose e.g. your chats with other users.
To be fair, that sounds pretty bad?
Network-connected application developers have as a community, desensitized me to this. They are the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Continuous mandatory updates in the name of security. Guilting you into thinking each update is critical due to "security".
I don't care. It's a hassle, and I don't believe the threats they warn of are something to warrant my attention in the landscape of things I should worry about in my life. Anecdotes don't help. To overload with another analogy: Security is a "think of the children" or "full stop": it's a thought-terminating cliche, and I don't believe people who use it.
Pro tip: Signal is vulnerable too.
citation needed. you have an alternative?
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> *for 3 months - learn to spell
Don't you mean "learn grammar"?
If you're going to be an insulting pedant, at least be correct about it.
The incorporated 501c3 named Signal is, in IT terms, a vendor. Is it not?
The Signal client software is open source and some of the clients have reproducible builds. The Signal server software is open source, though has a history of being over a year out of date at some points. Other deployments of this server software for production use are rare.
Suppose you configured an instance of the Signal server software and others you know ran also a somewhat modified Signal client that could access that instance of the Signal server software.
But the centralized namespace of the hosted Signal service hosted by the incorporated 501c3 named Signal would not be accessible through that server instance now would it.
And, as dictated by the incorporated vendor of the centralized namespace, and other reasons, in practice, this client would have to run as a separate piece of software. "Another app".
This is vendor lock-in.
The service hosted by the 501c3 named Signal seems widely open yet is a permissioned namespace. A physical location tracking number aka phone number or a credit/debit card is required to access the namespace. This is for slaves. The profane.
This vendor is abusive.And, I don't think this is what Moxie wanted.
Signal 501c3 is a centralized service. XMPP and Matrix are decentralized/federated. SimpleX is distributed.
> I don't think this is what Moxie wanted.
I think this is exactly what he wanted, as these were the complaints levelled against the service when he was still in charge.
From 2018: https://drewdevault.com/blog/Signal/
> Moxie knows about everything I’ve said in this article. He’s a very smart guy and I am under no illusions that he doesn’t understand everything I’ve put forth. I don’t think that Moxie makes these choices because he thinks they’re the right thing to do. [...] Moxie can’t come out and say it openly, but he’s made the decisions he has made because they serve his own interests.
And it looks like it's working. The Signal social network is growing. Revenue is growing (revenue pays for ongoing maintenance). Alternative servers are not sapping user metrics. It's still easy to push both security fixes and eye-catching new features because one central server, and client upgrades are aggressively pushed. Spam is not a plague because registration remains expensive - you need a genuine phone number you control, or Google to vouch for you (who in turn have their own robust defences against account creation).
If it was a free sign up where you just need an IP address to play, spammers would have hundreds of millions of accounts and you'd get as much nuisance friend requests as you get email spam. Most people would leave. You've seen the scraperpocalypse, every sketchy person on the planet has money to fund a million sign ups each from a unique US residential IP (thanks to "smart" TV vendor neglect/corruption allowing residential proxies), IP reputation is worthless.
Personal instances of Signal would hide until spammers found them but you'd better have your own locked down registration because you can't hide forever. Not to mention that sending ongoing traffic to your own server tells everyone where and when you're posting, moreso than using Signal's centralised services.
Its tradeoffs all the way down.
> Signal 501c3 is a centralized service. XMPP and Matrix are decentralized/federated. SimpleX is distributed.
Session is a decentralized Signal fork that creates the account on the device without associating it with a phone number.
https://getsession.org/
See also maqp2's comment here regarding Simplex:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250302182017/https://reddit.co...
> And, I don't think this is what Moxie wanted.
Moxie as far as I know is still involved in the project and is the source of decisions such as requiring a phone number. My understanding is he is leaning hard on "encryption for anyone and everyone" over all other considerations such as decentralization.
A common criticism is "huh, not very anarchist of him!" Which, maybe? If decisions like that can get Signal into as many hands as possible, and if Signal can continue to operate in such a way as to have basically nothing to offer governments that demand data other than account join date, I think that's an improvement in material conditions.
Your bio has a pretty frank indication of the maximally decentralized, encrypted alternative, and how user hostile that still is:
> If you want to DM, I am generally open to chat. Generate a https://SimpleX.chat invite and paste it into a file simplex-invite.txt, then run the commands below and include pasted contents of DM.txt in one of your comments in any thread we're both participating in.
<insert laughing emoji>
Should take only a few minutes to use an LLM to sync to upstream and build a new APK if you have any of the $20 subscriptions
Signal's rigid anti-fork stance allows it to stay compliant with its 9-figure government contract, which requires it to include a backdoor in final builds that are not reproducible from the official source code.
All these poor, starving users who can't have any freedom unless they compile their own builds don't even have proof that Signal _doesn't do that_. And the worst thing is they probably have no idea there are already free and verifiable alternatives like Delta Chat and SimpleX.
The Android client has been reproducible for quite some time, instructions right in the repo.
Signal has reproducible builds for Signal Android.
Maybe some of Android users who are naive enough to use Google Play to manage a package like Signal could over time consistently inspect what APK they have and share results.
But reproducible builds for Signal Desktop are "experimental" and "may not work on the public releases yet", which in real terms means Signal Desktop doesn't actually have reproducible builds yet.Maybe reproducible builds of apps for iOS and macOS will happen some day but the people with the necessary competencies to do reproducible builds are unlikely to believe in others using those systems enough to attempt reproducible builds for them.
Even with reproducible builds, whether packages on iOS can be verified seems to be a grey area at best and with no source code for iOS there is no starting point to believe anything iOS tells us.
SimpleX has been inconsistent with integrity of releases. Some releases have the expected GPG signatures but more do not.
For any release to not have at least one GPG signature on the source tarball is a serious concern.
Evgeny, the head of the SimpleX project, is doing much better with Git commits now than he has in the past. But a cursory look at the Git commit history at the link below shows an RSA4096 key that is over three years old.
What many would like to see from the SimpleX project are a combination of signatures on release source tarballs with RSA, ECC, and PQ keys where at least two of those are on hardware wallets.I know there are some have urged Evgeny to use hardware wallets for signing source tarball releases and to be forthcoming that he is using a hardware wallet (something built into a Macbook is not sufficient) but there isn't anything on the SimpleX blog showing this.
_> users who can't have any freedom unless they compile their own builds
Those who don't have cicd don't have any freedom and have questionable security at best. Whether this is how things should be, I'll let others argue that. It's how it is.
This is a serious claim - do you have any proof you can offer that this is actually the case?
>Signal's rigid anti-fork stance allows it to stay compliant with its 9-figure government contract, which requires it to include a backdoor in final builds that are not reproducible from the official source code.
[citation needed]