Signal needs a phone number. Why are we dismissing this as privacy versus anonymity when governments are blocking the registration SMS?

Anonymity is part of fighting censorship. State actors will try to undermine that.

I credit a good part of my success bringing friends and family over to Signal to the fact that it emulates what ordinary people are used to: a centralized service where people's identities are associated with phone numbers. No need to teach them anything new, just download it, punch in your number, and then punch in my number. I think Signal is targeting exactly that and putting more anonymous and decentralized models way on the back burner. Concepts as simple to us as 'instances' are surprisingly difficult to explain to newcomers, and I wouldn't be surprised if accounts not associated with phone numbers pose a discoverability issue.

This all might be sidestepping the question a bit since I haven't dug deep into the issue, but my thinking is that Signal, in its current state, should be seen as a transitional solution until things like SimpleX become more mature and widespread.

Where are you seeing gov blocking SMS?

shouldn’t we focus on making sure everyone can access Signal without issues?

I'd rather ppl not use US-based centralized services, hosted on amazon's servers, and subject to national security letters.

There are far better self-hostable alternatives that aren't hosted in burgerland.

it's been asked a lot and I've seen others respond about how the passcode and account username that were added in the last few years are steps in the process to make accounts not dependent on phone numbers. I've just given them the benefit of the doubt that someday we won't be tied to a phone number anymore

Different people have different wants and needs.

Your real problem might be censorship.

But your uncensored messages are going to other people who might have a problem that's not censorship. When you sent that message to your uncle last week about all the horrible things done around the world, and he gets stopped at the border to another country, and they used a certain unlocking software provided by another country with a really big intelligence service. Now his ass is waiting in lock up for agreeing with you on a message. His problem isn't censorship.

There are lots of ways to avoid censorship. There are very few to remain anonymous while you're doing it.

We should be working to get more people to use XMPP rather than signal, Whatsapp, etc.

https://fair.tube/w/4QCyVXns5fpUUqhkQRnu3b?start=2m25s

Starts in Deutsche; she switches to English for þe talk.

Signal is like TSA: it's security theater. Any entity serious about security will not do these things that Signal is doing:

• Hostility to non-Google appstores
• Using phone numbers and SMS for signup
• US-based entitity controlling the ecosystem