Comment by elevation
2 years ago
Nothing about Signal is haphazardly borrowed from Telegram. The feature we're discussing was chosen to help Signal to grow from a few thousand users to 50M+ without needing to build a social graph on Signal servers.
This mechanism may not be ideal for all users, and it's possible that Signal has now outgrown it, but without it, there would be no Signal as we know it today.
>The feature we're discussing was chosen to help Signal to grow from a few thousand users to 50M+ without needing to build a social graph on Signal servers.
How did THAT feature help Signal grow?
You only receive that spammy message if you already have Signal installed and your contact already has it too.
Signal grew a lot in 2021 (in Europe) because of the pandemonium created by Meta when they announced a change in WhatsApp Privacy Policy so everyone rushed to install Signal but the initial surge, was short lived.
Moving the clocks forward to today, looking at my extended network of family, friends and acquaintances, almost everyone has Signal installed, but most don't use it anymore as it's too frustrating and feels dead, so everything is still on WhatsApp, especially groups. All the Signal groups I have, originally meant to replace the WhatsApp groups, slowly died out and people stopped posting on them or following them, defaulting instead back to the WhatsApp groups.
You don't fix this lack of retention with stickers and spammy messenges.
Let's see if and how Signal will become interoperable with WhatsApp later this year...
Tell me more?