I’ve seen so many people talking about it that I tried the free trial. It has been giving good enough results. My reference is usually duck dck go since that’s what I’ve used for years, and I only fall back to google when really need to expand my search, but google has been so useless about almost everything that anything else is a win.
I’m not sure if I’ll pay or keep using or not, but for now I activated it as the default on my browsers and devices to get a feeling.
I like the idea of a proper business where the business model is clear and where they are making their money. They even have changelogs with their updates and it seems they keep improving things focused on the user, which is nice.
For normal end user average usage signal is the best option available, specially for family since they may already be used to the flow and UX of it. Simple and straight forward. All the “bad” things you read are about nerds being annoying and not liking a very particular specific thing and thinking that specific thing should be the only focus.
So just make people use signal. It’s the best and simplest way with the most common features for individuals and small groups. A simple download, in a common known place on a store without confusing people with differences between a protocol and a client and with and onboarding experience most are already familiar and ok using.
Even so you still need to make sure that the app does not have battery optimizations turned on, but that applies to all apps used for communication that are not blessed in specific phones (like facebook and whatsapp already having that setting by default because vendors make it so).
I read the other day something about being a limitation that google official app only supports that and all the other are forced to use the same to be compatible.
https://lobste.rs/s/gqoj5n/passkeys_shattered_dream#c_bv8hpr
Also you can’t change it on your side, a server and the part tou have in your authenticator need to be in sync. There’s no point to change only on your side if the server was not configured to also use the same settings I guess.
Understanding is simple. Every few years, 5 or 8 or 10, there’s a big marketing push and brain wash around trying to destroy encryption by using the excuse of CSAM. Nothing new, a play as old as ever. It’s basically (and really the whole point) trying to pass mass surveillance into law hoping that people forget the arguments of the last time or that people are not paying attention or trying to put it wrapped into a different gift wrapping and see if it goes into effect before anyone notices. The time frames for these things are getting smaller and smaller and more and more people don’t care at all about privacy and basic rights and are ok with things like mass surveillance. It will eventually pass.
It’s as if it’s a big problem to manage one more platform between all the ones they already do. Lot’s of apps and options to just automatically cross post content to multiple platforms too or just mirror mastodon to Twitter or vice versa.
At this point, ignoring or avoiding another platform where so many people already are is just laziness.
It’s not suspicious. It’s been talked about for years. People know exactly what the phone number is used for. Easy discoverability, quick and seamless onboarding of new users by providing a way to bootstrap their social graph, and it being very similar to the process of the other biggest player that people just understand. And spam prevention. The phones are not leaked or used for anything else. The other alternatives exist and you are welcome to onboard the people you want onto them if you think it’s simpler.
The code is open, if you don’t trust other people and can’t read the code to understand then hire someone you trust to validate the claims and assure you. But spreading FUD and saying it’s suspicious is not productive to anyone.