Signal’s use case is “authentic communication”. like when a govt person interacts with other govt person and doesn’t want a second govt to snoop on the actual contents on the communication, but accepts that metadata is public.

It is whatsapp for such people, without being whatsapp.

But then why would you use whatsapp either ?

phone number isn’t just any metadata; it is the anchoring data around which the rest of metadata is collected, and it is also connected to govt/corporate verified real identity.

why would anyone even claim to offer privacy around such an anchor ?

It does, to India.

Right to repair must apply to cars as well.

For an entity hat already has monopoly over violence, how difficult is it to claim monopoly over the collective will?

What how so? They already have taken a deceptive consent from every registered user to show ads profiled on per user basis, and serve numerous clicks on their website that offer ads or ad-like stuff.

What is your alternative theory of why they are doing all this?

They can’t do what they are doing here without an intent to violate privacy.

I have been using Hacker’s Keyboard since … forever?

Yahoo was the competition as far as space is concerned. Even today, it offers a whopping 1 TB for email.