Finally, Signal will catch up to XMPP.
Nah, it still requires a phone number.
XMPP has always won
To register on Signal Desktop, a phone number will still be required. However, this can be either a mobile number or a landline, including basic mobile phones or dumb phones. This will make Signal accessible to users without a smartphone.
What’s the point? Something they don’t understand is that phone verification only fucked up people, and that spams and big entities have millions of proxies and phone numbers to use and flood the network
I assume the point is that by requiring a phone number it’s a drop-in replacement for WhatsApp. There’s no need to register an account, just install a different app and you’re good to go.
It’s not the biggest barrier, but for some people it is one.
Why do I need to register an account?
If mullvad can let me click one to generate an “account” that receives payment, signal can figure out how to do the same with a bit of text.
Why is it a different version
Wdym?
It seems the headline has bad wording. It’s not a new version of Signal.
Just install signal-cli :P
Or use SimpleX Chat in a terminal instead desperately using some third party github repo to try to access something that tries to identify you based on numbers and hardware identifiers.
finally, been waiting for a signal desktop-gui for a long time…hope its available on linux
Signal desktop has been a thing for years at this point. On Linux too. However, you could not register it to desktop only. You had to have the mobile app and then register the desktop app, so there was a dependency. This is about to change now.
ooo didnt know about that ill try it, i came to hear that WhatsApp is also gonna have a username based system…i dont think thats gonna make it any better
It really isn’t, and recently there have been claims that WA has 3ssentially backdoored its encryption and can read everything.
whats with big corps messing everything up… why haven’t people switched to FOSS yet
Plenty of reasons: inertia, vendor lock-in network effect, lack of knowledge or awareness, or plain ol’ stupidity.
But on a less pessimistic note: I’m pleased to say that I can reach pretty much all of my contacts via Signal these days. It’s reached critical mass where I am.
