Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by autonomoususer@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I really don’t get why so many people are turning this into a privacy versus anonymity debate when the real problem is censorship.

Yes, Signal needs a phone number to sign up, but replacing that with an email or username doesn’t make it anonymous. The real issue is that governments are blocking the registration SMS, so people can’t even sign up for the app in the first place.

Sure, there are workarounds, but most people aren’t going to jump through all those extra hoops just to use an app. If we want to spread privacy, how do we do that when Signal's phone number requirement is actively working against us?

Instead of arguing over privacy versus anonymity, shouldn’t we focus on making sure everyone can access Signal without issues? What do you think?

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[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Schlemmy@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

It is a centrakized service.

And yes, the familiarity makes it easy to get people to switch. The phone numbers made my contact discoverable so I had an easy way to find out they're on signal.