160
Signal is working on registration without a phone number. But what form will it take?
(aboutsignal.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
160 points (99.4% liked)
Privacy
4930 readers
220 users here now
Icon base by Lorc under CC BY 3.0 with modifications to add a gradient
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's not entirely dystopian (just barely), we have newer messengers like SimpleX and DeltaChat (I/we use Delta) on the up and coming which deliver on all the same e2ee promises as Signal. It's just network effects as usual, getting people to try is the real hurdle.
What they share in common (mostly) is the architecture - they're built natively decentralized, utilizing caching relays with no single source of truth, or device of truth, to be used to create a profile of you like a phone number does. Encryption keys owned by the user and no single servers. Generally this is the Nostr design as well, so we have 3 different teams all focusing on the same natively decentralized architecture patterns.
Is any of these apps good for phone calls or video calls, or just text messages?
At this rate Canada would probably ban anything they can't get records from eventually if it got popular enough. I hate this timeline.
And Canada is supposed to be “the good guys”.
They have great PR, but other than that no, unfortunately
I started self-hosting xmpp recently, and the calls work perfectly! You don't need to self-host either, there are plenty of public servers.
Arcane chat (a delta chat client) offers video/audio calls as well
Delta has it native.
Thanks!
Must be a newish update.