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Could you all just stop trying to flee corporate greed jumping from one company to another? We already have XMPP, Matrix and other descentralized solutions.
I have this in Threema. Thank you
Oddly enough, once you make that three fiddy payment signal will now potentially have a payment method linked to your account.
If this is true that payment method can essentially be tied to a identity.
I suppose the reason they are choosing to do this is to prevent a influx of bot accounts and spammers/scammers.
And if you are worried about Google's involvement in this, Greyson Parrelli of the Signal team points out that the payment runs through the same zero-knowledge proof setup it uses for donations.
Looks like there is some way of decoupling the payer identity from the signal user
I figured they must be doing something along those lines, thanks for sharing!
Hmm, I bet there’s a hidden 50 cent surcharge. Damn it, Loch Ness Moster, I ain’t giving’ you no tree fiddy!
I gave him a dollar to make him go away.
Well, of course he's not gonna go away! You give him a dollar, he's gonna assume you got more!
Oh God dammit, it's nessy again.
All the purist here would rather use matrix to send messages to themselves...
Signal is an amazing alternative to WhatsApp and one of the few apps you can actually get non-techies to install. If it's not for you then don't use but don't say stupid shit like "why would anyone use it? it's not perfect!".
Signal is as good as it gets for normies
There is no such thing as "perfect". They will always find something to complain about.
Actually I was installing signal in my relatives phone to replace the sms app, they used it even without knowing... I understund why they remove the sms part but it was a sad day for me, now noone from my "normies" use it anymore
What about Matrix is harder than email?
The getting people to use it.
Took me months after issueing my friends and family accounts for most of them to get the concept and install something to log into (I still get complaints about Element, and thats one of the nicer ones).
For mobile apps, if its not seamlessly integrated into their existing accounts or they have to remember a new password, you might as well have given them a bag of spiders.
The fact that every OS comes with pre-installed email client and everyone knows at least 3 free email providers but most people have no idea what matrix even is?
Those people have no idea about Signal either.
for me, it's that it breaks randomly. all. the. time.
With element, it was constant across two different homeservers I tried. Either logging me out, or just randomly unverifying my client and failing to decrypt messages.
with fluffychat, it's been more stable, but recently it's taken to logging me and a friend of mine out at random just like Element. After logging back in, it constantly tells me there's an error fetching the notification (even though I'm not launching from a notification) due to the account not existing.
The protocol feels incredibly fragile, since it seems every implementation trips over the same footguns, and it makes the user experience horrible.
it gets worse
The feature currently requires Google Play Services, as payments run through the Play Store, making it such that devices without Play Services cannot access it
... don't they know that as soon as you use your Google account you're ID? Like doesn't that defeat the whole purpose?
No, they DO know that.
The only way to communicate anonymously across the internet is Tor.
I would rather give Signal my phone number than use a smartphone with Google services.
Yeah why am I donating $10 a month every month for them to come up with shit like this. Google? Really? Now I question what else is going on behind the scenes.
if you’re donating, you should know they have a system to collect payments zero-knowledge (which they’ll also use for the $3)
If Signal had zero value to the three letter agencies, they probably wouldn't be allowed to exist. Sucks, but I wouldn't trust them much more than anything else American.
Honestly, for super secret communications, leave your phones at home and meet up irl.
From the official announcement
Can I buy an account on a device that has no Play Services?
Not yet. We have plans to add more payment methods, but currently only offer Play Store in-app payments, which requires Play Services.
Ok so given how long it took them to allow an alternative to phone numbers, it will probably be at least 5 years before you can pay using a de-googled phone. I really don't understand what's so hard for them to accept crypto, they already do for donations. Smells like government involvement.
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Signals reliance on phone numbers is my biggest problem with it. I don’t understand why they can’t move away from them entirely.
You need something to limit spammers using the service to sign up a million accounts
You can already today share a username instead of a phone number, this is just extra for signup.
Still need a phone number to sign up though, or pay.
Just use a secondary number not connected to you. It's not that difficult.
You mean they want to identify you from your credit card instead of your phone number? Bah.
They claim it's "zero knowledge" proof through Google pay, meaning that Google will know you paid Signal, and Signal knows you paid them, but there is no link between the two that uses your PII payment info to identify the Signal account. I'm inclined to believe them.
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this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2026
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