I’m trying to promote Signal in a community that is not made up of “privacy-conscious” people. While I will try to sell the security and privacy benefits of Signal, I doubt that alone will be good enough to make Signal an appealing option. I figured other people run into this issue so I wanted to start a thread where we can list out some non-privacy/security related features of Signal that might be appealing to the average person.
I’ll start off by saying me and my friends actually enjoy stickers! The default sticker packs are limited but I recently found an unofficial Signal Stickers website that allows you to add others sticker packs and share your own. I also think the addition of stories is neat, but unfortunately unless you have a ton of friends on Signal, it’s kind of useless since you won’t have enough reach to justify posting a story on there and I myself hadn’t seen any friends use it yet.
The biggest advantage is that it’s much easier to install stickers in Signal, and you get to change the theme. It’s pretty on par feature-wise with whatsapp.
I find being able to add people by username is pretty convenient beyond its privacy benefits. People don’t really share phone numbers anymore anyways, so sharing a username feels more similar to Snapchat, Instagram, Discord, and the like.
To put it simply…it just works as intended. Sometimes simplistic is a feature. I easily got my own very non-tech savvy mother setup on Signal and even she can operate it.
Pretty/modern UI, custom themes, easy sticker installation & custom sticker upload, easy option to send current location, scheduled messages, automatic metadata reduction (can be explained to non-privacy conscious individuals that people can’t find your location through photos you send them), standalone desktop app, stories, and easy group chat management, don’t need to give people your phone number to chat.
I honestly believe Signal is better than non-privacy centered alternatives. Even without going into privacy/security benefits, I think Signal should have at least one selling point for anyone.
I think the main difference really is just that Signal collects far less metadata than WhatsApp. WhatsApp and Signal are both creating new features that one makes and another adopts later. For example, WhatsApp has ‘Status’, so Signal copied that from them and called it ‘Stories’ instead (Snapchat, who invented it, calls it the same); Signal has usernames, WhatsApp is also adding usernames so you can talk to someone without needing to give them your phone number.
The only real difference is that Signal collects a lot less metadata and if you recipient’s Safety Number changes while you have messages that are undelivered (that is, in Signal’s servers but they haven’t been delivered to your recipient’s device, so it displays one checkmark instead of two) they will not get sent. WhatsApp will still send them but will display a warning that the numbers have changed (if the user enables that). This was reported by The Guardian that unfortunately gave it a very misleading headline claiming it was a ‘backdoor’. You can see Moxie Marlinspike’s response to that, the EFF’s, and an open letter.
Signal adding Stories did cause a bit of a stir because it seemed to make the app more like social media. However, if they want to gain more adoption, they needed to add features so that people who aren’t as interested in privacy will use the app, otherwise they will just stick to WhatsApp. I think all you can really say is that Signal is like WhatsApp but more privacy-respecting. That is basically what Signal is. Both Signal and WhatsApp are intended to be used by everyone, so they are going to be similar and share many features.
@bee you mentioned ‘automatic metadata reduction’. WhatsApp also does that, so it’s a feature they both have. Even social media removes metadata from photos so people can’t accidentally leak their location. And as mentioned earlier in my post, WhatsApp is working on usernames, so that also won’t be unique to Signal soon. WhatsApp also has an option to send someone your current location. You can even share it live, unlike Signal which doesn’t have that option yet.