Oddbean

Ok now how many of you actually do that? Facebook is social media, yet 2.1 billion people communicate with messenger as part of their daily private messenger. If we don’t make privacy by default, then we find that people will use whatever is most convenient, even if it means giving away their privacy. What you said is all valid and these are ways to use it without compromising your privacy, but the average person does not and will not think about it until it too late.

For big public chat rooms, Signal has effectively worse privacy, since the contents are public anyway and you still need a KYC phone number to use it.. They are different tools for different use cases.

Sure, I understand different tools for different use cases, yet people as a whole will gravitate towards what ever is easiest. So meeting people in the real world and swapping contacts, we do that in many ways, when we are at conferences, telegram is the place that is suggested to me most often to contact. This is purely out of convenience. This is where I find issue. Humans are creatures of convenience. Look at any grass in the city and you’ll usually find a dirt path cutting through it, while there is a perfectly good paved path to protect the grass and keep it nice next to it. It doesn’t matter what the defined use cases are people will use it in whatever way is most convenient. My point this morning was I wasn’t expecting to see signal under attack for enabling privacy by default for millions of people. My mom understands signal. My grandma understands signal. This is why it is effective.

I don't know what you refer with "signal under attack" maybe I missed some news? I was merely steelmaning the case for "telegram friendliness" among bitcoiners. Lately I always get in touch with people in nostr via SimpleX, no one mentions telegram for DMs. Due to the phone number requirement, I think Signal is more appropriate for IRL friends and family, where your number and identity is already doxxed. Usernames don't quite fix this.