Is there a quick explanation of what signal actually does? I don't understand the need for a phone number either. Jami doesn't ask for a phone number. It has other deficiencies that make me not want to use it, but those are technical rather than policy, more or less. Similarly, irc (I'm luddite enough to still be using it) doesn't ask for a phone number either. So this is all suspicious. There are a bunch of other things like this too (Element, Matrix, etc.) that I haven't looked into and tbh I don't understand why they exist.

Bots. If it makes you feel better, you can disable other people finding you via phone number and just give them your username. All messages are private.

Session is an alternative that does not require, or request, your phone number (or any other identifying information). Honestly, I have no idea why Signal got popular and Sessions did not. As soon as Signal asked for my phone number that set off alarm bells for me and I’ve never really trusted it since.

thousands of threads on this topic since decades ago.

it's an eternal debate (since signal has no plans to change)

just read the history and join the rest of us waiting for them to change. using signal before that change is completely optional. go ahead and don't use it. no problem.

opening the discussion again is just tiring.

Because they're building a private, not anonymous, instant messenger. They've been very open about this.

My conspiracy theory brain goes:

Its funded by the government.

Yes, the messages themselves are encrypted, but they don't need that, they have access to all the useful metadata.

They can find everyone near the site of a protest (via cell tower data), then find their signal accounts, then see who they are contacting, potentially revealing who the the other protestors and protest organizers are.

And if you need access to the messages, they don't need to crack the encryption, they could just send pegasus to your phone (and they already have you phone number to do so), and they'll have access to every message.

Then they just find those other protestors, also send pegasus to their phones.

I mean, the Signal code is technically legit, they just used a side channel (zero day exploits) to gain access.

But this is just a theory, I don't have any evidence supporting this hypothesis.

Signal is not perfect but we control its app, libre software. See SimpleX Chat.

Escaping WhatsApp and Discord, anti-libre software, is more important.

Everything is a balancing act. Privacy, anonymity, and security aren't the same things. They're sometimes, and in some aspects always, difficult to achieve without compromising one of the other two.

When you add in the goal of quick, easy setup to make the service useful in the first place. Doesn't matter how good the service is at the trinity if nobody is willing to use it. Signal just errs on security first, privacy second, anonymity third.

They implemented an alt method IIRC but you must go out of your way to search and find it. I just recall seeing a bunch of post headlines about using email or something like that a year or so back.

They send an initial SMS message that is a main expense and funded by some rich person and donations. I think that has some significance to encryption or something but I'm not sure of the details. I could be wrong on that one, it has been years since I read the details.

If you want to be mainstream a) you can't have spammers, scammers, and all the other scum of the earth and b) finding your contacts in the app HAVE TO be plug and play. Literally no normie will bother adding with usernames or whatever.

One of the design goals is that they don't have a user database, so governments etc can't knock down their door demanding anything. By using phone numbers your "contacts" are not on their servers but local on your phone.

https://signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames/

I believe you can delete your phone number once you're up and running, but yeah that seems like an anti-feature.

It's focused on ensuring there is no middleman between you and the other party, but it does not have a goal to provide anonymous messaging. Sadly.

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