Single-handedly, Firefox (independently from how crappy it can be at times) is what is keeping me on Android. Its full extension support (i.e.: uBlock Origin support) is something that I can't really do without.
I do wonder if the crowd here knows of other good alternatives though - specifically, Android and/or iOS browsers with "full" uBlock Origin support (no uBlock origin lite, no other blocker, ...). I would love to be made aware of a few alternatives.
I am aware that there is a browser from Kagi that works on iOS (I think?) but it's still in beta and closed sourced so not ready for prime time on my device. I am also aware of some peers of Firefox like Waterfox.
Orion (by Kagi) with full ublock origin on iOS, atleast that was the case about 6 months ago that I am aware of on Apple’s ecosystem. I’ve long jumped to pihole/adguard home to block ads at the router level so I went back to stock safari after that and use Tailscale to retain the router blocking capabilities when I’m on cell service.
Edge for Android also has (limited) extension support.
It only supports a subset of extensions, but I am using uBlock Origin (full version, although _lite_ is also available), Sponsorblock and Dark Reader for example.
Not uBlock Origin but Brave's own blocker is written in Rust and it is much more battery efficient than Firefox+uBO. It is equally powerful too (you can also add custom lists). Firefox is both slow and eats a lot of battery.
I'd be careful with that - in the past there were no "mega-chicken-factories" that you'd find nowadays. So you can't quite compare spread of viruses in chicken today with the last "thousands of years" without very large asterisks
I think the idea is that Telegram servers are encrypted with keys that Telegram itself has access to (just distributed to different countries) - as opposed to e2e encryption.
[1] Signal is working to support an encrypted "cloud backup feature" (some hints on this are on their code base), as per "sync" that's already done in the forward direction by Signal (by sending all new messages to all your devices) I'm sure you could provide some sort of backward sync as well.
[3] Signal already supports groups up to 1000 people iirc, I'm sure a read-only channel larger than that could also be doable. [4] I'm not sure why that would not be possible.
I'm not sure exactly what [2] refers too but nevertheless I have some doubts that would cause a blocker.
I used Signal as an example since it's a well known encrypted messenger; although I must acknowledge it's not really a Telegram competitor and vice versa (one is a secure messenger and the other is a social media app).
That said, (proper) E2E encryption makes everything harder to do - again, you can take Signal as example and their development speed. But, I'd argue, is not impossible
> Signal already supports groups up to 1000 people iirc,
Which is where the practicality fails. This is why Telegram is the only app that works in large protests, unlike Signal.
Time and again, Telegram proves that the lack of E2EE actually becomes its strength, as proven by the protestors in Myanmar, Hong Kong, Iran and more countries: https://x.com/Pinboard/status/1474096410383421452
I'm not really against E2EE, but many of us fail to see how E2EE can hurt the usability of the app sometimes, and in cases where it is needed the most too.
Many Telegram groups have thousands of people, which is impossible to do on Signal at the moment. WhatsApp copied Telegram's features, large groups with topics and channels too!
> I'm not sure exactly what [2] refers too but nevertheless I have some doubts that would cause a blocker
1 and 2 are related. You can quickly login on Telegram and have your chats sync instantly, instead of waiting for manual backups or devices to sync. The devices run independently.
> But, I'd argue, is not impossible
I too don't think it's impossible. It's just computationally expensive and comes with limitations for now.
Durov does not want to use the Signal protocol either because he's been approached by the US agencies multiple times to include certain algorithms or libraries inside Telegram, not to mention that Signal itself is funded by the government.
Matrix could be better but it leaks tons of data, has been hacked multiple times in the past too.
What baffles me is why people use a centralised messenger to organise a protest? and the one that is hosted in another country.
And what do you imply 'funded by the government' means for Signal? It's a nonprofit org, app has e2e encryption and clients are open-source. How is it worse than an app owned by an LLC in UAE, with no e2e encryption by default, unknown funding sources and no information about what's going on on the server?
To be fair - their hand was forced by the EU to do that. They were not forced for VR headsets and they came out with 3-4 new type of connectors for this. So I think the parent comment was fair
Apple was well on their way moving everything to USB-C. It was going to happen with or without the EU.
I suspect the iPhone was last because it is the most popular device. They don’t want to do anything risky, and it would be good if people already had a bunch of USB-C around the house before the iPhone switch to make it less impactful. People were very upset when Apple moved away from the 30-pin connector, because all their accessories became obsolete overnight. They promised Lighting was designed to last for the next decade, which is about how long it lasted.
Why did we remove SMS (step 1 into "only criminals use this app") and then start adding stuff that has absolutely nothing at all to do with messaging?
I think that "only criminals use this app" is always going to be used on anything that uses encryption by folks that are against encryption (usually governments for some reasons...). SMS or not is always going to be there. I don't think that having secure communication apps intentionally offer insecure communication is the right way to solve this. SMS was a legacy feature for Signal that just got removed now.
> adding stuff that has absolutely nothing at all to do with messaging?
Stories?
> Did a federal agent start running the show with the sole mission of destroying the entire app?
I just replied to another similar comment, not sure if it's the same person or not... but then I'd say...
Use Telegram! It's unencrypted by default!
Use WhatsApp - unfortunately encrypted by default, but at least Meta will collect so much more metadata than you can keep track for.
Use iMessage - It will upload your encrypted chat and the decryption key to Apple servers for you.
My point saying "it's the feds running it" without proof like that is not the most constructive conversation - Signal is by all accounts one of the most secure and private (not necessarily the same as anonymous) messaging apps out there with no clear competitors at the same level of privacy and security.
You mean the messaging service with no SMS support and an assumption that criminals are the main users?
Signal was great because it gave encrypted messaging to people who didn't know they needed it. When you take away SMS support, the only people who use it are people who know they need it.
> So did Moxie leave because Signal got overtaken by Feds?
No, he worked on Signal for so long that he probably just wanted to take a break to work on other passions too - he's still on the Signal Foundation board (https://signalfoundation.org/)
> Why is a secure messenger adopting the appearance of social media?
I'd argue that Stories (or equivalent) is nowadays a standard feature in many messengers.
To more directly answer your question no - Signal is missing a key aspect of Social Media: discovery. Stories is pretty much equivalent to share a picture to a group of people.
You can also easily disable the feature in settings.
> Doesn't this work explicitly against the entire claimed reason for not having an account system?
I'm not sure specifically to what you refer to but in general: phone numbers is still the primary way to find new folks, but they're working on a username feature. They will still use phone numbers for simplicity as "account" but again, Stories is simply a new interface to share pictures with your contacts.
"Standard" implies a lot, and definitely there is nothing about "enabling two-way communication between willing participants" that requires "make available a video on the screens of my contacts in a non-directed way" to be part of the offering.
Signal is not social media. That is not its intention, nor its purpose, nor even its design. It is a messaging service. We already have a discovery feature in Signal: using your contacts, you can see who has Signal installed or not.
This feels like bikeshedding to the max, because it is.
> Let's not conflate "normalized" with "standard".
Good point - I agree, should have phrased better.
> We already have a discovery feature in Signal
Another point I should have been more clear. I agree that contact discovery is ... well, discovery! I think what I meant is that right now you can only discover folks you already know (i.e.: have the number for) but you don't get recommendations.
So yeah... I'd say that one of the major points distinguishing Signal from a Social Media (at least one of the definitions of) is the lack of recommendations of new people to follow or things to discover. Signal in that sense is a communication platform.
[note I mean Signal the app not the company]
> bikeshedding
You mean if Signal is or isn't a Social media? Or it's run by the feds?
I mean I replied to the above company with a serious comment but I thought the original one was not particularly useful to any discussion around Stories per se.
I mean, it is now since they just added a stories feature. Sorry that your view of the product doesn't align with Signal's.
You're also using the word bikeshedding in a way unfamiliar to me. I use that word to mean intense debate about inconsequential changes that don't matter, like the right color for a bicycle shed. Which ofc is ludacris because there is no right or wrong color for a bicycle shed. In contrast to that, there are absolutely product decisions about the app that are material to its desired and undesired functionality. If signal decided to change the functionality of their product and stop encrypting texts, would discussion about that be bikeshedding? Why then, is this change in functionality not of similar concern?
The important part of "bikeshedding" is the part about ignoring more important changes by focusing on trivial changes around the edges. If stories are more than trivial, I'd like to know how.
Personally, I think call quality and server reliability with respect to private messages are more important for a service that is explicitly (and, until this change, exclusively) about private messaging, especially considering recent outages.
If Signal changed the encryption protocol to an insecure one, or simply removed it, then they are fundamentally altering the promise of the app vis a vis its core technology, ie, the essence of the provided service. Obviously that is analogous to the foundation of a house, not to the shed in the backyard.
I guess its up to uoaei to define companies instead of themselves. They have a mission statement and othing more and that mission could be achieved as a social media company.
I believe they are encrypted (and decrypted on device by the Signal app).
They recently had to do some rewriting of the code for iOS15 - they share some comments about that here: https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-up...
Hope it helps
I'm actually surprised they didn't use a notification extension before. They're surprisingly great as an API - I used it to dynamically render preview line chart images for a finance app I worked on a few years ago. Just send over the limited line data, render the image, and you're good to go.
