Ironically having a giant security breach happen in a security focused messaging app was good advertising.

Of course in this instance the breach was not because of the app, which is a good thing I guess.

People hoping to get randomly added to war chats lol

Good. It's the only encrypted channel I trust right now.

Everyone hoping to get accidentally added to a government group chat.

Bad actors are sowing distrust by implying that Signal is not secure. Always remember that the powers that be don't want the public to have encrypted comms and would love to ban private messaging apps altogether. I could also be completely wrong and Signal is in fact a fed honeypot...

The code is open-source though, and I'm hoping that individuals more learned than I would surely alert us if there were any backdoors/exploits...

So who exactly is downloading the app as a result of this latest government scandal? I'm going to guess it's the maga crowd because they are this as an endorsement from their new king. But hopefully I'm wrong and it's a broad sweep of different users from across the political spectrum.

The chat space is problematic.

• There are a lot of apps that don’t encrypt at all (e.g. Google chat, discord, etc)
• There are apps that encrypt but they are subject to jurisdictions that can or may in the future force backdoors (e.g., Chinese apps, possibly telegram, possibly US apps in the future)
• There are apps that encrypt, are in countries that are privacy focused but are not for free (e.g., threema)

This contributes to a fragmentation that makes WhatsApp the app that-you-must-have

Sure it is supposedly encrypted but I would not bet my money that is without back doors

Next up:

• Signal getting banned in US govt
• Signal getting banned in the US
• Signal servers seized, devs detained
• Signal protocol repos removed from M$hub

It just about always comes down to user error. The White House trusting Signal is very indicative of the effectiveness of the app's underlying protocols and the organization's commitment to privacy. This is definitely huge publicity and I hope Signal endures the limelight.

For the people who want to use Signal but are stuck in WhatsApp land because all their contacts are on WhatsApp, you should download WhatsApp business and create an automated away message that says that you are only available via Signal and with a link to your Signal account (if you use a Signal username. ) People in my contacts are slowly switching to Signal.

Signal has been with me for a decade. Have had Matrix/Element installed for years but no one i know uses it

Tox