Signal will finally let you transfer your encrypted chat history to new linked devices

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because believe it or not, sometimes important information gets mentioned in a normal conversation, and not everyone remembers to add it to their personal self-hosted wiki afterwards.
and some people, including myself, often go back a few years in a chat history to reference something, or reminisce.

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Should be, but sometimes it just isn't. I've definitely had plenty of times where I was like, oh shit, the only place I have that information is in this chat somewhere.

Other people, kind of like me, are just data hoarders. Just because I can't think of a use of the data now, doesn't mean I won't be able to think of one in the future! I have piles of old inboxes in my archives.

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I'm not bagging on signal, here, since I use it too. But what about xmpp? It does e2ee, right?

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People have different opinions about things. Why do you think it's good to lose chat history?

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Convenience mostly, privacy needs to be convenient and easy for people, otherwise no one uses the tools.

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Security researchers always look at a specific thing, usually the encryption only. The message encryption of Signal is great, the problem is all the rest of it that never gets scrutinized that closely.

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Original announcement: https://signal.org/blog/a-synchronized-start-for-linked-devices/

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XMPP basically uses the same end to end encyption method as Signal, but due to it not being mandatory some things are easier but come with the footgun that you can accidentially disable it (but it is enabled by default in most modern xmpp clients).

Otherwise: since XMPP federates more servers can theoretically see some metadata, but since most servers are small and community run there isn't a single big target like with Signal where you can siphon off all the metadata. So you can make arguments for both. XMPP: more meta data but decentralized, Signal: less metadata but all in one place.

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Holy shit no way, basic functionality needed at absolutely all times, in my signal? More likely than you think!

Kudos to the Devs! Maybe time to give this app another shot!

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Why not use SimpleX then? You mention it but provide no real reason to use Signal over SimpleX

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Hey u still use signal I'm not saying to stop using it I'm simply saying just cos its better than the alternatives doesn't mean we shouldn't demand better.

The signal encryption is provably secure that's what the researchers analyse. The metadata is a separate story.

See: https://lemm.ee/comment/17831982

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You have no S.O. or friends you'd want to look back on chats with from 2-5 years ago to reminisce about how you met or something you did?

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XMPP has been an option for decades, if your contacts aren't using it by now, they arent going to. And with communications tools, both parties have to agree on a tool. Even if one party doesn't care about privacy or security.

Raw brute force security isn't the point most of the time, and ease of use and simplicity of setup are going to be major factors in adoption. Signal is much easier to get started with for most people than XMPP.

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What about threema?

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I use disappearing messages no longer than a week for all my Signal chats. Pretty surprised everyone's out here keeping long records over this medium.

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No records means an adversary can't pull off an entire lifetime of communication history if a device is compromised. Signal is not the medium in which I'm interested in keeping records.

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Yeah. If the contact would be installing a whole new client to communicate with you anyway, why not make it an XMPP one? I got my mom to use it like this.

I did hear that the implementation of the encryption isn't as good as in Signal (and most clients also use an older version of it), but from my understanding - not in any way critically so.

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I use Simplex and overall happy with it, but since it is so new, would rather not go all-in. It is VC-backed so might eventually enshittify to make a profit.

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I see. I just don't have adversaries, and if they got hold of the memes and inane conversations I have about whose turn it is to pick up the kid from school then good luck to them.

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If you don't have adversaries then why not use SMS? Though this just ends up with the tired old "if you have nothing to hide" argument that I'm not really interested in repeating.

Those examples also don't sound like things you'll need to look up months or years down the line, either. So why not just let them fade away?

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Signal will finally let you transfer your encrypted chat history to new linked devices