I agree needing a phone number is a dealbreaker, the reasoning I’ve seen is:

• It’s a core dependency on Signal, and replacing it would require a major overhaul.
• Serves as an Anti-spam feature
• Helps with contact discovery among common users

My opinion?

• 1st statement makes sense but maybe it’s somewhat incorrect.
• 2nd statement is true, Signal has had an increasingly amount of spam since they added “username accounts” linked to number, I can tell myself.
• 3rd is true, I discovered two guys I knew used it and it was nice. When SMS on signal was still around, I suppose having a phone number also made more sense.

In general, signal has proved they store no data besides the phone number itself, and in court they have only been able to give phone numbers.

Now it’s up to privacy oriented users like many here to think about ways of getting a burner phone number for his without their name on it.

But I still agree with your point, they could work on better or more private ways of using Signal.

I’ll make sure it is updated, no worries

This is going into the wiki and you know it

Not a personal preference

In the new instance rule, the only exception allowed has been xcancel

It’s outside of our control

To add to this, all kinds of fitness trackers are still trackers, and they will sell your data.

I don’t have much knowledge of privacy-respecting alternatives, but this post on the GrapheneOS forum covers that for those interested.

Eventually, I’m sure we’ll cover hardware privacy more extensively in this community, as it deserves its own guide.

We do have to be strict about this, as this rule comes from the instance and we must comply with that.

Still, avoiding traditional social media in general is a thing I support, so for me this rule is great. And I believe it also aligns with the view of a community who cares about privacy, as X/Twitter does like users data a lot.

A privacy report on X/Twitter here

Just researched into it, and while I dislike the situation, is not something I see bad enough to delete proton from this post

I’m quite happy with proton and while I don’t think they are the silver bullet of privacy, they’re still about the best “private suite” of apps you can get with little to no effort

I’ll check and correct my post when I get home

Thanks!

I somehow tripped writing this, I also use aegis woops, but I did use authy In the past

My browser recommendation was based on how easy it is to just download librewolf compared to messing with user agent

I’m outdated in that proton situation, I’ll look into that

I vote positive on the wiki, we can discuss it in DMs

Take a read