lobsters score: 1 · tags: email, web
I don’t understand this person’s threat model at all. Why do they trust the person that they’re emailing but not an email provider?
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doesn’t trust email because of metadata leaks
[…]
also trusts signal, which requires a phone number
That’s a bit of a head-scratcher for me. Giving my phone number to signal is an absolute non-starter. I can contact you over a burner email very easily.
Can you share a bit more about what threats you’re concerned about?
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The metadata leaks for email is who is talking to who, while the metadata leak for signal is that you have an account attached to the phone number.
By the way, you can pay to make an account without providing a number now.
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Oh, that looks handy. Once they expand it to desktop, I’ll probably be inclined to try it. Setting up an android emulator seems like a lot of trouble for this, though.
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It’s almost certainly just me, but there is a psychological difference between tools like Signal and tools like email. Email is a fire-and-forget medium to many. I feel comfortable sending an email to someone telling them I appreciate their work, and never receiving a response. It’s going to go into a box, maybe be read, and that’s the end of it.
Apps like Signal feel more immediate. You don’t send a single message, you start a persistent correspondence thread. Now, the user on the other end can just disregard and delete as usual, but the feeling is very different to me. I now have an ignored “chat” on my Signal interface. It’s more intimate and personal than email, so it feels much worse suited to this specific task.
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I’m a blogger with quite a few followers. I receive emails from my readers and I appreciate them a lot. I also send appreciation email mysel. Fire and forget.
https://ploum.net/2026-03-20-social-smolnet.html
I would be very very very annoyed if I started to receive Signal chats from strangers while I’m away from my laptop and only expecting messages from my wife and close relatives.
And you know what? In fact, I experienced it when I set up a Delta Chat channel. I didn’t know that, unlike other popular messengers, Delta chat channels subscribers could directly contact the owner.
https://support.delta.chat/t/channels-reveal-who-the-owner-is/5878
So I started this channel, managed to get a few hundreds followers and posted when I wrote a new blog post. At each blog post, I had multiple people reacting directly to me. To the point that I first believed it was spam.
So, yeah I believe that OP is mostly hiding behind “privacy” the fact that he doesn’t like email because people who cannot manage their own emails believe nobody can and that their email will ends up forgotten. I also had my share of people sending appreciation emails then sending angry emails because I didn’t reply to their email. In a few occasion, they were even angry because I didn’t reply to their reply to my reply.
But there are also people who apologize for sending me an email. And the vast majority of very normal people. I’m really thankful for the messages from my readers.
https://ploum.net/2026-02-11-do_not_apologize_for_replying_to_my_email.html
As for Delta Chat limitations, see: https://support.delta.chat/t/what-are-actual-delta-chat-limitations/5845
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