⁨Really #Signal? Was this necessary?

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📷⁩ ⁨Signal Polls Are Here

Are you and your friends on the same page, or are you poll-ar opposites?

Polls are an easy way to see what your group chat really thinks. Create a poll with competing dinner options, vacation destinations, musical preferences for an upcoming road trip, or any other important choices.

Everyone in the group can vote and see each other's responses, and you can decide whether or not to allow multiple votes.⁩

@j

Yes. I have wanted to do polls on several occasions in Signal and resorted to clunky things like posting each option and asking people to react to the one they want (which then floods me with notifications because Signal still doesn’t let you turn off notifications for reactions even though they are never a thing that requires an urgent reply).

Moreover, it’s one of the things that consistently comes up in ‘why don’t you use Signal’ questions. Not having polls is a big barrier to adoption just as the lack of stickers was. I have zero interest in stickers, but I do want people to be using Signal so that I don’t need to persuade them to install it when I want to add them. Features like stickers and polls increase the likelihood of this.

@david_chisnall @j Wait people refuse to use services if they don't have *stickers*??

@buherator @j

Yup. I don’t understand it, but people get attached to different styles of informal communication and it’s not my job to police how you talk to your friends and family.

@j yes, it pretty much was – network effects are what determine if a platform is widely adopted, and if we want most people to choose a more secure, privacy-preserving platform then it has to support enough “features” that regular folks find useful (or amusing, etc.), not just the MVP version that privacy & security advocates find sufficient