If you are looking for a secure messaging app that is not affiliated with a big company, is secure and focuses on privacy, chances are you have come across Signal. Signal satisfies all these requirements, ensuring that your messages are only read by the two parties exchanging information and no one else.
Joining the other players in the messaging space including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, Signal is now testing stories for its beta users. Signal confirmed the rollout on its community forums late last week, however, rumours were already doing rounds months prior that stories were in consideration to be introduced to the platform.
This move joins a few others, including the adoption of animated stickers on the platform, as features you would normally find on more mainstream chatting platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook. The official post on the community forums explains that the company’s take “lets you create and share images, videos, and texts with your friends on Signal that will automatically disappear after 24 hours.”
Just like their messages, the stories on Signal are end-to-end encrypted. The forum post goes into detail about who will be able to see your stories.
“You are always fully in control of who you share your stories with. You can share your stories with all of your Signal connections (Signal connections = your contacts + anyone you’ve had a 1:1 chat with), or with a custom list of friends, or with any of your Signal groups. When you share stories to groups, anyone else in that group can view, share, react, and reply to that group story.” an excerpt from Greyson Parelli’s post on the Signal forum.
For those who are not fans of stories and want nothing to do with them, Signal will not push the feature down your throat and offers you a way out. “If stories aren’t your thing, you can turn them off completely in your Settings. This will prevent you from creating stories or seeing anyone’s stories,” adds Greyson
At the time of writing, only beta testers and their friends who are also beta testers are the only ones who can currently see stories on Signal. Once the beta period is over and the update is rolled out to all users, everyone will have access to the feature, and it will be up to you whether you have a need for stories on Signal, or you would rather prefer scrolling through them on a different platform.
