this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2025
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Well my point was not that every random maintenance task under the sun gets done and ticked off a mile long list.
It seems a reasonable guess that a person whose hobby is building custom mechanical keyboards probably does keep it clean. I figured people using an encrypted messaging system with backups enabled would probably go to the trouble of ensuring those backups didn't live in one place.
From your comment and a few others, it's evident I was wrong in this thought. Among other things, it seems some people don't want backups at all, which is a bit surprising to me. That's why I asked the question.
The point is that encrypted messaging is not a hobby for anyone but Moxie Marlinspike. It's just a tool that people use for communication. WhatsApp and iMessage are both encrypted and have relatively seamless backup solutions and do not require any extra thought or effort.
Is Signal equivalent in scale to iMessage or WhatsApp? Does it come preinstalled on devices as well? All three are tools, I agree, however one of these things is not like the others. The average toolbox will have Phillips and Robertson screwdrivers, but not a Torx type.
Signal takes at least a grain of interest to even get a user to install it, whereas iMessage is already there ready to go and that suits most people just fine. The question I asked was based on my incorrect assumption that centred in the Venn diagram of people whom bother to use Signal, read a technology forum, and look at an article about backups, there would also be an overlap with people that already had a backup solution in place.
Your Marlinspike comment notwithstanding, thank you for demonstrating that I was wrong. I should have remembered most people just want to drive a car, not concern themselves with how or why the wheels go round.