alt Hacker NewsIt baffles me that when you install the Element App (which uses matrix.org by default), you can not easily find any of your friends, because you cant “connect” your phone number…
This makes the App a no-go for everyone and their grandmother. The registration and setup process was so cumbersome, even people with some tech knowledge in my friend circle had trouble getting it to work.
Anyway, it seems so user hostile, why not just make connecting a phone number optional? That would attract many more people?
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I don't use that functionality, but I'm pretty sure it exists:
I genuinely can not understand if this is satire or not. Attaching everything to a phone number is the worst thing that happened to messaging.
> It baffles me
It baffles me that people use corporate surveillance software, and balk at the tiniest of privacy hurdles.
You can add your phone number.. But I don't know if it can actually be used to find you, even though it's the stated purpose :). You can find it from Settings/Security and Privacy.
Most probably don't add it anyway because it's far from mandatory (I haven't created an account for some time, but I assume it's not part of the flow), so it probably wouldn't work out great in practice.