My wife is part of styre for our borettslag. For non-Norwegians this is a volunteer board that runs our apartment block on behalf of the residents. How she ended up in this position is a bit messy but let's keep it simple and say that she hates it and intends to leave as soon as she possibly can. #Signal
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One of the primary ways the board communicated was WhatsApp. At some point one of the members convinced them to switch to Signal. All good, right? Well, no. Up to that point my wife had primarily used Signal for family communication. This board is VERY chatty. So she would frequently mute Whatsapp, that group or ignore notifications and only look at intervals that suited her (anything super urgent they could ring her anyway).
Now that everything is in Signal she has a new problem. Signal used to be her safe, fun place as the only people she communicated with there were family and close friends. Sure, she can mute the group board chat from sending her direct notifications but just opening Signal to reply to me or one of the kids, she sees it there looming with a mounting unread count, filling her with dread.
@ruari
I wonder why we feel this way. I have folders in my mailbox for mailing lists with hundreds of unread emails and that doesn't bother me.
I think we should put more thought in a good messaging UX that will not stress you if you haven't read everything.
@bohwaz Indeed this is a UX problem AFAICT because even if you mute notifications you still see the group has unread messages from the main chats view.
@ruari
Yes and it will also be put at the top of the list.
This might be where a minimal local machine learning algorithm would be useful : "only notify me for important decisions about gas bills, ignore the rest", or something like that.
And this my friends is how we as a family moved our personal communication to #Threema. 🤣
@ruari This makes me feel like contorting my body.
Might sound exaggerated...but I explicitly bother with software and machines because I want them to make my life easier, more convenient, better...
This should be handled with EU-legislation afaic. If an institution requires vital communication it should be mandated that they provide a safe and secure means of communication that does not send any data to private companies outside the EU. We've had the technology since before Silicon Valley enslaved us with convenience.
I recently bit the bullet to see where Mr.Mullenwegs new purchase, #Beeper, is.
For anyone not in the know: Beeper intends to be an app that will allow you to connect other accounts to it and then only use that one single app for all your communications.
I found this fantastic and connected Signal (for the few I have on there), WhatsApp (because I live in Portugal and I'm thus forced to use it), LinkedIn (arguably essential in 2026, sadly)...Discord (because some people never learn) etc... that way I'd only have three messaging apps on my smartphone in 2025: Texting, Beeper and Element/Matrix for the server I'm running for friends.
Well... My main thing would be to cram WhatsApp in there...and ehr... It works?
But there's no granular notification control once you've put it there...so if my partner has an emergency, that has the same priority as all the weird borättsförening/walking groups etc ...
So once again I gave up. But I intend to start fighting back in about two weeks as in:
What can I actually do to depend less on technologies I'd rather not use.
Could I make WhatsApp calls funnel to hardware that funnels to a landline phone, for example. I don't want to live out my life as a slave to notifications that are so horrifically redundant and needlessly stress-inducing.
Might sound exaggerated...but I explicitly bother with software and machines because I want them to make my life easier, more convenient, better...
This should be handled with EU-legislation afaic. If an institution requires vital communication it should be mandated that they provide a safe and secure means of communication that does not send any data to private companies outside the EU. We've had the technology since before Silicon Valley enslaved us with convenience.
I recently bit the bullet to see where Mr.Mullenwegs new purchase, #Beeper, is.
For anyone not in the know: Beeper intends to be an app that will allow you to connect other accounts to it and then only use that one single app for all your communications.
I found this fantastic and connected Signal (for the few I have on there), WhatsApp (because I live in Portugal and I'm thus forced to use it), LinkedIn (arguably essential in 2026, sadly)...Discord (because some people never learn) etc... that way I'd only have three messaging apps on my smartphone in 2025: Texting, Beeper and Element/Matrix for the server I'm running for friends.
Well... My main thing would be to cram WhatsApp in there...and ehr... It works?
But there's no granular notification control once you've put it there...so if my partner has an emergency, that has the same priority as all the weird borättsförening/walking groups etc ...
So once again I gave up. But I intend to start fighting back in about two weeks as in:
What can I actually do to depend less on technologies I'd rather not use.
Could I make WhatsApp calls funnel to hardware that funnels to a landline phone, for example. I don't want to live out my life as a slave to notifications that are so horrifically redundant and needlessly stress-inducing.
@dotmavriq Thanks for the long reply. I have played with Beeper too but it is not quite what I am after and indeed it has extra limitations of its own.
I do not have a good solution but for now Threema works as a family messenger and I do not have the fight to go further than that.
@ruari Interesting, for similar reasons we use Nextcloud talk for our family communications (which was the best way forward since we already are heavy Nextcloud users)
What I find interesting is I have pushed various groups of people I need to interact with (but would prefer not to) towards Signal in the past (albeit without much success). Now I am left wondering if that was ever a good idea in the first place. 🤔
And ultimately yes, perhaps what is needed here is a UX change such that when a person or group is muted it does not just affect notifications but also stops them from being bumped upwards in the chat view and also hides unread count in this view. Or at least an option to do that as well.
Because there should be a way to fully mute, without having to leave or block a group entirely.
Here is a little test I did (which is possible because I have two independent Signal accounts). I muted my extra account and then used it to send a message to my main account. From chat view, there it is right at the top with an unread count, even though it is clearly muted.
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