IE like Crypto AG:
In 2020, it was revealed that the Swiss company, Crypto AG, which provided secure communications services to ~120 governments throughout the 20th century, was secretly ran by the CIA and West German Intelligence. The CIA and later NSA were able to read encrypted communications for many countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Italy, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Jordan and South Korea.
Signal requires to use phone number, which in many countries is legally required to be tied to your personal identity. Like the SMS provider must have a copy of your id card. You’re basically naked to the CIA when using Signal. Even if not like in the US they presumably mass collect SIM and location correlations for ID. For the life of me I do not understand how anyone can promote that shit.
So the “honeypot” of Signal is that the mainstream promotes it as IF it was a privacy focused app when it’s very glaringly obviously is not. So the effect is that it prevents market space and attention for other apps actually focused on privacy without requiring ID to sign up. It’s a bit like introducing sterile insects to prevent the spread of unwanted pests (= actually secure communication).