The popularity of the Signal messaging service has exploded in recent weeks, largely due to concerns over the recent changes in WhatsApp’s terms of service. But it appears that the service may not be scaling perfectly in response to demand. Several anecdotal reports indicate that the signal is inactive and is at the top of the charts of the interrupt aggregator Downdetector at the time of writing. However, the company is aware of the problem and is working to fix it.
the slack decreases and I’m free
the signal goes down and I’m looking forward
– Tony Romm (@TonyRomm) January 15, 2021
While you can’t really trust Downdetector in isolation, it’s usually a good indicator that something may be going on with a particular service, and anecdotal reports in other places, like Twitter, also indicate problems. In some cases, users indicate that they are unable to log in, with an error message stating that they are “disconnected” and to “check their network connection”. Others simply cannot send messages.
Same. I can not log in.
– David ImeI (@DurvidImel) January 15, 2021
Based on reports, people started having problems about an hour ago, close to 10:00 am Eastern time, with the pace of reports increasing significantly in the last hour. As far as we know, Signal has not yet publicly acknowledged the interruption.
For those unfamiliar, Signal is a privacy-centric messaging service, available on Android, iOS and Windows, which offers secure and encrypted communication. It is open source and run by a non-profit organization, and a popular alternative to services like WhatsApp and Hangouts.
It is not surprising that Signal has a problem like this, given the pace of growth it has seen recently. Based on Play Store metrics, its user base has increased at least 5 times in the past week, and this is ignoring other platforms. The real numbers may be close to 10 or 20X in the past two weeks. With such an explosion of numbers, the pains of growth are inevitable and today’s downtime is expected.
The signal informs you that it is correcting the problem at the moment and that it should return to normal soon.