Signal recovers normality after the avalanche of users after Elon Musk's tweet and the controversy with WhatsApp

Signal has been experiencing problems since Thursday in the process of verifying phone numbers for new accounts. Difficulties that begin to be solved hours after the encrypted messaging application experienced a sudden and notable increase in new users.

It is the effect produced by two specific events: a tweet from Elon Musk and a controversial WhatsApp news. The machines in charge of sending by message the codes that allow the application to verify that the telephone number is the correct one were overwhelmed and the possibility of registering on the platform was limited; messages were not arriving or were late.

The verification codes that Signal sends to verify that the telephone number provided is correct were not being able to be sent and received normally

A recommendation and new conditions

Use Signal

- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021

This week has been moved to WhatsApp. During the first days of the year, users of the instant messaging application par excellence received a notice on their devices indicating that to continue using the service it is necessary to accept a new privacy policy. A new conditions which, among other matters, addresses the sharing of data users WhatsApp with other Facebook services.

This situation was joined this Thursday by a tweet from Elon Musk, very brief as well as clear, the one that precedes these paragraphs: "Use Signal". Said and done, it seems to be for part of 41.5 million followers and others.

A few hours later, Signal's Twitter account warned that different providers could not properly send verification codes because "a lot of new people are trying to join Signal right now."

A couple of hours later it seemed that the situation was normalizing around the world, although it was not until this Friday that they announced that European users should be able to register without delay due to the sending of these messages. It is unknown how many users may have won.

"A lot of new people are trying to join Signal right now," they reported this Thursday from the Signal Twitter account

This is called the domino effect pic.twitter.com/qpbEW54RvM

- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021

Elon Musk, in addition to recommending Signal, also took the opportunity to charge against Facebook again. If in recent years he has been critical of the company, a few hours ago he published a meme in which the birth of Facebook is related to the assault on the United States Capitol through the image of a domino. The first piece is a succinct definition of what the platform was in its earliest origin and the last tab is a tweet that comments on what happened in Washington this Wednesday.

Signal has been using PIN codes for a few months to allow data migration if access to the phone is accidentally lost and one of their future plans regarding this feature is to enable it more generally by no longer linking accounts to a phone number, though This functionality has not yet been implemented.