Comment by XorNot
Having run some family through the Signal onboarding process lately I'm actually kind of disappointed though: the CAPTCHA requirements are a big turn off, and it was relatively difficult to get them to see "look I'm on Signal!" In their existing contacts.
To wit: phone numbers have to stay. That's how I even get people to use it with me, and that's enormously valuable.
But also: there really needs to be a way I can use my own account to vouch for a new user and skip that CAPTCHA (maybe there is? What happens if I do an in app invite?)
Yeah the onboarding process isn't the best but... is CAPTCHA requirements really that big of a deal? Where on the internet can you go where you don't face these? Maybe my grandma can't handle that, but my already retired parents can (and that's a pretty low bar if you know them). For my grandma, yeah, I'll set it up. For my parents and anyone under 70 I think CAPATCHA is not too high of a bar.
I think your threshold is too high. How high off the floor is a CAPATCHA? Because it looks like a bar rolling on the ground to me. You can trip over it but it is almost trivial to get over.