The scariest part of this recent news is that TM Signal seem(ed) to be interoperable. People using TM Signal could interact with actual Signal users, and the conversations could be archived.
Is there a way to verify/ enforce users in a group are using the official Signal client?
Those third-party clients have some essential, basic functionality that the official ones for some reason lack. Signal-cli allows registering from desktop without any smartphone, Molly allows an arbitrary Socks proxy instead of being limited to just Signal’s own proxy solution, tying a desktop client with a link instead of scanning a QR code (thus allowing easy registration from an Android VM), and maybe most importantly for some - Notifications not relying on Google (Molly-Socket allows it to use UnifiedPush).