(via mobile quickly, same as my tweet replies on this one)
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hi there! signal did not start silently rolling out patches because there is nothing here to patch. friday’s releases were part of our regular cadence of shipping features and improvements to the apps.
by design, SNs don't change when doing a signal device transfer or when making a linked device change, because the key material doesn't change. we explained this several times and even added to our support article/FAQ. no behavior here has changed.
and the concepts and UX research surrounding Safety Numbers (what they are, how they're represented, and how we found they bring the most utility to the platform) in these 2016 & 2017 blog posts:
https://signal.org/blog/safety-number-updates/https://signal.org/blog/verified-safety-number-updates/