Unable to use Signal, which is hijacked by “Introducing PINs” view

Signal has always been very opinionated, for example, by requiring a phone number. But in my view these decisions have been justified by a consistent focus on verifiable security, ease of use, and very importantly "hard to mess up"ness that so much encryption software lacks.

But the decision to force users to set a pin and store their contacts in the cloud is a bad one. I'm not interested in storing any of my data in your cloud and I don't believe depending on Intel SGX makes sense.

For years I have unhesitatingly recommended Signal and it's allowed me to get many friends and relatives, some elderly or non-technical, to start using strong encryption in their messaging.

As soon as signal put up a pin creation screen that couldn't be removed I started to get calls from people not knowing what was going on. WTH are they thinking?

I understand the features that this would enable but why burn so much hard earned trust by forcing users to store their "profiles" on your servers?

Terrible user experience. I helped someone with exactly this problem a few days ago because they couldn't access any of their chats anymore, weren't sure what's going on and whether it was a legit dialog.

I really dislike this paternalistic direction. I do not want my data backed up in the cloud, theirs or anyone else's.