- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
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Humans are too stupid to switch from convenience to slightly less convenience even if they get privacy for free. Any amount of discomfort is too much and changing an app is basically death.
They see no value in it. They don’t see that privacy is proactive measure that can protect you.
On Facebook, especially in my family, accounts get lost and hacked. One fine day, it might be someone with more influence in the family who’s attacker might make off with stolen bank information or passwords.
but “that’ll never happen”, right?
After Trump was elected and inaugurated, Signal has finally been gaining some steam here in the Netherlands.
It’s still an American company, so it’s not ideal. But it’s still significantly better better than letting a tech giant like Facebook have control over the most commonly used chat app.
WhatsApp needs to go and Signal is the most likely way in which we can achieve that. We can worry about the American elephant in the room later.
There is threema, a Swiss messenger that gained some popularity earlier since they had end to end encryption before whatsapp.
Unfortunately the source code is not open (even though they do get annual audits with public reports), and the client costs 3 EUR or something (once).
And Switzerlands records in terms of privacy sadly is far worse than most people think - even with the last attack being repelled.
Matrix (preferably on a non-matrix.org instance) currently is the preferable non US and privacy friendly way.
Yeah, but Threema has basically no momentum behind it at all at this point.
I’m putting my social capital behind the option that currently stands the most chance of beating out WhatsappThreema has a pretty big momentum in some countries.
Then by all means keep that momentum going.
I’m just looking at this from a Dutch perspective, where Signal is seeing by far the most growth.You can help making it stronger. That’s what I did in Germany: if people want to contact me, I usually give them my Threema ID first, everything else comes later.
But my goal is not to move to Threema, my goal is to move away from Whatsapp.
Signal fits the bill while expending far less social capital convincing people to use it.
That’s just the client, the server architecture is what really matters.
Thanks, yeah someone else said similar here.
Sadly many still don’t want to switch. My most active chats are in signal now but the large majority of chats are still on whatsapp
If you leave WhatsApp, your chats will usually follow.
Signal is based in America but it’s a non profit organization, not a company. Important difference
But being based in the United States it is still subject to American laws, and that comes with the risk of potential American spying and embargoes. Software from any American entity (be it coorporation or non-profit) comes with that risk.
I will use the opportunity to remind that Signal is operated by a non-profit in the jurisdiction called “the US”. This could have implications.
A somewhat more anarchist option might be TOX. There is no single client, TOX is a protocol, you can choose from half a dozen clients. I personally use qTox.
Upside: no phone number required. No questions asked.
Downside: no servers to store and forward messages. You can talk if both parties are online.
You can use Signal with a different client. Signal being operated within the US has no effect. As of now the jurisdictions that I know of to be worried about are:
Sweden, where a law is proposed to add an encryption backdoor
The EU, where leadership is pushing for an encryption backdoor
France arrested the founder of Telegram for using end to end encryption in Telegram
Australia in 2018 passed a law that enabled the government to require communications platforms add a backdoor for government decryption. The Director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) said that “privacy is important but not absolute”. Which has the same vibes as “this is not about human rights, this is about human life.”
WhatsApp was previously suspended in Brazil for refusing to hand over decrypted messages.
China and Russia are very obvious problems. Here’s an easy one of many examples
The White House both in Trump’s first term and in Biden’s presidency were pro-encryption. Signal and Tor were US government funded projects. That’s not to say the US is great on encryption, and there have been laws in the past that did/were proposed to limit it. But, as of now, it seems that the US is (edit: one of) the most hospitable jurisdictions for encrypted messaging non-profits.
BTW, I’m not saying using Tox is bad, or that Signal is good, I’m just talking about the US jurisdiction part.
You can use Signal with a different client.
Can you advise, which one would be a good one? Because I actually use Signal too, it’s just misbehaving a lot recently.
I have had endless difficulties with Signal forcing upgrades on me and requiring to sign in on the phone, under threat of deactivating my account (I use it on a PC).
I’ve never used any, but Molly seems well liked
Well yeah we could also use Briar or whatever… but would your grandma?
i’ve only managed to get some of my fam to move over to signal. the other half full on refused
Don’t ask me for a phone number and I’ll use it.
When did WhatsApp start allowing signups without a phone number?
No clue. Never even tried to use it since it’s a Meta product. I was referring to Signal’s phone # requirement being a non-starter.
So what do you use now?
I use Element.
I use both and have been happy with both, but note that Element / Matrix have recently announced the intent to add paid service tiers.
Fair enough, servers cost, you can self host it too…
Remeber, If it’s “free”, you are the product.
Matrix
The irony of you posting this on lemmy, which won’t allow posting from a VPN or masked email addresses is not lost on me.
The amount of hoops I had to jump through to make this comment and maintain some semblance of privacy is infuriating but at least it’s not reddit I guess?
But do go on about your security standards…
Edit: BTW, you can set signal to hide your number completely. Combined with FOSS-based encryption keys on-device makes signal the only choice for trying to maintain freedom of expression globally.
Nothing will protect anyone from messaging with a snitch who knows how to screenshot though. Food for thought… get to know your neighbors now.
If you’re reading this comment, I posted it from proton vpn
Thanks, appreciated. I installed Nord on my linux box as well, then set that to openvpn technology and obfuscated servers which worked. I’d prefer to use their quantum-proof encryption but there’s no way to bypass VPN checks if one sets that. I think it’s a mistake on lemmy’s part to even put that hurdle up, but it is what it is. Having one’s real world identity tied to social media is a risk going forward. Data is the enemy.
Data is 100% the enemy and you’re right, lemmy would be moronic to put that roadblock in place
They DID put that roadblock in place. That’s kinda my point. You have to loosen a VPN’s security to post here (as I’ve had to do to reply). It says “no posting from VPN” in the lower left if one uses more advanced/secure encryption. They also don’t allow account creation from masked email platforms like fastmail.
You’re using the wrong lemmy server then, no problem with mine
It doesn’t matter if you hide the number; at some point they deanonymized you when you signed up.
Want to be a dick about “hoops”? Get a number that isn’t traceable. It can be done, but it’s tough. I doubt its possible in the countries that really need anonymity of association.
Deanonymized isn’t a risk with end-to-end FOSS-governed encryption (as compared to Meta’s mysterious backend that manages keypairs for whatsapp and messenger). Sealed Sender can even obfuscate the metadata of the recipient for further snooping hurdles. Nothing is perfect, and any participant can silently ex-filtrate conversation data with another camera.
Duck duck Go VPN connection here
I like Signal. I even got all my close friends and family on it, specifically to message me because I won’t use whatsapp. The PIN reminders are annoying it enough to be legitimately holding it back from mass appeal imho
Turn them off
The fact that it’s opt-out is already a reason to push people away from the app
TIL I have no family I care to keep in touch with and I have no friends.
It’s ethical because it runs on donations and has a non-profit business model.
Meta likely spends at least $1 billion a year running WhatsApp.
Please donate to Signal if you use it.
My wishlist is an app which is not linked to a phone number, is multi platform and has a web app. It should be none US and open source. That isn’t too many requirements and yet nothing seems to full fit the bill? Anyway good luck trying to get school parent’s groups to use something other than WhatsApp.
Matrix and Element. Run your own server if you want or use a server that’s not in the US.
Matrix fits the bill.
Unless you don’t like the federated nature.
XMPP/Jabber via a web client like movim.eu sounds like it ought to work!
You can also look into Snikket as a host for small groups like friends or family, but can continue to use the Movim web client even if you’re hosting with Snikket rather than Movim itself.
When they dropped sms support I was no longer able to convince people to migrate to signal.
Before I could make the argument that you need one sms app anyway so that app might just as well be Signal instead of the one that comes preloaded with your phone. That way people would gradually get more and more secure messaging as time went on. When sms support was dropped, Signal could not replace an existing app and adding another messing app is much less appealing than replacing one.
How about matrix?
Overdramatic blog post,sorry. I can’t stand the whole “fremmium” crybabies that then literally recommend the next freemium or “non transparent funding model” service… And don’t understand the fundamental difference between the Protocol and one of its implementations.
Matrix as a protocol is solid and is used far beyond the Matrix messenger. (e.g. the French and German governmental messenger, the German healthcare messenger,various armies,etc.) With a lot of commits coming from there - but not enough funding,that is definitely an issue.
The current issue with Freemium is solely limited to the matrix.org instance. There are hundreds of federated instances out there that aren’t Freemium and won’t have the need to go that way as they are funded differently.(e.g. the Lemmy Instance I am currently writing from, feddit - we are financed through other means) As they are federated it doesn’t matter - and honestly, I personally tend to see this as a good thing - it will lead users away from matrix.org towards other instances, making the whole network more reliable and decentralized.
There are two other issues that are relevant, though: The way the foundation is run is not ideal, definitely - there are and were issues and I am not happy with some management decisions, but at least they are getting somewhat better recently (government board). The whole protocol does not evolve as fast as it should be and this is an issue,especially as a it also affects bug fixing. As an executive for a (much smaller) company myself I see management issues and infighting due to lack of leadership within the foundation and I am not happy with that. The second issue is Element as a company that does things companies do - focus on making money. This in theory would be a good thing if Element would send enough money AND effort upstream to seriously bring the whole project forward. For a long time this seemed to be the case,but licensing issues and the “stale” development off Element X(Matrix 2.0) has me questioning that as well - but recent changes show us hope in that regard. We also need to carefully reconsider if element is keeping too much"closed" source code for monetized features and what influence VC really has. In conclusion: We need better leadership for Matrix,more transparency and more funding.
The good news is: It doesn’t mattter too much - if the current foundation fucks up and goes belly up it is not the end of Matrix - the protocol is decentralized enough and the licencing of the core components permissive enough for another (better?) foundation to start over. There are dozends of clients available and we have alternative servers available by now.
The funding part nevertheless is my major pet peeve here. All around Europe governments try to get rid of US tech - and use Matrix protocol based products. But they hardly if ever fund that. If Germany, France, Poland and Luxembourg (the big users) would give 5€ per year for each client they implement all issues with funding would be gone, Matrix 2.0 would be available in a few months, VC could be pushed out of elements AND they could mandate more transparency.
The issue with funding is relevant for all NGOs and especially in tech. Running servers costs a fuckton of money.
Signal has a respectable amount of backers but is a centralized protocol and when Trump does something shady moneywise their infrastructure,money and possibly even people will be gone within 24 hours.
Threema has a more sustainable business model but Switzerland is,well, difficult, in terms of privacy and intelligence services overreach, especially towards traffic pointing to foreign servers or hosts.
Revolt is a centralized service with no federation,limited selfhosting capabilities,with unclear funding(we are waiting for a financial transparency report for ages now).
Polyproto is still not quite there feature wise and funding, etc. is unclear.
Delta Chat is indeed an option but has massive technical limitations.
That leaves XMPP as the sole big competition if you want non-centralised, non-US based, privacy friendly, messaging.
I will switch to signal when I can avoid installing stuff on bunch of my devices. Until web version is available, sorry it hard for me to switch and for me to convince other people to switch.
How about Delta Chat? At least as secure as Signal, open source, and decentralized.
Anyone using Session? I finally got most of my friends and family on Signal so I’m not gonna switch but I just heard about it, seems pretty good.
Have a look here: https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html
I like the comparison and prefer simplex as an replacement to Signal in the Future. Self hosted Matrix Servers are a good idea aswell if you have the money and knowledge.
Basically Signal but without the weakness of a phone number & runs on a Tor-like network. It’s still a work-in-progress thing but you CAN use it to send messages
SimpleX as well!
The founder of SimpleX is out of his mind. Check yourself: https://xcancel.com/epoberezkin
It doesn’t look good indeed…
Sadly, that’s what we have to work with. The app is pretty good though
TIL the founder is a transphobic and conservative piece of shit
Made a post to raise awareness
Avoid the lemmy.ml community because it’s moderated by that fucker
IMO the best on-boarding I have seen in a chat app. Just scan each other’s QR codes or click a link. No account management because ID is unique to each conversation.
Signal and WhatsApp need a phone number, Matrix/Element is needlessly messy, XMPP/Conversations is sensible IIRC (ID + password)
Just got the app. Really like the idea!
I wish I could do this, but trying to convince people to ditch an app they’ve never had problems with and where they all have their family, friends, work groups and school groups already mashed together, how do you convince them? Its not even about me convincing my friends or family, its about everyone else doing the same and when everyone has so many contacts in WhatsApp, that number starts to snowball real quick. Its just not feasible to try and explain this to someone who literally doesn’t care. I mean even though I myself know what Meta is and how Zuck is complete asshole, I still can’t switch off of WhatsApp because nobody I know is on Signal and I’d just be alone there. What’s the point? WhatsApp is pretty much the first app anyone installs on their phone (regardless of platform), they’re not gonna switch now.
Well, just an anecdote:
I simply deleted my WhatsApp and moved to signal. Just did it.
People installed the app, at least the ones that cared about staying in touch. Which was most everyone I cared about staying in touch with. A few of my friend groups also moved the group chat to signal, though all of them do have other ones with the people who didn’t care enough to move too, but I hear it isn’t that big a deal, they had multiple groups before and will have in future, doesn’t really feel like any extra hassle they say.
It’s been fine. No problems. I’ve had more trouble trying to explain to my extended family why I’m no longer posting on instagram. Those I never had in WhatsApp either back in the day, so they “stayed in touch” by watching my pictures I suppose. But I just consistently tell people they can reach me always via signal or plain old sms.
I guess the biggest thing to be scared about would be fomo for most, but I don’t really care enough, I’ve got so much going on already that it’s more of a blessing that I don’t have to be involved in every conversation or meme sharing or whatever.
It really gets so easy after simply switching. Just do it and that’s that. The people worth anything come with you, it’s just another app and another group chat or personal chat. Most already have discord and the meta messenger whatever its name is these days anyway. I know zero people with only one messenger/chat app and unsplintered groups across them. It’s not a big chore, and if it is, there’s always sms.
Just ditch WhatsApp. Don’t give in to social pressure to install malware on your phone
The problem is there’s no one on signal that I want to talk to. So “just ditch the app” isn’t actually helpful.
Just need to move everyone. Not that hard honestly, if you are around smart people
" It’s not that hard really all you have to do is be around people who already want to move over". Yeah thanks for that advice.
I have a very similar strategy to being rich, step one is to be rich already. Simplicity itself.
Why are you friend with stupid people?
Why are you being intentionally disingenuous?
I will say it again just so it’s stated.
People are not going to move to another service unless they can obviously see the benefit in moving to that service. People who are not technically inclined (that doesn’t mean stupid) are not going to see the benefit.Don’t be rude about people you don’t know anything about. Don’t insult their intelligence just because they’re not as interested in a very niche area of technology as you are.
spoiler
Why are you friend with stupid people?
Also note that if you are going to be rude about people you know nothing about, you had better check your grammar
What I said is that smart people can be convinced to move to another platform. Most of my friends are not technically inclined, but it was easy to make them use it, at least to chat with me.
What you did is change “smart people” with “people who already want to move”, which is not the same. You then said it’s not something you can choose (as you cannot choose to be rich). But I answered that you can actually choose your friends.
Never did I say people who are not interested in niche technologies are not smart. My statement can be rephrased in an equivalent statement “people who cannot be convinced to change are not smart”, and I stand to it.
There’s nobody on Signal, that’s the problem. If I want to miss out on all of my group conversations, work conversations, messages between myself and others, then yeah, I can switch. But if I want to receive any messages at all, I have to keep WhatsApp installed.
Yep. I know the details. I’m tech savvy enough, but I use what my contacts use, and I’m not leaving WhatsApp. Same goes for youtube. The content I consume is there. There is no suitable alternative until the content creators switch. It’s not really about the technology at all.
WhatsApp is pretty much the first app anyone installs on their phone
Is this really the case?
Maybe it’s a regional thing. I’m in the northeast US, and nearly everyone I know uses Facebook Messenger as their main form of communication, even people who don’t touch Facebook at all. I hate Messenger for the same reasons that people hate WhatsApp, but I still have to use it because my entire social circle does. If I want to message someone outside Messenger without giving my phone number out, I use my Google Voice number.
I’ve only ever used WhatsApp to talk to work contacts overseas, and I’ve only ever used Signal to talk to paranoid drug dealers, which is a use case that’s mostly been replaced by Telegram now.
