I have a few friends and family on Signal. Pretty much everyone uses other services too (including myself) but Signal is installed on a few
I talk to some friends / family on Signal exclusively. They either already cared about it, or they’re close enough that they trust my recommendation / still don’t care but want to put in the effort
I talk to some friends / family on Signal only when we want to have a more private conversation
Some people won’t ever be convinced, I talk to them on other services or in person when privacy is important. I set up boundaries to protect myself, and people usually respect that.
This way I protect myself while respecting other people’s choices.
For you I’d recommend focussing on the second option. When you need to talk privately, ask the person to install it and give a short explanation for why it’s better. If they do, then great it’s installed and it’ll get used once in a while. Maybe they will see other people and build up the network. If they don’t install it, then suggest an alternative like talking in person
I tell everyone that messenger is not installed on my phone and I check messages once a week. So if they contact me there, expect a one week response time. (Or more.)
It's worse for me in my country, 90% of people use Viber. Which not only has the same lack of privacy with other popular messengers, it's also ugly, filled with ads and company bots, and it's obviously targeted to teenagers. It's so weird to me that people use this app, but I guess most people's choice is always "whatever my most contacts use". I've been trying to introduce my friends to something better, I would prefer Signal but literally zero of my contacts use it. On Telegram on the other hand, I found 4-5 of my contacts already using it so I started from there, added my family too, and I'm slowly trying to add more friends. Until then, like others said, I'll use whatever for a casual message, and I'll just call the person for anything more personal or private.
Yeah that’s what sucks about this. But you don’t have to really call for intimate messages. WhatsApp cannot read you message since it’s E2EE but they do store and use the metadata. So a casual message and an intimate messages are the same in a WhatsApp server’s eyes.
Viber is really very annoying, constantly nagging me about their “newest stickers” and other crap. When I open it, it’s like times square on my phone with all the garbage ads…
Signal is not much better than WhatsApp or any other walled garden messenger without provider choice. Don't waste your time and energy to move people to walled gardens. A better idea would be to use providers and apps that support the federated internet standard XMPP: https://joinjabber.org
Yes, the XSF has a very high bar what a standard is and what not, so the many protocol extensions are labeled experimental. However that doesn't mean implementations are "incomplete" or "insecure". OMEMO has good support nowadays and the implementation in Conversations has been independently audited.
Sorry but I've been burned by WhatsApp before. Not wasting time on moving my contacts to another walled garden again. XMPP is actively developed and has most privacy features Signal does + most providers don't require a phone number and let you connect over Tor. Doing things properly and in an interoperable way takes more time but is absolutely worth it: https://snikket.org/blog/products-vs-protocols/
Interoperability and standardization is not just a virtue, it is a necessary condition for sustainability. Unlike Signal, modern XMPP implementations have great privacy properties AND great sustainability properties.
Matrix is a much better choice than Signal since it offers provider choice, but I wouldn't be sure it's any better than XMPP in terms of usability or sustainability:
It doesn't clash at all. If startups keep re-inventing the wheel just to have shiny things to sell investors on we end up with fragmentation which is terrible for interoperability. For example it's impossible to send an encrypted message to a Matrix user using any XMPP client, since Matrix bridges can't handle end-to-end encryption. Why? Because the company behind Matrix just had to cook up their own protocol instead of building on (and thus improving) existing internet standards. This is bad for interoperability and privacy.
You also seem to have trouble understanding that there can be multiple factors at play, not just a single one. I'm not arguing just privacy or just interoperability, but a combination. XMPP performs well in both while Signal performs slightly better in the first one while completely failing the second one.
Great! Then I guess they don’t mind giving you their bank password, credit card pin, details of all the medicines they take, information from the work they do, their detailed weekly activity schedule, their browser history, their investment portfolio and assets, etc, etc… I’m salivating at the thought of the hundreds of different ways in which I can make money with all that info!
Funny thing is that a lot of people actually do give pins and shit. I know more than a few people that straight up gave me their card and the pin number to buy shit when I was a kid.
Besides, giving embarrassing information to a faceless billion dollar company does not feel as bad as giving it to someone who judges you if they find that info embarrassing. It’s illogical but that’s how a lot of people think.
Why everybody is talking about signal? Isnt a matrix also a good alternative? It requires no phone number + has almost the same feature set. For chatting with family and friend it scales enough good. It is fully open source.
personally, signal is a lot easier to set up for a family member who doesnt care about privacy. its just a sms replacement basically, just need a phone number (which is also a downside, of course)
In Matrix all u need is username, email and password and ur ready to go. Homeserver is configured automatically to matrix.org (which is a problem, but nvm)
The downside of matrix is complexity of choosing a client though. And in general understanding a concept of matrix is not easy for regilar person.
For example u can say: “Im on Signal”, but u cant say: “im on FluffyChat”, or Element whatever, it sounds wrong, cuz these are only the clients and everything is working on matrix. But the regular person needs an object: telegram, signal, whatsapp - these all are just single entities. On the other hand u have matrix with clients, homeservers, spaces and all of this complexity, and that is not easy to understand.
Yeah, i hope in future this problem will be resolved.
For those of you who think you are using a local pharmacy, you might want to check whether or not they're owned by one of these. They buy out local pharmacies without obviously rebranding. And then they kill the store. At least, that's Rite Aid's MO.
Start sending invites to Signal. Setting up group chats can help too, as invitations to those create mild FOMO in the mind of the invitee, then once they have the app they can use it for things besides group chats.
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