It’s a good move; it shows they are no interested in popularity but Privacy and Security
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I was hoping to move to signal in the whatapp network. Unfortunately in Brazil you cannot live without whatapp.
You could try and run both
Keep whatsapp, and slowly switch contacts to Signal (it might just be close friends and family). That’s what people around me are doing
I managed to convince one long distance friend a few years ago. So now I need to keep Signal just to be able to communicate with him.
My wife told me to fuck off when I installed signal on her phone 😔
Haha, that’s kinda funny. Then people are like.
Just tell your friends and family to stop using iMessage. Like everyone will be ok to switch their routine just like that.
It’s definitely not for everyone. For me it’s
- some use signal with me / others exclusively, sending the occasional message elsewhere when on a certain device or sharing within a platform
- some use signal for sensitive conversations, and use other platforms most of the time
- some just don’t. If I need to have a sensitive conversation with them, I do it in person
Sounds like you need some matrix bridges in your life.
Whatcha bridging to Matrix?
Honestly I started looking into a few of the easier ones and its a damn process so which one am I bridging? All of them. One at a time.
It’s on my list of things to explore soon 😄
I have both WhatsApp and Signal installed.
In the 3 years or so since I installed Signal, I haven’t had a single conversation on it. Only a handful of people from my Contact book are showing as Signal users, and none of them people I speak to regularly.
I live in anticipation of someone deciding to message me on there, but I’m not exactly optimistic at this point.
I met one person a few months ago who also used signal primarily. It did feel weird adding someone normally. Usually when I add someone it’s their first time with signal
It’s not about converting people close to you. In some situations, you’re asking them to install an app just to talk to you, while everyone else they talk to is on WhatsApp. I personally have to use WhatsApp for work and for personal, otherwise I’d literally not get those messages. There’s no option when, if you stop a random person on the street, regardless of what OS their phone is running, and ask to look at their phone, it’s going to have WhatsApp installed. It’s like your phone having email; who the fuck doesn’t have email? It’s the same with Whatsapp, it’s just assumed you have it.
me neither
Meta wants to federate with the whole fediverse eventually. This is first up, then Threads. Remains to be seen if they’ll bother with a Lemmy instance but I wouldn’t be shocked.
So far though the response by the fediverse has been “nah”.
EEE at its finest, like they did to XMPP
Wasn’t it google?
Both Google and Facebook.
It’s… I guess the ghost of their XMPP abandonment.
This is what I hate most about the privacy community, too fanatical and purist to allow extremely useful optional features that would allow them to reach more people.
I use Signal whenever I can because I’m not comfortable with Meta harvesting metadata of my conversations with people. guess what would happen if Signal made it possible to talk to Whatsapp accounts?
You could go on without doing it. I would like to use signal to signal, but there are literally zero people interested in my environment :-(
Using signal just me would be much better than using whatsapp directly, and would reduce the data collected.If signal suddenly stopped being mostly a geek desert and people could still talk to all their contacts, don’t you think they would be much more willing to move? The more people, the more people interested in migrating, and the less data for meta.
don’t you think they would be much more willing to move?
no, why would they, if they could talk to Signal anyway?
Because when you give most people the choice of convenience vs privacy, they’ll choose the thing that they can feel 99 times out of 100(convenience ). Most people don’t care about metadata because first of all they have no idea that’s even a thing, let alone what it does. And they’re not visibly affected by it. The difference between using signal and Whatsapp for the vast majority of people is the fact that one is green and has everyone you know on it and the other is blue and nobody besides me uses it.
But, if you give signal the convenience of being able to use it with everyone, then the choice becomes “do I wanna use this app that my friend is saying is spying on me or do I wanna use the secure, hacker app?”
And hopefully, more and more people will switch and we can be rid of fucking meta
If the user base is signal’s big draw, I’m afraid we’re screwed with such a tiny one against those titans.
Signal users are far more likely to need to use whatsapp than the other way around, and migrating to signal is a huge loss with not very popular gains. I don’t see how it could compete on a level playing field, but that’s where the opportunity to eliminate signal’s huge disadvantage comes in.
If it’s an optional feature why are you complaining that the other businesses are refusing their option to federate with Facebook?
The issue is simple: Facebook will work to leech users away from other services, strengthening their position into a monopoly (if it isn’t already in some places). It is not a good thing for Facebook to get access to more users and steal their data.
Extremely bad take in my opinion. Not supporting alternatives means you force users into installing the alternatives
People could be using WhatsApp if they cared about it, but they chose signal for a reason. And making signal weaken its privacy for the purpose of reaching more people is against everything they stand for.
I would use signal if I could convince people to use signal.
I could convince people to use Signal if all their conversations were on signal and they could talk to people on WhatsApp in a seamless way.
Right now you MUST have WhatsApp if you have any kind of social life. Signal is the other app that no one has because it’s kind of a pain in the ass to have two messaging apps.
I would love to switch to Signal, but inter-compatibility with WhatsApp is a must. The EU is essentially handing them a golden opportunity on a silver platter to become a mainstream app, and they are like nah, we good wtf
The trouble is we end up having to install both when we could be only using Signal
Same goes for people who you convince to install Signal. They’ll end up never using it because they just forget about it and they’re not the ones who wanted to use it anyway. Being able to message people on WhatsApp through Signal would also make it a lot more easy to convince people to install it.
And once those people have it installed, they’ll talk to each other using signal-to-signal as opposed to signal-to-whatsapp!
It pretty much solves the chicken and egg problem, and yet they’re scoffing at it as a solution. IMO it’s a big mistake.
Using only signal in such a scenario is like using only whatsapp today, to chat with whatsapp contacts. What are you hoping to gain?
But it’s not the same - there’s a community of people doing the same thing, and with those contacts you’ll be using Signal.
This is correct, and everybody who complains about how “hard” it is to use more than one messenger app is pathetic. That’s like the epitome of first world problems. People should be GLAD that they have the option of using Signal, instead of whining about how they didn’t build it the way they wanted it to be.
Its hard to get others to do so, for seemingly no reason. I have Signal installed, have had it for years, have told all my contacts about it. Only like 3 installed it, but quickly forgot about it. I still have to have WhatsApp installed to not fall off the world so they end up texting me from WA anyway.
Its not like SMS vs Signal where there is a clear benefit to the average Joe to use Signal, there’s no difference between Signal and WhatsApp to the average person so they will just keep using WhatsApp out of habit.
It’s not hard for me to get others to use it. I simply don’t have a Whatsapp account or anything else. If they want to contact me, they will use the right app.
Thats great, now try that with acquaintances, coworkeea, classmates or companies that only chat through WhatsApp. I wish I could go nuclear but WA is a necessity.
Your problem is you allow them to do that to you. I simply do not allow it, and it works out fine for me. Have never used WhatsApp a single time.
It is literally not a necessity. It’s a convenience that you are making yourself dependent on.
I can only agree with you, it is a choice we’re making.
Still I don’t feel like I want to tell people other than my family or friends to give up on me or switch to threema.
I’m still thinking about it, but the downsides are bigger than the upsides for now.
Nope. Fuck people stupid enough to use FBInc at all.
Using whatsapp is an absolute necessity in most of the world, its the only way to communicate with coworkers, classmates, businesses and even some government services. Not using it means you are essentially disconnected from the world. Good luck convincing more than 2 close friends to install Signal just to talk with you. No one uses SMS. FB really is that dominant.
It’s OK to be “disconnected.”
Especially if “connected” implies dependency on one corporation which has shown general disregard for its customers’ privacy and mental health.
I don’t use Whatsapp, FB, Instagram, snapchat, google, and somehow manage to make my way through the world.
Believe it or not plenty of people still interact in meatspace, limited as it is.
It’s easy not to use Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram.
Even not using Google is easy as you can just use any other search engine like Ecosia.
Sadly, not using WhatsApp would be a real organizational problem for me with people I ain’t close enough to force them to use Threema.
So I’m forced to have both apps installed. Threema for 95% of the time and 5% with WhatsApp.
It might be OK for you to be “disconnected”, but some of us have got stuff to do.
If you don’t live in a place with WhatsApp as the dominant chat app I don’t think you could get it. I don’t have FB, Instagram, Snapchat, Google, Outlook, or any form of social media, I am as disconnected as can be. But WA is truly inescapable.
Need to ask a very specific question about taxes? The government support person only answers through WhatsApp. Need to file an insurance report and even check if it was approved? WhatsApp. Need to schedule a certification exam? Whatsapp. Hell, more and more companies and government services are moving to WA only customer service/support, like not even help you if you show up in person and in some cases their phone lines (which are “always busy”) just direct you to their WhatsApp.
Its also the only way of reaching coworkers/classmates. Not for like socializing or messing around, but for group work, file sharing, scheduling meetings, sharing important/urgent announcements, etc. And good luck getting mere acquaintances to install a secondary chat app just to talk to you, when we can barely get our friends to install adblockers in their browsers. Well, there are other secondary ways to reach them, Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs, but we both likely agree on what to make of these ones.
I hate Facebook and am aware of their practices, but they have reached an absolute dominance over communication in most of the world. You can’t just ignore them in day to day life.
The people who say “just don’t use WhatsApp” really don’t understand. They may as well be saying “just don’t use email”
For millions, possibly billions of people, it’s a straight-up requirement for partaking in modern society.
Like somebody else here said, the EU has handed Signal, on a silver platter, the chance to become a mainstream messaging app, and rather than embrace it, Signal have comprehensively rejected it.
Honestly, what are they doing?
Doesn’t give any reason to swallow that kind of sucker punch.
Clearly written by someone from somewhere where WhatsApp isn’t de facto mandatory.
Yup and no fucks given.
Ooh you’re hard.
If you think think such of no respect for the FBInc or fucking any closed source software then, yeah, duh.
Threema seems to solve a problem signal has that is it does’nt need a phone number to open account . But i haven’t used any of them so can’t say . (If anyone wanna know i use telgram foss which is a debloated fork of the original client)
Doesn’t signal now have username support? I thought i saw it released a week or so ago.
It still needs a phone number for registration. You just don’t need to share it with people you want to talk with.
You can use Session (getsession.org) without any phone number. It is based somewhat on the Signal code base, and it’s a decent alternative for some.
That doesn’t solve the issue that you have to give them a phone number to start an acc.
That’s not really a problem. The biggest problem Signal has is people not caring about privacy enough to use another messaging app.
If Signal dropped the phone number requirement they’d get a handful more users. If people started to care about privacy they’d get millions of new users.
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You can pay anonymously with cash or btc.
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Android users.
Oh i didn’t know that sorry as i said i haven’t used both of em.
That’s a bummer. Means I have no alternative but to keep using WhatsApp then.
you’re getting downvoted for not being American 💀
I’ve had this conversation before. The consensus last time was that I should tell every single person on my contacts list to download Signal if they want to stay in touch and if they refuse it means they’re shitty people that don’t care about me but I’m totally not a shitty person for forcing my preferences onto others.
People don’t realize that in most of Europe WhatsApp is more popular than iMessages are in the US. Not having WhatsApp means you’re not texting to anyone.
Yep. And it’s not just a Europe thing. WhatsApp is basically the only messaging app in South Asia, West Asia, south America and a lot of parts in Africa. Telling someone to stop using WhatsApp here is like telling an American to stop using E-Mail ans SMS.
Well for me it works and I have most of my people on either Signal or threema though threema is getting slowly obsolete
Americans have something even worse: SMS
A huge amount of them, and the vast majority of younger people, have iMessage.
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I’ve had Signal installed for years. There’s like 3 of my contacts that I never talk to anyway. Most people use facebook and tiktok and can’t even bother installing an adblocker. They’re not interested about a privacy focused messenger when they already got WhatsApp.
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Wholeheartedly agree, but most people wont do it, so you end up with signal for 1 or 2 friends, telegram for a few others, and all the crap ones for the rest (whatsapp, slack, teams, messenger, etc)
Ive ditched every messaging app but signal and telegram, and its really annoying sometimes
Like another person said, most people don’t even bother installing adblockers on their browsers and yet complain about ads anyway, despite them being like 4 clicks away. Even after being told they exist and how to do it. Now imagine that with an entirely “new” “unheard of” messaging app.
This is a centralization problem. Come and force federation upon my SimpleX server in Iceland!
Indeed. I wish your comment was the most visible here.
Signal and Threema can be all about privacy, but they are still companies which can make money only by keeping their service as centralized as possible.
Decentralised messaging like Matrix, XMPP, Jami, have no issue with interoperability.
Signal is developped by a non-profit.
You are right.
You’ll be happy to know it’s the top comment thread, at least in Sync
I’m using sync, it’s the second top-most for me.
upvote for SimpleX
SimpleX looked pretty intriguing…is it basically a better / private / more secure replacement for IRC?
pretty much, though it’s pretty basic in terms of functionality at the moment
I understand her point and imho that’s what makes signal a superior option to the others but because of these extreme choices I’ve seen the usage of signal gradually go down (might be wrong for the total number of users) around me. Now I don’t anyone who uses signal anymore.
it’s a real shame it’s ridiculous to be using whatsapp but I have whatsapp installed on my phone not signal because that’s what everyone uses.
Signal were fools to remove the SMS support from their app. That was a good way to get people in to use the system - they could have insecure SMS chats with those not on signal, and secure signal chats with those on it. The app would warn you when someone didn’t have signal and the chat was insecure.
It was a really good “trojan horse” route into people’s lives. I was using signal every day and it was easier encouraging others to make the switch because it was a convenient app.
Then the devs removed that and dumped all their users back onto other SMS apps.
Now I have 3 apps - an SMS app, Signal and WhatsApp. I barely ever use Signal now. I want to use it more but so few people I know use it, and it’s not the first place people message me from.
Removing SMS support was a huge strategic misstep. They should have been the bridge for people to move from SMS to secure chat.
While I do think you are correct, you have to remember a few things:
- SMS really isn’t used outside the US (and iMessage pretty much was the death of text messages and now iMessage also supports RCS)
- Open source projects can be strict about following a moral code
- Anything more than just sending secure messages is just an attack vector and more layers of code to maintain
Idk about other countries. But in India, SMS is pretty big for businesses to send updates to the customers. Like 2FA for bank transactions, delivery tracking, govt alerts etc. Customer to customer is almost nil except on rare occasions when maybe the internet is down and you need to send an urgent text.
And I should mention that domestic SMS is free (included with any active cellular plan)
Very good point. I did forget about that. That’s pretty much the only time most of my family will look at actual SMS messages.
A bit offtopic, but, are SMS free on the US?
Indeed, in my country SMS are not used at all. Too expensive compared to alternatives.
Most plans include unlimited text messaging.
Here I pay 1 euro per month extra for unlimited calls+SMS. Still no one uses it.
So then it seems completely absurd signal is “not interested” in allowing any integration. They could just notify their users communications with WhatsApp users are unsecure.
I got my whole family on it, and generally all my closest friends have it as at least a backup. As the other chat apps falter it’s been easier to convert people.
I tried switching to Signal a couple years ago but I had to return to WhatsApp since literally no one of my friends and acquaintances did the jump. It wasn’t even considered an option by many. So it was either returning to Whatsapp or being cut off from everyone.
If people were a bit more open-minded Signal could be a good alternative. But alas…
can’t have 2 apps installed?
It’s still installed but it’s kind of difficult to use if no one I know is even willing to try.
Honestly would love to use signal to chat with my whatsapp contacts. Signal could just throw in privacy notice when messaging with someone whatsapp or facebook messenger.
Currently I have signal installed and used to use it to message with my so but we have both moved to discord and use whatsapp to communicate with those that do not use discord. Still holding on to signal if and when some oddball from my contacts decides to use it instead.
moving from signal to discord is not going to be exactly helpful for your privacy, discord is completely unencrypted
I am aware of that but when all our friends or communities either use whatsapp or discord then it’s just more convenient. Honestly messaging these days is a mess
- Teams and Slack for work
- Whatapp and Discord for family, friends and interests/communities
- Signal for the techsavy friends
I really miss that fleeting moment when all messaging apps were using either open protocols or at least they weren’t hostile against alternative clients. It was really nice to be able to use one client to log in to gtalk, msn etc. at the same time.
Then too bad… Dont talk to them. If people want to talk to me they have to install signal.
If.
This is the way!
This is the only path forward.
In a statement to the publication, Signal president Meredith Whittaker says, “Our privacy standards are extremely high and not only will we not lower them, we want to keep raising them. Currently, working with Facebook Messenger, iMessage, WhatsApp, or even a Matrix service would mean a deterioration of our data protection standards.”
Ugh, okay Meredith, let’s pretend it’s impossible to handle this with user experience that makes the user acknowledge their conversation with a WhatsApp user is not secure. Meanwhile if the only viable way for this conversion to occur is to have WhatsApp on both ends, the situation less secure. So according to Meredith, the choice is between less overall security or not having conversations with people who don’t use Signal. That could makes sense for her salary but it surely is a net negative for Signal users some of which will have to install WhatsApp since they won’t be able to afford not to have those conversations.
Yeah we’re like super serious about privacy so we require you to make you’re account based on a unique, hard to change, personally identifiable, insecure data point and require you to show it to everyone you talk to. The fact that they’re only now starting to test hiding your phone number is beyond asinine. Any arguments signal has about security I might listen to but their concept of privacy is laughable.
a net negative for Signal users some of which will have to install WhatsApp since they won’t be able to afford not to have those conversations.
I just had to do exactly this for a little league group 😭
It’s the same argument they used when ditching SMS-support ☹️
I’m not nearly as salty about SMS because of the following differences from the WhatsApp scenario. Signal-SMS was only supported on Android, call it half of Signal users whereas a potential WhatsApp integration (or lack thereof) would affect nearly all Signal users. Then the Android users who have to reach others over SMS already have a built-in system app that does this, so they don’t have to install third party app that exists to vacuum data. So the downgrade for the Android Signal user is in ease of use, not in overall security.
Except most people are not going to tolerate having a multiplicity of apps, and if people in your circle don’t already use signal, they definitely won’t now. Whereas previously, I was getting pretty decent traction from people slowly adding it.
In the modern age, it’s getting easier to hard-line your messaging platform though.
If people are already used to having multiple messaging clients for multiple people, it’s less of a jump to add one more.
This has been my experience as well. In the past friends and family were more reluctant to break away from whatever their default communication app was. These days most people are already familiar with the idea of using one thing to text, another to “message”, and often more than that. I’ve had great success converting people to more secure platforms now that they understand the process.
Don’t the built in system apps also vacuum data?
This is Lemmy. Here we believe everything vacuums data!
The built-in apps get and send SMS from a system service on Android. In nearly every case the system app is from the same vendor as the system itself which means there’s no significant opportunity for data disclosure that doesn’t already exist within the system. If anything , the system has much larger opportunity to vacuum data. Therefore if you don’t trust the system SMS app, you shouldn’t trust the system either. If you trust the system, you can probably trust the system SMS app too. Third party SMS apps present net additional opportunity for data disclosure so one has to trust the one they use doesn’t vacuum data.
It’s doable we are not in the kindergarten and school groups we might miss a few things but worked so fast for us. And I convinced both my job teams to use Signal
Ugh, okay Meredith, let’s pretend it’s impossible to handle this with user experience that makes the user acknowledge their conversation with a WhatsApp user is not secure. Meanwhile if the only viable way for this conversion to occur is to have WhatsApp on both ends, the situation less secure.
I don’t agree with this. The only way to have the conversation is to have Signal at both ends.
while i see where you’re coming from, being able to message WhatsApp users from a client app that respects privacy would be better than being forced to have WhatsApp installed on your device, with it snooping casually on your everyday device usage and your contact list and so on.
WhatsApp is the only Facebook app on my phone and i’d love to get rid of it without losing the ability to message all those buffons using it (which make up for 99% of my social circle)
BTW, you can somewhat mitigate the spyware by using Shelter.
while i see where you’re coming from, being able to message WhatsApp users from a client app that respects privacy would be better than being forced to have WhatsApp installed on your device
Who’s forcing you? I removed everything Zuckerberg and just informed people I use only Signal now. I had to help my parents a bit with the install and the pin, younger than 70s did it themselves. I found that, if you have a reason for boycotting, people will just give you a hundred MB of their phone space and install Signal along with whatsapp
Exactly. Let us choose if we want to interact with WhatsApp or not.
I’d be ready to sacrifice some security in order to not have WhatsApp installed on my phone.
Of course it would be cool to just get rid of WhatsApp but I can’t force my whole basketball team to go on Threema…
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There is one thing about interoperability that I don’t see many people talking about:
Your messages going to and being handled by other services means you’d be subject to their TOS and privacy policy as well.
As long as services are transparent about it so users can make informed decisions based on it, that’s generally fine.
But then services like Beeper, or just Matrix bridges in general, make it so anyone can setup such a connection between services without their contacts even knowing about it.
Your messages going to and being handled by other services means you’d be subject to their TOS and privacy policy as well.
This is true of literally every one of your contacts, too. When you send someone a message, they can screenshot, copy, archive, and forward however they see fit (and most people don’t govern themselves by any kind of TOS or privacy policy). Which then means that if any one of your contacts chooses to use another service as a bridge, or as an archival tool, you’re naturally going to expose your messages to that service, on that contact’s terms.
But that isn’t about interoperability per se. It’s about how other people store and use their copy of data shared between multiple users. Apple iMessage isn’t interoperable with anything, but users still have conversations archived all the way back to the beginning of the service over a decade ago, and can choose to export those messages to be saved elsewhere. (For example, I use a bridge for iMessage so that I can view them on my Android phone, but the mechanism is software that leverages the Mac’s accessibility API).
Some of us are data hoarders. If you’re gonna have a conversation with people like me, you’ll have to trust that we don’t use those archives in a way that either inadvertently/negligently or intentionally exposes that data to some bad actor. I’d like to think I do a good job of respecting my friends’ privacy, and secure my systems, but I’m probably not perfect.
You’re not wrong but a friend (maybe even inadvertently) being negligent with my message, and a business structurally sending my message (received from my friend’s app) to third parties seems like a different ballpark.
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Using Threema is not an option. This is paid software and it is too difficult to purchase a license for this software when Google does not allow us to pay for purchases through their Android app store. No one from my entourage will bother paying for a license for this software using cryptocurrency. They will just install another messenger.
I think you can buy keys for Android on the threema website
You can buy a license directly from Threema via credit card, btc or cash in the mail.
I know this. That’s why I wrote that it’s too difficult to deal with cryptocurrency payments on their website. Most people won’t do it. Other payment methods are not available from my country.
I’ve bought Threema for my whole family on iOS and Androids. Never paid in crypto but always with my normal credit card.
It works perfectly fine and I love it👍
Know many people who bought Threema on Google Play
