Technology

59472 readers

5401 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

-21

Signal is just a company selling privacy (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 1 year ago by gthutbwdy@lemmy.sdf.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

81 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Signal is a centralized app, run by a company. If they are offered enough money or legal threat they will sell out or close.

I am sure people will make an argument that its FOSS and people will just fork it if it goes bad, but a new fork will have 0 users and Signal will still have all of your old contacts. Why not make a switch now? Before it is even more popular and you have more reasons to stay? Why fork it if there are already decentralized apps that use same encryption, like XMPP apps?

Sure you can find flaws in every app, including XMPP implementations, but if we will have to write code for a new Signal fork, why not just fix whatever is that bugs you in XMPP clients?

If you want to use Matrix, that is fine as well, we can always bridge the two open protocols. But you cant bridge Signal if their company doesn't allow it.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] jecxjo@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the difficult part is justifying the move from a "working service". My parents still use SMS as their main mode of communication. Going to something else "just like SMS" doesnt do much for them. Getting someone who is on Reddit to use a new Reddit that wont have a blackout means you're getting an upgrade.

[–] gthutbwdy@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Old people are hard to change, but you can always try. Still at very least we should motivate young people to use this decentralized alternatives and not trying to promote centralized ones like Signal.

[–] jecxjo@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh i finally hit the point of "being old" this year so I don't have young friends.

[–] gthutbwdy@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It might be a good idea to ask local schools to talk to every class about digital privacy, teacher might be into that. Telling them about examples, such as XMPP, might be very useful.

[–] jecxjo@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago

In theory yes that's a good idea but sadly most teachers wouldn't understand why we'd have the discussion and therefore not be super keen on randos wanting to talk to classes. And you need kids to actually want privacy when they post their entire lives online.