You don't need to, as facebook, messenger , whatsapp, imessage, and Telegram will be forced by the EU to interoperate with Signal and other messengers in about six months. (for now only text chat no voip in sight)
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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WHAT, I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS
Look up the DMA, it goes well beyond just messaging apps.
If this ends up to be implemented it's literally my best opportunity to stop using propietary apps without losing the ability to interact with friends/people using them.
I didn't know that :o
Would you have a relevant link to share so I can learn more about it please ?
Well, Meta can still do their practices though. And I fear it will be even worse since they can know when you texted, who you texted, where you texted, for how long you texted in WA and i fear this will spread to other platforms too.
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Would Google Duo also need to interoperate? (Or did they remove the allo from duo again, or what was the text chat app again?)
I don't know which google product they will make interoperate. what I know is that google is already working on implementing this. Teams will probably made to. in the early stages, I read that one criteria to be designated a gate keeper is to have more than 50 million users.
do you have a source for this?
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If the people you know and care about use it, you don't need WA. Plus, it trains them in it. You cannot always change the world, but you can change your part of it.
I got my family and partner on Signal. I don't care if they use WA. I don't have to. They seem confident with it now.
I don't use WhatsApp since 2017 If someone wants to talk to me it must download Signal or no deal.
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I think it's worth it.
Just simply send a link along with that's generally better and that lots of people are moving over. Watomatic could be looked into as a way to automatically remind people you are on signal when they go to Facebook you. It would then prompt then to install signal.
I take the attitude if they want to contact me either, phone, email or text.
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I was in a similar spot and gave up before starting. This is due to several reasons: 1) My circle of relatives and friends, like yours, neglect their privacy and would not engage with me in a serious conversation regarding it; 2) educational institutions, businesses, organisations and even governmental bodies may rely on WhatsApp for communications; and 3) the two big telecom monopolies offer enticing mobile data deals for using WhatsApp.
While I am not saying you should give up, you should go for modest goals (e.g. converting your close family to signal when chatting together) and eliminate optimistic expectations so you don't get crushed.
I was a very early adopter of Signal. I was using it before it was called Signal, and the voice calls used a separate app. I had also been following Moxies's work for some years prior on a Firefox extension. I got almost all my friends and family to use it, and I use it everyday.
Now though, I'm looking for a good alternative and no longer evangelize it. I don't believe conspiracy theories about Signal, but the persistent phone number requirement and the recent dropping of support for SMS in android has me looking towards a future with a different protocol.
Unfortunately, I don't think there exists yet the perfect alternative. The closest I've found for my needs is Matrix, but it isn't smooth enough for me to pressure my contacts into using it.
Do you know about simplex chat? What do you think about it?
I have it. Seems like the best of the bunch so far. I don't use it much since I haven't got any friends on it. I like that it's getting updated on fdroid all the time!
Yeah, they drop sms support, but still use numbers. It's pretty dumb
Phone number requirement is there to avoid spam, isn't it? How else would you do it?
Huh? I don't get spam on xmpp or on matrix, neither of which require phone numbers. I'm pretty sure Signal's main argument for phone numbers is to make it easier for people to find each other.
Great but just like with mastodon you have to find a public server that you trust and this will stop a lot of users from using yet. To stop spam you can do two things: make sing up more complicated or tie accounts to something that's not free, like a phone number. One is better for privacy the other is better for discoverability. Matrix is good for technically aware people but for general public you need something simple, like Signal.
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I see a lot of people in this thread talking about an EU regulation that will allow interoperability between messengers. I'm an EU citizen living here and this is, on one hand, amazing, because we can finally ditch proprietary apps and still keep in touch with people that still use them.
On the other hand, I'm concerned about the privacy implications of this. Converting people to Signal is pretty difficult in most cases, however, once they download it and start using it, Facebook gets no messages and metadata from our chats. If this interoperability comes into play, most people will see no reason in downloading Signal, since they can chat with people on Signal anyway. This would mean, that Facebook would still get the chats.
To me, this looks like a desperate way for Big Tech to keep profiting off user data even though better alternatives exist, while making it even more difficult to get people on these better platforms.
What do you guys think about this?
These are valid concerns. But I doubt Big Tech is joyfully opening up their userbase to third parties to harvet more metadata. they would rather keep their walled gardens intact, add to that smaller players are insignificant compared the billion users these companies already serve. question mark is what other shenanigans are they going to inact once this legislation in enforced.
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I think that this danger will exist but it will be easyier to convince people to switch to other privacy-friendly alternatives because they don't have to ditch all of their friends still using the garbage shit
Conversely they could more easily be convinced to make the switch, since they could still communicate with their contacts without forcing them (and in turn the entire social graph) to change app too.
If it's implemented well I think it will be mostly beneficial and it could actually end up slowly transitioning a lot of people to privacy respecting apps whereas before it seemed so impossible, due to this chicken and egg problem
I'm really concerned about this.
I am using signal with my wife and 2-3 closed friends for 3 years now. The problem with signal is that you need a phone number. Now i am using SimpleXchat which is a decentralized messenger and i believe is the future of privacy chats. Its hard to convience people to switch their daily chat app, but if tou do it i would say go with SimpleXchat.
Tried it about a month ago, it felt barebones so I deleted it but it's quickly updating, might check it again!
Your main concern I believe is to move your relatives/friends there. And for work, communication with strangers you can use your usual messengers. This way you don't lose opportunities in your career, but you protect the most sensitive information. You can tell your relatives/friends that you will not talk to them on the phone in other messengers. It is also an effective tactic.
I got my mom to switch. Well, made her to. Sent her a link to install it and just said "It's like Whatsapp, but no Facebook" along with "Keep Whatsapp for your old contacts".
Can i ask why exactly signal?
Well, it's more privacy-focused, feels like home, and it's not hard to get used to and it's not a data-hungry company like Meta or Google. Also Other platforms i tested didn't really fit right with me.
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If they don't care about privacy you don't have any argument for them to switch. I don't think you can argue that Signal is better functionally than WhatsApp, it just has better privacy.
They do still have an argument for them to switch. "if you want to message me here is how you can do it. I don't use whatsapp". No need to convince them, they can either switch or not send you messages.
That's valid but a gamble.
Here in the NL it's almost like some kind of privatized utility. It's used for sensitive things too.
A while ago there was an audit: Lo and behold the backups weren't e2ee. What ever happened to warrants?
Well I just told everyone I'm switching a few years back and that's that. And actually a lot of people switched because they preferred it over email and SMS.
It's best to avoid trying to persuade others. Just say how they can contact you and leave it at that.
Exactly, just stop using it yourself and let others know how they can still contact you. If they aren't willing to do that they aren't worth talking to in the first place.
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As others have already mentioned, there will be EU regulation that comes into effect soon that will force messengers to be interoperable. Despite following the topic quite actively, it still seems to be quite uncertain how this interoperability will look like. I also have some concerns about companies making interoperability opt-in, requiring users to go to the app settings and manually turning it on or presenting them with a popup that makes it seem like interoperability is a security risk (a Meta spokesperson revealed that they were pushing for a solution like that pretty heavily). Either way, before trying to get other people to migrate to another platform I would first wait and see what the implications of this regulation are.
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