Federating would mean handing off chat metadata to Meta and other for-profit companies in the future.
I don't see how anyone excited to use Signal would like that. It very much defeats the purpose of using Signal.
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025
105 points (88.9% liked)
Technology
61227 readers
4363 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 other!
- 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
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The benefit would be the ability to chat with those refusing to move away from WhatsApp without having to use the Whats App. I get why they aren't going for it, but I guess it could be handy.
So use a Matrix bridge? Or Beeper (which is a Matrix bridge)?
Matrix bridge
I haven't had them work realibly enough to rely on them
Beeper
Haven't heard of that one, aside from the iMessage thing which didn't really make a good impression on me. But outside of that it sounds interesting.
I've had pretty good luck with everything except Google Voice, since it requires Electron and the Docker containers don't use it. But I've had good results withbridging Signal, Discord, and WhatsApp in my local install.
So? Those of us who have switched to signal clearly don't want our data going through meta. Just stop using WhatsApp.
I've even got old people using it.
I mean I love the passion and I love Signal too but I'm not going to stop messaging my family and friends over their decision to use WhatsApp. Can't get everyone to switch.
And if they had interoperability towards WhatsApp and had their own stuff too those not using it wouldn't have to have anything to do with WhatsApp
load more comments
(3 replies)
Okay, hear me out, but I think it's actually beneficial.
Your content itself is encrypted, e2e so u don't need to worry about that.
The signal protocol has recently introduced sealed sender. sealed sender is completely useless if all communications are going through a centralised server, such as the signal server (You can deanonimise senders easily). If the traffic travels across multiple servers with sealed sender, then it is theoretically impossible to reveal who the sender is unless you have communications with that other server give u info on who the sender was. So if you trust signal not to be collecting your metadata, then you must also trust them, not to be giving your metadata to metadata.
This is not federation, this is signal being able to send message to a WhatsApp server and WhatsApp being able to interpret it to send it to a WhatsApp user. WhatsApp wouldn't know more than what it already knows when you inevitably need to use the app to reply to your grandma or whatever.
A big plus however is that you can convince friends and family to switch since they would be able to keep chatting with their family and friends, so the entry barrier lowers by a ton.
This is not federation and it is great.
Last I heard Signal wasn't interested in federating with WhatsApp so that initiative basically died before it was born.
It would go against their principles and the mission of the non-profit that runs Signal. They don't store any message data on their servers (unlike WhatsApp), and WhatsApp mines as much data as they can from its users.
How much and to what extent, I can't say, but allowing Signal to federate would essentially let Meta start mining and storing Signal user data. Fuck that noise.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I wasn't aware that it was only about Signal. Thought messengers in general must be able to communicate with each other.
I'd rather my Signal not be federated sigh Facebook at all. I'd be fine downloading a secondary Signal-owned app just for Whatsapp contacts (that way I don't have WhatsApp on my phone), but I do not want my standard Signal traffic routed through Facebook's data-guzzling, privacy-eroding servers.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Just delete it now. Tell your friends that you're moving because of all the tech oligarchs that just got handed the keys to the government and the economy. Tell your friends that Signal is run by a 501(c)3 nonprofit and actually cares about privacy.
I left Meta products in 2010, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. You deserve not to "be the product" anymore.
Unfortunately this doesn't actually work. Even if people do try Signal, they see they only have one or two contacts, and they go back to WhatsApp.
I got my entire Snapchat gc (15 people) and a little more to switch. The key isn't dropping an announcement of "hey I'm moving", you talk to each person individually; starting with the most likely to switch. Then go up the line, share who you've already got to join if you're met with resistance. if you save the most difficult people for last, telling them almost everyone else is already there is usually enough.
If someone along the way has refused to move for the time being, you can revisit them later after you've got more people to move. I didn't 100% nail my judgement of who would and who wouldn't, but I was able to go back and revisit those who didn't.
If you can, reach out to people in person; I got a few this way. You have to express that you will not be accessible otherwise and will only be present on signal moving forward. It helps if you have a reputation for following through :3
Likely not everyone is going to move over. I've accepted that there's some people I probably won't end up talking to ever again. I've got my main group over, the ones that actually respect that I want more security (and less clown-show shit that Snapchat has)
Human nature wants to stay put, you have to have some strategy or it won't work.
Also a lot of people are pissed at Meta for lobbying for TikTok's ban. Use that with the relevant people, if applicable
And you should call them whiny, scared little babies for doing so. But I digress.
Other people have succeeded in getting friend/family groups to switch to better E2EE options, so I believe that most people who say it can't be done haven't actually tried.
I've tried extensively. For years. I was a regular Signal donor, too.
I don't know where you're from, but in much of the world, asking someone to use something other than WhatsApp is like saying "stop using email", it's an extremely difficult sell.
load more comments
(1 replies)
This is pretty close to how I did it.
The "one or the other" thing is a fallacy. You have just one, but they're clearly happy installing stuff like WA - so tell them to install another app. It's not like they have to switch.
If they subsequently come to realise the value of Signal in time, all the better.
load more comments
(3 replies)
If I understand this document correctly, it would mean that the entire connection somehow gets routed through Meta's servers. I can fully understand the reluctance of other parties, including Signal, to do that, and I wonder how this is actually compliant with the DMA.
You don't understand. This is not for you, the signal user, to speak with WhatsApp users. This is for you to convince them to swap to signal and keep talking to other WhatsApp users. The more people change, the less information will go through meta. Lowering the barrier to swap apps is great.
To send messages, the third-party providers have to construct message protobuf structures which are then encrypted using the Signal Protocol and then packaged into message stanzas in eXtensible Markup Language (XML).
Meta servers push messages to connected clients over a persistent connection. Third-party servers are responsible for hosting any media files their client applications send to Meta clients (such as image or video files). After receiving a media message, Meta clients will subsequently download the encrypted media from the third-party messaging servers using a Meta proxy service.
This is only for messages sent to WhatsApp, right now you are force to use their app to chat with WhatsApp users, which is worse than the proposal.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Signal declined, despite the EU bending over backwards and handing them the chance on a silver platter to become relevant.
IMO it's a mistake, like getting rid of SMS support was (which is far less secure than WhatsApp yet Reddit/Lemmy seem to be angry about that but glad about lack of WhatsApp interoperability?? I guess it's because Americans don't really use WhatsApp so it's not a big deal to them, whereas SMS is).
It would have been an amazing opportunity to help those that want to use Signal actually use it.
Yes, I'm aware Meta scrapes what metadata they can from messages, but if you make this clear in Signal when you talk to a WhatsApp user then I don't see the issue, after all it's what they did for SMS chats yet everybody loved that feature!
People trying Signal because it's compatible with WhatsApp that everybody uses would lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats, and that's a good thing.
The Signal foundation seems to care more about being ideologically pure for its 10 users than they do about making a small compromise that leads to far more users and far more Signal-to-Signal chats. It seriously disappointed me, and I stopped my £10 monthly donation hearing that bad news. I was so invested in Signal because I thought it was a great app, but there's no point of financially supporting the growth of an organisation that vehemently rejects growth, I was throwing my money away.
I went from having 10 contacts on Signal down to just one after the SMS purge. I want to use this app but it's pointless. Nobody wants to use an app that nobody uses, and Signal doesn't seem to want any users either.
Frankly, I don't buy their excuse. If they were truly that ideologically pure about absolute privacy, they'd never have added SMS support in the first place! And they wouldn't have tied accounts to phone numbers either!
I think the reason they ditched SMS was down to development costs. Maintaining that functionality, as well as building RCS support, is far more expensive than simply cutting the feature out and trying to salvage some "it's about privacy!" PR. I think the same is true for WhatsApp integration.
E: I knew this would start getting heavily downvoted once the Americans started logging on. Please try to understand that WhatsApp is big in much of the world. Everybody uses it. My bank wouldn't let me take out a mortgage without WhatsApp. That's how ingrained it is. Being able to use Signal and still receive messages from people would go a long way in getting people to install the app.
People trying Signal because it's compatible with WhatsApp that everybody uses would lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats, and that's a good thing.
75% of my signal contacts would delete signal and just use whatsapp if interOp happened... I've already slowly lost 1 or 2 contacts a year because i'm the only one they know on signal and they either gave up or forgot to reinstall when they got a new phone
load more comments
(5 replies)
People trying Signal because it's compatible with WhatsApp that everybody uses would lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats
would it, though? why would anyone move away from Whatsapp if they could talk to Signal users without switching apps?
would it, though
Yes? 100% it would?
A fair amount of people don't want to use WhatsApp, but they have no real choice because it's practically a requirement for living in modern society.
If you make it so they can still chat to people on WhatsApp, they can go to Signal without worrying about that.
why would anyone move away from Whatsapp if they could talk to Signal users without switching apps?
Why would anybody play games on Linux via proton if they could just stay on Windows? Because they don't like Windows.
Like I said above, plenty of people don't like Meta, they use WhatsApp because there's no real choice. Offer them a choice, and more will take the plunge.
And why would anybody move to Signal if they can't talk to anybody?
The massive drop in users after getting rid of SMS support shows that people are willing to use Signal if they can still talk to people, but aren't willing to use it when they can't.
why would anybody move to Signal if they can’t talk to anybody?
why would anybody move to Signal if it's no different in terms of privacy anymore? That'd be the consequence of interoperability.
You'd have better privacy when talking Signal to Signal. Interoperability would be towards those using WhatsApp and then it'd be either using Signal to chat with them or being forced to use WhatsApp's app.
I'm assuming they'd have two different ways to communicate instead of just switching it all to WhatsApp's system.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
I doubt it would lead to more signal-to-signal chats. With interoperability, they would be handing off their data to Meta, at which point users will just keep using WhatsApp as most are today.
If getting away from Meta and other for-profit companies is no more, what will be the selling point of Signal?
How could it not lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats?
The biggest problem with signal is that nobody uses Signal. Everybody uses WhatsApp.
If you make it so people can switch to signal without it completely cutting you off from the world, then more people will use it, which will lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats, which will lead to signal becoming widespread enough that people shift from WhatsApp.
load more comments
(6 replies)
Yeah I also found that decision to be really disappointing. Before you could just use Signal for all your messaging and it would smartly use its own protocol if you both had accounts. Now it's relegated to dedicated Signal users, which yeah I've got like 4 contacts left.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I also am waiting for news on this. I think many users lack of an european view. In Europe Whatsapp is a monopoly for Instant Messaging, look at https://www.statista.com/statistics/1005178/share-population-using-whatsapp-europe/. And you do not break a Monopoly with "remove whatsapp and use only signal". I only have 1 contact in Signal, two years ago I had 5 contacts. If I remove Whatsapp, I lack of IM. Period.
Signal has E2EE encryption, Signal collects very few metadata. If they collect very few metadata, they have very few metadata to expose to Whatsapp. If Whatsapp forces them to provide more metadata, they could argue and even ask for arbitration with the European Comission.
But the lack of interest to ever consider the interoperalibity seems to me they are not interested in the european market. They do not want to grow in Europe to become the best privacy-respectful IM solution (with users).
it requires Whatsapp to open up interoperability with other services if they request that. Signal has already mentioned in the past that they wouldn't be interested.
Matrix being federated and interoperable from day 1 was pushing for this and there was a blog post on this:
So, Matrix (federated) and XMPP (federated) would also have "metadata leaks". I imagine there would be metadata exchanged between federated servers and in addition the E2EE of XMPP and Matrix is not so good/modern as Signal's. When Signal-Whatsapp interoperability is mentioned, all people is worried about metadata leaks but it seems that concern dissapears when federation of Matrix or XMPP is mentioned.
Apart from that and one very personal opinion, I always connected Matrix to IRC, I mean, it is used more for the groups functionality than for the person-to-person functionality. And IRC was never considered an Instant Messaging alternative. But this is a very personal feel.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I'm looking forward to the day when I confederate my own fucking messaging server. But I doubt that'll ever come.
I think a lot of the fediverse should introduce Matrix as part of their deployment for private messages directly.
load more comments
(3 replies)
WhatsApp and Signal will likely never integrate, unless Signal itself compromises on its actually effective security policies.
Signal's security and privacy model is not compatible with WhatsApp, and if they made it compatible, that would break what makes Signal secure and private.
That would make most people that use Signal quit using it.
If you have friends or family that won't switch to Signal, then they value convenience over privacy and security, regardless of whether or not they are informed enough or intelligent enough to understand this.
IMO, if you value privacy and security, and your friends/family are unwilling to take 5 minutes to install a different phone app to communicate with you, that is how little they value continuing to have a relationship/contact with you, you are not worth that extremely small amount of effort, you are worth less than this extremely minor inconvenience.
Other people may have different stances on this last bit, but that's mine.
load more comments
(7 replies)
I have no idea, but I'm also interested. Thus said, remember that's only inside EU. I remember that Meta said they won't apply this outside EU.
I don’t know. I’m having a much better time getting friends to move to telegram than signal.
I prefer signal, but they all seem to prefer telegram as an alternative.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Hopefully never. Just stop using whatsapp. Be the change.
When facebook bought whatsapp, I walked through the list of chats I had on whatsapp and asked them what other apps they already used. Most people already used something other than a facebook owned thing or were willing to start.
WhatsApp is ubiquitous in Ireland, if only it was as easy to get away from it. Everything from clubs, schools, kids sport is done via group chats on WhatsApp. Absolutely hate Meta as a company, WhatsApp is the only app I use of theirs and only because they bought it from under us. If we could get proper interoperability, we could use a non WhatsApp app, but it's not looking good so far.
Sounds awful, sorry to hear that
view more: next ›