Technology

Molly is in f-droid, though it's technically third party. Looks identical though.

I don't think that the founders are bad people. If you look at their history of work, they have done enormous amounts of work in the computer security sector. The founder, however, did run a cloud based WPA cracking service.

Meredith Whitaker, who is the president, used to work at Google doing research for "issues related to net neutrality measurement, privacy, security, and the social consequences of artificial intelligence".

In 2018 she then staged walkouts at Google over concerns of sexual misconduct and citizen surveillance.

The people on Signal's board seem to be trustworthy people with a pretty airtight background. You have to worry more about the mobile operating system compromising you than do you about Signal.

Does it really matter who made it if you can see the source code? You don't have to trust them.

You can use Signal with a different client. Signal being operated within the US has no effect. As of now the jurisdictions that I know of to be worried about are:

The UK, where Apple was recently ordered to remove end-to-end encryption features, and have been gagged from talking about it

Sweden, where a law is proposed to add an encryption backdoor

The EU, where leadership is pushing for an encryption backdoor

My understanding is that the Indian government under the BJP and Congress has been pretty consistently anti-encryption, and violated privacy rights

France arrested the founder of Telegram for using end to end encryption in Telegram

Australia in 2018 passed a law that enabled the government to require communications platforms add a backdoor for government decryption. The Director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) said that “privacy is important but not absolute”. Which has the same vibes as "this is not about human rights, this is about human life."

WhatsApp was previously suspended in Brazil for refusing to hand over decrypted messages.

Austria is in the process of passing legislation allowing police to backdoor encryption in messaging apps

China and Russia are very obvious problems. Here's an easy one of many examples

The White House both in Trump's first term and in Biden's presidency were pro-encryption. Signal and Tor were US government funded projects. That's not to say the US is great on encryption, and there have been laws in the past that did/were proposed to limit it. But, as of now, it seems that the US is (edit: one of) the most hospitable jurisdictions for encrypted messaging non-profits.

BTW, I'm not saying using Tox is bad, or that Signal is good, I'm just talking about the US jurisdiction part.

Well yeah we could also use Briar or whatever... but would your grandma?

Hell yeah. Tox continues to rock. If anyone wants to chat, HMU, here's my key:

fdd7005639c618263ab2eedab974f7576c7c0ded6217eed9e9dc0344c622e72aeef7055f8b4d

They see no value in it. They don't see that privacy is proactive measure that can protect you.

On Facebook, especially in my family, accounts get lost and hacked. One fine day, it might be someone with more influence in the family who's attacker might make off with stolen bank information or passwords.

but "that'll never happen", right?

https://delta.chat/

XMPP/Jabber via a web client like movim.eu sounds like it ought to work!

You can also look into Snikket as a host for small groups like friends or family, but can continue to use the Movim web client even if you're hosting with Snikket rather than Movim itself.

Matrix fits the bill.

Unless you don't like the federated nature.

WhatsApp is pretty much the first app anyone installs on their phone

Is this really the case?

Maybe it's a regional thing. I'm in the northeast US, and nearly everyone I know uses Facebook Messenger as their main form of communication, even people who don't touch Facebook at all. I hate Messenger for the same reasons that people hate WhatsApp, but I still have to use it because my entire social circle does. If I want to message someone outside Messenger without giving my phone number out, I use my Google Voice number.

I've only ever used WhatsApp to talk to work contacts overseas, and I've only ever used Signal to talk to paranoid drug dealers, which is a use case that's mostly been replaced by Telegram now.

Well, just an anecdote:

I simply deleted my WhatsApp and moved to signal. Just did it.

People installed the app, at least the ones that cared about staying in touch. Which was most everyone I cared about staying in touch with. A few of my friend groups also moved the group chat to signal, though all of them do have other ones with the people who didn’t care enough to move too, but I hear it isn’t that big a deal, they had multiple groups before and will have in future, doesn’t really feel like any extra hassle they say.

It’s been fine. No problems. I’ve had more trouble trying to explain to my extended family why I’m no longer posting on instagram. Those I never had in WhatsApp either back in the day, so they “stayed in touch” by watching my pictures I suppose. But I just consistently tell people they can reach me always via signal or plain old sms.

I guess the biggest thing to be scared about would be fomo for most, but I don’t really care enough, I’ve got so much going on already that it’s more of a blessing that I don’t have to be involved in every conversation or meme sharing or whatever.

It really gets so easy after simply switching. Just do it and that’s that. The people worth anything come with you, it’s just another app and another group chat or personal chat. Most already have discord and the meta messenger whatever its name is these days anyway. I know zero people with only one messenger/chat app and unsplintered groups across them. It’s not a big chore, and if it is, there’s always sms.