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foss alternatives for social media apps
(lemm.ee)
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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Same to you regarding the politeness, I’m appreciating the conversation!
I’m with you regarding Facebook Messenger and even (to a more limited extent) WhatsApp Messenger. Their motivation is to provide the cheapest ways possible to keep you engaged with their platform so they can collect as much data about you as possible to sell. That is their reason for existence, essentially. Whether that trade off is worth it to the individual user is up to them, and I have decided it is not worth it for me.
Where I’m getting confused is with your characterization of Signal. It is neither closed source, nor is it a for-profit company. It is a non-profit organization whose mission is "to develop open-source privacy technology that protects free expression and enables secure global communication.". The app they built leverages end-to-end encryption, and you can find their source code here.
I will be honest, I feel Signal is the closest I’ve found to a FOSS, E2EE messaging solution that has a chance at some adoption by people who aren’t technology enthusiasts. It makes some compromises to achieve that - the fact that your account must be associated with a valid phone number is a point of frustration for privacy advocates, and it isn’t perfect when it comes to anonymity in some ways - but it is encrypted. It seems to favor security over anonymity, which is something with which I have seen the average user be able to get onboard.
Given the ease of use and security of Signal, it leaves me even more confused as to where some of the competitors differentiate themselves in ways that would make most people are likely to adopt them.
Whoops! Now that really was news to me. I default to closed source for profit and this was the first time I got it completely wrong. Sorry and thanks for correcting me.
But I already told you I have no knowledge of signal. So I guess my fault was to jump to this conclusion when prompted.
But now I have to ask. How does the backend of signal work? I just saw the frontend/client to download but I cant remember there being servers. How do you find your grandma on signal? That must be going to some kind of server, right? Also, signal got hacked at some point and lost 10k+ phone numbers of users which is unfortunate. And there is the benefit of matrix again. You can host your own server with your 10 friends and as long as you update regularly, you‘re a very bad target (small and up to date).
I think matrix is absolutely not at the stage where you can compare it to something as polished as signal. I just checked wikipedia and they made 8 digits a year. So, I get that they‘re not making billions and not selling data but people „work“ there in stark opposition to matrix (bar element). I‘ll say that signal is probably a very good product and overall trustworthy. Although I have to say that it’s not a competitor to discord, unlike matrix. Which was my actual claim.