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Molly v.s. Signal
(mander.xyz)
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this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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Privacy
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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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I love Signal, and I have persuaded people to use it a lot. That said, it is definitely not the gold standard for privacy. It's a good-enough compromise between actual unbreakable encryption and trivial for anyone to use. It's always been valuable for that reason, and still is.
Don't worry about Molly - it uses a variation of the same code that Signal does, so they don't need "help" to get critical fixes that Signal receives. Use it if you like it!
The actual gold standard for privacy would be logging in through TOR and sending GPG-encrypted messages that way. And there's an app which does this, too - it's called Briar. (No phone number needed, either!) It's not as seamless to set up as Signal is, though.
Cool I had not heard of this, thanks!
@hoodlem
You can also do private groups, forums, and blogs on #Briar.
@SteleTrovilo
Very nice!
Do you know about SimpleX?
@Nimbus @SteleTrovilo
@lengsel@latte.is not.coffee I did not, super interesting.
I gave up Briar for SimpleX, as really good as Briar is, because of only having one ID. On SimpleX, if you enable incognito, it will create a new random ID for each new contact that you message, so no 2 persons will see the same ID for you, they each see you as a different name.
Also SimpleX is on iOS and Android, Briar is only for Android, and SimpleX does calling with contacts.
How do you backup SimpleX? Considering you changed your phone or factory reseted, can a normal person continue to contact their previous list? They don't have a problem with Signal since it uses the phone number. Can I convince my family / friends on SimpleX, as I barely managed it on Signal? Because SimpleX looks much nicer and I'd love to use it.
In SimpleX app settings, if you have already set a database passphrase, you can do a data backup or export to a file, when SimpleX is installed again, you import database.
I see, thanks for the reply. I guess this is still not so viable for tech-illiterate people, unless the devs find an optional and more streamlined process for this. I barely made people use Signal, they couldn't managed Matrix for example.
Let them stick with Molly/Signal, that will give them a lot of privacy, and nothing for them to figure out how to use.
Leave SimpleX for people more skilled to handle how to do configurations. SimpleX does have superior privacy over Signal, but mabe they can't do SimpleX. Take it in stages with what they can handle, don't jump to the end.
I'm not willing to Matrix and I don't recommend anyone use it if they wat privacy and anonymity. I'm content only using Molly and SimpleX with everybody I know and no other apps or messaging services.
I agree. Though I think 1v1 on Matrix is fine if encrypted prior, but I mostly use Matrix as tech news/forum. Federated services are not good for privacy anyway, they are not meant to be.
Currently I tell people to install Signal if they want to message me, I guess it would be a couple people for SimpleX. Most of my Signal list came when WhatsApp ToS made it to the news, some of them uninstalled Signal after a while but I'm okay with it. Well, I'm happy with Molly-FOSS for now. I would love to use SimpleX but it's something.
I wish Mastodon had encrypted DM's. I've been focusing on using Mostodon as my main place for media.
I can't find a Matrix client in F-Droid to use because when I turn off all of the anti-features, it seems Matrix is not an option to install something.
Have you not tried SimpleX yet? If not, I would suggest when the new release for 5.2 is in F-Droid you should install it. I could give you an invite link to message there but I don't want others on here using the link.
That's a wanted feature I guess but I doubt if they will implement it.
Did you check FluffyChat? Not sure about all the anti-features though.
Well, I installed it some time ago but haven't really used it. Thanks for the offer but no need to expose your privacy here, even with incognito mode. I must try it with someone I know first anyway.
I'm registered with FluffyChat, it seems fine.
Just wondered by the way, what feature about Element you do not like?
I think my dislike comes from the hype about Matrix being federated so people think it's safe, the fact that a company owns the matrix protocol, seeing the various apos that have non-free dependencies, when I looked before it seemed alk personal Matrix history is permanent, it seemed to be a combination of not the freedom people think it is and no clear sense of what the purpose of matrix is for, but don't now that I had an account previously to validate all of that.
If you want, we could talk on matrix but we both post our ID's here publicly to make sure it matches who we message on there?
I guess that's a common misconception with the federated services. Yes you can own your data if you join the federation with your own server, but once you write something on a community, it's federated and on other servers from that moment. This is the best way to keep forums intact as long as possible, so years later someone can check those and find whatever they searched for. Reddit was great as a forum however after the recent incidents people deleted their posts and unless someone recorded that page on web archive before you won't find anything when someone redirects you there. What people should know here, federated services are meant to be anonymous, not private.
Again, no need to expose anything here, and well, I'm not much of a talker anyway. :)
It's fine to talk here, as long as it isn't something personal.
This might be of interest to you https://mastodon.social/@simplex/110776953058906725
There is also a desktop app now? That's great. Thanks for the info. I'm looking forward to it.
I'm planning to watch it and ask a question.