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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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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.
I hear you. I still think Signal is a great project, and I use it daily. It has flaws, and the alternatives mentioned have flaws. As I said, I'm not recommending the alternatives (yet) for general public, but I am actively looking for something that is polished enough for non-technical people, but addresses my concerns with Signal. Like I said, I also haven't seen spam being much of an issue on xmpp or matrix, despite pretty easy signups. As far as trusting a server, lots of people don't trust the closed, centralized Signal server. At least with xmpp/matrix you have choices which include some cool organizations--- or you could run it yourself.