it took a long time to get all my important family members & friends on signal, but it’s been worth the effort! don’t give up!

Signal has worked fine for me

I moved my family successfully to Signal a few years ago, and so far I've only very rarely encountered issues with video calls

Matrix. Self-hostable, and basically everything you're looking for. Just can be a real PITA to setup TURN/STUN.

I personally use signal. Never had problems with video calls or anything really.

Hello,

You could give a look at simplex (https://simplex.chat/) ; it seems to be a possible alternative to signal, mostly focus on protecting user's privacy. Yet in my experience it doesn't allow (yet?) a call between multiple devices simultaneously.

An other alternative would be to use xmpp protocol using a jabber like server and apps. The advantage being that there is a lot of servers and even more apps, and that not every family members need to use the same... but if you are the one going to help them install, setup and upkeep, you may see mulyiplicity as a down side.

Signal should work, at least through my experience. It would also serve as a chat and stories alternative.

Signal is the way to go, been successful in moving my family, two friend groups and girlfriend. Any other closed source non encrypted messagers will collect all your family informations, news, pictures. This should be convincing enough for them

I host a Nextcloud for my family and it came with Nextcloud Talk which works fine

I've been looking for an alternative as well. My gaming friends always use Skype when we play together. We started a million years ago when Skype was huge and everyone had it and since it kept working, we kept it around.

We tried a lot of stuff, but nothing just works the way Skype always did. Why did MS have to be bitches and get rid of it.

Why not Signal? it's like WA. My family were able to accept it in the end, and it's easier now than years ago.

Controversial take:

When Signal came up WA sucked, wasn't secure. Nowadays they adopted the same E2EE that Signal uses and there isn't much difference privacy-wise. Of course I still prefer not to feed the Zuckerborg, but WA objectively isn't as bad as it was back then.

edit: apparently the E2EE does not apply to media and document attachments, and all metadata, so you might still want to consider who you entrust with that.

@Streusel

Beeper is a good, easy solution. And it has a few platforms that might entice your family (FB, x, Whatsapp, signal, etc). It's basically matrix with a bunch of bridges preset up.. it can be self hosted if you really want to be privacy focused... I like it as it makes the login experience much easier than a traditional matrix app (like it just email them a code each login)

wire

You already have your family using an encrypted service WhatsApp. Better to make them verify encryption keys with each other. And set group to auto delete messages after 30 days.

We hate what’s app because of all the metadata leakage. But it’s metadata of your family being a family. “They” already know you are a family.

If you can cinch the win though, then get them onto signal. If not, harden WhatsApp for the whole group by showing them how to use settings.

Threema is a one time payment, then it's "free" forever. You can get some google play gift cards and offer them to your family. It looks reliable and it has group calls.