this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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Signal usage survey, what versions do you use? Wanted for potential Flatpak adoption (community.signalusers.org)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
116 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

There are big wishes for Signal to adopt the perfectly working Flatpak.

This will make Signal show up in the verified subsection of Flathub, it will improve trust, allow a central place for bug reports and support and ease maintenance.

Flatpak works on pretty much all Distros, including the ones covered by their current "Linux = Ubuntu" .deb repo.

To make a good decision, we need to have some statistics about who uses which package.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (5 children)

https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/why_not_signal.md

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Oh look an essay full of fearmongering that adds nothing to the discussion. Thanks for contributing!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

Tbf it does suggest several alternatives.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's by one of the Lemmy founders btw

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago

Doesn't make him automatically correct however.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

those were some bullshit bullet points lmao

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They're actually very good points.

The problem is that all the suggested alternatives are unworkable for adoption by the general public (they require stuff like Tor, self-hosting etc.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

one of the points is cia funding. they are bullshit

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

The appeal of signal is it is a good option (may have flaws but it is better than say discord) and it's pretty easy to get normies using it, all the other alternatives you mentioned are obscure and convincing normies such as friends and family to use them is much harder, and while signal isn't perfect, it's certainly better than whatsapp or other proprietary solutions

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

So... not using Signal because it's based off a conspiracy theory that it's secretly funded by CIA?

Well, let's stop using RSA and encryption because the most used secure crypto algorithms today were created by none other than the NSA!

EDIT: None of the alternatives provided are good alternatives for Signal. Matrix is an extremely complicated protocol that lacks some features compared to normal IM apps (I use Matrix and the experience is quite close to a standard messaging app). XMPP is dead and has a very niche userbase. The others are not suitable for being a daily messaging app.

Signal is a good alternative and while I do agree with some points, they are not bad enough to prevent you from using it (e.g. not having usernames).

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

How do you read this without JS?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Git clone

Cd [the clone]

[Text editor of choice] why_not_signal.md

[Exit text editor]

Cd ..

Rm -rf [the clone]