this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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Privacy
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I thought people had been moving OFF signal lately?
Personally, I’m on signal, but never signed up for a Meta property because, well, it was obvious from the start that they had bad privacy controls that depended only on corporate promises.
Why are people moving off signal?
Most are staying, but there's a growing shift to simplex among privacy/anon focused people
Signal uses closed source and centralized servers to deliver all your messages. Some people don't like their communications being dependant on a corporations computer, and would rather maximize data sovereignty when possible.
phone number requrement is unacceptable to some people
If SimpleX makes bad choices it can be forked and self hosted, whereas we would be locked in with signal and at the compamys whims
No one is moving off Signal, don't listen to him
Some people realized when Signal removed SMS support on Android that Signal is a private org that can make changes as they see fit, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Other people get stuck on the fact that Signal requires a legitimate phone number in order to operate.
In both of these situations, the people up in arms usually don’t understand WHY the changes were privacy and security improvements and make Signal a better platform. But the argument about not being fully in control still stands.
So it could be argued that Signal may keep you safer than if you try to roll your own Matrix or SimpleX server, and it’s definitely a better platform for anyone who wouldn’t have a clue how to set up and secure their own server. But people have definitely had reasons for leaving it.
Personally, I use both Signal and Matrix, and push average people towards Signal.
Signal aint perfect and current leadership is sus... giving me 'em Mozilla vibes.
I foresee another migration in my feature but currently it is the gold standard for at least some keeping your msg content "private"
Meta data collection is still a huge issue with Signal and its architecture nearly built this feature into it.
Signal is designed to collect meta-metadata. They don’t hold any information that can tie a person to their account, but they definitely know how those accounts interact via their servers.
They know my phone number. Which in Europe is tied to me. They absolutely hold info about who talks to who
It's OK to stay on signal but to say no one is switching is untrue.
It was pretty small numbers before (darknet) but a youtuber called Mental outlaw did a video on it recently and now it's exploded into the more mainstream privacy communities.
It isn't perfect, and signal has a lot of perks but there's no need to literally ignore new developments
Some use open source alternatives since signal still has the off switch to your communication. I personally use matrix for over a year and its pretty good. But its not polished so you need patience and a good admin.
I've started to get much more interested in SimpleX as the database management is much easier and disappearing messages exist and while that is not a privacy function it is a great database management function to automatically have messages removed
i can see how this would be an interesting function. sadly, we're, nowhere near an end user ready experience in any non corporate messenger. it very much still depends on how tech savvy the user and how good the admin is. until that changes I'm gonna unilaterally say no to reinventing any wheels and say fix the stuff we have before adding more functionality.
I think because simpleX is more open source, self-hosted, and maybe slightly more anonymous. Not sure how the usability trades off for that if at all because I haven't used it (I mainly use signal and discord)
It also doesn't seem to be a mass migration by any means, just that simpleX is a bit better if you are super hardcore about your privacy.
Its a LOT more anonymous, not slightly.
For the overwhelming majority of users phone number alone = no anonymity, then there's the fact you're relying on a corporation to store all your messages on their closed source centralized server...
The Signal server is centralized, but it is also still open source under the AGPL license: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server
Its not more open source. It is at all. Signal is dependent on the backend which is as proprietary as bluesky. You can absolutely not self host it which technically binds you to the next single point of failure.
The Signal server is centralized, but it is also still open source under the AGPL license: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server
It's just an example. Put any libre software.
If you don't have bad stuff, this advice isn't for you but you can share it with others.