I use it, and its pretty decent. Looks good and works.
Pros: -No user ID needed. -Can self host the server that passes on your messages. -Has the option to use Flux. -Works out of the box.
Cons: -Battery drain is a thing. Either toggle the periodic check, or turn it off and open it yourself to check messages. -Using one account accross multiple devices can be a pain. Since u can’t keep using your phone account at the same time as it is connected to your pc. Can be circumvented by having mutiple accounts in the same group chat; but yea it’s a pain the ass.
Neutral: -Convincing people to use it hahahh. But this is a universal probem vs mainstream messenger apps.
Final verdict: 4/5. Very good if privacy and anonymity is your number 1 priority. It’s less of hassle to set up than some other options, and relatively easy to get people into it. Sent invite, they download the app, make profile and are good to go.
Batterydrain and same use account across multiple devices could and should be better for mainstream adoption. On the other hand if u toggle the periodic checks then I find the drain tolerable. And how many of us are in places that don’t have a wallsocket available to charge your phone :p
It is better. First of all you don’t have to connect your phone number or an email. this is an automatic victory
Its on a torified network. It’s encrypted And if you choose basically every chat is a burner account. So once deleted it’s gone.
I’ve noticed that signal is actually NOT secure at all and may actually be a gov project
People like to forget that signal uses amazon servers lmao, yet they paise it for its privacy🙄
I was just telling people to read terms of device and people disliked my post. If they read it they would realize information like that but they are SIMPs so they just refuse to and say “oh iTz tOo hArdD to ReAd it”
The Signal crowd gets butthurt pretty quick lol. Have been downvoted before for prefering SimpleX over signal and trying to explain that its better in terms of privacy. They really are simps ahhahaha
I use it but it is slow with notifications and I don’t like the way both sides have to agree to deleting or self destruct messages.
Neat idea, but in practice, it’s only practical for a single small-ish group of motivated, technical users who wish to communicate internally to the group. When you luck out with such a situation, there are many options out there to choose from, including running a private chat server somewhere running something like XMPP, possibly over tor. It’s well-trodden ground.
Signal has a completely different use case than the above. You can get a lot of regular people to switch from SMS or imessage to a Signal chat without too much cajoling, and sometimes just discover that contacts are already on it so you can start with that.
Why technical users? U just download and use it
I do. It looks nice and is easy to use. My less technical friend wanted to use something more private than texting, and we decided to use it together.
We had a small group (under 50 people) that used it daily for several months as our primary means of communication after moving from Matrix. I think the privacy/anonymity features are sound, and the creator/lead dev seemed to be making the removal and prevention of CSAM on the platform a priority which is great.
We always had problems though. Users on iOS and Windows had regular problems with the chat losing track of where it was, images not loading, images getting stuck as your “last read” position, etc. Users on all platforms including Linux and Android would randomly lose the ability to see messages from others in rooms, fail to receive notifications, or upload images that only they could see. There’s also a fair bit of feature disparity across platforms. While we were using it iOS lacked the ability to mark all messages in a room as read, meaning some people were stuck scrolling slowly through hundreds of messages a day or living with unread message counts in the thousands.
We ended up moving to XMPP. Maybe in the future when the platform is more evenly developed we’ll give it another shot, but for now XMPP is working better for everyone across multiple platforms.
may i ask what clients you use for xmpp? conversations.im is the obvious best choice on android but not sure on ios, macos, linux, windows etc
Gajim on PC (Linux) and Monocles on mobile (Android) are my favorites. Gajim is available on every desktop platform you mentioned. Monocles is a fork of conversations.im.
I don’t actually have a recommendation for iOS as I don’t use it. I know at least one person in our usual group does though, so I’m assuming there’s a client on that side that doesn’t suck?
Thanks for the recommendation!
I’m trying to move a friend groupchat away from discord and there are users on all those platforms.
Are you hosting your own server? How’s it working with multi devices one one account (phone and desktop usually)? I’ve experimented with prosody a bit and it seemed like only one machine was able to receive message at one time, so the phone and computer quickly got out of sync.
Sorry for asking too many questions, it’s hard to find these things easily.
We have a private Prosody server on a VPS. The device issue may have been a setting you needed to change on your clients. By default there’s a built in delay when sending notifications to multiple devices, so whatever is seen as your active device will get the updates in real time and the others won’t. I have all mine set to no delay and all the messages sync instantly on PC and phone, assuming the phone isn’t doing any type of power or data saving that messes things up.
Thanks!
💚
What were the reasons for moving away from Matrix and what XMPP server and client are you using?
Curious about what wasn’t working with matrix? and how XMPP is comparing? I haven’t used XMPP in like over a decade. Is it still about the same? Better? I don’t think I was that aware of its group abilities. Mostly used it with one friend back in the N900 days where it was built in. How does the excryption compare? about the same if you choose the right option? You got a favorite linux client?
(I know I am pestering you with too many questions, feel free to ignore)
Curious about what wasn’t working with matrix?
Performance was never amazing even with a dedicated server for local users. We also had insane issues with pedos and traffickers joining our rooms to spam their telegram links or CSAM. It got to the point that it wasn’t fun to use and Matrix never seemed to care. They claim to be tough on that type of thing but our experience didn’t reflect that.
how XMPP is comparing?
More reliable which counts for a lot. Still working through some stuff with our host and messing with some add-ons for XMPP but over all everyone is happier.
I haven’t used XMPP in like over a decade. Is it still about the same? Better? I don’t think I was that aware of its group abilities.
I’d say it’s roughly on par with most of the better known chat solutions these days if you’re looking for something that’s reliable but not bleeding edge. It’s been working well for us, YMMV. Groups are a thing and work well and there are even bridges to Matrix and many other platforms.
How does the excryption compare? about the same if you choose the right option?
Default is blind trust OMEMO which works very well. I recommend checking it out for yourself if you aren’t familiar to make sure it’s appropriate for your threat model.
You got a favorite linux client?
Gajim was the early favorite and I haven’t found anything compelling enough to change. I’ve tried probably a dozen clients total across various platforms and Gajim mostly just works. These days that counts for a lot with me.
(I know I am pestering you with too many questions, feel free to ignore)
Nothing but love here mate. Some days I have time to answer, sometimes I don’t. It’s never personal. 💚
Tangibly even less people use it than Signal.😅
This is exactly why I don’t use it. I have a super tiny chance of getting somebody to message me on signal. I have zero chance of getting them to simplex.
Yeah this is the problem, I can’t even broach moving away from what’s app without my friends calling me crazy.
Someone I volunteer with sent me a Google Doc and I told them I couldn’t see it without a Google account and they just couldn’t wrap their head around why I did not have and would not be getting one. I gave them several alternatives where they could upload the document to share and they simply refused.
I also volunteered with another program with the local school district/city and they required to use Google Groups for communications. I sent them a list of 8+ alternatives but they just tried to guilt me into using Google instead.
It’s a sad corpo world we lived in.
Yep. Even have this problem with people who agree that it is a bad idea and that google/etc is tracking them. I struggle to admit it, but I think many people are just sheep. Or probably lemmings. I think the last few years have shown that many people really will walk off that cliff if they think “everyone” else is, even if they know the cliff is there and the bottom is way way down there. It looks like they can’t help themselves.
Yeah its crazy, its not even that much more inconvenient to use another service. people just tend to stick to what everyone else does I guess
I use it and yes, it is quite noticeably better.
Connecting to somebody new with a new pseudonym is completely possible by just tapping one switch in the share screen.
Plus, you don’t need a phone number which does generally require at least some personally identifiable information to obtain
Do be aware though, your database is an incredibly important file. If you lose your database or lose the password to your database, you are completely screwed just as if you lost cryptocurrency. Those accounts are burned forever because you will never have the keys to generate those accounts again.
Conceptually, it’s a messaging app done right. Not haunted by legacy identifiers like phone numbers, can be run in a decentralized manner, and a more secure invite system.
In practice, it tends to burn through battery, and it’s already hard enough getting people to use Signal. People also seem to have a hard time grasping the concepts of invites, or anything that’s not a phone number for that matter.
I’ve stopped using it due to the battery issue and I don’t want to fragment my communication strategy further. It ought to have a privacy advantage by virtue of not needing a phone number, but at the end of the day, my messages are also getting swept up on the other end by non-privacy-respecting phones.
Not haunted by legacy identifiers like phone numbers,
That is a very solid point that all too few people consider. (I’m looking at you telegram!)
I don’t know that it is “tangibly better for privacy”. Not saying it isn’t, just that I don’t know. It’s definitely better for anonymity/pseudonymity. The main benefits, in my opinion, are:
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No phone number needed for sign-up. Signal wants people to be able to easily find who is available to message on Signal, and they’re leveraging the phone numbers in your personal contacts to build a private “social graph”. This is actually really nice, but also can be a huge hurdle for a variety of reasons I won’t go into, none of which are privacy, as others have repeatedly alleged, because there is nothing connected to your phone number, as Signal has demonstrated in their public subpoena responses.
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SimpleX let’s you have multiple profiles. For example, a work profile, a personal profile, a public/social profile, and an anonymous/pseudonymous profile. They also support business profiles. This is, in my opinion, a huge problem for Signal. Sometimes Signal is used to do things like organize protests. If that group is public, anyone can join and see exactly who you are, and you’re essentially doxing yourself in that group. Really not ideal. In the case of something like Session, I can use Shelter to create a work profile and install a redundant copy of the app for another profile, but due to #1, this is not possible.
I also see orgs like EFF and 404 Media using Signal as a comms method. You can’t message them either without doxxing yourself, unless you just erase/pseudonymize your profile, which would then just completely confuse your actual friends and family.
- No one can message you that you have not invited to message you. Due to #1 (again) people can and do use Signal to send spam/scam messages. Now they could do so just using SMS, but my personal SMS app has spam filters, Signal does not.
If you want to create a public invitation, you can do so, and share it wherever you want. I share mine on my personal Linkstack site. If, in some hypothetical future, spammers/scammers start scraping the web for invitations, and that invitation gets collected and sold/shared, I can simply rotate it out with a new invitation, but, importantly, without losing any of the connections to people I’ve already messaged. You can do similar with Signal usernames, but only for the 1 profile, and you cannot stop people from messaging with your #. You can also set it in a group to disallow private messages to other members, which is a huge problem in places like Discord and Matrix.
This doesn’t really matter so much today, as certainly the # of users are so small as to be a waste of time for any spammers, but it matters so much on a fundamental level, in a hypothetical future where it becomes widely adopted.
You can also create 1-time invitations so that you can be 100% sure that the person messaging you is the person you invited, as opposed to Signal’s “safety number” approach.
- They don’t use Google/Apple notifications. This is both a pro and con. Ideally they would just support UnifiedPush but instead they run their own notification server. This hits your battery life, as well as causes problems with notifications. I often open the app and just watch it update messages for several seconds and then get a wave of notifications, but I also don’t utilize the “always on” notification service. The fact that Signal just uses Google/Apple is appalling but you can get around it using the FOSS Molly app. To reiterate, there is no way to receive notifications in the Signal mobile app without going through Google/Apple’s servers. It really chaps my ass to see supposed “private” apps that make no option available to circumvent the servers of tech oligopolies. I understand very few people would utilize this but I still think it’s extremely important, and the fact that Molly devs actually provide this shows that it’s entirely feasible. Google FCM notifications is the only remaining reason I absolutely need Google Play Services installed on my device, and it frustrates me to no end.
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this is the founder, so no.
Lemmy has problematic lead devs and yet we are here.
fking gross. Why do these guys gargle Musk so much? Like dude, he’s not your friend. He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t know you exist. You are not his boyfriend.
Seems to be better and i have it but… network effect, as is always the case with messaging apps.
I played with it briefly. It looks like a good choice for a situation where security is paramount and the people involved are reasonably motivated. I don’t have those needs, and nobody I know has asked to connect with me using it.
Signal, on the other hand is a familiar experience for most people with no new concepts to learn, and popular enough that I think most people will find a number of contacts already using it.
I use it, although not with people who are new to encrypted messaging or who I really need to keep contact with.
SimpleX has great features for the separation of pseudonyms, which is part of why I think it’s the best concept for an encrypted messaging app so far. But it’s not only for-profit, but funded by venture capital. I don’t think it’s going to last for the long term, and if it does, it’ll probably experience a similar enshitification that other services have. Supposedly they’re going to profit by allowing businesses to pay for their service, but I doubt that they’ll actually make much money from that.
I have it and used it in the past. It’s better in privacy than Signal since it’s decentralized and doesn’t use any identifiers. Signal forces you to use the worst identifier ever: your phone number. It should be optional (as Threema) for easy contact discovery, not mandatory. Back to SimpleX, I stopped using it because every time you have to connect the computer to phone if you want to use it from computer (it’s for maximum security, but inconvenient for me). But it’s a great app.
