I’ve been working really hard to research and rank messaging apps by their privacy. The more green boxes the better.

I plan to turn PrivacySpreadsheet.com into a place for privacy data on everything from cars to video games. It’s all open source too on GitHub.

Not trying to advertise, I just put a lot of time into researching all this, and I want to share it since I think others could benefit.

  • fosstulate@iusearchlinux.fyi
    6·
    9 months ago

    The messaging app front I consider to be a long-term stalemate, mainly due to crippling network effects. Another factor is that strange psychology at play when making app decisions, where a person will have page after page of junk apps on their phones, yet utterly balks at the notion of installing a second messenger.

    Even if a large actor (say, the EU?) managed to bruteforce some interoperability into being, I wonder whether that would be to the detriment of small apps in terms of undermining (or even eliminating) their privacy protections. I can use the likes of Session or Simplex all day long, but if the other side of the conversation is on a corporate product like Whatsapp… It runs into the same problem as email.

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
      31·
      9 months ago

      where a person will have page after page of junk apps on their phones, yet utterly balks at the notion of installing a second messenger.

      Ffs this drives me crazy.

      I have a friend who bitches about SMS being shit, every.single.day.

      But will they use another app? No. “I don’t want to have to use different messaging apps”. Oh, so what you’re saying is you’re OK with how shitty SMS is. So stop complaining.

      Really, it’s not like you don’t already have 3 email accounts, and have had a few phone numbers. And your friends numbers have changed over the years too.

      This is something you use all day, every day. Not hard to find a conversation - hell, both iOS and Android show you this on a per contact basis.

      So I’m not sure what’s really going on when people say this. There’s some other weird mental thing happening.

      • UnHidden@lemmy.worldOP
        1·
        9 months ago

        Now you have something visual that you can show them and say “this is how bad SMS is compared to Signal”