Hi friends,
I’m new to Lemmy but I think I like where it is heading in general. I would like to ask, do you have any specific apps used for ?
As a community that seems more focused on decentralized platforms, I thought this could spike up an interesting discussion
I have been using mainly Viber and FB messenger. I did try to convince friends and family to move over to simpleXchat, as it seems the most privacy focused alternative I have found, but basically failed.
I would love to hear your input!
Signal
I dropped it when they decided to get rid of SMS. I don’t want to be treated like I can’t be trusted to be responsible for my own privacy and security. I understand the difference between an SMS and an encrypted Signal message and was fully aware of which contacts had Signal and which did not have it.
In my opinion they should have disabled SMS by default and made it an option with warnings to enable in the settings. They had already been doing borderline questionable things with crypto and the stories that I did not want in a messenger app… this was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.
I’m patiently waiting for a decent fork of Signal with SMS enabled, or a decent open source RCS client… unfortunately I landed on Google Messages for now.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I belive the reason why SMS was dropped was because of the unreliable interaction between two endpoints: If you’re communicating with a contact over RCS in Google messages, and you’d send them a message over signal- they’d receive an SMS. But throttling reply would be over RCS and signal wouldn’t be able to display that since there isn’t an open API for signal to interact with RCS messages. So the whole reason to drop SMS support was due to inconsistencies of how messages in androids would be handled.
Basically, Signal could have implemented RCS messaging themselves, making them the de facto iMessage replacement on Android, but they chose not to so that their devs could instead spend their time building NFTs into their platform or whatever the next shiny bauble is.
I still use Signal for lack of a credible alternative but dropping SMS support in favour of NFTs and Stories was fucking dumb. They need to focus on being the best messaging platform first, then focus on expanding into other markets and functionality.
I use Signal kinda exclusively. Managed to migrate my friends and family away from WhatsApp a few years back (I am living in Europe).
How did you do it ? I cant get them to migrate.
To be real, getting someone to change their habit is near impossible and when that happens, just send them SMS.
I just started selling them drugs, and told them we use signal now.
The way I did it was getting rid of the apps I no longer wanted on my phone. This forced people to send text messages. If they try sending a good pic/video it would obviously fail. Their only option was usually something more difficult than just installing Signal. I don’t provide Whatsapp as an alternative. I did lose some contacts, but close friends/family will obviously opt for the better messaging experience compared to default SMS.
Managed to migrate my friends and family away from WhatsApp
Please tell my how I beg you
- Uninstall WhatsApp
- Family+friends will get notification that you left in every group you were in, and lose their shit. They will call you asking wtf is happening
- Try to calm the waters by telling them you found out Meta is a bad company and you don’t want to participate it
- Get confusing looks and asked wtf is wrong with you
- Try to divert the complexity of the subject by mentioning that they can just download Signal and reach you there
- Get scoffed and manage to get one or two nearest friends on your Signal app
- Still get contacted by everyone’s else on whatsapp and by your grandmother on FB messenger , although you ain’t there
- Sucessfully managed to keep your 2 contacts on Signal and even see it growing to 4 over a year.
- Wait till Signal fucks up, delete it, install SimpleX, start over again
In about ~20y I should be able to convert all my friends away from Whatsapp then!
It’s not perfect, but it is the best alternative for the masses.
Whatsapp is the norm here so I begrudgingly use that. Wish more people were on Signal, Matrix or Telegram.
You can apparently bridge Whatsapp and Matrix. I have looked into it for a few evenings but got nothing running despite having some experience with self hosting stuff. It was a while ago though.
There is an Ansible repo. It does all you need. It’s just some configuration in one file. Maybe takes a few hours to read through, but it can set up early everything Matrix has to offer and is well documented… It just really is a lot.
Elements (Matrix) as much as much as possible. I bridge a lot services through it. Though Signal would be the second most.
With bridges, it’s truly the one app to rule them all.
I tried to migrate friends and family to Signal a couple of years back. Only managed with 3 people :/.
Unfortunately here (Italy), WhatsApp is too much widespread as reach out method now. Especially for businesses, from restaurants to, say, the family doctor.
I use Cinny. It’s a desktop app for Matrix.
Signal is my go to. Some of my friends refuse to download it, so I just text them. I’ll use iMessage on iOS and Google Messages on Android. But if I can use Signal, I will
For your friends and family, Signal is probably the best. It’s simple to use and set up, unlike SimpleX which some might have trouble with. For people who refuse to switch, iMessage.
Delta Chat is awesome encrypted/secure messaging via imap and thus compatible with anyone who has an email address.
Conversations is an excellent XMPP client.
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Does FluffyChat support encrypted rooms/chats now? Last I tried it didn’t and was the reason I went back to Element.
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unfortunately it is whatsapp… Had everyone move to signal, but it didn’t last :(
yeah, most people here use WhatsApp so I, reluctantly, have it too.
some friends wouldn’t even consider Telegram though it’s better feature-wise; i can’t think of swapping to Signal, Matrix, or others mentioned here though they may have more perks.
even if friends don’t use it, to me Telegram is king with the group and channel features. you can easily connect with other telegram users almost anonymously (although scammers are to be expected).
what other apps have these sort of community chats? I found an asexual community on Matrix, but that’s kind of it.
I really like using Signal Private Messenger app, but I can’t get all my friends and family to use it, so for my regular texting app, I just use Chomp SMS.
Eh, mostly sms and telegram.
The only people I care about use sms, and I’ve convinced them to use telegram for thighs sms can’t do, like file sharing.
I have and use matrix for specific tasks, and I got suckered into discord for gaming and reddit. But neither get used much nowadays. There’s one discord server I stay vaguely active on because internet friends use it. Post reddit implosion, the matrix isn’t very useful since they were for mod chats and I’m only modding one sub until the end of the month, and that’s mostly solo (no need for chats lol)
Waiting on SimpleX to have desktop client and sync to migrate from Signal. Meanwhile Molly and all the major platforms sadly
