Well, just an anecdote:

I simply deleted my WhatsApp and moved to signal. Just did it.

People installed the app, at least the ones that cared about staying in touch. Which was most everyone I cared about staying in touch with. A few of my friend groups also moved the group chat to signal, though all of them do have other ones with the people who didn’t care enough to move too, but I hear it isn’t that big a deal, they had multiple groups before and will have in future, doesn’t really feel like any extra hassle they say.

It’s been fine. No problems. I’ve had more trouble trying to explain to my extended family why I’m no longer posting on instagram. Those I never had in WhatsApp either back in the day, so they “stayed in touch” by watching my pictures I suppose. But I just consistently tell people they can reach me always via signal or plain old sms.

I guess the biggest thing to be scared about would be fomo for most, but I don’t really care enough, I’ve got so much going on already that it’s more of a blessing that I don’t have to be involved in every conversation or meme sharing or whatever.

It really gets so easy after simply switching. Just do it and that’s that. The people worth anything come with you, it’s just another app and another group chat or personal chat. Most already have discord and the meta messenger whatever its name is these days anyway. I know zero people with only one messenger/chat app and unsplintered groups across them. It’s not a big chore, and if it is, there’s always sms.

I will switch to signal when I can avoid installing stuff on bunch of my devices. Until web version is available, sorry it hard for me to switch and for me to convince other people to switch.

I use it mostly for family chats, I got the extended family to use it rather than Facebook Messenger

What makes you not trust signal as against WhatsApp?

groups/channels?

Interesting phrasing. How so?

I was with them helping them out. For reasons I won't discuss here I won't be able to visit them anymore, so that avenue is gone .

I would like nothing more, but so few of my contact group are willing to switch away... despite all of Meta's bullshit. I resent being made to use it whilst their AI/ads encroach further and further.

so a centralized American messenger enshitified, lets switch to the next centralized American messenger, it surely will not enshitify in the future, lets ignore the actual problem, what could go wrong

My wishlist is an app which is not linked to a phone number, is multi platform and has a web app. It should be none US and open source. That isn’t too many requirements and yet nothing seems to full fit the bill? Anyway good luck trying to get school parent’s groups to use something other than WhatsApp.

Humans are too stupid to switch from convenience to slightly less convenience even if they get privacy for free. Any amount of discomfort is too much and changing an app is basically death.

Spam isn't a binary issue, where it either exists or doesn't. It could very well be the case that, without requiring a phone number, there'd be far more spam (since it'd be far easier to automatically create new accounts).

Again, do you have a better suggestion for spam & abuse prevention?

And still, aside from that - it doesn't really make sense to expect Signal to offer SMS integration just because it requires a phone number for spam prevention, when offering this integration would be detrimental towards the mission of Signal (offering secure messages).

They see no value in it. They don't see that privacy is proactive measure that can protect you.

On Facebook, especially in my family, accounts get lost and hacked. One fine day, it might be someone with more influence in the family who's attacker might make off with stolen bank information or passwords.

but "that'll never happen", right?

I believe in it,... for now.

I moved my family group to xmpp to have more personal control over our chats. Signal seems benevolent, but I've seen this play out before. Will it stay that way? We treat online forums with the idea that federstion works to stop enshittificstion. I believe XMPP is a good model for federating secure chatrooms for the same reason: People should control the voices of the people, not companies.

Can I ask why are you so attached to your message history? I recently lost my entire WhatsApp history and it hasn’t made any difference in my life to be honest.

Xmpp is far lighter on resources and not ran by a company with funding issues.

SimpleX as well!

Your reasoning would hold up if 80% of xmpp wasn't running on Conversations or forks of it, that all support OMEMO and OpenPGP.

Your criticisms are too broad with few serious negatives. What makes extensions powerful is that they can easily change the rules without breaking the underlying system. If your client sucks, get another?

You have choices, but if your problem is metadata, whoooo boy.

If you're privacy focused, do not use matrix… The amount of metadata it leaks is... | Hacker News

(news.ycombinator.com)

Encryption on metadata · Issue #9133 · matrix-org/synapse

Timestamps, emoji reactions, message sender, read receipts, and possibly files are not encrypted in encrypted DMs and rooms. Please have encryption cover all of these things and not just the message itself.

GitHub (github.com)

(www.reddit.com)

Matrix fits the bill.

Unless you don't like the federated nature.

WhatsApp is pretty much the first app anyone installs on their phone

Is this really the case?

Maybe it's a regional thing. I'm in the northeast US, and nearly everyone I know uses Facebook Messenger as their main form of communication, even people who don't touch Facebook at all. I hate Messenger for the same reasons that people hate WhatsApp, but I still have to use it because my entire social circle does. If I want to message someone outside Messenger without giving my phone number out, I use my Google Voice number.

I've only ever used WhatsApp to talk to work contacts overseas, and I've only ever used Signal to talk to paranoid drug dealers, which is a use case that's mostly been replaced by Telegram now.

The problem is there's no one on signal that I want to talk to. So "just ditch the app" isn't actually helpful.