FYI, while Threema front-end clients (apps) are open-source (and offer reproducible builds, which is surprisingly uncommon in open-source land), the server component, though supposedly audited, remains closed-source.

EDIT: for comparison, the Signal server code is mostly open source, but things like the spam filter are closed.

TIL I have no family I care to keep in touch with and I have no friends.

Well yeah we could also use Briar or whatever... but would your grandma?

How do we know signal isn’t also run by a techbro who just wants our data?

Hell yeah. Tox continues to rock. If anyone wants to chat, HMU, here's my key:

fdd7005639c618263ab2eedab974f7576c7c0ded6217eed9e9dc0344c622e72aeef7055f8b4d

The founder of SimpleX is out of his mind. Check yourself: https://xcancel.com/epoberezkin

Not saying that it's necessarily a bad option, but my biggest issue with delta chat is that it does not offer forward secrecy (if a user's private key is compromised, past messages can be revealed); Signal does. Delta no question beats signal in decentralization, though email is less decentralized than it seems--how many people do you know who still use gmail? Delta also inherently leaks metadata on whom you're communicating with to the email host (that's just imap/smtp). Signal can mitigate this somewhat with Sealed Sender (which gives one-way anonymity), though it can be broken with statistical analysis, and signal metadata is more identifying due to requiring a phone number.

it does make sense, actually. as they had that function when the app was first around. why do you think they have you sign up with a phone number in the first place?

also, it's not on me to solve every technical hurdle you make up. if you want to learn more about Spam Prevention methods, I can point you to some resources if you're truly interested.

I'm sorry that not everyone thinks Signal is a god app worthy of worship. its a message app, and its not the only one. it does stuff some people don't like. including me.

why do you think they have you sign up with a phone number in the first place?

Again, spam & abuse prevention. We've been over this.

I’m sorry that not everyone thinks Signal is a god app worthy of worship. its a message app, and its not the only one. it does stuff some people don’t like. including me.

I'm not saying that Signal is a god app worthy of worship, I'm saying it's detrimental for them to include SMS functionality, since that's fundamentally insecure. That's literally why they removed it. Is that so hard to understand?

I don't think that the founders are bad people. If you look at their history of work, they have done enormous amounts of work in the computer security sector. The founder, however, did run a cloud based WPA cracking service.

Meredith Whitaker, who is the president, used to work at Google doing research for "issues related to net neutrality measurement, privacy, security, and the social consequences of artificial intelligence".

In 2018 she then staged walkouts at Google over concerns of sexual misconduct and citizen surveillance.

The people on Signal's board seem to be trustworthy people with a pretty airtight background. You have to worry more about the mobile operating system compromising you than do you about Signal.

That's their problem. If their messages aren't encrypted, it isn't like you won't be aware of it. Request that they use a modern client and get with the times. None of this is an actual problem without easy solutions.

Not sure if you're actually sincere or are sarcastically making fun of Tox's onboarding. That's a long key.

Does it really matter who made it if you can see the source code? You don't have to trust them.

Outside of North America, most other countries' use WhatsApp as a choice for personal and business uses is WhatsApp. Rest are mostly dominated by Facebook messenger. Excluding China which has WeChat domestically.

How Meta was ever allowed to buy WhatsApp without triggering anti-trust laws is beyond me.

Some numbers

Many of my European and South American friends are having a hard time because that's where all their families and friends back home are, and it's hard to get them to use something new, especially the older folks.

Thanks.

And I didn't know Signal had spam filters. It makes sense to not make that open source.

In my circle of 20 there has only been one instance of spam over several years. 3 of us got the same message.

nope I fully understand it. completely. and when they removed it, they removed my need for their app. as suddenly I went from being able to message everyone, to being able to message just 2 people.

it no longer fits my needs. so it isn't used by me or by both of the people that were leftover after the sms turn off. as they had the same reaction I did.

so that's that, I suppose.

Signal is based in America but it's a non profit organization, not a company. Important difference

Anyone know why the Signal app isn't available on F-Droid? Isn't it supposed to be open source?

You can use Signal with a different client. Signal being operated within the US has no effect. As of now the jurisdictions that I know of to be worried about are:

The UK, where Apple was recently ordered to remove end-to-end encryption features, and have been gagged from talking about it

Sweden, where a law is proposed to add an encryption backdoor

The EU, where leadership is pushing for an encryption backdoor

My understanding is that the Indian government under the BJP and Congress has been pretty consistently anti-encryption, and violated privacy rights

France arrested the founder of Telegram for using end to end encryption in Telegram

Australia in 2018 passed a law that enabled the government to require communications platforms add a backdoor for government decryption. The Director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) said that “privacy is important but not absolute”. Which has the same vibes as "this is not about human rights, this is about human life."

WhatsApp was previously suspended in Brazil for refusing to hand over decrypted messages.

Austria is in the process of passing legislation allowing police to backdoor encryption in messaging apps

China and Russia are very obvious problems. Here's an easy one of many examples

The White House both in Trump's first term and in Biden's presidency were pro-encryption. Signal and Tor were US government funded projects. That's not to say the US is great on encryption, and there have been laws in the past that did/were proposed to limit it. But, as of now, it seems that the US is (edit: one of) the most hospitable jurisdictions for encrypted messaging non-profits.

BTW, I'm not saying using Tox is bad, or that Signal is good, I'm just talking about the US jurisdiction part.

You can use Signal with a different client.

Can you advise, which one would be a good one? Because I actually use Signal too, it's just misbehaving a lot recently.

I have had endless difficulties with Signal forcing upgrades on me and requiring to sign in on the phone, under threat of deactivating my account (I use it on a PC).