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!
I mainly use Signal, but sometimes have to fall back to SMS for people that aren’t on Signal. I also have matrix accounts, but I never really use them since I don’t have anyone among my friends and family that uses matrix.
Does signal allow two phones yet?
I have two phones and signel can’t comprehend me signing in on both of them at once. Such a stupid limitation IMO.
No, I don’t think so. I still think that it requires a different phone number on each phone. But I agree with you that it is annoying that they do not allow it, especially since they could simply imitate the functionality that exists on the desktop apps.
I use SMS and Matrix. I’d love to see something like Briar become more popular, or maybe XMPP make a resurgence as it’s been a great federated chat protocol for a long while.
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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.
Signal could have implemented RCS messaging themselves
That would have been great, except Google doesn’t provide an API for developers to use RCS in their own apps like they did with SMS. Google’s basically forcing everyone (long term) into their messaging app, which I suspect will eventually be the “iMessage” of Android since there wont be any alternative “texting” apps.
I sadly still use facebook as that’s the only way I can keep up with family. Instagram because everyone who competes in my sport uses it, and lemmy.
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.
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.
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.
Around the time when Meta announced some big privacy changes to WhatsApp, it became a hot topic in the news since everyone here uses WhatsApp.
I took advantage of that situation to talk to my friends and family about how much better Signal is. I set up our existing groups like Family Chats, Friends, and Sport Groups on Signal, and helped some people install the app. I kept reminding and urging them to switch and assured them we would continue using Signal, everything will stay the same just super secure.
To make it clear to everyone still on WhatsApp, I changed my profile picture to say “please contact me via Signal.” Surprisingly, within 1-2 weeks, everyone I care about made the switch and, to my surprise, they still use Signal today.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for all the privacy concerns about WhatsApp in the news, I think convincing them to switch would have been much harder.
I just started selling them drugs, and told them we use signal now.
This works 100%.
To be real, getting someone to change their habit is near impossible and when that happens, just send them SMS.
My brother got everyone to switch from FB messenger to WhatsApp and then FB bought whatsapp and prompted a second switch to signal
Managed to migrate my friends and family away from WhatsApp
Please tell my how I beg you
Around the time when Meta announced some big privacy changes to WhatsApp, it became a hot topic in the news since everyone here uses WhatsApp.
I took advantage of that situation to talk to my friends and family about how much better Signal is. I set up our existing groups like Family Chats, Friends, and Sport Groups on Signal, and helped some people install the app. I kept reminding and urging them to switch and assured them we would continue using Signal, everything will stay the same just super secure.
To make it clear to everyone still on WhatsApp, I changed my profile picture to say “please contact me via Signal.” Surprisingly, within 1-2 weeks, everyone I care about made the switch and, to my surprise, they still use Signal today.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for all the privacy concerns about WhatsApp in the news, I think convincing them to switch would have been much harder.
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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.
I use Cinny. It’s a desktop app for Matrix.
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’m only Discord at this point. Over time I’ve just wanted to stay within a select few platforms for mental health and security. I would move to Matrix but most people I know are on Discord. But I still have an account there incase anyone wants to contact me.
Whatsapp and Google Messenger for RCS. I wish other apps could use RCS or I’d use third party.
I use the message app that came with my phone, lol. No one in my life seems to use anything else, either.
Element for that one friend who’s also privacy conscious Telegram, Discord and Facebook Messenger (yuck) for everyone else.
