A mass exodus from Whatsapp created a great opportunity to change a whole landscape of communication tools, but seems it is already missed though. Instead of switching to wonderful self-hosted (rocket.chat, element) or even p2p serverless (briar etc) alternatives, millions of ex Whatsapp users stuck with yet another centralized USA-based messenger - Signal. Sad.
I don’t know about this being missed opportunity… Getting my 18 friends over to Signal has been an uphill battle…Am talking grown ass middle aged men of diverse ethnic mix here… It sure as hell would not have happened if I asked them to move to anything else and trust me I know this because I have tried this ever since whatsapp was acquired by FB. But it was only now I could make it happen… So not a missed opportunity in my world eh!!
Signal is great for those who are privacy conscious and mediocre for those security conscious. For majority of users though security isn’t as big a concern (we aren’t planning a revolution or resistance) as privacy is and on that basis alone move to signal is a win for good guys in my book.
ahaha definitely understand your situation, my gf tried to convinced her relatives for a year.
Sure it’s a centralized USA-based messenger, but if it’s end-to-end encrypted with literally no data collection why does it matter?
PRISM, backdoors, etc. https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/839181861976956928 If it’s based in the USA or China it doesn’t matter how encrypted it is, both countries can legally force the provision of backdoors and not tell you about it.
That’s not entirely true. Telegram reported 25 million new users in the past few weeks, they’ve crossed over 500 million this month. It’s just not happening in North America because of the insular nature of the empire.
it is adding up to the point and makes things even worse :)
You are echoing some of the thoughts I had when I wrote this:
People should be looking to switch to apps like Threema, or at the very least Telegram. The US has very little power over those apps and can potentially exert a lot of influence over Signal.
btw Crypto AG story increases chances that some services and companies even marketed as super secure and NON-US could be secretly owned by us government :) https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2020/02/12/cia-secretly-bought-global-encryption-provider-built-backdoors-spied-on-100-foreign-governments/
A fox is not caught twice in the same snare…
Yeah, I like the optimism of that :)
