this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024

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Privacy

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I got a new job. whatsapp group (20 people) is migrating to signal because I don't use it. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

172 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I understand that it may be problematic sometimes but this was very smooth. I didn't even say anything.

A: what's your number for the whatsapp group Me: I don't have whatsapp because of facebook. B: ok, we have to use signal then A: ok

And that was it. Life can be very easy sometimes

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

Damn...

You must be really good

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

Sure and then Santa gave everyone free librebooted thinkpads.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

If only everyone was like that...

[–] [email protected] 94 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (15 children)

Before Signal made the boneheaded move of removing SMS support, it was so much easier for me to pitch the idea of using Signal to my friends and family, most of which eventually did make the shift from SMS to Signal messages for reasons like ease of use when it came to group chats, sending images/videos, voice clips, etc.

But now? Now it's one of those embarrassing moments where I hear back from people basically all saying "your tech recommendations are usually on point but uh, what happened with Signal???" because the app just abruptly stopped supporting SMS and ruined the seamless appeal. SMS support was the perfect way to ease people into shifting towards Signal messages and now the only damn people I know who still know Signal are my most privacy-minded friends/family, while everyone else has switched back to WhatsApp.

Clearly I'm not bitter...😅 But I mean like, come on. I had the most notorious luddites in my social circle make the switch to Signal and they loved it. The shift from SMS to Signal messages was so smooth so many of them didn't even have that "I miss [SMS stuff]", plus they LOVED that Signal could be used on their laptops in addition to their phones. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this annoys me so much.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Why did they remove SMS support?

[–] [email protected] 43 points 9 months ago (9 children)

Think it was related to the messages being insecure and signal didn’t want people to be confused.

If your using signal your messages should be secure. SMS messages aren’t secure. It may have been clear to you when Signal send an sms or an encrypted message, but they need to cater to everyone.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

In all my years of not using WhatsApp this has never happened to me lol. At best I've gotten some people to message me individually on Signal but not entire groups

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago

I wish my family was that easy to change, and there are only five of us.

[–] [email protected] 269 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Surprised that happened. Very rare to see that these days.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago (2 children)

There may have been discussions around it beforehand. I didn't ask why it went so smooth.

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[–] [email protected] 114 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Maybe OP works on infosec and the team was like yeah, makes sense?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

They only realized that when he said that? What a weird infosec team. I guess they also could use SimpleX if they wanted the most secure, private and anonymous option, but I think Signal is pretty well balanced as a messenger. Good privacy and usability.

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[–] [email protected] 124 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Let's say I work in an IT area (but not infosec)

[+] [email protected] -19 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Should have used Matrix

[–] [email protected] 67 points 9 months ago (10 children)

No, Matrix isn’t the best in terms of privacy. It is a metadata disaster and most other platform are a lot more performant.

Matrix’s E2EE does not, however, encrypt everything. The following information is not encrypted: Message senders, Session/device IDs, Message timestamps, Room members (join/leave/invite events), Message edit events, Message reactions, Read receipts, Nicknames, Profile pictures

Matrix is developed by a for profit entity, a group of venture capitalists and having a spec doesn’t mean everything. The way Matrix is designed is to force into jumping through hoops and kind of draw all attention to Matrix itself instead of the end result.

XMPP is the true and the OG federated and truly open solution that is very extensible. XMPP is tested, reliable, secure and above all a truly open standard and decentralized it just lacks some investment in better mobile clients.

What most fail to see is that XMPP is the only solution that treats messaging and video like email: just provide an address and the servers and clients will cooperate with each other in order to maintain a conversation. Everything else is just an attempt at yet another vendor lock-in.

People need to get this through their heads, XMPP is the only solution for their problems.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

XMPP is great but it's dead.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)

It is as dead as we want. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel, probably the only thing that XMPP lacks is a bunch of money into a very good, cross-platform (but native) client like Telegram has that actually works 100% of the time and a bunch of large scale public servers to handle regular users who don't want to host their own. Also... easy registrations and setup on said client.

For a regular user and most privacy aware people, they just don't care if the protocol is Matrix, Signal or XMPP - they just want a good end user experience and a solid thing, that's what XMPP lacks today and it's all client side.

Bottom line is: XMPP as a protocol is great, lacks someone with vision and money to drive it into mass adoption.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I'm pretty sure an encrypted chat platform is possible with ActivityPub. In fact, sup is an instant messenger that will be encrypted and federated using the ActivityPub protocol. It's being made by dansup, the creator of PixelFed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Why reinvent the wheel, tweak a protocol, implement a ton of software when you can just use the tested, tried and true XMPP?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (4 children)

For a team of 20 people matrix is way overkill imo

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There would be room for expansion. What about an IRC then?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

XMPP on the other hand...

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Now tell them you just switched to matrix and see if they'll follow

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't have to. Matrix is coming anyway. It's not an if but a when.

For official (internal) company communication though I will advertise matrix instead of signal. I'll report back once I've talked to the right people about it.